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| - This is the You do not know 1% of all that can be known argument. The reference to Edison is at best an attribution, and at worst an argument from authority.
For more on Thomas Edison, including his views on religion, visit his page.
- Starting off with a double insult probably isn't the best way to convince someone, but what Kirk's really saying is that some folks simply won't believe based on blind faith.
- Yet another example of Ray's implication that only a moron or fool would fail to recognize the obvious truth of his claims.
- Kirk begins with an appeal to emotion. Kirk asserts, without justification, the reality of damnation and salvation and the viewer feels compelled to learn these "tools" to prevent their loved ones from experiencing damnation. This isn't a logical fallacy because the viewer is likely to accept this premise but it does obscure the questionable nature of the premise.
- Ray is correct, and this is a much better representation of the atheist's position. By continually arguing against an inaccurate, straw man, representation of strong atheism, they've built a case which has no basis in reality.
It's worth noting that the conclusions Ray asserts one must logically reach with regard to God, also apply to any similar claim. It's possible that there's ample evidence to prove God, or fairies, or unicorns, or aliens, or ghosts, or ESP, or any number of other claims. Ray conveniently ignores this fact, hoping that one won't notice that his argument for God is hollow.
The real question isn't "Is this possible?", it's "Is this true?" or "Is there sufficient evidence to justify belief?" If we simply believed things because there's a possibility that evidence might exist, we'd believe nearly anything. For those who prefer to hold justifiable beliefs which are as near to "certainly true" as possible, mere possibility is grossly insufficient.
- Here Chris really shines, with a great answer - an answer which Ray promptly ignores. Direct empirical evidence, falsifiability, testability...these are the things that determine reality. Ray's implication that God, by virtue of not being seen, is somehow the rational equivalent of gravity, as it is also unseen, is preposterous. Perhaps, even without the ability to actually test gravity, the ubiquitous and uniform experience of gravity would be sufficient to justify belief. The god concept, in addition to being untestable, lacks this ubiquitous nature.
- Ray's 'if you're not stupid, you'll believe this'-mantra continues.
- Kirk's "tools" seem to have failed. A little flattery and one last group of emotional appeals and he's forced to just request that she think about it. He also uses questionable definitions of "abolish" and "destroy," since in normal usage, he would be saying that there is no longer any death, for anyone. The request that she be "honest" with God is rather insulting; clearly, he's implying that she's being dishonest about her beliefs. Despite this insult, and being so unconvinced as to break our host's heart, she politely agrees to think about it.
- Here they again admit to intentional dishonesty and clearly admit that the intellectual arguments are only there to draw the "fish" in so that you can make an emotional appeal.
- Kirk adds a slightly new twist to the discussion, adding a false dichotomy to the analogies. His implication is that there are only two options: an intelligent designer or spontaneous, self-creation. This completely ignores or misrepresents evolutionary theory, overlooks natural selection and relies on the common sense rejection of "self creation" to prop up his implications about an intelligent designer.
- Here's the point where Ray claims the individual changes his mind about the existence of God. In truth, this individual states that he accepts evolution and admits that a creator god is a possibility as a sort of first cause.
This doesn't directly represent a change in the person's position on the existence of God. Ray has spent considerable time building up a false picture of atheism as some sort of absolute position so that any acknowledgment of the possibility of a god appears to be "backsliding". It's also possible that this person, like many people, was simply trying to avoid an argument, trying to avoid appearing rude toward others' beliefs or wasn't prepared to deal with deep theological questions.
- Kirk is correct, if we accept that a claim of knowledge requires absolute certainty. However, we often make claims of knowledge that don't require absolute certainty. Within epistemology there is a definition of knowledge as "justified true belief", which stems from the realization that certainty is unattainable outside of the knowledge that we are able to think.
- This "deep, rich, scientific" principle is none of the above. It is a tautology which explains nothing and serves as rhetoric to support a particular position. Saying that a painting requires a painter is like saying that a gift must be free. It's true by definition and in the case of all of Ray's examples , obvious by examining root words.
- Here we have an argument from blind faith. Ray is no longer interested in evidence or intellect, the key is just to accept that this is true and you'll get the pay off...but only after you've died. That tends to make this claim rather untestable. Much like trusting that parachute, if it works, great...if it doesn't, you've been misled, you've wasted time mired in false beliefs and you're dead - with no benefit from that faith.
- One very short rebuttal to this line, made famous on the Hellbound Alleee show is, "Have you ever told the truth?", "What does that make you?". Ray's argument isn't a judgment of whether or not one is a good person, it's a judgment on whether or not one is perfect - and perfect by criteria which weren't included in the initial question.
- It is reasonable, given the example, for his wife to presume that he placed those leaves in a straight line, but Ray's implication is that order necessarily indicates intelligent design, and this simply isn't true. It's possible, though unlikely, that those leaves could have fallen and been arranged in a straight line by natural laws. Our assumption that their pattern was the result of intelligence is based on our experience with similar situations and an understanding of the laws of physics.
What if we were to find a large, nearly circular void in an area filled with leaves? Is this the result of some intelligence which intentionally formed the circle or could it be the result of a helicopter taking off from that location? Only by analyzing the available evidence can we determine what the most reasonable explanation is - though we may never be certain.
Our minds are very good at spotting patterns. So good, in fact, that we often see patterns where none exist. It's very common to confuse correlation with causation, transpose cause and effect or confuse apparent design with actual design. One fine example of this confusion and our ability to see an apparent design and overlay an intelligent cause or purpose is the Face on Mars. The term for this phenomenon is pareidolia.
- Finally, the big payoff. After contradictory claims about the intellectual veracity of Christianity, Kirk has agreed to provide us with absolute proof of the existence of God.
- IronChariots has been unable to find any reference of Albert Einstein objecting to any atheistic reference to him or his work. Ray's comment that Einstein believed in God is more than a little dishonest. For specific quotes on Einstein's religion, visit his page.
Einstein's stated beliefs, while they do include some concept of God, hardly represent the sort of god-concept that Ray Comfort is implying. If anything, his opinions are more in line with the deists and freethinkers of the 19th century.
With regard to Charles Darwin, we're presented with a very similar situation. Darwin's autobiography clearly demonstrates his rejection of Christianity as well as the specific arguments and evidence which lead him to identify himself as an agnostic.
Ray quickly tries to imply that Einstein and Darwin were believers as an argument from authority, yet their own quotes clearly show that if they maintained any notion of God, it was vastly different from the sort of God being argued for in this series. As with any fallacious argument from authority, the personal beliefs of Einstein, Darwin or any other person has no bearing on the truth of the situation and carries no weight outside of their recognized fields.
This blatant misrepresentation of Darwin, the second in the past few minutes, demonstrates either a lack of scholarship or intentional dishonesty. Neither Einstein's nor Darwin's ideas about God mesh with Ray's "intelligent designer"-god and claiming that Darwin, the "creator of the theory of evolution" , would support Ray's notions about God is laughable.
- Ray skips the important question - "Why do you believe your car had a manufacturer?" The answer, as noted with all of the flawed examples of the argument from design, is not "Because it's complex" or "Because it is orderly" or "Because it appears designed"...the answer is that we know it had a manufacturer because we have considerable, empirical evidence to support the notion that it was designed and absolutely no evidence to support the notion that the car "happened by accident."
- Is Ray Comfort seriously suggesting that for a person to be psychologically or spiritually broken is beautiful? Too often Christian fundamentalists set out to break people’s spirits and those who do it are frequently sadists. If a person is not a Christian or is a different type of Christian from them they see that person as hell-bent and set out to break that person. People who are fundamentalist Christians of their type get psychologically broken struggling to keep unrealistically difficult moral standards and being told they are sinners whenever they fail. These problems exist wherever there are fundamentalist Christian communities, in New Zealand where Ray Comfort was originally, in the United States where Ray Comfort is now, throughout the English speaking world and elsewhere.
In the Bible belt of the United States there are so many fundamentalist Christians together that they can in some areas impose their way of doing things onto the whole of society. See Bible Belt Statistics for how many social problems are worse in the Bible belt than elsewhere in ther United States. See Bible belt for general information about the Bible belt and how it originated.
- The terms are not mutually exclusive. Kirk sets up a false dilemma which is addressed in the article: Atheist vs. agnostic.
- Ironically, after repeatedly claiming that belief in God is the only intellectually sound conclusion and insulting the intelligence of anyone who dares to question or demand sound, logical arguments and reliable, empirical evidence; Ray and Kirk now argue that it's best to avoid intellectual arguments as anything more than "bait" which leads to the emotional "hook" of the Ten Commandments. Despite Kirk's claim, this tactic does, in fact, side-step the questions of the atheist. It's a direct attempt to avoid intellectual debate and they freely admit it.
Evidently, reason and evidence are no competition for a good guilt trip. Unfortunately, even their guilt trip is flawed...
- This argument drew so much attention that an entire entry has been devoted to the banana argument.
- Here Kirk attempts to link the various tautologies about design and a designer to show that agnosticism is absurdly unintelligent.
- Here we get a redefinition of "manifest". You won't actually get any empirical evidence of God's existence, you'll just "feel" that it's true or even "know" that it's true, by divine revelation. This hardly qualifies as "absolute proof" in anything more than an esoteric sense.
- This isn't an argument, it's an assertion. Citing the Bible as an authority doesn't make it so. Additionally, the idea that God would come to Earth, take physical form and sacrifice himself, to himself, as a loophole for laws he created, in order to save us from his wrath - that defines a schizophrenic deity, not a benevolent one. The notion that God had to jump through hoops instead of simply changing the law is patently absurd. Consider a similar dilemma in the movie "Coming to America", where James Earl Jones, as king, is explaining his objections about his son's non-traditional choice of a bride, to his wife. "It's tradition" he says, "and who am I to change tradition?" His wife poignantly responds, "I thought you were king."
- In any real debate, this bait-and-switch tactic - the deliberate avoidance of issues in order to make appeals to emotion - would immediately disqualify them from continuing. While they may be honest by admitting to it, admitting that you've been repeatedly dishonest hardly seems worthy of respect.
- This is one of many appeals to emotion or vanity, designed to make the believer feel intellectually superior for recognizing the "ultimate truth". It's a subtle attempt to shift the burden of proof, at least in the mind of the believer, setting up their beliefs as truths which must be disproved instead of claims which must be proven.
- Ray has opted to use an outdated, unscholarly survey in order to unjustly inflate the significance of his position. More current statistics, from more reputable sources show that nearly 14% of Americans identify as non-religious or secular.
Additionally, this is a veiled example of the argumentum ad populum. Ray doesn't actually assert that the fact that so many people believe in the existence of God is evidence that he exists, but the implication is there.
- Kirk's analogy, again, misrepresents evolutionary theory and here we have yet another example of how "smart" you'd be to accept these arguments and how foolish and unintelligent you must be to reject them. Curiously, the bulk of their arguments for the existence of God are actually arguments against their inaccurate view of evolutionary theory. In addition to this program, they have an entire episode devoted to evolution.
- Clearly, Chris hasn't changed his mind about Ray's concept of God. Even though he didn't directly challenge Ray's assertions and arguments, he's clear that he doesn't believe the things Ray believes.
- While this, like the first answer, may not be the technically preferred explanation it's clear that this woman wasn't swayed by Kirk's arguments from design or an appeal to her conscience. Kirk's rather flustered response is priceless...
- Kirk switches theological viewpoints once or twice during this description of the "absolute proof". First of all, the instructions are to "keep the commandments"...something which the Bible tells us is impossible for anyone other than Jesus. So the direct Biblical method for this "absolute proof" is impossible via self-contradiction.
- Order does not always require an intelligence behind it. In caves stalactites may appear very orderly, or designed, but they are known to be nothing more than the natural effect of mineral rich water dripping from the ceiling leaving behind debris. There is no reason to believe that a sculptor is the cause of the beautiful rock formations.
One aspect of our ability to be confused by the appearance of design involves our rather anthropocentric world view. It's relatively easy to look at the universe as if it were designed for humans, yet this presupposes an intended purpose...the very thing these claims seek to prove. Viewing the universe objectively, in the light of scientific investigation, it becomes clear that everything that exists is the logical result of natural laws. In other words, the universe wasn't made to "fit" humans, humans "fit" into the universe.
This view can be uncomfortable for those who wish to believe that humans are the central reason for the existence of the universe. However, the vast majority of scientific evidence backs up this view. Currently, we know of only one planet which is capable of sustaining human life and it wasn't always capable of doing this. Most of the universe appears to be inhospitable or deadly to humans. Ray's statement, though vague, is an example of the anthropic principle, as it pertains to the cosmological argument.
- Again we have this fundamental misperception about atheism and agnosticism and the implication that neither position is "true", as the atheist, deep-down, knows that he's a sinner who needs to be forgiven. We have a final instruction to avoid intellectual discussions and opt for emotional appeals, despite their initial claim that atheism is counter-intellectual and requires more faith than belief in a god.
After watching the entire program, however, there wasn't a single piece of evidence presented on the core subject: the knowledge that we are sinners who definitely need salvation.
They've offered flawed arguments from design in an attempt to prove that God exists, but even if those arguments were valid and did demonstrate that a god exists, it doesn't mean that the God they're talking about exists. There was no evidence to support the idea that the Christian God is the true god and no evidence that the concepts of sin, hell, heaven or salvation are true.
- Kirk, essentially, admits that his atheism was without basis. Rather than holding rational views supported by evidence and questioning views which lack evidentiary support, he made assumptions based on a limited understanding of evolution and religion. In an interview with Ray Comfort on the Hellbound Alleee program, Ray stated that Kirk's epiphany was "what if I'm wrong". A simplified version of Pascal's Wager, which is an argument for belief when "real" evidence is insufficient, this "epiphany" demonstrates that Kirk's current belief is just as unfounded as his previous one.
Kirk sets himself up as a living straw man in order to support his claim that it takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to believe in God . Asserting that one must really "ignore the facts", he lays the groundwork for Ray's claim that belief in God is more intellectual than disbelief.
- Again, we don't get to see Travis' final response but it seems reasonable to presume that he was not convinced. The interviewer claimed that research will demonstrate his claims, let's consider them:
# Jesus Christ came, two thousand years ago;
# He paid the fine for sins;
# We needed him to pay this fine; and
# His death and resurrection are required to have a relationship with God
The first claim remains unproven. The historicity of Jesus isn't beyond question, and even among those who do believe in an historical figure, not all accept that he was the Christ or that a messiah-figure could ever exist. Those foundational claims are assertions which have not been proven and may not be provable.
The final three claims are theological assertions that no amount of research can support. Apart from personal revelation or some sort of unambiguous, global revelation, the truth of those claims cannot be supported by evidence.
- Actually, it's not a fair argument because Ray has used tautological examples which are not directly analogous to evolutionary theory. Additionally, he continues to ignore the foundational question about how we recognize design, trusting that we're all so used to accepting and recognizing design via common sense, that we won't think about how this process occurs.
- Ray asserts, as true, that we're all going to meet God on judgment day, whether we believe in him or not. Where's the evidence to support this? It's a thinly veiled version of Pascal's Wager or the fear of the threat of hell, to encourage belief.
- Kirk demonstrates the failings of common sense in the light of critical examination. His continued reliance on the flawed design/designer arguments seem to carry no weight with this woman and he attempts to appeal to her vanity by mentioning how smart she seems and implying that this, somehow, is evidence that she was beautifully designed by an intelligence.
- While cosmologists might cringe at that explanation, it's not bad considering this is an unprepared street interview with a layperson. The critical point at the core of her explanation is that we have scientific explanations which demonstrate that a supernatural explanation is not required. Whether her explanation, or any other, is the correct explanation of what actually happened is far less important than the fact the we can have probable, naturalistic explanations of origins.
In the unlikely event that evolutionary theory and big bang cosmology were proven to be completely wrong, that still wouldn't be evidence for the claim that "God did it". That claim requires its own evidentiary support.
Though the interview is spliced together, Kirk's responses indicate that the woman was giving good answers and addressing critical flaws in his claims...though we don't get to see all of them.
- While Ray and Kirk have, on many occasions, insulted atheists by implying that one must be unintelligent to hold such a position, they've now progressed to implicitly asserting that atheists don't exist. By referring to atheists as "professing atheists", they're implying that atheists are lying or mistaken about their position. Fortunately, Ray and Kirk aren't definitional authorities on atheism and agnosticism and their continued misrepresentations of both positions demonstrate that they lack sufficient understanding to produce an entire program which addresses those positions.
- Agreed. Unfortunately, many atheists are former Christians. Many others have sincerely and earnestly attempted this prayer and not achieved the sort of "absolute proof" Kirk promises. Objections like these are met with ad hoc hypotheses like, "You weren't really serious" or other claims which place the source of the failure on the individual - because God can't possibly be at fault. However that means his 'evidence' basically boils down to 'If you believe with your whole heart that God exists, then God will make you believe in your heart that he exists.' Additionally the argument from inconsistent revelations holds that vastly divergent and contradictory claims of revealed knowledge about God demonstrate that none of these claims can be considered reliable.
Revelation, as Thomas Paine pointed out, "... is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it."
- This is a prime example of quote mining. The quotation from Darwin is incomplete and the entire section reads...
:"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of Spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei , as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certain the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, should not be considered as subversive of the theory."
Darwin, after admitting that the idea contradicts common sense, points out that common sense is not a reliable foil within the scope of scientific investigation and that if we can demonstrate gradual changes from a simple eye to a complex eye, his theory holds despite objections from "common sense". Darwin goes on to provide examples of the variety of eyes which exist in nature. Beginning with simple, light-sensitive cells and advancing through creatures with primitive lenses, irises he marches through a series of examples demonstrating the exact sort of gradations he hypothesized.
- Travis agrees to play along with the rest of the test, supplying the expected answers based on the obvious intent of the interviewer. It's clear, however, that he's unconvinced by this painfully obvious attempt to tug at his conscience as he continues to hold that unproven assertions about Biblical morality aren't convincing. He addresses the lack of proof for the interviewers' claims by stating that he does research for papers and doesn't simply explain away data anomalies with ad hoc explanations.
- It's worth noting that many cars which might not be considered "well-made" also have those features. However, the important objection to this argument is that, like all of the other examples, it isn't the features or complexity of the automobile which convince us that it had a designer. We're convinced that this car was designed because we have vast quantities of reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that the car was designed and absolutely no examples of "naturally occurring" cars.
We can investigate and discover the manufacturer of that car, the designer, the history of this car, the history of similar cars, the variety of designs, how various features were invented, the successes and failures of the design process...it's this mass of evidence in conjunction with the lack of incidents of "spontaneous car generation" which assure us that this car was not only designed, but designed by an intelligent, human mind.
- We've included the pauses and "uh"s in the transcription in order to demonstrate how awkward this sort of situation can be and we do not wish to embarrass the individual at all - we completely sympathize. Having your day in the park interrupted by someone shoving a camera and microphone in your face, followed by requests that you provide justification for your beliefs is not a situation most people would be comfortable with and we commend this individual for doing his best.
The key point to note is that this individual effectively stated that he requires "proof" to substantiate claims before he'll accept them.
- Depending on the dictionary you grab, you might also find an entry declaring that atheism is synonymous with immorality . Dictionary definitions are useful, but when considering complex, philosophical topics, they often portray an over-simplified explanation.
If you get a dictionary and look up the word atheism, you're also likely to find an entry defining it as the 'lack' of belief in a god/gods/God. Ray selects a particular definition, representing one possible take on strong atheism, and uses a distortion of this definition as a straw man attack on atheism.
- Ray's position, and his claim that you'd have to be a moron not to recognize the truth of it, are supported by this passage. Unfortunately, for Ray, a tautology and insult from the Bible isn't going to carry any more weight or be any more logically sound to a critical thinker than when Ray says it himself.
- Kirk is, again, correct - if we accept his definitions. However, he's building a case that is, essentially, a straw man. Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or the belief that there is no god, it isn't a claim of absolute knowledge that no god exists. A more accurate analogy than "There is no gold in China" would be "The claim that there is gold in China is unproven." It is still an emotionally misleading analogy, however, since even without specific knowledge of an example of gold in China, we can be pretty certain there is some. A fairer analogy might be phrased, e.g., to claim "there is no coelacanth in China," or "there is no living Tyrannosaurus rex in China," using things that could physically exist in China, but for which there is no evidence.
In specific circumstances, omniscience is not required to make an absolute, negative statement. "There is no unobtainium in China." Because unobtainium is a fictitious material, we can say with absolute certainty that none truly exists in China. If god is the product of humanity, we can logically make a similar, absolute statement "In the literal sense, there is no god."
Following the analogy, the same argument could be parodied and applied to monotheism. To be a monotheist, one would need to be all-knowing. It would be like standing in Shanghai with a nugget of gold in your hand and saying, "This is the one and only piece of gold in China."
- Ray cuts Chris off with a small sermon which continues to make emotional appeals. Chris is encouraged to think about his family and possibly burying one of them. He's berated for turning his back on God and encouraged to plead with God for forgiveness, if he loves his family. Ray even manages to use patriotism by thanking God for this "wonderful free country." He also switches from acknowledging Chris' disbelief to an accusation that he is "denying" God.
All of this emotional appeal fails to acknowledge the questionable nature of a god who would pass a death sentence on every one of his creations and then offer an escape to those who take a leap of faith which appears wholly unjustified. This is yet another point where Pascal's Wager is used. Ray asserts that if, as he believes, God does exist and will punish you and your family for sins, then you should believe in him, an unjustified leap of faith for nothing more than the reward of not being punished in Hell.
The interview ends here, and we have no idea how Chris responded, though it seems reasonable to presume that any reaction that favored Ray's case would have been shown.
- Whilst holding up the human eye as an example of perfect design, Kirk neglects to mention the eye's many failings, such as;
* Blind spots
* High incidence of defects such as
** Colour blindness
** Astigmatism
** Hypermetropia and Myopia
* Presbyopia, a deterioration of focus with age
* How easily the eye is damaged and it's limited ability to heal
To name just a few. If the human eye was 'designed' as Ray and Kirk suggest, the 'designer' did a botch-job. Although Kirk is trying to point out the complexity of the eye and use that as evidence for a designer, its flawed design raises some questions about the competence of the designer .
- Ray is correct to point out that designed things must have a designer. However, this is a tautology. He's making a circular argument from design by asserting that human beings must have a designer because they appear designed. While his argument is incomplete, the implications are riddled with hidden premises about the nature of design and potential designers. He uses this "common sense" argument as a foundation for his belief that humans were designed by God.
The argument fails to recognize that the appearance of design doesn't necessarily require an intelligent designer. Additionally, his argument rests on a misrepresentation of "chance" as it relates to evolutionary theory. While random mutations are essential to evolutionary theory, the governing "designer" of evolution is natural selection, which is about as far removed from "blind chance" as possible.
This argument also confuses creation with design. For items such as soda cans and watches we know they are designed because we have the factories that create them to specifications. Humans are the factories that produce humans, God does not create them. We know that we are encoded by our DNA and that DNA controls how we grow and mature into an adult from a single fertilized egg cell. If someone did design us, they worked mathematically with DNA strands and not with things like arms, legs, and eyes.
Finally, Ray makes some insulting appeals to vanity by implying that acceptance of evolutionary theory is somehow an exercise which requires one to turn off their brain. His example is a straw man which doesn't accurately represent evolutionary theory, and is in fact as absurd as he attempts to make his target out to be.
- As is the case with nearly all of Ray's examples, this analogy fails for a number of reasons. In reality, we understand that a building had a builder because we have a mountain of evidence that supports the notion that buildings are designed and built by intelligent human beings and absolutely no evidence that they occur naturally. This distinction between "naturally occurring" and "intelligently designed", or "How do we recognize design?"/"How do we distinguish between design and the appearance of design?" is the true question that Ray continually avoids. For example, he fails to mention that one can still visit their local planning department and see the building's blueprints, the name of the architect, and the name of the construction company that built it. One can ask a friend in the construction industry and be told exactly how buildings are built. One can visit the library and find old newspaper articles about the construction of the building.
Ray never ponders why naturally occurring objects appear to be designed. If you look at a cave with an open mind then it would appear to be designed as well. We know however that God didn't place each stalactite and stalagmite, but they formed from mineral deposition. We know the caves weren't individually carved by the hand of God, but were formed when water dissolved and carried away minerals. If you look at crystallized salt or frost then the formations appear to be designed, however we know what causes crystallization and I have yet to hear someone argue that God's hand drives the formation of each crystal.
In the case of living things, we have an enormous amount of evidence that they are naturally occurring and absolutely no evidence that living things were intelligently designed. The appearance of design is adequately explained by the filter of natural selection acting on slight modifications over long periods. Each of Ray's arguments assumes, in the premise, the very thing he's trying to prove. This sort of circular reasoning is a logical fallacy which cripples each of his examples.
- This emotional "hook" is simply an unfounded assertion. While everyone will likely admit to violating some of the Ten Commandments, only those who recognize the authority of the Bible would agree with the concepts of "needing forgiveness" and "day of judgment." These premises are simply assumed throughout the program and never supported as anything other than an a priori truth.
The truth shouldn't require a bait-and-switch tactic. The truth shouldn't require dishonesty, emotional appeals and guilt trips. The truth shouldn't be immune from critical examination, it should be revealed by it. Ray and Kirk have presented an impassioned appeal based on poor definitions, false assumptions, unproven premises, flawed arguments, dishonesty and misconceptions about atheism, agnosticism and evolutionary theory.
While this episode may appeal to its intended audience , the methods and "tools" presented are no more convincing than they were during the first two-thousand years. In the end, this entire episode amounts to; "Believe in Jesus or you're going to hell when you die."
- Here's the "deliberate swing" where Ray attempts to address the conscience of the individual, rather than the intellect. His first question, "Would you consider yourself to be a good person?" is presented as a claim to be challenged. However, the question is asking the individual to assess his own character based on his own criteria or a generalized criteria. In the following questions, Ray analyzes the man's claim from an entirely different set of criteria - and replaces "good" with something which could better be defined as "perfect", by using any violation of the Ten Commandments as "not good".
- Again this insulting implication about thinking one knows everything. Atheists don't think they know everything, they're simply convinced that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Additionally, the verse Kirk read doesn't say anything about claims of ultimate knowledge. This seems to simply be an appeal to ignorance, a request that we stop thinking critically. Finally, most atheists would, and do, admit the possibility of a god, although the likelihood gets increasingly smaller as we learn more about the world. There are some logical disproofs of certain claims about certain gods, but no reasonable atheist holds the view that their own omniscience demonstrates that no god exists.
- In this quote, Kirk's argument about absolute knowledge begins to take shape as an analogy that atheism is irrational and theism is rational. All of his examples of knowledge which would be sufficient to prove that gold exists in China are fine, yet when we transfer this analogy to "There is a god", we find that the evidence which supports this claim is still missing. Where is the "absolute proof" of the existence of god which would support his claim? And, if such clear, absolute proof existed, would there be any debate?
Also, in a super-naturalistic world view how do you tell that there is not an omniscient human? According to the argument, proving that false would require examining all the humans. And since it is possible not to reveal your knowledge, even having done so we wouldn't know for sure.
- We'll look for those moments in the interview, but Ray's tactic here is to pick an "atheist on the street" and use them as a representative of the atheist's position. Not every atheist is able to eloquently justify their position, especially when plucked off of the street, nor do all atheists have the same justifications for their lack of belief. For those inexperienced in debating philosophical issues with theists, identifying logical fallacies and critically examining claims, Ray's questions can appear to have an impact. In reality, and in keeping with their theme for this program, these interviews are a form of straw man attack on atheism.
These interviews are, in part, the reason IronChariots decided to do such a detailed rebuttal to this episode - to demonstrate that while a given individual may not have sound responses at the ready, that doesn't mean that Ray's arguments hold water.
Also, when Kirk says "You did?", it conveys to the listener that this was difficult, once again using some of the aforementioned argumentum ad populum. He implies that because "so few" people are atheist or otherwise non-believers, that it is a position held by a small, stupid part of the population that has not recognized their "truth".
- Ray continues Kirk's argument which misrepresents atheism as an untenable position which requires omniscience. This test implies the existence of God as a real entity, rather than as a product of the human mind.
- Ray is absolutely correct. Unfortunately, we're not talking about "Creation", we're talking about existence, the universe, nature, the cosmos, everything or any of a number of terms which don't make the circular mistake of including a claim about their reason for existing in their name. By labeling everything as "Creation", he is, again, assuming in the premise the very thing he's trying to prove. This argument is another tautology and the hidden premise renders it logically unsound.
An opposite statement would be equally true... "When I look at the universe how can I know there was a big bang? Well, the universe is absolute proof there was a big bang."
- This is the point where Ray claims that the Ten Commandments have convinced Chris that he's wrong and he tries to justify himself. In truth, Chris doesn't appear to be fazed by the Ten Commandments, he doesn't appear to feel guilty, he appears to be offering an alternate philosophical position to counter Ray's claims about the Bible's ultimate morality.
- Ray's analogy fails on many levels. His "intellectually stimulating theory" isn't a theory at all; it's a hypothesis. Unlike Ray's example, scientists don't just "dream up" an explanation and run with it. The scientific path from hypothesis to theory includes observations, testing, falsification and peer review. Additionally, his analogy is a combined theory of cosmology, abiogenesis, and evolution, which is not directly analogous to the current state of the scientific theories he's challenging. Finally, even the aspects of his example which "represent" evolution are fundamentally undermined by the absolute most rudimentary basics of evolutionary theory. In particular, his analogy provides no mechanism for a tendency for this amorphous mass to accrue more and more aspects of a Coke-can-like structure over time - an absolutely essential aspect of natural selection, which depends crucially on differential survival rates for positive mutations to slowly assimilate into the population.
While Ray may not recognize the various faults of his analogy, he does recognize that it's absurd and immediately points this out. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to recognize why it's absurd and why this is an incredibly weak objection to evolutionary theory. Indeed, if he had bothered to expand his argument to actually make it mimic evolution, perhaps then he would have been struck immediately by the simple elegance of Darwin's theory, having considered it in its entirety.
- Ray and Kirk use a narrow, incomplete definition of atheism to argue there are no atheists, only "professed atheists" who are agnostics. This idea, echoed in Ray's book "God Doesn't Believe in Atheists," shows a gross conceptual error about philosophical positions like atheism and agnosticism and lends itself to straw-person arguments. Avoiding epistemological questions of belief and knowledge, they rely on many hidden premises to prop up analogies that support intelligent design. This episode:
* has many insulting claims about atheism and intellectualism;
* misrepresents, by analogy, evolutionary theory;
* gives anecdotal arguments from design to support commonsense conclusions over empirical evidence;
* favors emotional arguments rather than intellectual ones; and
* misquotes and misrepresents famous figures.
- The appearance of design is a natural conclusion from our interpretation of purpose. Kirk transposes cause and effect in comparing the human body to a car and in commenting on the purpose of our features in relation to design.
Humans and the natural world have, obviously, been around much longer than cars. It should come as little surprise that the inventors of the features of a car drew inspiration from the world around them - that's what inventors do, they try to improve on nature...to come up with new and better solutions to common problems.
Those common problems also control and define the process of natural selection. Consider the common problem of finding food. An animal that can sense its prey, by sight - even simple cells that only detect variations in light - has a distinct advantage to solving this problem compared to one that is blind. The same is true for other senses and features. Those with the slight benefit have an advantage which can translate into more opportunities to pass on this trait to offspring. Each of these developed features has a benefit which can be viewed as a "purpose" but it's not a true purpose as there's no evidence to imply that these were the result of conscious forethought .
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