I just got an email listing 50 “proofs” for the existence of a god. It was also sent to a large number of skeptics, and included a plug for the dumb-as-bricks author’s book — she’s a flea who writes an imaginary scenario in which Richard Dawkins gets psychiatric counseling…from Jesus! If Debra Rufini’s imaginary dialog is as bad as this list of “proofs” — more like a collection of cliches, bad quotes, and lies — I can’t imagine wanting to slog through it.
Any one of these I’d happily rip to shreds, but 50 at once? The distilled dementia herein is overwhelming, and I’m sure she counts on that.
It is easy to prove to yourself that God is real. .the evidence is all around you. Here are 50 simple proofs:
Whilst agreeing that random patterns occur naturally by chance, DNA however, consists of code, which requires a designer.
How do you explain the paranormal, such as people witnessing positive or negative sightings, like ghosts or angels? I saw a ghost with a friend of mine – I am not a liar, an attention seeker. Neither was I overtired when this happened.
Try praying. What good is it when a mind is set to coincidence & disbelief regarding the positive outcome?
The law of cause & effect – in order to have an effect, there has to be a cause. Everything is caused by something.
Mindless nothing cannot be responsible for complex something.
Science can only be the detector of certain things. You cannot scientifically detect emotion, memory, thoughts etc., though scientifically we must.. These things which do not consist of matter are beyond the detection of science.
Evolution has never been proved, which is why we call it the ‘theory of evolution’. It’s a fairy tale for grown ups!
Atheism is a faith in that which has not been proved. The disbelievers have not witnessed anything to not believe in, whereas the believers believe because they have witnessed. There is no ‘good news’ to preach in atheism.
How much of the atheist’s faith relies on anger with God as opposed to genuine disbelief in God?
Why do many atheists shake their fists & spend so much time ranting & raving about something they don’t believe in? If they are no more than a fizzled out battery at the end of the day, then why don’t they spend their lives partying, or getting a hobby?! Why don’t they leave this ‘God nonsense’ alone?
What created God? What came first, the chicken or the egg? I am not going to deny the existence of the chicken or the egg, merely because I don’t understand or know what came first. I don’t care – they both exist!
Improbability is not the same as impossibility. You only have to look at life itself for that backup of proof.
How could the complexity of human life possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells?
How could the complexity of the human mind possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells? Where does our consciousness come from?
What/who knew that our hunger & thirst had to be catered for by the food & drink which we’re supplied with?
Most of us are born with the five senses to detect our surroundings, which we’re provided with.
What/who knew that had Earth been set nearer to the sun, we would burn up?
What/who knew that had Earth been set any further from the sun, we would freeze up?
What/who knew that had Earth been built larger or smaller, its atmosphere would be one where it would not be possible for us to breathe?
What/who knew that we require the oxygen of plants, just as plants require the carbon dioxide of us?
The concept that life came about through sheer chance is as absurd & improbable as a tornado blowing through a junk yard, consequently assembling a Boeing 747!
We are willing to believe in physically unseen waves that exist through the air, operating physical forces & appliances to work, yet not supernatural God forces being responsible for the same.
Matter cannot organise itself. An uneaten tomato will not progress on its own accord to form a perfect pineapple. It will transform into mould, into disorganisation. The laws of evolution fall flat.
Our ‘inventor’ of evolution, Mr. Charles Darwin had this to say to Lady Hope when he was almost bedridden for 3 months before he died; “I was a young man with unfathomed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions. wondering all the time over everything, and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire – people made a religion of them.” Darwin then asked Lady Hope to speak to neighbours the next day. “What shall I speak about?” She asked. He replied; “Christ Jesus and his salvation. Is that not the best theme?”
Where do our moral values held within our conscience come from? If the atheist is right, why then would we care about what we did?! If there is no God, then we’ve no-one to be accountable to.
If man has evolved from an animal, why doesn’t he behave like an animal? Yet man is civilised.
‘Chance’ isn’t the cause of something. It just describes what we can’t find a reason for.
Science & logic do not hold all the answers – many people are aware of forces at work which we have no understanding of & no control over.
Look at the date/year on our calender – 2000 years ago since what? Our historical records (other than the Bible) record evidence of Jesus’ existence.
Many people have died for their faith. Would they be prepared to do this for a lie?!
Much of the Bible deals with eyewitness accounts, written only 40 years after Jesus died. When the books in the New Testament were first around, there would have been confusion & anger if the books were not true.
From as early as 2000 BC, there is archaological evidence to confirm many details we’re provided with in the Bible.
Not one single Biblical prediction can be shown as false, and the Bible contains hundreds.
The evidence from liturature & historical studies claim that Biblical statements are reliable details of genuine events.
From the birth of science through to today, there is no evidence to claim that Christianity & science are in opposition. Many first scientists were Christians; Francis Bacon, Issaac Newton, Robert Boyle, to name a few, along with the many who stand by their work & faith today.
Science can explain ‘how’ something works, but not ‘why’ something works.
Science is constantly recorrecting its findings. Past theories contradict certain beliefs which are held today. Our present ‘discoveries’ may change again in the future to rediscover how we originally came into existence.
Evolution describes the way life possibly started, yet doesn’t explain what made life start & why. Scientific questions fail to do that. Even if evolution were proved, it would still not disprove God.
The two people who discovered Jesus’ empty tomb were women. Women were so low on the social scale in first century Palestine, so in order to make the story fit, it would have made far more sense to claim that it were male disciples who had entered the tomb. But it wasn’t – we’re left with the historical & Biblical truth.
Think about Near Death Experiences. It’s naive to believe that they all are induced by chemicals or drugs. How do we account for a blind person having this experience, coming back to describe what they had never before seen, a person telling the Doctor that there is a blue paperclip on top of the high cabinet, which they couldn’t have otherwise known, an african man being dead in his coffin for 3 days, coming back to life to tell of much the same events which took place as those of many others? We never hear of the witnesses describing “a dream”. We’re not silly – we know the difference between even the most vivid of dreams to that of reality.
There are many skeptics who didn’t believe in Jesus before his crucifixion, and who were opposed to Christianity, yet turned to the Christian faith after the death of Jesus. Just as the many who continue to do so today.
Albert Einstein said; “A legitimate conflict between science & religion cannot exist. Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind”.
A speaker in Hyde Park who was attacking belief in God, claimed that the world just happened. As he spoke, a soft tomato was thrown at him. “Who threw that?” He said angrily. A cockney from the back of the crowd replied; “No-one threw it – it threw itself!”
It is easier to believe that God created something out of nothing than it is to believe that nothing created something out of nothing.
Stephen Hawkins has admitted; “Science may solve the problem of how the universe began, but it cannot answer the question: why does the universe bother to exist?”
We cannot confuse God with man. With God in the equation, all things, including miracles are possible. If God is God, he is Creator of all, inclusive of scientific law. He is Creator of matter & spirit.
If we are the product of evolution – by sheer accident, chance, then we are still evolving. Does it just so happen that we exist here today with everything so finely tuned for our living. as we now have it?
Could it possibly be that the missing link does not exist?!
God has proved himself to us in numerous ways, all around us. The atheist needs to put his glasses on. What more can God possibly do if man has shut his eyes to him?
Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.
YOU DECIDE!!!
OK, I’ve decided. Religion is a joke told by the irrational, believed by the brainless, and propped up with flapdoodle and moonshine, and Ms Rufini is a perfect example that confirms my diagnosis.
I always love this one coming from believers in the uncaused God.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I didn’t get very far. Pretty much what I saw was argument from ignorance, argument from complexity, wishy-washy feelings, anecdotes, argument from ignorance, argument from ignorance, wishy-washy feelings, and on and on and on x50.
“Autobiography of a Flea?” Really? That’s rich…
“50. Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.”
She’s so close to the truth!
Reading those ‘proofs’ it becomes obvious you cannot argue her out of her position: logic and reason are not tools she has mastered.
Or as a buddy of mine is fond of saying about arguing with fundies: you cannot use logic to refute that which was not arived at logically.
Someone needs to make a bingo card out of these.
I couldn’t get past #18 or so before my brain shut down in protest.
DNA agrees that random patterns occur naturally by chance? Learn to write.
More importantly, it wouldn’t have been called a code if it required a designer. It doesn’t look like a designed code, with rather odd redundancies existing for no purposeful or functional reasons. Furthermore, selenocysteine and pyrrolysine are clearly not a part of the original “code”, being evolved to exist through modifications and strange adaptations of stop and other codons.
Indeed, DNA is exactly the kind of molecule needed for evolution, reasonably conservative, while being able to incorporate both mutations and recombinations. In a sense, it can be considered to have been predicted by evolution.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I don’t get it. which one of these is actually a proof?
Professor Dawkins getting psychiatric help from jesus… I’m not going to lie, I would pay big money to see that.
Snappy answers to stupid questions:
‘How’s explain ‘Why’s.
Not according to the Bible, apparently (fun with apologetics).
Easier still to think that nothing was explicitely ‘created’.
There’s definitely a missing link in that sentence, a link between concepts (between what and what?).
Great, but where can I find God’s glasses? Why would he need any?
I HAVE!!!
Now, how long until Walton wanders along and claims these are easy pickings (which they are), but won’t offer anything substantial (which he can’t)?
“Improbability is not the same as impossibility. You only have to look at life itself for that backup of proof.” I can’t help but scream “Exactly!” at that point. It’s nice that that can be used in argument against pretty much the rest of her email.
I like the one “improbable does not mean impossible” immediately followed by (essentially) “life is too improbable”
Logic, UR doin it wrong.
Your collection of “proofs” is complex, yet clearly mindless.
By the way, other than where you are begging the question, you are generally invoking a false dilemma. And while it’s been fun answering a few of the most pathetic ones, it’s not productive enough for me to continue (I may respond to a couple more, or so).
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I’m sort of persuaded to start beieving that God does exist, just so I can mock Him and ridicule Him for allowing such stupid people to be His most vocal advocates.
“Yeah, I believe in God. And he’s a farkin’ idiot!”
could this be Kenny? NDE as proof and didn’t he also use the calendar as proof of God?
You know, anytime someone says that something can’t come from nothing, I ask them if they’ve ever heard of “virtual particles”.
Where are all these proofs she talked about? All I see is a list of 50 random logical fallacies.
Jesus WAS a con man. Isn’t that obvious?
Glen:
Heh, she actually addresses your concern in “proof” number 11.
Apparently, she doesn’t know what caused God, but only that something did… And that thing exists, too!
Alas, she fails to notice the high g forces as she plunges into circularity…
“Science is constantly recorrecting its findings.”
this was probably the only thing she got right, although her unstated major premise is wrong
other than that, i could only skim this pile of feces
I was just struck by lightning.
Weird.
I’m gonna lay down for a minute.
The funniest part is that a lot of her “proofs” of God work against each other:
That just cracked me up. She’s arguing against herself.
So, your proof of god is, “This has already been proven!” Hey! That doesn’t count! I almost fell for it…
This has to be a joke. It still amazes me the capacity of people to NOT think. This woman needs help.
I couldn’t make it past #10 without rushing back to the coding of deadly dull accounts reports that I should be doing. I suspect the whole thing is a ruse by my boss to increase productivity…
My Brain Hurts!
*facepalm*
It is the only action I can take…
PZ you’ve been fooled. This flapdoodle couldn’t have been written by an adult human being. No one could be this stoopid.
My chickens did it.
50. Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.
Or he was a charismatic man with a few good ideas who has been subject to ther biggest “telephone game” in history.
So, uh, a baby can detect emotions, but a scientist can’t?
There’s a great deal of research on the psyche and the emotions that will have to be stopped. Oh, unless this statement was just yanked out of someone’s colon.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
ElJay @ #5
We have a similar, but shorter, saying where I’m from:
“You can’t fix stupid”
Admittedly few animals behave as badly as Fred Phelps and his crew, but this woman seriously needs to get out to a singles bar some Friday night.
Well, in her defense, just because a lot of stupid people believe in God doesn’t mean there is no God.
I believe in God.
But he’s very dumb.
You can’t correct someone’s error unless you understand where and why they are making it. I thought this list was interesting, because you can find a lot of the same themes running through all the “proofs.”
I noted these common mistakes:
1.) The assumption that thoughts, emotions, and abstractions are non-physical, mysterious things which can’t be explained by science. I think this is the foundation for a lot of confusion — and belief in the supernatural. The woman’s views are simplistic, but typical. People seem to have a natural tendency to view the world in dualistic terms. It takes education and thought to think your way out of it.
2.) The Puddle Fallacy: the environment was created and shaped in anticipation that we were coming — just like the holes in the ground anticipate the puddles which fit into them. There’s a lot of egotism here.
3.) Personal stories, anecdotes, and eyewitness testimony should always be believed, because people are reliable. If you doubt this, there’s something wrong with you. You’re small. People do — and should — believe things they like, from people they like.
As PZ says, there are so many kinds of mistakes it’s hard to know where to begin. Someone would have to classify them into types of errors.
I feel vaguely cheated; half of these aren’t arguments for anything, let alone the existence of a deity.
The writer must not understand the concept of what a “proof” is. As I was reading the list, I was looking specifically for items that would be considered as arguments for a God (even if they were true), and there are just a very few of those – I’d grant that #1, #4, and #5 could possibly be lame arguments for the existence of God. The rest of the list is just a stream of unconsciousness.
But my favorite is #50: “Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.”
I keep seeing those horrid Dow ads up there… I can’t take a science site seriously when they allow killers (Bhopal, anyone?) to advertise on their site.
Dow is a company who’s goal is to make money, and to kill people who get in their way. They have no interest in science for the benefit of all, but rather, they patent and destroy nature, making seeds that will not reproduce and corn that poisons the earth.
From 2007 – http://www.petitiononline.com/NoToDOW/petition.html
• Earlier this year, the company was fined $325,000 by the US Securities Exchange Commission for having paid $200,000 in bribes to Agriculture Ministry officials for expediting the registration of three of its pesticides. One of the registered pesticides, Dursban (chlorpyriphos), is freely sold in India whereas it has been withdrawn from use in domestic settings in the US owing to its demonstrated deleterious effects on the mental development of children. An enquiry by the Ministry and another by the Vigilance Commission is currently ongoing.
• In 2005, Indian Oil canceled a technology tie-up with Dow Global Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, because the company had attempted to sell a Union Carbide technology by passing it off as its own.
• Dow is exerting tremendous pressure on the Indian Government to get the Government to absolve it of all liabilities related to Bhopal. Letters unearthed by the Bhopal survivor groups indicates that Dow has written to the Indian ambassador in an attempt to dictate the Government’s course of action in a case against it for environmental clean-up in the Madhya Pradesh High Court.
PZ, please, please ask ScienceBlogs to reconsider this ad revenue.
Quite so, except for the “addresses” part (well, you know what I mean).
It’s just, well, who cares if I can’t show that God has a cause or is an effect? I believe, and doing science isn’t belief, so screw that nonsense.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
How can these possibly be proofs. There’s not even an epsilon!
Milo said, “Autobiography of a Flea?” Really? That’s rich… I can’t claim to have actually seen it (or even seen the cover of it), and in fact it may not even really exist, but I do remember hearing several years ago about a pornographic film called “Autobiography of a Flea”.
Hmm…now she’s got me imagining a porn flick with Richard Dawkins and Jesus.
Glen D @30;
She seems to be referring to Dr. Egnor’s “where is altruism” argument for God (and doing it badly). It looks to me like this entire list is just a compilation of bad argument for God plucked from the comments section of this blog, but with no thought given to what the arguments actually are. Just that someone used it, and she can’t answer it, so it must be a good argument. But with a list that long, inconsistencies are almost inevitable.
My brain shut down by #8.
Darwin’s deathbed conversion to the Lady Hope (item 24) has been disputed by Darwin’s children and grandchildren. Her story has major holes in it, including the complete lack of evidence that she ever actually saw Darwin.
The better explanation is that Elizabeth Hope visited the famous Darwin residence, and not finding Charles Darwin returned home to America and made up the story out of whole cloth in order to impress her friends.
“How could the complexity of the human mind possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells? Where does our consciousness come from?”
That second one is actually an excellent question, but God sure ain’t the answer.
@ #6 (Shaden Freud):
Someone already did.
Someone needs to make a bingo card out of these.
Then you get a bunch of people together, flip through random pages of AIG, and see who wins.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
I’d love to know where this originated so I could read the comments (and maybe provide a few of my own.)
“The law of cause & effect – in order to have an effect, there has to be a cause. Everything is caused by something.”
(Then a couple entries later) “What created God? What came first, the chicken or the egg? I am not going to deny the existence of the chicken or the egg, merely because I don’t understand or know what came first. I don’t care – they both exist!”
Wait, what happened to cause and effect? Huh?
@ #6:
Awesome. It’s a shame there’s 50. Maybe we could drop one, and make a 7×7 bingo card. That would work. Alternatively, we could add a few more to make an 8×8. Obvious omissions include “the 2nd law of thermodynamics disproves evolution!” and “if we came from monkeys…”
Well i’m convinced …
By the way, Rufini, you could probably find answers to every one of your “proofs” in the Pharyngula archives.
We’ve dealt with the same canards so many times that we only pick and choose the most humorously bad ones at this point.
At least Thomas Aquinas’s “proofs for God” are interesting and make one think. They’re mostly based on faulty assumptions, which is why they’re worthwhile to consider, for by doing so one’s thought processes may be sharpened.
Your “proofs” aren’t even written in logical form, and most of your faulty assumptions are trivially easy to counter.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
uuggghh ….my brain is being overloaded by waves of sheer stupidity.
But I thought of one she missed…
#51. If there was a designer, he/she would never have created someone as stupid as this.
That doesn’t prove anything other than the fact that people who believe in god are intolerant, weak-minded assholes.
That broad’s freakin’ nuttier than a box of squirrel poops.
Please take this crap somewhere else.
This reminds me of the sort of insipid forwarded list type emails you’d get from your grandmother. Except this one is full of more concentrated stupid than usual.
The profoundity of the ignorance displayed in this sentence is staggering. I am astounded that this person actually manages the most basic logical processes.
For reasons outlined in the LJ post I’m putting as my URL, I’m inclined to think Jesus was a well-intentioned con man.
How come PZ gets quality email like that? All I get are spams about eliminating debt, enlarging my manhood, buying watches, joining online casinos, getting millions for letting Nigerian widows access my bank account, buying meds online, and tips on hot stocks.
Of those 50 statements, she at least got one sort of right:
37: Science is constantly recorrecting its findings. Past theories contradict certain beliefs which are held today. Our present ‘discoveries’ may change again in the future to rediscover how we originally came into existence.
It’s a shame religion can’t do the same. It’s also a shame her grammar and general sentence structure are so ditzy, though it isn’t surprising.
It would be a waste of time to refute all of these one by one, but it’s still inspiring to use material like this to sharpen the formulation of our arguments. I’ve learnt a great deal about science thanks to the sheer frustration of dealing with mindless creationists!
Oh, and #33?
You sure this wasn’t written by Denyse O’Leary?
“#50 Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.”
He was a sincere speaker of the Truth and just like L. Ron Hubbard, Jim Jones, Joseph Smith, Sun Myung Moon, Muhammad, and David Koresh right?
More than half those ‘proofs’ justify turtles all the way down as much as they do Jehovah.
Classify this idiot as a bigot through ignorance.
Actually – I call Poe. No-one, but no-one is dumb enough to call this a proof:
A speaker in Hyde Park who was attacking belief in God, claimed that the world just happened. As he spoke, a soft tomato was thrown at him. “Who threw that?” He said angrily. A cockney from the back of the crowd replied; “No-one threw it – it threw itself!”
@41
Good point.
I’d like to reverse it, and note that although Egnor writes better and is superficially more sensible and logical, his “arguments” are just about as bad as these 50 “proofs”. One has, however, to cut through the many supporting faulty premises with Egnor, hence one must write a lot more when knocking down Egnor’s ignorant twaddle.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
The only thing that this list proves is Poe’s law.
Why do many atheists shake their fists & spend so much time ranting & raving about something they don’t believe in?
Fred Phelps and family, Peter Labarbera, Ann Coulter, and Bill O’Reilly are atheists? Who knew.
Re 57
The profoundity of the ignorance displayed in this sentence is staggering. I am astounded that this person actually manages the most basic biological processes.
there, fixed it for you
Ugh. That’s unsettling. As an IT manager I see all manner of lists forwarded through my mail system every day. I hope I don’t see this one, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I did.
Wow, and holy freaking crap! To respond to that maniacal ranting would give it undue credence! All I can think of to say is the remark by one of the Johnsons in the movie, “Blazing Saddles”, after the drunk spewed forth an incoherent babble of drunkeness and slurred speech:”Now who can argue with that?”
Congratulations, a great lesson how to cram every single logical fallacy and discredited canard into only 50 “proofs”.
@ Brain Hertz
Exactly! I was just thinking “but she left off ‘If We came from Monkeys…'”
PYGMIES AND DWARVES
Who is Stephen Hawkins? O_o
#38: apart from the error of stating ‘Evolution describes the way life possibly started’ this is a good point. Evolution doesn’t disprove god.
‘Course it doesn’t exactly help either.
Fractally stupid
Content (or lack thereof) aside, this is really poorly written.
What/who knew that a defender of The One Truth would have such horrible grammar?
Actually, quite a lot of these are pretty good questions. Her mistake is thinking, “because God exists” is the only answer to them.
Ow! That’s a lot of crazy to read in one sitting.
Okay, shall we divvy the sucker up into ten sections of five? Or will merely citing the Wikipedia definition of Begging the Question fifty times suffice?
I couldn’t finish the list, but–
1) These are not proofs.
2) I am *really* starting to hate the word, “complexity”. It is now the hot-button word for Christians, along with “Jesus” and “Hell”.
It would take forever to address each one of these snippets of synaptic misfirings.
It ain’t Kenny (same genus though). He would have used the secret dead uncle as an example instead of the blue paperclip.
Wow, some of those don’t even parse. It’s either that or I have evolved a mental filter to protect me from ODing on stupid.
Well, if you Google Debra Rufini, you get two modest hits, one for the author of “Social Misfits” – a book written by a qualified hypnotherapist / psychoanalyst and ex-Samaritan and another for a Kate Bush look alike based in Hampshire, UK (oh noes, my home county).
Interestingly, the picture of Ms. Rufini the author on the dust jacket at Amazon UK is strikingly similar to the mug shots of Ms. Rufini (a.k.a. Kate Bush) on Fake Faces UK, even down to the straw hat.
I wonder if they are in fact related, or indeed related to the purported Ms. Rufini from the email.
I suggest the email was poe’d out (using the verbal form of Poe) to see just what kind of a reaction it would get from the readers of this blog and others …
If man has evolved from an animal, why doesn’t he behave like an animal? Yet man is civilised.
Someone doesn’t pay much attention to the news…
I’d like to note one more aspect of someone putting out 50 “proofs”.
Only one actual proof would be needed. Even Aquinas’s five proofs were more than anyone would need, if they were truly sound. One wonders if he didn’t realize that there were questions to be asked about at least some of them.
But why 50 “proofs”? Almost certainly because the person knows that not one of them is very convincing. It’s really kind of like Dembski’s “research,” throw out so much bullshit that sounds reasonably good to you that you’re sure that at least one of them wouldn’t be knocked down by your critics. Even he, like Rufini, knows that a lot of it is mindless pap, but you just keep what better minds don’t knock down.
Yeah, she probably knows that a lot of them are lame. ‘There must be some that will stick, though, if you chuck out an entire 50 proofs coming from ignorant theists.’
Sorry, Rufini, most of them are so bad that all we’ll do with respect to them is to tell you to Google using “bad proofs for God” and similar terms. There’s no reason for us to wade through endless PRATTs (use that term on Google, too–mostly for the evolution issues) which embarrass the more intelligent theists.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
And yet for millions and millions of people, this kind of nonsense serves as rational, unbreakable thought. People construct their entire lives (and will try to adjust yours) based on these kinds of nonsequitors and lies. We can scoff all we want at this, but it is a sign of how intractable the problem really is.
Is this “book” being self-published?
31) Much of the Bible deals with eyewitness accounts, written only 40 years after Jesus died. When the books in the New Testament were first around, there would have been confusion & anger if the books were not true.
She shows that she has the same grasp of how historians work as she does about how scientists work.
Negative sightings? Is that when you don’t see ghosts or angels? I have those all the time.
Damn. I feel left out. I didn’t get a copy of the e-mail. :-(
I caught that “Stephen Hawkins,” too. I think that’s what you call it when R. Dawkins and S. Hawking merge together into a really big, powerful battle-bot and go a-smitin’.
Wow, just wow. The stupid burns.
Number 4 is classic caricature of science. Suddenly, and completely with out proof, there is a law stated: the “law of cause and effect.” This is a clearly bastardized version of Newton’s third law. But, is totally baseless.
It says here
http://www.fakefaces.co.uk/lookalikes.html?categoryid=8&page=8
that Debra Rufini is a professional Kate Bush look alike.
Z
Oh – and I got to 18 before I lost the wil to go on.
Heh, this one breaks down nicely into two bad arguments. The first one is, The believers believe because they have witnessed. If you believe in your sky-fairy because he’s personally appeared to you and asserted his existence? Great. I’ll assume that if he wants me to believe in him, he’ll do the same for me. Or are you somehow special? (Hint: pride is one of the seven deadly sins.)
The second is, There is no ‘good news’ of atheism. There isn’t? “You can drive your morals by empathy and common sense” isn’t good news? “You won’t be sent to hell by the whim of a capricious divine being” isn’t good news? The nonexistance of the God of Abraham is *very* good news, as far as I can tell. Am I missing something? (Hint: no.)
This site used to be “300 proofs of god”, but has more now. Some are even genuine arguments advanced by “serious theists”:
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm
I used the bare address to show what you’re getting. These are even in proof form, or at least the first ones are.
Glen D
I haven’t seen reasons for the existence of god this poor since, well, er, um…. never.
This is so so so bad. It’s enough to make me want to renounce the existence of god all over again, just to be sure.
I wonder what she would’ve thought of these arguments before her lobotomy.
I am proud to say that I made it to number 21, after which, I was absolutely convinced that God exists. Who else could come up with such brilliant arguments (all no longer than 1 or 2 lines of text) if not God — I cannot fathom an alternative! Oh THANK YE, Jesus! Alleluja!
oh teh stoopid, it buuuurnnns…
I want the Madonna look-a-likes to form a think tank!
Sigh. Because I’ve had a lot of caffeine and at this moment feel someone needs to say it:
Evolution has never been proved, which is why we call it the ‘theory of evolution’..
Wrong. Evolution hasn’t been proved because it’s a scientific theory and (all together now)
WE DON’T PROVE THINGS IN SCIENCE.
The End.
I looked at both edges 1 and 50, to get a quick idea of the level of ingeniosity of the “proofs”. I will score the said proofs in terms of how difficult I think they are to counter.
0 = very easy,
10 = very difficult,
1. Whilst agreeing that random patterns occur naturally by chance, DNA however, consists of code, which requires a designer.
So, she agrees that patterns can occur naturally, but somehow, DNA cannot and must require a designer ? Did she think for more than one second about what was a pattern, and what was a code ?
SCORE = 0
2. Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.
How does that prove that he is not the biggest con man history has ever known ?
SCORE = 0
I don’t know, but if she starts at such a low level and finishes at such a low level, is it really worth reading the rest ?
So I gave it one last try, picked a number around the middle, came out 32 :
32 “From as early as 2000 BC, there is archaological evidence to confirm many details we’re provided with in the Bible.”
Well, just shows that the Bible was written by people who had some recollection of some of the events that happened in history. How does that prove the existence of God ?
SCORE = 0
So, now let’s see, we have :
1 : SCORE = 0
32 : SCORE = 0
50 : SCORE = 0
I’m tempted, should I read any further, or make the warranted assumption that the whole thing is going to end up being a constant function with SCORE = 0 ?
Hah! Did that goofy-looking image in the background actually come with the email? You know it’s got to be convincing if it’s illustrated!
Although I really couldn’t read through all of it without getting lost in SIWOTI land, the parts that I did read sounded more like something one would say to preach to the choir than something which would actually be convincing to a doubter. There’s an assumption that we already believe certain things for each “proof” to make sense, and even then, the statement doesn’t mean what she thinks it means. Take her #9, for example: “How much of the atheist’s faith relies on anger with God as opposed to genuine disbelief in God?” Even if I gave her the answer she expects (I suspect it is ‘oh, of course athiests are all just angry with God’), all that would mean is a lot of people believe in something. Guess what, a lot of people also believe in Santa
Clause, but that doesn’t make him real. Something tells me logic is not this woman’s strong point {/understatement of the year}
Such ego! She’s utterly convinced that her 50 “proofs” will convert us on the spot. “YOU DECIDE!” Boy will she be surprised to find her message has backfired spectacularly.
From Glen’s link:
Wow, I had no idea all that was required to call something a proof was to number each increasingly absurd sentence!
I wonder why she doesn’t just list her remarkable resemblance to Kate Bush as proof number 51.
Speaking of which, how does any but the most pig-ignorant and self-deluded dipshit say “I am not a liar, an attention seeker” with a straight face when they’re a professional fucking impersonator?
No wonder the world’s such a fucking mess. Sometimes I fucking hate humanity.
False dichotomy. What if Jesus Christ is an imagined historical figure, like Achilles? “Achilles was either the greatest warrior of all time, or an idiot for not wearing better boots!”
See also Creationist bingo
Ah. The classic argumentum ad hospitium.
Freethoughtpedia answers most of the serious “arguments for god”:
10) Why do many atheists shake their fists & spend so much time ranting & raving about something they don’t believe in? If they are no more than a fizzled out battery at the end of the day, then why don’t they spend their lives partying, or getting a hobby?! Why don’t they leave this ‘God nonsense’ alone?
Why get angry at something that does not exist? I might as well get angry at Lord Foul for his constant corruptions and attempts to destroy The Land.
I think she confuses most atheists dislike of being forced to conform to a bit of god nonsense with “anger with god”. There is a huge difference.
Wow, can’t believe I read all that. I hope it doesn’t have a lasting effect on my IQ. I’d like to believe that this is a joke or a satire but unfortunately it’s probably real. I have a few coworkers here in the Texas bible belt that have very similar beliefs. They have used most of these “proofs” as arguments at one time or another.
@ reply #5 reputedly the quote is from Jonathon swift. It’s my favorite quote, but I don’t know for certain who said it.
You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.
How can she say that it’s never been proved when it been proven time and time again? It’s just mind-boggling when creationists like her still say it’s never been proven even in the face of scores of evidence proving evolution to be far from being what creationism truly is– a fairy tale for grown-ups.
i especially like arguments from ignorance:
“How could the complexity of human life possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells?”
because someone cannot imagine something, doesn’t necessarily make it untrue.
here, i will have a go at it:
i can’t imagine how someone could be as ignorant and illogical as the author/s of this list of 50 “proofs”. therefore it could not have been authored by a human being.
since it must have had some cause to bring it into existence, and the cause can’t possibly be human, the only conclusion that one can make it that the FSM must have written it with his noodly appendages.
:). Seriously, though, have you seen “The Lobotomist”? Highly disturbing.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lobotomist/program/
#
Look at the date/year on our calender – 2000 years ago since what? Our historical records (other than the Bible) record evidence of Jesus’ existence.
#
Many people have died for their faith. Would they be prepared to do this for a lie?!
*blinks*
Wow….. just….wow.
Jeez, Glen. Maybe those tiny urls weren’t such a bad idea after all.
The evidence from liturature (sic) & historical studies claim that Biblical statements are reliable details of genuine events.
This one, as horribly misspelled as it is, also demonstrates that she has no idea what people who study literature do, either. (That is to say, you can’t source something completely from literature, but you can use it to contextualise known information, e.g. culture — comedies of manners, anyone?) Science, history, literature — it’s a flippin’ hat trick of ignorance right there.
Also, I’m given to understand that the contemporary literature of Biblical times says absolutely nothing about Christianity, but is absolutely littered with other (peoples’) gods. Which is still not proof of the existence of any god, but it is pretty compelling evidence that people in that time and place told a lot of stories about gods.
I knew about “beer goggles” that make people look more attractive on a Friday night. Where do I get my “god goggles”?
Atheism is a faith in that which has not been proved. The disbelievers have not witnessed anything to not believe in
*Head explodes*
30) Many people have died for their faith. Would they be prepared to do this for a lie?!
Much more accurate would be this: Many people have died for their faith. Would they be prepared to do this knowingly for a lie?!
What I like best about this is that she sent her 50 proofs into the world and then leant back in her armchair and thought, “there, that’ll show ’em!”
Does she really believe for a second that we’ll go, “BUT OF COURSE! Why didn’t these things ever occur to me? Now it all makes sense! Into my heart, sweet Jesus, praise the Lord etc.”
BTW, nice to see Mr Gumby again! Because, you see, my brain hurts, too. It’ll have to come out.
Interrobang, in the novel The Seven Percent Solution, Sherlock Holmes meets up with Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud was a historical figure. Therefore, Sherlock Holmes also is a historical figure.
I love arguments from literature.
Argument from Design:
1, 4, 5, 12?, 13, 14, 21, 23, 27, 43, 44, 48
Bonus: Perfect design:
15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
Argument from Personal Experence:
2, 40
Just a Theory
7
Atheists are jsut angry at Christianity:
9, 10
6. We can detect Thought, Emotion, memory, vision, etc.
22. Unseeable != Undetectable.
24. Hahahahahaha
25. Read Thomas Hobbes, Hume, Voltaire, etc.
26. Man doesn’t behave like an animal?
28, 49. This is just you assuming your premise. Such is not a proof.
31, 32, 34, 39. Closer to 100 then 40. PLus just because SOME things are true doesn’t mean it’s all true. The Illiad references soem true events, but you dont’ believe in Sirens or Cyclopse.
33. Name one. (ANd don’t name things in the old testament made true in the new testament)
35. Many people don’t believe they are opposed. It’s not Science coming into Churches and trying to make you stop teaching Genesis.
36. Because.
37. Yes. This is called Science. This happens with the Bible too. THe bible was used to ‘prove’ slavery is valid. Used to ‘Prove’ that women are inferior to men, etc. etc.
41. People believe a lot of things demonstratably false.
Note that she recounts the ‘Lady Hope’ story in #26, which has been exposed as fraudulent.
I don’t know about dying for a lie, but we sure know Christians have no problem with lying themselves, the dishonest douchebag fuckers.
Even as someone raised in a devoutly Christian household, I have problems seeing how most of those even relate at all to proving God exists. Like 43, the idea that someone throwing a tomato and not fessing up to it is “proof” of God, all that does for me is make me glad I haven’t been on that side of the table in years.
How’s seeing a ghost or praying proof of God? Cause and effect? What’s the effect that proves God is the cause? 6 is a non-started since we can look into the mind in various ways and are starting to decode what certain activity in it relates to. 8 is simply silly, and science has plenty of good news that the theistic would like to ignore, as is evidenced by much of her points. Points about food/drink/plants/ect being made to suit our needs also fails as it’s more rational to follow the line of thought that we evolved to our environment as opposed to our environment was created for us. I’d personally rip apart a lot more of the completely idiotic points but I’m beginning to feel unclean by getting this close to such high doses of stupid. Suffice to say, even someone who was raised to think in that theistic way finds these points worthless after opening his eyes and mind to science.
I shudder to think of how rotted my mind could be by now if I’d stayed on the theistic side.
R. C. Moore (#111):
Indeed.
Even ignoring the fact it clashes with “everything needs a cause”, “Proof” 11 should get some special attention I think.
She used “the chicken and the egg” to get out of “what made God” ?!
A very clever man called Charles Darwin SOLVED the riddle of the chicken and the egg. Perhaps this author would like to read his works for the details.
115:
I think she confuses most atheists dislike of being forced to conform to a bit of god nonsense with “anger with god”. There is a huge difference.
JanineID, yes, as in #9:
Forty-eight of these are sheer waste of space on these here jammed-up Intertubes. BUT –
2. “I saw a ghost” and
40. “We’re not silly” – Ms. Rufini, I fall at your feet, CONVINCED!
I know I already said I’d not pick anymore points apart, but the mention of con man Jesus and the prophesies just doesn’t stand either.
Many prophecies were not fulfilled at all, and many of the lines in the bible about “this was done according to what was prophesied by XYZ” are in fact false, as XYZ when his works are searched will actually have no prophecy about that. Only a few of the most vague and open ended prophecies were actually fulfilled, and those ones were met by hundreds of people, not just Jesus.
Jesus was the best and biggest con man ever, even today people are falling for what he did oh so long ago.
I couldn’t leave it alone. Here goes.
1. DNA “code” is not like coding in Java.
2. You don’t explain the paranormal. You make it up.
3. This is a suggestion, not a proof, and a pretty stupid one, at that.
4. Valid. But does not prove anything about anything.
5. Water currents can be complex.
6. Yes, you can “detect” emotion, and other brain processes. Fail to see this as a proof.
7. Yet another phrase parroted by every creationist, never thought out or researched.
8. Um. Anti-faith = faith? Some circular logic here.
9. Not a proof. And, for an atheist, it’s retarded to be angry at an imaginary friend.
10. We rant and rave about the intrusion of God Figment believers into our lives, not God Figment.
11. Man’s desire for explanations of the unknown, and man’s desire to feel really freaking special.
12. First statement true. Can swallow second statement, but what does have to do with Figment?
13. Gah. “Complexity”. “Gosh! I can’t bother to read some Wiki articles or a textbook!”
14. Again. “Complexity”.
15. Panglossian logic, wow. Our noses are perfect for spectacles; therefore, we have noses!
16. True. … What does our sensory system have to do with God?
17. Yes, and if it had, life wouldn’t be here, but life would be somewhere else. Big deal.
18. Okay. Numbers 17 and 18 could have been one “proof”. Same answer for both.
19. Huh? Where did she get that?
20. (Brain starting to melt.) No one. This smacks of evolution. Look it up.
21. Yes, it is. Good thing that life didn’t come about that way.
22. We are able to measure and predict “air waves”. Ever played with polarized lenses? Wiki it.
23. Yes, yes, law of entropy. We’re aware of it. Thankfully, the reason why we eat and breathe is to provide energy against entropy. Wiki it.
24. Darwin did not invent evolution. Where the hell did she get this “quote”?
25. Social animals have “morals”, not just humans. And what kind of person is she, where Figment is the only reason why she does anything good? Hellfire is keeping her from eating her babies?
26. Man *does* behave like an animal. Stop thinking you’re so freaking special.
27. Tell that to the guys at the casino.
28. First fragment true–though it really depends on what your questions are. And, the second fragment really shows where all this Figment stuff feeds into. “I don’t know! I’m powerless! Someone please take charge!”
29. I’m quite okay with the person Jesus existing. Does not prove anything about God.
30. Ohhh, the Josh McDowell Defense. Of course they believed. But belief does not equal proof.
31. Written only 40 years = eyewitness account? Does anyone accurately remember anything from 40 days ago?
32. Vague. What evidence? Proves historical events, if anything, not God.
33. What predictions? Huh?
34. Look. Up. “Evidence”.
35. Newton challenged the view that angels held people to earth. This is not opposition?
36. Um. Okay. The “why” doesn’t have to be God, though. Not a proof.
37. Yes. Science corrects itself. That’s good. We don’t change discoveries, though. Look it up.
38. Evolution doesn’t really address the start, no. That’s a different field. … Why are you making this list?
39. Yes, my pastor said that, too. Does not prove anything but the gullibility of men.
40. Who was dead for 3 days? (Cerebral circuitry nearing overload.)
41. … This is the sort of person that thinks that if everyone else thinks something, it must be true! Try thinking for yourself for a change!
42. Quote-mining. Obviously didn’t read the recent NYT article on Einstein’s letter which made his non-beliefs clear. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/science/17einsteinw.html
43. Wtf is this?
44. Yes! Admission of mental laziness! Finally!
45. Another quote-mine. Not a proof.
46. *sigh* And so it be so, ye, and Amen. What? No, God is Figment.
47. I love Pangloss! Yes!
48. Not proof. And, no. It’s there. Wiki it.
49. Can you please stop saying stuff that your pastor made up? But, consider this: “Wow, I created the Life, the Universe, Everything! I’m so powerful! Hey! You over there! Worship me, or… wait. Are you closing your eyes? Crap. Hey! Don’t close your eyes! Oh, man, what can I do *now*??”
50. Or. Maybe he was speaking metaphorically, and the people near him were the biggest dummies in history. Another Josh McDowell reference. Come up with something original, please.
I have decided that I’ve just wasted my time making this list.
Wow. I got as far as point number 6 and thought “this woman is fantastically dumb”. And decided not to waste my time on the rest.
Very disappointing.
I was hoping to find at least one “proof” worth sinking your teeth into; one proof where you could say, “that’s a good point, but here’s the counter to that argument” rather than a collection of simple minded Sunday school catch phrases.
“Where do our moral values held within our conscience come from? If the atheist is right, why then would we care about what we did?! If there is no God, then we’ve no-one to be accountable to.”
sooooo…the only reason this person doesn’t lie, cheat, steal, murder, slander, rape, loot, pillage, pilfer and commit general mayhem is that they have to be accountable to an imaginary friend who will give them a metaphysical timeout sometime in the indefinite future?
why not try being accountable to your family? your friends? your neighbors? yourself?
Hmmmm…
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fact
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/opinion
Hope that’s some use
These are proofs? Of God?
Usually, chance means that the cause is convoluted or meaningless, like the particular initial position and momentum of a coin (and this is ignoring quantum mechanics). So… God exists… what?
Janine ID — There’s a relatively well-supported historical hypothesis that Sherlock Holmes actually was a historical figure, more or less, based largely on one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s professors. Also, I’ve read a good deal of Freud, and I have my doubts as to whether he actually existed. Do we have any coroborating evidence to suggest he wasn’t just someone else’s “Dr. Watson”? ;) Jesus is also a literary figure, even in English, dating back to The Dream of the Rood at least… Are we confused yet?
Literature is great — any and all time travellers going back to the Regency period should be required to read Jane Austen first, but that also doesn’t mean the Bible belongs on the “non-fiction” shelf. (Me, I keep my religious books in a separate section; effective quarantine is good public health even in one’s personal library.)
I have no idea. What could an omnipotent being possibly do against the awesome eye-shutting powers of man? And the eyelids aren’t even made out of iron…
Any church would be happy to give you a pair. Careful though – they will try to lock them on your head, and proclaim doom for anyone who tries to remove them.
Like the “historical records” of the Galaxy Quest?
sarcasm aside, I don’t think there are any “historical records” of Jesus other than the Bible.
What’s curious to me is how many of those “proofs” are actually excellent arguments /against/ the probability of God.
Matt, #11 also contains the answer to the riddle of Ms. Rufini:
“I don’t understand or know . . . . I don’t care.”
Any church would be happy to give you a pair. Careful though – they will try to lock them on your head, and proclaim doom for anyone who tries to remove them.
Posted by: Ubi Dubium
You will pay to pull the wool over your own eyes!
All Hail Bob!
“50 Ways to Deceive Your Brother”
(with apologies to Paul Simon…)
CJO #95: the relationship between Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking has been revealed:
“Richard Dawkins: The Movie (Part One)”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ECh1EnHBTos
In the beginning, Richard Dawkins was a decent, God-fearing man. He loved Jesus with all his heart….
It is at this moment that Steven Hawking realised that he could save Richard Dawkins and turn him into a crusader for non-belief….
Richard Dawkins, biologist, a man barely alive. And it was said: “gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology, we have the capability, to make the first super-atheist. Richard Dawkins will be that man”….
And so, Richard Dawkins became what he is today. The leader of the militant atheist faction. But this epic story had just begun. Soon he would wage a full-scale war against God. The greatest battle in the history of mankind.
I think I got a little “throw-up” in my mouth…
I hear from my favorite comic creator that there’s a 3rd part of the bible coming out! Check out my url :)
I need a aspirin now, thats awful…
Anyway, some of those arguments were
original and thoughtful when Augustine of
Hippo wrote them in the IV century.
Not today anymore, but what good could
make reason upon those kind of people ?
Im always amazed of their capacity
of hating.
#145
Well, there are indications of a dude named Jesus(very common name at the time) who claimed to be a messiah, and claimed to do all sorts of magical things. There are also records that indicates there are dozens of OTHER messiahs walking around in that period of history.
1. DNA changes through random mutations guided by natural selection. The argument presented is something complex requires a designer. The person making the argument does not apply it to god therefore it is special pleading.
2. Humans have an imperfect pattern seeking mind which allows for false positives. The argument presented is an argument from personal incredulity.
3. Intercessory prayer has been demonstrated to not work. Positive results from personal prayer can be attributed to paying mind to problems in one’s life or the feeling that the full burden of one’s problem does not rest only on one’s shoulders. Also argument from personal incredulity.
4. Special pleading. God is an effect which should need a cause.
5. Special pleading. God is complex.
6. False premise.
7. False premise.
8. False premise, burden of proof, and personal incredulity .
9. Precisely 0%.
10. Atheists are vocal about the ill effects of religion.
11. Argument from sheer stupidity.
12. Argument contradicts argument #1.
13. Argument from personal incredulity. The answer is natural selection.
14. Argument from personal incredulity. The answer is natural selection.
15.Argument from personal incredulity. Animals evolve to adapt to their surroundings and not the other way around.
16. Argument from personal incredulity. Life evolves to adapt to its surroundings and not the other way around. And incomplete premise, what about the others who are not born with all five senses?
17. Argument from personal incredulity. If Earth were nearer to the sun, most life would simply never exist on Earth.
18. Argument from personal incredulity. If Earth were further from the sun, most life would simply never exist on Earth.
19. See previous two responses.
20. Argument from personal incredulity. Life evolves to adapt to its surroundings and not the other way around.
21. See argument 12.
22. Waves can be detected.
23. Argument from personal incredulity.
24. False premise.
25. Man evolved into a social creature which benefits from better chances for survival and propagation of one’s genes through a positive interaction with other members in the species.
26. See answer 25.
27. Replace ‘Chance’ with God in this argument.
28. Special pleading.
29. Argument ad populum.
30. Because they thought it was true doesn’t make it true. Argument from authority and ad populum.
31. There was confusion and anger exactly because the New Testament was around. Read the bible and the extra-biblical sources for evidence of this.
32. Which proves those specific details and not the existence of god.
Not one single Biblical prediction can be shown as false, and the Bible contains hundreds.
33. False premise.
34. False premise.
35. See Galileo, the creation/creation science/intelligent design movement,
36. False premise.
37. Science is progressive and self correcting.
38. False premise. Evolution doesn’t attempt to describe how life started but rather explains speciation.
39. False premise.
40. Argument ad gullibility.
41. Argument ad populum and argument from authority.
42. Argument from authority. Incidentally Albert Einstein also said the bible is “pretty childish” and all religions are ” an incarnation of the most childish superstitions”.
43. Wow.
44. Special pleading. God is something.
45. Argument from authority. Incidentally Stephen Hawking is an atheist.
46. Special pleading. God is something and cannot have created himself.
47. We are still evolving. Argument from incredulity. If the universe wasn’t the way it was we simply wouldn’t exist.
48. Nope.
49. Atheists use logic, empirical evidence, and reason to judge claims. Believers have a lower standard when it comes to their beliefs. If there is a god he should already know what to do to convince nonbelievers. Argument from lack of imagination.
50. False dichotomy.
Okay..how about that URL?? http://tiny.cc/AwKko
It seems unbelievable anyone could say these things, and many are calling Poe’s law on this as I read down all the comments. I can assure you though, having read all the points that every single one is something I have heard an adult Christian say at some time as a proof for God. I know it does seem unbelievable, but the truth remains, there is that much stupid out there and someone did take the time to collect it all together for this.
This is utter brain damage. I dont see how Richard Dawkins gets so much heat. Chris Hitchens is exponentially more cut throat!!!
Last thought on this topic after reading a comment about humanity wanting to feel special about existing.
“You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake, You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.” ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 17
How do you explain the paranormal, such as people witnessing positive or negative sightings, like ghosts or angels? I saw a ghost with a friend of mine – I am not a liar, an attention seeker. Neither was I overtired when this happened.
Wow cool. I believe you!! Thanks.
How much of the atheist’s faith relies on anger with God as opposed to genuine disbelief in God?
Hmm good question. Probably a lot! Thanks!!
Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.
False dichotomy. Two other likely possibilities are that the guy never existed — we have no evidence that he did — or that if he did exist, he was “just a guy” who long after his death was built up and then written about with details borrowed from various mythic creations of other cultures.
“sarcasm aside, I don’t think there are any “historical records” of Jesus other than the Bible.”
Other that the highly disputed Testimonium Flavianum in Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus, probably not.
Half of these proofs are variations of cause and effect. Rewording an idea does not a new idea make.
My head hurts. Although, I must say I enjoyed the Monty Python image included with the inanity.
My all-time favorite snowflake quote:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a76/mightyjalapeno/snowflake2.jpg
I admit, I only rad about eh first 8, then skipped to 50. So sue me. =P
But noting number 50, she apparently doesn’t even agree with C.S. Lewis’ famous apologetic. There should be a false trilemma, not a false dilemma!
We need to alert some rabid Lewis’ supporter to go argue with this woman and save us the trouble.
“I do remember hearing several years ago about a pornographic film called ‘Autobiography of a Flea.'”
—That would be the one.
I thought the proof that Jesus was the “Son of God” was his Resurrection. If people are constantly being resurrected (as “ghosts”), doesn’t this then disprove the singular divinity of Jesus?
Just asking.
#93
How do you explain the paranormal, such as people witnessing positive or negative sightings, like ghosts or angels?
Negative sightings? Is that when you don’t see ghosts or angels? I have those all the time.
I guess negative sightings are when you see characters from religions you don’t like.
It’s more ’50 proofs for my astounding ignorance’
I love to point out that whenever anyone throws up the chicken and egg platitude (#11), eggs came before what we would recognize as a modern chicken.
It does not matter if Rufini has cottage cheese between her ears, she is polite.
______
There, there, Ms. Rufini. So upsetting to have doubts regarding your unfounded beliefs. It is tres malin of you to have this vacuous, little list of calming, soothing nonsense to lull yourself into thinking that you are being a reasonable human being instead of the immensely gullible idiot that you are. I advise that you fix your wonderfully trite list to your fridge with a crucifix magnet, make it the background for your computer screen, etc. Keep your lulling nonsense close by, you never know when a real and true logical thought will surface and catch you by surprise.
33. Not one single Biblical prediction can be shown as false, and the Bible contains hundreds.
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/proph/long.html
Someone should send these to Ed Current, not that he particularly needs the help: his most recent vid on youtube is masterful and presents the best argument for the Earth being the center of the universe that I’ve ever heard.
You’ve never heard of Howlin’ Steve Hawkins, the eminent blues guitarist and theoretical physicist? He penned such classics as “Ain’t Got No Free Lunch” and “There’s a Black Hole in that Jelly Roll”. Unfortunately white record company executives swindled him out of his royalties, so he had to turn to physics to make a living.
Couldn’t resist…
“50 Ways to Deceive Your Brother”
“The problem is the logic inside your head”, she said to me
The answer is easy if you reject all things learned logically
I’d like to stop you in your struggle to be free
You must see fifty ways to deceive your brother
She said it’s really not my habit to intrude
Furthermore, I hope my meaning won’t be lost or misconstrued
But I’ll repeat myself, and I know I’m being rude
You just must see fifty ways to deceive your brother
Fifty ways to deceive your brother
You just slip out of whack, Jack
Make up a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just set your logic free
Hop on the Jeebus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And set your logic free
Ooo slip out of whack, Jack
Make up new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just listen to me
Hop on the Jeebus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And set your logic free
She said it grieves me so to have to logically explain
And here is something I can do to make you dumb again
I said I don’t appreciate and would you please refrain
About the fifty ways
She said why don’t we both just pray on it tonight
And I believe in the morning you’ll begin to see the light
And then she pissed me off as I realized she was right
About the fifty ways to deceive your brother
Fifty ways to deceive your brother
You just slip out of whack, Jack
Make up a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just set your logic free
Hop on the Jeebus, Gus
I do like how this thing is perfectly crafted to piss everyone off. Scientific ignorance? Check. Theological ignorance? Check. Social ignorance? Check. Historical ignorance? Check.
I love to point out that whenever anyone throws up the chicken and egg platitude (#11), eggs came before what we would recognize as a modern chicken.
You’re miscontruing the question, it’s shorthand for “which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?” and it is a semantic issue not a scientific, theological or philosophical one. Is a chicken egg an egg laid by a chicken or an egg containing a chicken? If it is the former then the chicken came first, if it is the latter then the egg came first.
“ndt” that was great! I was thinking about referencing Screamin’ Jay Hawkins or Ronnie Hawkins in my initial comment, but I thought I’d keep it simple and see what came back at me. ;-)
This is my favorite bit of nuttiness:
“What/who knew that our hunger & thirst had to be catered for by the food & drink which we’re supplied with?”
This was my principle argument for the existence of “Mom”. Now it’s my principle argument for “Stop and Shop”.
PZ, please put up a website just for these e-mails, along the lines of “My Right Wing Dad”. They should be viewed in all their multiple font size/color glory.
If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS?
So we’re nothing more than a computer program? God’s version of the Sims?
Apparently you are an attention seeker, since you sent this email out to a bunch of people to promote your book. That also makes you a liar.
And God was caused by…?
“Try praying. What good is it when a mind is set to coincidence & disbelief regarding the positive outcome?”
Um…huh?
“Science can only be the detector of certain things. You cannot scientifically detect emotion, memory, thoughts etc., though scientifically we must..”
WTF?
“Most of us are born with the five senses to detect our surroundings, which we’re provided with.”
We’re provided with surroundings?
You expect me to believe that the person who wrote some of these incoherent sentences is a published author?
Guys, has anyone gotten round to producing a talk.origins style guide to dumb arguments for religion? If we had a proper categorised list for situations like this, it’d make the pointing and laughing a lot more efficient.
quote ‘Matter cannot organise itself. An uneaten tomato will not progress on its own accord to form a perfect pineapple. It will transform into mould, into disorganisation. The laws of evolution fall flat.’quote
wow, so a tomato becomes a fungi and not another plant, now that is incredible, it would have been less of a challenge for it to become a pineapple!!
Author: go back to school with teh 11 year olds, they will know more than you.
Inky @ 136:
31. Written only 40 years = eyewitness account? Does anyone accurately remember anything from 40 days ago?
Not only that but *how* long were lifespans in that era? Chances are that even if this was somehow true, it wouldn’t have been first generation eye witness accounts. I’m siding with the “Life of Brian” theory of how christianity arose though and appreciate the gumby.
God has proved himself to us in numerous ways, all around us. The atheist needs to put his glasses on. What more can God possibly do if man has shut his eyes to him?
– Uh, show up?
Prof Myers,
please change your custom css file to make the blockquote.creationist repeat-y instead of no-repeat.
One should always be warned of doodoo,
without actually having to read doodoo.
I like that snowflake quote too Seamyst, still prefer Fight Club myself, but that’s definitely a close second for me.
At the very least though, both make the strong point that we are not special or unique, with how many people there are in the world there is no way that any one characteristic about you is not also expressed in hundreds and thousands of other people for even the most esoteric traits. Millions of people at minimum likely share your more common traits. It’s not even beyond belief that there is someone out there with your same tastes, personality, quirks, ect.
Outside of looks, which were similar but not to the point of confusion, a friend of mine met someone basically just like me while he was traveling. Only the fact that the other me had a different last name (same first name though), looked different enough to tell, and lived several states away kept my friend from thinking he’d screwed up his trip and not left yet. As it was he initially considered that it was an elaborate prank for a while till ongoing events naturally provided proof that it wasn’t.
@ #111: Or for not wearing “fuck-off block of concrete”.
Oy. Finished. I’m a masochist today.
Stupidity aside, why do people who think they can prove something try to give attractively-numbered lists of proofs?
From that rant I get the impression the author wrote down as many “good” ideas as she could and then decided to fabricate the rest of them in order to make a convincing “50.” I mean, the lot of it is bullshit no doubt, but I’d be more impressed with a odd-numbered list (like 17 or 23, etc) distinct arguments.
Maybe what she did was try to write a livejournal rant or something, and then decided to list-ify it? Her tone is generally defensive anyway.
Ok, I got to number 9 and stopped reading, just before my vision clouded and blood shot out my nose.
Setting aside for a moment the idiocy and poor grammar, I think she has inadvertently revealed the essence of creationism and crackpot theology in #43 – “If you disagree with us we’ll throw fruit at you: do you really need that kind of hassle?”
(This one was also my favorite because it doesn’t even pretend to be a “proof.” It’s as though half-way through she forgot what she was doing and just started telling stories.)
Bronze Dog: Isn’t that what your Doggerel list is for?
R.C. Moore: Makes one wonder, doesn’t it? Is anyone else around here qualified to answer the burning question of how Christians square their apparent belief in ghosts with the whole Heaven and Hell thing?
“Ah. The classic argumentum ad hospitium.”
Sounds more like argumentum ad shoegazeum to me.
“If they are no more than a fizzled out battery at the end of the day, then why don’t they spend their lives partying, or getting a hobby?! Why don’t they leave this ‘God nonsense’ alone?”
Silly, silly Debra. We do it to piss you off! Isn’t it obvious?
“40. Think about Near Death Experiences”
AAAAAEERRRGHGGHDJSKLFHNSGBSDF
You’re miscontruing the question, it’s shorthand for “which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?” and it is a semantic issue not a scientific, theological or philosophical one. Is a chicken egg an egg laid by a chicken or an egg containing a chicken? If it is the former then the chicken came first, if it is the latter then the egg came first.
I always thought the eggplant came first, then the eggs fell off it and hatched and out came the chickens.
Millions died for Hitler, and more than a few were ardent Nazis. Millions died for Stalin, and more than a few were ardent Stalinist.
Thus both are true.
Oh wait, that cannot be right.
I guess Debra Rufini had better think again.
I’m reminded of Einstein’s famous retort: “If I were wrong, one would be enough”. Anyone who spits out 50 “proofs” has little confidence in any of them.
Not Even Wrong.
The super-serendipitous random quote generator just coughed up this one:
“In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality.” [Clarence Darrow, The Sign, May 1938]
Surely the appearance of this quote at the top of the page is proof of something.
The chicken and the chicken egg are a matched set, see; they exhibited concurrent punctual equilibriation. Before that, however, there is the “Cro-chicken Quandary,” which still presents a fearsome problem for cnatural selectionists.
First a couple responses to other commenters…
mayhempix….awesome… send it to Paul Simon (and I don’t mean a couple apostles)
from way above:
“2) I am *really* starting to hate the word, “complexity”. It is now the hot-button word for Christians, along with “Jesus” and “Hell”.”
Remember that a complex number is only part real and the other part imaginary.
And finally…
PZ…you are a wasteful, wasteful man. You could have stretched out this email to a weekly item for A WHOLE YEAR! (well. almost) and we could have dissected them one by one…although it’s funnier this way, I guess. But you must be very confident of more material coming your way to throw it out in such great big gobs.
[I]50. LOLRon Hubbard is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.[/I]
Fixed
Really quite a trip. #11 and #16 in particular just about made my head explode.
For those of you who couldn’t make it a little further in, this one at 16:
“We are willing to believe in physically unseen waves that exist through the air, operating physical forces & appliances to work, yet not supernatural God forces being responsible for the same.”
So you see, the little man who makes the ice in my fridge is really god.
this is the Cold Beer argument:
1. If God exists, he would want us to be happy.
2. Cold Beer exists, therefore, God exists.
case closed.
(case opened, beer removed)
Sorry, 22. not 16.
Somebody has been watching The Matrix as if it were a documentary. Somebody needs to take the blue pill and wake up to reality.
Ha ha. This list made my day … I’m not (yet) a nihilist or a misantrophe, but someday this kind of bullshit will nudge me over the edge.
TH
Well, I’m convinced. Where’s my bible?
Looks like 50 non-sequiturs to me.
1. Sure, I admit some stuff in the world looks random. But the DNA code can’t be, because it’s called a code.
2. I’m not crazy and I’ve seen a ghost in broad daylight. Therefore, souls are real.
3. If you pray for something and you get it, then god exists. If you pray for something and you don’t get it and you don’t believe in god, god didn’t give it to you because you didn’t believe.
4, 5. If conclusions reached by Socratic dialogue were good enough for goat-herders 2500 years ago, they’re good enough for me.
6. Ever see the South Park episode “Imaginationland”? That shit’s deep, yo.
7. No, I didn’t know that the word “theory” has a meaning that’s more precise than casual usage. Why?
8. Atheism is a religion too because atheists care about atheism just as much as we care about religion. No, don’t ask me to prove it.
9, 10, 49. Why do atheists care about religion so much?
11, 12. Well, you can’t conclusively prove that god doesn’t exist, can you? So hah!
The rest are left as an exercise for the reader. I see that many people in comments have already taken stabs at some.
I came across this “proof” for anyone who is still hungry for something to tear apart.
We’ve already dealt with Yomin’s garbage already.
Let’s not give the walking ulcer any more attention, shall we?
She’s fractally wrong (definition): http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/Stocks_B/threadview?m=tm&bn=51268&tid=100799&mid=100799&tof=3&frt=2
Swing and a miss. If these are the 50 best “proofs” of god, then theists are in trouble.
pesky facts and that ruling out crap. assumptions without experimentation. just icky.
Ouch. I think that was a recounting of every bad argument I’ve ever had to pull my hair out over. If I hear those repeated one more time (like folks haven’t heard them before) I think I’ll cry…
It was good for a laugh, though. I’m not even sure what the point of some of it was. Agree with #136.
I’ve gotta go and Beer this away…
My apologies.
Gandalf- Liar, Lunatic or Wizard?
Gandalf- Liar, Lunatic or Wizard?
The world has moved on to testable theories and Xians are still playing word games.
I made it all the way to #26! I think that’s pretty good. Maybe I’ll to get through the rest later… maybe not.
I really do find this sort of thing both very sad and very scary.
“Gandalf- Liar, Lunatic or Wizard?”
Weed smoking Wizard…they never describe the stuff in the pipes as tobacco.
;-)
HereticChick #151 :-)
Sinfest exists.
God is in Sinfest.
Therefore, god exists.
Only 50? I don’t think the guy was trying hard enough…
Cathy in Seattle, his name is Debra Rufini and he looks like Kate Bush.
snark
The one, abiding question I have: does Glen Davidson sit on his PC all day, every day, with Pharyngula in his browser, hitting ‘refresh’ every 30 seconds?
Well done! I had to force myself not to simply roll past the stupidity after only #3, and finally gave up at #12, only failing to miss that amazingly funny punchline at #50 because comments start there.
What… a… maroon!
Janine ID: “…he looks like Kate Bush.”
Dude, never denigrate Kate. You’re stepping on toes. :)
I responded, check it out if you want. Some are just intended to be mean or funny.
http://keippernicus.blogspot.com/2008/06/little-something-for-skeptical-part-of.html
DavidONE, just go to #97. It may not be the same Debra Rufini but it is funny.
The ignorance of this Rufini woman is just shocking. Sadly, I encounter illogical assholes like this on a daily basis. There is no amount of logic or reason that will dissuade them of their thinking. It’s like trying to argue with someone who believs that anyone holding a different opinion is the devil. Try reasoning with such faulty logic,and you’ll come away with all hope lost in the future of humanity.
My usual response to these fundies has been that they’re worshipping a mythical 2000 year old Jew, drinking his blood, and eating his flesh because they think it will give them immortality. Ultimately, that’s all Christianity comes down to. You can similarly break down Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and all the other silly little mass halucinations into their most basic illogic.
It never ceases to amaze me how credulous people can be. You can literally sell someone a steaming pile of elephant shit, as long as it comes with some fancy embellishing. Henceforth, religion shall be known as Corprophilia.
Sheesh, I got to about number three when my brain started trying to hatch from my skull. If you want a debunker for this effing tripe PZ, I’m afraid you’re on your own :)
I only made it to #5. This list sucks, even as a troll.
This is the best thing about “new atheism” in my book, the sheer amount of nutters showcasing how incredibly weak their reasoning is and how little they seem to know about the reality they live in is fantastic.
I would be amazed if books like these don’t overwhelmingly help people to leave their silly religious convictions.
I loved # 12:
Improbability is not the same as impossibility. You only have to look at life itself for that backup of proof.
being followed immediately by # 13:
How could the complexity of human life possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells?
– and I don’t mean numerically, either.
Other than that – my brain hurts from so much nonsense!!!!!!!!!
15. What/who knew that our hunger & thirst had to be catered for by the food & drink which we’re supplied with?
So does this mean my wife is proof that God exists?
Helioprogenus @ 229 You come about as close to me as anyone on this site can. Good man!
My brain hurts too much to read the comments too, sorry folks. I can’t remember ever having seen such a long list of stupidity. And this on a day when I found out that one of my smarter co-workers is a believer of the moon-hoax.
“22. We are willing to believe in physically unseen waves that exist through the air, operating physical forces & appliances to work, yet not supernatural God forces being responsible for the same.”
I almost vomited when I read that. Did the physicists get it all wrong?! Radio, Television and the precious Internet all exist because of the unseen will of GOD ALMIGHTY! Seriously, why do I even bother to study?
“30. Many people have died for their faith. Would they be prepared to do this for a lie?!”
As a matter of fact, yes.
“33. Not one single Biblical prediction can be shown as false, and the Bible contains hundreds.”
What…?
“39. The two people who discovered Jesus’ empty tomb were women. Women were so low on the social scale in first century Palestine, so in order to make the story fit, it would have made far more sense to claim that it were male disciples who had entered the tomb. But it wasn’t – we’re left with the historical & Biblical truth.”
At least I’ll know from this that religion is a defender of women’s rights.
“43. A speaker in Hyde Park who was attacking belief in God, claimed that the world just happened. As he spoke, a soft tomato was thrown at him. “Who threw that?” He said angrily. A cockney from the back of the crowd replied; “No-one threw it – it threw itself!””
I’m totally convinced now.
Somehow, I feel we do not have the same definition for a proof…
Actually we can use MRI machines and micro electrode arrays to detect emotions and thoughts quite easily. Memories are harder to detect, but can be to some extent. They actually do consist of matter, being groups of neurons.
Wow, that is some mind-blowingly stupid stuff.
Here are 50 simple “proofs”.
/inigo
You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
/end inigo
I think I just might have to write a blog debunking this. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel.
stated by a person without: arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, ulnar nerve entrapment, prostate enlargement, scoliosis, impacted wisdom teeth,…
“Look at the date/year on our calender – 2000 years ago since what? Our historical records (other than the Bible) record evidence of Jesus’ existence.”
hmmm, i wonder if this Christian would be so quick to leap to the defense of Islam? After all Muslims have a calender dated from the time of Muhammed, and there is numerous historical and textual evidence for the existence of him? Yet he is not regarded as a prophet by Christians?
“Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.”
Again, Muhammed – did god talk to him, or did he lie? This Theist would no doubt say the latter, yet balks when we do the same of Jesus?
My brain shut down after number 5 since I do a lot of heavy science reading I couldn’t fathom 5th grade writing or thinking anymore.
“Why do many atheists shake their fists & spend so much time ranting & raving about something they don’t believe in? If they are no more than a fizzled out battery at the end of the day, then why don’t they spend their lives partying, or getting a hobby?! Why don’t they leave this ‘God nonsense’ alone?”
Aside from the fact that im out partying all the time, atheists cannot leave ‘god nonsense’ alone, because those peddling god nonsense wish to force the normal amongst us to conform to their holy texts – we get killed and maimed by people working for ‘god’, exacting his will.
Their is also an altruistic argument – just as theists will try and convert the godless to save them, it is perfectly reasonable for atheists to save the believer from ignorance, emotional and intellectual deprivation and get them to enjoy the only life they will get, rather then trying to attain an impossible ideal, which demands suppression of natural, harmless urges and desires. In fact, were atheists to not try and deconvert the believer we would indeed be guilty of the kind of callous selfishness that the theist trys and attributes to us
Finally, someone who speaks to ME! I’m convinced now, and am so ashamed that I’ve wasted so many years living as a blinkered atheist. I’ve given my life over to Jesus, and now just need to find a God-fearin’, Bible-believin’ church to tithe 10% of my income to.
“Matter cannot organise itself. An uneaten tomato will not progress on its own accord to form a perfect pineapple. It will transform into mould, into disorganisation. The laws of evolution fall flat.”
HOW CAN I HAVE BEEN SO BLIND??!? Open your eyes, people! This proves that evolution is nothing more than… Wait a minute. That proof has nothing to do with evolution at all!
Never mind. Not that it matters, I’ve already blasphemed the Holy Spirit anyway, and expect to do so again several times tonight.
“What/who knew that our hunger & thirst had to be catered for by the food & drink which we’re supplied with?”
this is a classic case of a theist reversing cause and effect!
the essential argument intrinsic to this point is that ‘food and drink were tailored in advance, as their was knowledge of our thirst and hunger’
we have hunger and thirst for what there is, because our hunger and thirst developed according to the food and drink avaliable; not vice versa.
“Matter cannot organise itself. An uneaten tomato will not progress on its own accord to form a perfect pineapple. It will transform into mould, into disorganisation. The laws of evolution fall flat.”
She is trying to make the laws entropy work against life and evolution. yet even her example is crucial flawed. what, precisely, does she think mould is? it is a living thing, as organised as the tomato.
I love #30 30) Many people have died for their faith. Would they be prepared to do this for a lie?!
Let’s see. Let’s pretend that this makes sense. Christians have died for their faith, thus Christianity is true. Christianity proclaims that its god(s) is/are the only one/three. All other religions are thus lies.
People have died for those other religions. Thus, they have died for a lie. But since no one would die for a lie, they must be true. Yet, if they’re true, then Christianity, with its claim to be the One True Faith cannot be true.
FYI:
God is imaginary: 50 simple proofs
http://godisimaginary.com/
“If we are the product of evolution – by sheer accident, chance, then we are still evolving. Does it just so happen that we exist here today with everything so finely tuned for our living. as we now have it?”
here she loses entirely. she completely inverts cause and effect – “we exist today with everything so finely tuned for our living”! surely, she must see that ‘our living is so finely tuned to everything as it is now’ is the actually sequence of events?
also, how is the earth so finely tuned for our living? naturally, humans only occupy a tiny niche, the fairly narrow band of geography congenial to survival. she conveniently ignores the vast tracks of ocean, the sweeping tundras, and the burning deserts, where humans, unaided, die easily and quickly. humans, by slaving the natural world to its own desires have made the world finely tuned for us
Honestly, this woman needs a brain upgrade – even for a theist she is of poor standard. I have read some arguments by theist philosophers, and they have far more powerful arguments for the existence of god. none convincingly, but even so.
oh, do NOT get me started on #39
my head hurts from reading the other 41 stunning examples of “proof”
Sorry, couldn’t get very far without my head starting to hurt. I could do with a bottle of 50 proof to wade through this tired mess. Na… would be a waste…
OH WOW! This is major Poes law material! This could come straight out of http://www.godlessgeeks.com Hundreds of Proofs of God’s Existence!
you know what they say holbach (235)…great minds think alike, (as long as one doesn’t mind all the typos). It should really say, no mind is great, except for the one that is free to explore the universe, uninhibited by other minds meant to hinder that exploration. These religious wackjobs are intend on clouding people’s minds because their brains are loaded with nothing but useless rubbish. Useless minds beget useless rubbish. Sadly, it’s the ignorant that go on increasing their reproductive success from an early age, while we try to establish an actual life full of thoughts and actions free of mental constraints. With nutjobs like Rubbishini, they’re going to pound out the children so their illogic can be maintained. Our only recourse is the truth, even if it’s on the decline these days.
“Atheism is a faith in that which has not been proved.”
Hmm, I was pretty sure that atheism was a “faith” (if that) in only that which has been proven.
“45. Stephen Hawkins has admitted; “Science may solve the problem of how the universe began, but it cannot answer the question: why does the universe bother to exist?””
Who id Stephen Hawkins?
Actually, I couldn’t be bothered answering those. They are so bad that I don’t think any form of reasoning will “counter” them. Just appeals to emotion, the unknown and a profound use of ignorance where possible.
helioprogenus @ 256 Ah yes, we speak the truth with reason, but that reason has to be backed with enough force to penetrate the religion-demented mind. I have given up being polite and civil to these insane morons years ago, and now only employ the harshest and at times the nastiest verbiage I can muster to counter these retards, not with common sense and reason that will do no good as many people uselessly proffer, and which I have been excoriated by several commenters on this site who do not approve of my harsh method. As I remarked earlier, if your enemy brings a knife to a fight, you bring a gun. Also, as a regular on this site has quoted Thomas Jefferson: “Ridicule is the only weapon that can be used against unintelligble propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.” We have reason on our side; they have deranged insanity.
Rawlinson @#124.
You idiot! Why did you point out that phrase!
*Head explodes*
Here are my answers:
1. Whilst agreeing that random patterns occur naturally by chance, DNA however, consists of code, which requires a designer.
* Unverified claim: “Code requires a designer”
2. How do you explain the paranormal, such as people witnessing positive or negative sightings, like ghosts or angels? I saw a ghost with a friend of mine – I am not a liar, an attention seeker. Neither was I overtired when this happened.
* Perodila: human brains are wired to err on the side of false-positive when attempting to recognize things, especially faces, whole humans, or animals.
3. Try praying. What good is it when a mind is set to coincidence & disbelief regarding the positive outcome?
* The uselessness of prayer without belief is irrelevant to the question of whether God exists. If God exists, prayer without belief is useless. If God does not exist, prayer without belief is useless.
4. The law of cause & effect – in order to have an effect, there has to be a cause. Everything is caused by something.
* Actually, this “law” goes the other way: every occurrence is a cause, which necessarily has effects.
* Unverified claim: “Everything is caused by something”.
5. Mindless nothing cannot be responsible for complex something.
* Unverified claim. Some atheists might argue that the present state of the universe is a counterexample.
6. Science can only be the detector of certain things. You cannot scientifically detect emotion, memory, thoughts etc., though scientifically we must.. These things which do not consist of matter are beyond the detection of science.
* Last statement is false. Many things which do not consist of matter are detected by science, e.g. light.
* Certain types of brain activity can be “scientifically” detected. It is possible that emotions and memory are now or could some day be detectable in this fashion.
* Irrelevant: whether or not emotions and memory are “scientifically” detectable has nothing to do with whether God exists.
7. Evolution has never been proved, which is why we call it the ‘theory of evolution’. It’s a fairy tale for grown ups!
* First half of first statement is problematic. The word “proof” has multiple common meanings. As mathematicians use the word “proof”, no scientific fact or theory has ever been rigorously proven. As the U.S. courts use the word “proof”, evolution has long since been “proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”
* Second half of first statement is false: it is called the “theory of evolution” because it is a theory. A theory is a hypothesis (idea) which has been explored thoroughly enough that predictions about things that can be observed in the real world have been derived. Evolution is a strongly tested theory in that many predictions have been made from evolution, and these predictions have been subsequently observed to be accurate.
* Irrelevant: the accuracy or inaccuracy of the theory of evolution is independent of the existence or nonexistence of God. If God existed, then evolution could still be an accurate theory. If evolution were inaccurate, another God-free theory of life could still be accurate.
8. Atheism is a faith in that which has not been proved. The disbelievers have not witnessed anything to not believe in, whereas the believers believe because they have witnessed. There is no ‘good news’ to preach in atheism.
* Irrelevant: the existence or nonexistence of God would have no impact on the truth of these statements.
* First statement is inaccurate and/or misleading. Many would dispute the appropriateness of “faith” in that sentence, arguing that “faith” means “belief without evidence”. Atheism is belief with evidence. The first statement is misleading because essentially all religions are built on beliefs in things which have not been proven.
* Obvious failure of logical form: if one substituted “Asantaism” for “Atheism” the logic of the argument would remain exactly the same, yet this is clearly not a proof of the existence of Santa Claus.
9. How much of the atheist’s faith relies on anger with God as opposed to genuine disbelief in God?
* Irrelevant: even if we accepted the premise that atheists are angry at their concept of God, that would not mean God exists.
* Dishonesty (or ignorance): atheists are generally not angry with God in much the same way that atheists are generally not angry with Santa Claus.
* Obvious failure of logical form: if one substituted “Asantaist” for “Atheist” the logic of the argument would remain exactly the same, yet this is clearly not a proof of the existence of Santa Claus.
10. Why do many atheists shake their fists & spend so much time ranting & raving about something they don’t believe in? If they are no more than a fizzled out battery at the end of the day, then why don’t they spend their lives partying, or getting a hobby?! Why don’t they leave this ‘God nonsense’ alone?
* Questions are not proof. Unless you are implying that the only answers to these questions are “because God exists.” However, there are clearly many other arguments (e.g. obsessive-compulsive disorder) which would explain this behavior.
* More Santa analogy: if the government wanted to tax you to pay for building reindeer landing-strips on the roofs of government buildings, you’d likely rant and rave, too. If they told you that you couldn’t hold a government job because you didn’t believe in Santa Claus, you’d object.
11. What created God? What came first, the chicken or the egg? I am not going to deny the existence of the chicken or the egg, merely because I don’t understand or know what came first. I don’t care – they both exist!
* Argument from assumed ignorance: you don’t understand the whole “which came first issue” regarding chickens, and therefore you assume we don’t either. Sorry, we understand it; if you don’t understand, that’s your problem.
* Broken argument: you seem to be arguing that we don’t know what created God, therefore God exists. Seems to me more like an argument that God doesn’t exist.
* Maybe you’re arguing that atheists believe God does not exist because we don’t know what created God. If so, your argument fails because that’s not why Atheists believe God does not exist.
12. Improbability is not the same as impossibility. You only have to look at life itself for that backup of proof.
* This does not even address the issue of the existence of God. Are you trying to make us do your work for you? Perhaps you mean that atheists argue that God is improbable and therefore impossible. Atheists don’t argue that.
13. How could the complexity of human life possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells?
* Questions are not proof.
* Very slowly, over hundreds of millions of years.
14. How could the complexity of the human mind possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells? Where does our consciousness come from?
* Questions are not proof.
* Argument from ignorance: you don’t understand where consciousness comes from, therefore…
15. What/who knew that our hunger & thirst had to be catered for by the food & drink which we’re supplied with?
* Questions are not proof.
* Simple argument from natural selection: if we hungered and thirsted for things we didn’t have access to, we’d have died out.
16. Most of us are born with the five senses to detect our surroundings, which we’re provided with.
* Failure to show relevance to the existence of God. Would we only have four senses if God did not exist?
* Or are you arguing that our set of senses exactly lines up with the set of things to sense? Then why can’t we smell carbon monoxide; why can’t we taste salmonella?
17. What/who knew that had Earth been set nearer to the sun, we would burn up?
* Questions are not proof.
* The fact that, of the billions of stars in this galaxy, at least one of them has a planet in the realm of radii where human life is possible does not prove or disprove the existence of God.
18. What/who knew that had Earth been set any further from the sun, we would freeze up?
* Questions are not proof.
* The fact that, of the billions of stars in this galaxy, at least one of them has a planet in the realm of radii where human life is possible does not prove or disprove the existence of God.
19. What/who knew that had Earth been built larger or smaller, its atmosphere would be one where it would not be possible for us to breathe?
* Questions are not proof.
* The fact that, of the billions of stars in this galaxy, at least one of them has a planet with a mass and radius such that human life is possible does not prove or disprove the existence of God.
20. What/who knew that we require the oxygen of plants, just as plants require the carbon dioxide of us?
* Questions are not proof.
* Second half of statement is false: plants do not require animals to burn oxygen and produce carbon dioxide. Other nonbiological processes turn oxygen into carbon dioxide, as they did for billions of years before animals evolved.
* The theory of evolution predicts that humans would evolve to breathe the atmosphere that was around when we evolved.
21. The concept that life came about through sheer chance is as absurd & improbable as a tornado blowing through a junk yard, consequently assembling a Boeing 747!
* Argument from ignorance: most people are not prepared to contemplate the magnitude of those numbers. Therefore they trust you when you say they are comparable. In reality, the probabilities could be hundreds of orders of magnitude different.
* Straw man: “the concept that life came about through sheer chance” is a terrible, misleading description of modern theories of how life came into existence.
* Misleading big numbers. If evolving life from non-life required trillions of gallons of sea water and millions of years of time, then it would still have happened in a blink in the geological time scale.
22. We are willing to believe in physically unseen waves that exist through the air, operating physical forces & appliances to work, yet not supernatural God forces being responsible for the same.
* Yeah, that’s what we call “science”. We have theories that predict the existence of things that we can’t see with our eyes. These theories make predictions (like we can use radio waves to send signals to each other). We test these theories, and when the theories prove to be consistent with reality, we believe in the things those theories are based on. We have no theories that make predictions about supernatural God forces. At least none that have been verified experimentally.
23. Matter cannot organise itself. An uneaten tomato will not progress on its own accord to form a perfect pineapple. It will transform into mould, into disorganisation. The laws of evolution fall flat.
* First statement is false; snowflakes and crystals are obvious counterexamples.
* The rest of the statements look like you’re trying to say “simple life forms cannot evolve into more complex life forms”. But you don’t actually say that or make any other specific arguments we could refute. Are you trying to make us do your work for you?
* The statement “simple life forms cannot evolve into more complex life forms” is an unverified assumption, and also one which has been fundamentally disproven experimentally.
24. Our ‘inventor’ of evolution, Mr. Charles Darwin had this to say to Lady Hope when he was almost bedridden for 3 months before he died; “I was a young man with unfathomed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions. wondering all the time over everything, and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire – people made a religion of them.” Darwin then asked Lady Hope to speak to neighbours the next day. “What shall I speak about?” She asked. He replied; “Christ Jesus and his salvation. Is that not the best theme?”
* Do you believe *everything* you hear? Darwin’s doctor and various family members are all on record saying that Lady Hope lied when she made this claim; she never visited Darwin when he was on his deathbed.
* Irrelevant: we do not believe in evolution because Darwin said so; we believe in evolution because the evidence indicates it is true.
* Irrelevant: the accuracy or inaccuracy of the theory of evolution does not prove or disprove the existence of God.
25. Where do our moral values held within our conscience come from? If the atheist is right, why then would we care about what we did?! If there is no God, then we’ve no-one to be accountable to.
* False underlying assumption: atheists are less moral than theists. Evidence shows that is not true.
* Irrelevant: arguing that God makes (or would make) the world a better place is independent of arguing that God exists.
26. If man has evolved from an animal, why doesn’t he behave like an animal? Yet man is civilised.
* Argument from ignorance: you don’t know why people don’t behave like animals, therefore…
* False underlying assumption: people behave more like animals than many people would like to believe, and many animals behave more like people than many people would expect.
* To find the answer to your question, ask some animal scientists. Most of the differences in behavior amongst types of animals have to do with cognitive function, environment, training, ability to communicate, etc.
27. ‘Chance’ isn’t the cause of something. It just describes what we can’t find a reason for.
* Unverified assumption: everything has a reason. It rained yesterday; do you argue that there was a reason for that? Quantum mechanics, which has been proven beyond even most unreasonable doubts, has proven that some things just happen randomly. Add in chaos theory, and you have lots of things (like when it will rain) that are random.
28. Science & logic do not hold all the answers – many people are aware of forces at work which we have no understanding of & no control over.
* Irrelevant: the (alleged) inadequacy of science to explain some things would not be relevant to the existence of God.
* Many people are “aware” of things that cannot be verified. Some of those things (e.g. schizophrenic delusions) have been proven not to exist.
29. Look at the date/year on our calender – 2000 years ago since what? Our historical records (other than the Bible) record evidence of Jesus’ existence.
* These records, if they existed and were accurate, would not prove God exists, only that a man named Jesus (a common name in that area at that time) lived 2000 years ago.
* These oft-referenced records don’t exist. No contemporary records have ever been found. No written account of the life of Jesus has ever been found that was made less than decades after his alleged life and death.
30. Many people have died for their faith. Would they be prepared to do this for a lie?!
* Another question?
* People have died for many different faiths which all conflict with one another. Clearly they cannot all be correct; therefore many people have died for faiths that were wrong.
31. Much of the Bible deals with eyewitness accounts, written only 40 years after Jesus died. When the books in the New Testament were first around, there would have been confusion & anger if the books were not true.
* The fact that some written statements would, if they were false, anger people is not evidence that those statements are true. World War II was a mere sixty years ago, and have holocaust deniers. And the literacy rates here are orders of magnitude higher then they were a couple thousand years ago.
* “Only 40 years after Jesus died.” In other words, everyone who was allegedly present at any of these events was dead years before any of it was written down. This is an argument that those statements are not to be trusted. The holocaust deniers started pushing their tripe years ago, despite the existence of hundreds of people who’d been there who were still alive at the time to refute them.
32. From as early as 2000 BC, there is archaological evidence to confirm many details we’re provided with in the Bible.
* This argument does not conflict with the “The Bible is fiction” theory. If I wrote a fictional story about a king who lived a thousand years ago, I’d make sure to get as many of the details as accurate as possible.
33. Not one single Biblical prediction can be shown as false, and the Bible contains hundreds.
* This statement implies that there is an unambiguous objective method for generating Biblical predictions. If that were true, then there should be: 1) an undisputed complete list of Biblical predictions and 2) a formal description of the method. Can you provide either?
* When people use ambiguous subjective methods, they tend to throw out all the inaccurate predictions.
34. The evidence from liturature & historical studies claim that Biblical statements are reliable details of genuine events.
* Irrelevant, again: the existence or nonexistence of these claims has nothing to do with whether God actually exists.
* People who write literature are not experts in verifying the claims they base their writings on.
35. From the birth of science through to today, there is no evidence to claim that Christianity & science are in opposition. Many first scientists were Christians; Francis Bacon, Issaac Newton, Robert Boyle, to name a few, along with the many who stand by their work & faith today.
* Again, irrelevant to the existence or nonexistence of God.
* Um, they arrested Galileo and sentenced him to lifetime house arrest because he argued for heliocentricity. I’d call that a conflict.
* False statement: “many first scientists were Christians”. Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Euclid, and Hypatia all were scientists who lived long before the “time of Christ”.
* Hypatia was captured by religious zealots, stripped naked, and flayed to death in the streets, because she refused to conform to what the zealots thought should be taught.
36. Science can explain ‘how’ something works, but not ‘why’ something works.
* Irrelevant to the existence or nonexistence of God, again.
* Statement is false. For example: “Why is it that the spectrum of light that comes down from the sun through our atmosphere matches so closely the spectrum that our eyes can see?” Natural selection explains that the answer is because it would have been useless for us to have eyes that could see light that isn’t there.
37. Science is constantly recorrecting its findings. Past theories contradict certain beliefs which are held today. Our present ‘discoveries’ may change again in the future to rediscover how we originally came into existence.
* Again, irrelevant to the existence or nonexistence of God.
* You describe the power of science as if it were a weakness. The whole point of science is that, while scientists acknowledge that they could be wrong, they also calculate the likelihood of that happening. When a scientist finds that there is a 1/billion chance that they could be wrong, they don’t say it’s impossible. When the odds are so low it would take a book’s worth of paper just to write the odds down, they still don’t say it’s impossible. Some theists make things up and then claim it’s impossible for them to be wrong.
38. Evolution describes the way life possibly started, yet doesn’t explain what made life start & why. Scientific questions fail to do that. Even if evolution were proved, it would still not disprove God.
* False first statement: evolution does not describe how life started. Evolution describes how life evolved. Arguing that abiogenesis is part of evolution is as incorrect as arguing that quantum mechanics is part of rocket science.
* Irrelevant: the fact that the theory of evolution does not disprove the existence of God does not in itself constitute a proof of the existence of God.
39. The two people who discovered Jesus’ empty tomb were women. Women were so low on the social scale in first century Palestine, so in order to make the story fit, it would have made far more sense to claim that it were male disciples who had entered the tomb. But it wasn’t – we’re left with the historical & Biblical truth.
* It would make more sense if Gandalf and Frodo had flown on Gwaihir into Mordor and simply dropped the ring into Mount Doom, rather than going on a dangerous quest. This fact does not prove that the Lord of the Rings is a true story.
40. Think about Near Death Experiences. It’s naive to believe that they all are induced by chemicals or drugs. How do we account for a blind person having this experience, coming back to describe what they had never before seen, a person telling the Doctor that there is a blue paperclip on top of the high cabinet, which they couldn’t have otherwise known, an african man being dead in his coffin for 3 days, coming back to life to tell of much the same events which took place as those of many others? We never hear of the witnesses describing “a dream”. We’re not silly – we know the difference between even the most vivid of dreams to that of reality.
* Read the book “Passage” by Connie Willis. Great book. In that book there is a description of a perfectly reasonable explanation of all the reported phenomena regarding near death experiences. Sure the book is fiction, but the explanation is still very good. Plus, it’s a great book.
41. There are many skeptics who didn’t believe in Jesus before his crucifixion, and who were opposed to Christianity, yet turned to the Christian faith after the death of Jesus. Just as the many who continue to do so today.
* The evidence for the claims in the first sentence are all found where, exactly? Oh, right, in the bible. If the bible is a work of fiction, then these claims are also fictional, and therefore cannot be considered to be evidence that the bible is not fiction.
42. Albert Einstein said; “A legitimate conflict between science & religion cannot exist. Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind”.
* Irrelevant, again: statements made by Einstein do not prove nor disprove the existence of God.
* Quote mining. Einstein never made those two statements in that order. A full reading of the article where those statements appear would show that his thoughts are not in alignment with the simplified quotes above.
43. A speaker in Hyde Park who was attacking belief in God, claimed that the world just happened. As he spoke, a soft tomato was thrown at him. “Who threw that?” He said angrily. A cockney from the back of the crowd replied; “No-one threw it – it threw itself!”
* Irrelevant, again: an anecdote regarding strange people in Hyde Park has nothing to do with the existence or nonexistence of God.
44. It is easier to believe that God created something out of nothing than it is to believe that nothing created something out of nothing.
* Fallacy of generalization: you believe that, so you assume that everyone believes that. I, for one, do not believe it.
* Irrelevant, again: the ease which with things can be believed by some people has nothing to do with the existence or nonexistence of God.
45. Stephen Hawkins has admitted; “Science may solve the problem of how the universe began, but it cannot answer the question: why does the universe bother to exist?”
* Irrelevant, again: whether science answers the question of why the universe bothers to exist is independent of the existence or nonexistence of God.
* The implication that the universe bothers to do anything is based on the false underlying assumption that the universe has a consciousness and motives.
46. We cannot confuse God with man. With God in the equation, all things, including miracles are possible. If God is God, he is Creator of all, inclusive of scientific law. He is Creator of matter & spirit.
* There is no argument here. If God exists he (she, it) is God. If not, then he doesn’t exist. Your statements have nothing to do with the existence of God.
47. If we are the product of evolution – by sheer accident, chance, then we are still evolving. Does it just so happen that we exist here today with everything so finely tuned for our living. as we now have it?
* Another question. Your argument seems to be: “Everything around us today is finely tuned for our existence as we are, so therefore we could not have evolved.” Actually, evolution predicts that we would have evolved to be fit for the environment we live in.
* Irrelevant, again: the accuracy or inaccuracy of the theory of evolution is independent of the existence of god.
48. Could it possibly be that the missing link does not exist?!
* Another question.
* The theory of evolution predicts that intermediate forms existed. Paleontology predicts that some, but by no means all, of those creatures left remains that were fossilized and that some of those fossils will be found by us. Some people argue that if there were intermediate forms that we haven’t found fossils for, then those “missing links” are evidence that evolution is wrong. Since this result is exactly what science predicts, it cannot reasonably be considered to be evidence that the theories are wrong.
* Again, irrelevant: the accuracy or inaccuracy of the theory of evolution is independent of the existence or nonexistence of God.
49. God has proved himself to us in numerous ways, all around us. The atheist needs to put his glasses on. What more can God possibly do if man has shut his eyes to him?
* Why do you make this claim and not bother to even list a few?
* Atheists argue that no irrefutable evidence for the existence of God has been demonstrated by anyone, ever. Theists respond with dozens of fallacious arguments “proving” the existence of God.
* James Randi offers $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate of any supernatural phenomenon under conditions that rule out trickery or random chance. No one has even made it past preliminary rounds.
50. Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.
* Or perhaps he is a fictional character.
I completely agree, I have nothing but contempt with these people. There was a time, centuries ago, when science wasn’t developed enough that some people could genuinely be amused with religious nonesense. These days, with all logic at the table, these assholes have no excuse, and I honestly cannot fathom how they reamain so hard headed when it comes to reason. Ultimately, I know it has something to do with our evolutionary history, and perhaps a holdover from our youth when we based our worldview on the authority of our parents. For those over the age of 18 or so, there is no need to embrace the illogical garbage, even if it was our own parents who fed it to us. The sad truth is these people will never add anything of value to our civilization and culture. Those who rebuke us on these comments may think we’re being harsh, but patience and tolerance can only go so far. At some point, we have to operate on basic principls of reason, honesty, scientific credibility, and if we’re countered with stupid bullshit, then why must we be nice?
There are times when satire can work so much better then directness. Yet, I don’t know about you Holbach, but I can only expell so much satire before I reach a boiling point. I know I’m not the most patient man, and let the Bad Astronomers and the Neil Tyson’s of the world try to attack illogic through kindness and understanding. We need different approaches, and for us, I don’t see why a fist can’t do the same. These fucks have gone so far, it’s time we take common thinking back. If they expect us atheists to be kind and walk on eggshells for fear of driving a few stragglers away from reason, well, tough. Life is harsh, and nothing comes easy. As long as we can have some fun tearing these fucks apart in the random chaos that is the universe, I’m happy.
I will attempt to show what’s wrong with the ‘proofs’. Sorry if I end up repeating what others have said but I don’t have time to read all the comments.
1. Read a biology textbook. This designer is extremely inefficient considering he makes the same parts do many things rather than building them from scratch.
I think you read ‘code’ and took the analogy too far. Your misunderstanding does not constitute proof of God.
2. Your second and third sentence answered your question. Many are tired, attention-seeking or not in a good mindset when they witnessed the ‘paranormal’ phenomena. Considering you sent this to a number of people maybe you are an attention seaker. As for liar, saying ‘I am not liar’ is not convincing. I’m in a good mood however and will assume neither and that you were in a good mindset at the time. It simply could have been a shadow or some other mundane phenomena that you and your friend misinterpreted. In the extremely unlikely event it was a ghost that still doesn’t prove God’s existence.
3. Ever hear of placebo effect and confirmation bias?
4. Assuming this is true it still doesn’t prvoe God’s existence.
5. Untrue. Look up automata. Simple rules can produce complex structures. Or considering the complex structure of every snowflake. Now we are more complex than snowflakes and automata. However complexity doesn’t require a ‘mind’.
6. Presently we CAN detect changes in the brain when emotions are fely and memories remembered. However assuming the case that there are things beyond the reach of what science can detect that still doesn’t prove God’s existence.
7. Look up falsificatioin, which is how many (probably most) scientist think science works. Under this regiment no theory can ever “proven”. Just saying something is “proven” doesn’t make it proven. As for “fairy tales for grown ups” this is a great example of projection.
8. There is alot of “good news” to atheism. It leads people away from superstition and frees them from false beliefs. And again, this does not prove God’s existence.
9. How much anger do you have towards the easter bunny? Now if people where making everyone believe in it and trying reshape society towards belief in the easter bunny would you be angry at the easter bunny? No. You would be angry at the people fucking things up. This misunderstanding of atheist does not prove God’s existence.
10. Read #9.
11. I assume you are responding to the reductio ad absurdum argument of who created God.
(1) God created everything.
(2) Everything has a cause.
(3) What created/caused God?
I think however you simply took (1) and were content to assume what you were trying to prove. Now that you are content consistency is not required.
12. So what? Go waste alot money in Vegas with that mantra.
13. A good question that many people have been trying to answer for centuries now. They have made a lot of head way avoiding the “magic man done it” approach. There will always be answers no one know. Many have been answered by investigating. None have been by saying God did it. Just because you can’t imagine how it could have happend without a magic man doesn’t imply a magic man done it.
14. Repeat of #13. Were you finding the goal of 50 ‘proofs’ difficult and decided to try to repeat some of them and hoped no one noticed?
15. Now you are getting desperate.
16. I’m glad you stopped before you reached…..how does our body know how to shit?
17. If the Earth had been too close for life to form you wouldn’t be here to ask. There are probably many planets for which that was the case.
18. Read #17 and replace “too close” with “too far”.
19. Actually life still might have arisen if the Earth was larger/smaller. Do you think if the earth’s radius was 0.1% larger? How about just 1 atom larger? Let’s just say Earth really was too big/small for life. Read 17/18.
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Alright I give up. I have read all of the “proofs” and simply don’t have the patience to respond to all of them. Most aren’t even on topic and the ones that are have falsehoods and/or bad reasoning. I can’t believe anyone would be convinced by any of these points. She is just flinging her feces (i.e, her 50 ‘proofs;) at us and hoping somtthing sticks. One good proof would be sufficient if God existed. I have yet to hear it.
I gotta stop reading this crap. I always end up depressed and feeling glim for the future of the human race.
Blue paperclip & jebus was African.
Hey, I’m convinced. Time for sackcloth ‘n ashes.
Gimme ten Kumbiahs, & call Office Max in the morning.
Lemmee guess…it was a story she heard from the friend of a friend of a friend who heard it in church. But they’re all xtians, so it must be true!
Such dreck.
Helioprogenus @ 263 Don’t forget to check the current thread “He’ll Fit Right In” I left some choice remarks for a defender of retard Hedges.
No it doesn’t/isn’t/can’t: 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 21, 25, 31, 33, 34, 38, 40, 44, 49
Anecdotal evidence only: 2, 3
Yes it does/is can: 5, 13, 14
Because of nutters like you: 10
WTF: 11, 23, 26, 29, 43, 47, 48
Presuppositions/false premises: (All of them, but specifically) 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 46
So?: 16, 22, 24, 27, 28, 30, 32, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 45, 50
50 proof? Try 100 proof. If you lit a match next to this email, while holding a oily rag, the resulting explosion from the mix of bullshit and fuel would take out half a city block.
Grumpy wins for conciseness !
I got to #5 and couldn’t take anymore. Ouch.
There must be a God because I’m a nice person – and any good Christian will tell you that none of us would bother being nice if there wasn’t a god watching our every move.
We’re all heartless bastards at heart, if you’ll pardon the oxymoron.
HA! What a load of BS!
Did the email finish with “PASS THIS ON TO 10 OF YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY NOW!!!!!!!!!!” ?
Wish I had time to read all 269 other comments, there must be some gems in there… can’t believe some of you actually had a go at responding to all the crazy.
I gotta go pass this on to 10 of my friends and family now… cya!
I often wonder are people like Rufini that stupid? How can they really believe this stuff? Sometimes I think many of them are going through some sort of charade, an agenda, for god knows why because, seriously, the abject dumbness is mind boggling. It does my head in.
Wow, the stupid…it burns.
My theory is (non-scientific theory) these ideas are like a game of jeopardy. You have the answer “God”, so you look for any questions that will fit the answer. So when you see arguments that come to the answer you have, you are going to take those questions on board without ever understanding them.
Though in reality, it’s more like:
What’s the answer? “42”
What’s the question? “What is 6 times 9?”
It’s just the brain knows that the answer is right so the question since it led to the answer must be right despite it obviously being the wrong question… I miss Douglas Adams
There’s a cartoon that illustrates two methods of inquiry with the one side going something along the lines of ‘here’s the data; what conclusions can we draw?’ and the other – possibly with someone holding a bible – saying something like ‘here’s the conclusion; what data can we find to support this?’.
It’s been linked here before; I just can’t remember the URL.
People need to feel secure in their beliefs (and hate to have it pointed out that they’re wrong or stupid) so they do whatever they can to protect themselves, including coming up with a list of ‘proofs’ that are anything but.
This one?
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/ii119/DonExodus/CA230_1Trever.gif
That’s the one. Thanks.
Where’s ichthyic? Haven’t seen him since the Celtics won game 1.
The thing that scares me most about people like this is they don’t know why arguments like Darwin repenting on his deathbed even if it were true has no bearing on the credulity of a scientific theory. To me it stems down to them being taught that evidence is a belief, so if the person who came up with that belief didn’t even truly believe it (young and naïve) then it must be wrong. The absence of any understanding of science is staggering.
50. Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.
This one’s easy. Con man. A con man who never existed.
Problem solved.
I love how “I saw a ghost” is used as proof for God.
Incredible.
Simply incredible.
Wow. Just….wow.
The stupid is way beyond burning. It’s sitting in a steaming pile in the middle of the lawn.
It does reinforce the logic behind Poe’s Law.
I’ve been wondering about that for the past couple of days.
It’s turtles all the way down!
Let’s make some turtle soup, I’m hungry.
I wonder if this person and his/her fellow creationists operate on the principle that if they keep repeating the same crap often enough, we atheists will just give up and say, “OK! You win! Now I believe!”
The least they could do is make up some new vacuous arguments. Wait; that would require thought…
Where’s ichthyic? Haven’t seen him since the Celtics won game 1.
I’ve been wondering about that for the past couple of days.
Oh, thanks, MAJeff and Kseniya. I thought you knew something I didn’t. Now I’m worried. Does he go off on research expeditions of some sort?
#267
Your response is constructed entirely of the internet elements Awesome and Win. I am intrigued by your ideas, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
4. the obvious retort to this is what is the cause of the first cause….?
5. Why not and who said anything about nothing in the first place?
6. Its called neuroscience, fMRI allow us to see all those things in action.
7. Say hello to the fallacy of amphiboly!
8. …whatever
9. Complex question fallacy…
um..did they bother to notice that some of their proofs contradict the others….
LIKE, please stand by, beep beep beep….ah yes, number 21 and number 12.
Which is kind of cool because if you put them together you get a palindrome.
13. Appeal to ignorance….hahahahahah
15. complex question again…
16. Um, not sure how this proves god….
yeah complex question from 14-20. Asking what or who, of course, assumes that a what or who exists and has the ability to know things….which is the conclusion to the argument, and, as we all know “you cant place your conclusion in your premise cause that good sense don’t make.”
And now I’m 2bye4
Agreed. Even a blind chicken…
Too long. Didn’t bother to read.
Anyways, I think she’s mistaking the proofs in a bottle of whiskey for the proofs she thinks will convince people to her thinking.
#51. If there was a designer, he/she would never have created someone as stupid as this.
Creationists: Unwittingly proving the theory of evolution is correct.
Try praying.
It’s been tried. In clinical trials. Null effect. So either God is a nasty jerk who intentionally won’t answer prayers when the prayers are part of a clinical trial in order to play head games with people or He/She/It/They just don’t exist. Either way, no indication for further prayer or worship.
This is that cheeky Dawkins fellow having a joke! It’s got to be.
We have a new creation myth!
11. So she’s saying a giant chicken laid God. Was the ur-godchicken viviparous, laying a gunk covered God whose arse had to be slapped to get him going? Or was there a godegg, which God had to chip through using an intelligently designed tooth on his forehead?
As to Nr.30, I guess all those Heaven’s Gate people are on their spaceship after all. Various human sacrifices over the ages (in some cultures the people supposedly went willingly) must have also worked. Need I mention more recent occurrences?
This may come a bit late, but I think I should let Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, a German physicist and philosopher from the 18th century, comment on proof number 15:
“He was amazed that cats had two cuts in their fur right where the eyes are”
Which about says it all.
From MJ’s Anarchy Page :-
Mankind’s Place in the Universe
If the universe is infinite, there are probably infinite “chemical broth” planets. Most of these fail to yield conscious life forms that are aware of themselves and their place in the universe. But if one in a zillion planets actually did achieve this amazing accomplishment, through the natural laws of the universe, then the resulting life form would surely look at itself, and say, “There must be a God or some higher being, because my coming together from a chemical broth cannot be an accident. It had to be directed somehow. It cannot be random chance…”. If the being put on its “universal view” glasses, then it would see that it came about because zillions of these “life experiments” on other planets had failed, but this particular one had succeeded, quite by chance. There was nothing but the universal laws of physics to guide its development. If the being had a good grasp of the meaning of infinite, it could understand the uniqueness of its place in the universe. Overwhelming numbers replace the need for a miracle-worker. If the being’s interpretation of the universal laws of physics was too “cold” to explain everything, and a more benevolent nature to the fabric of space-time was actual, the sequence of life-forming miracles would be more plausible. However you look at it, we are here and we are conscious of being here. Either we are the very first conscious life form in the universe, or, more likely, there are others that are conscious too.
#26
If man has evolved from an animal, why doesn’t he behave like an animal? Yet man is civilised.
I believe this is the best proof of God’s non-existance. I agree with Stephen Hawking: “I am not even sure there is intelligent life on this planet.”
JMW said:
I’m not sure exactly what process led to the creation of this awesomely silly list, but I’m fairly certain that thinking was not part of it!
I wish ignorance and stupidity were actually painful afflictions for these people. If it physically hurt them to be this dumb, maybe they’d bother trying to do something about it.
PZ, you must be on large quantities of valium to be able to read this stuff and not want to go door to door kicking people’s asses.
Can I have her e-mail address? I’d like to send her my responses.
On come on, this list is as least as useful as the 95 feces Martin Luther nailed to the Wittenburg church door. He just had better grammar.
Ciao
Fifty proofs?
Big deal.
-jcr
Bah, the link didn’t work.
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm
Over three hundred. #11 seems to be a very popular one these days.
-jcr
50 Proofs of God!
1) I am ignorant
2) I am ignorant
3) I am really ignorant!
…ad nauseum
If it was true that DNA required a designer, that designer would not necessarily be a god. It has not been shown that ‘code’ needs a designer. This is not a proof of the existence of a god.
Posing a question (such as ‘how do you explain X’) is not proof of the existence of a god.
This doesn’t make sense. And is not proof of the existence of a god.
Do you really think _everything_ is caused by something? Do you believe that God was caused by something? If you do, I’d like to know what that something is. If you don’t believe that God was caused (or that he is self-caused), then you have contradicted yourself.
How do you know? Are you basing this assertion on anything other than your pre-existing belief that the universe has a designer? This is not a proof of the existence of a God, it’s an unsupported assertion.
Recent developments in neuroscience such as this brain scanner http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/feb/09/neuroscience.ethicsofscience contradict your assertion that science cannot detect the workings of the mind. But even if you were right that science couldn’t detect these things, this would not be proof for the existence of a god.
The theory of evolution has mountains of evidence in it’s support, just as any other major scientific theory has, including the theory of relativity and the theory of gravitation. Look up the meaning of the word ‘theory’ in a scientific context to see that a theory can be powerfully supported enough to be considered a common fact. This is the case with the theory of evolution.
In your study of what constitutes a scientific theory, take care to notice that theories can never be definitively proven, only disproved.
The predictions drawn from the theory of evolution are very specific, they inform agriculture, medicine and other important fields–the modern world depends on the theory of evolution. When the theory of evolution produces predictions that fail, scientists will reject it. This is the only way the theory will be displaced by another one. So far, this hasn’t happened.
In any case, you’re barking up the wrong tree again: if the theory of evolution turned out to be false, this would not be proof of the existence of a god.
Atheism is the absence of theism, nothing more. We are all born atheists. And again, even if you were right, this would not be a proof of the existence of a god.
This is not a proof of the existence of a god. When you address atheists, please have the decency to at least take them on their word when they tell you that they do not believe in gods, including yours.
This is not a proof of the existence of a god. One reason that some atheists vocally oppose superstition is that they believe that it can damage the quality of the one life we are lucky enough to have.
This is not a proof of the existence of a god. It’s not clear what you’re trying to say.
This is not a proof of the existence of a god. It’s not clear what you’re trying to say.
‘I don’t understand how X could happen if there is no God’ is not a proof of the existence of a god. The literature is out there for you to study if you’re sincerely interested in finding out more.
‘I don’t understand how X could happen if there is no God’ is not a proof of the existence of a god. Read an introductory text on natural selection to understand how things like hunger and thirst evolved. I recommend ‘The Blind Watchmaker’.
Yes, and the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that natural selection ‘provided’ us with our senses. This is not proof of the existence of a god.
Learn about natural selection and realise that the only life forms that _could_ have emerged on earth, were ones perfectly suited to this environment. This is not a proof of the existence of a god.
Understand that chance is just one component of the theory of evolution. No biologist is suggesting that life arose through ‘chance alone’. Your failure to understand the theory of evolution is not a proof of the existence of a god.
Your appeal for us to insert gods into the gaps in our knowledge does not constitute a proof of the existence of gods.
The theory of evolution does not predict that a tomato will transform into a pineapple. Your failure to understand this is not a proof of the existence of a god.
The dubious deathbed conversion story is not a proof of the existence of god. If Darwin had really rejected the theory it wouldn’t matter, the theory will not be replaced as long as it works. And more importantly, the falsification of the theory of evolution would not prove the existence of a god.
‘It would be awful if God didn’t exist because it would mean X’ is not a proof of the existence of a god.
Please understand that man, Homo sapiens, is an animal. Our behaviour _is_ animal behaviour, and different animals behave differently. Your confusion over common descent is not proof of the existence of a god.
This is not a proof of the existence of a god. “God did it” is also not an explanation, it just describes something we have yet to understand.
This is not a proof of the existence of a god.
The phenomenal success of the cult of Christianity is not proof of the existence of a god. Almost everyone used to believe that the earth was flat, and they were all wrong.
Are you talking about the apostles? We don’t have reliable evidence that they did die for their belief in Jesus’ divinity. Today many Muslims die for their faith, but you believe that they’re mistaken. The existence of martyrs is not a proof of the existence of a god.
Not necessarily, it would very much depend on whether the people who were written about actually read the events recorded therein. We don’t know if this happened. What we do know is that most people alive at that time couldn’t read. Further: perhaps there was confusion and anger, we know too little about what happened at that time to say. This is not proof of the existence of a god.
This is not proof of the existence of a god. Archaeological evidence also shows that the biblical account is wrong in many cases.
False. Many biblical prophesies have failed. This article introduces a few of them http://www.daylightatheism.org/2008/06/the-bibles-broken-promises.html
I don’t know where you’re getting this information from, but the source is not trustworthy. The gospels contradict each other. Even if that was all we knew about the bible, that would already be enough to conclude that it is not a reliable document.
Whether or not science and Christianity are compatible has no bearing on the question of whether a god exists.
‘Why’ is only a legitimate question if there is an intelligence behind the subject being considered. Until there is evidence that suggests the existence of a creator, ‘why’ questions, when posed in relation to life and the universe, make an unwarranted assumption that such a creator exists. The fact that you can pose unwarranted ‘why’ questions is not proof of the existence of a god.
Thats right, that’s the power of science. This is not proof of the existence of a god.
Evolution explains biodiversity. Abiogenesis deals with how life started. Also, a failure to disprove the existence of a god is not proof of the existence of that god.
We cannot trust that the biblical account of what happened at the tomb. Even the gospels contradict one another when recounting the events there. Appeals that rely on the accuracy of the bible cannot be taken seriously as proof of the existence of a god.
‘How can you account for X if there is no god?’ is not proof of the existence of a god. This fallacy is called ‘God of the gaps’, please look it up.
Many people who are raised into the Christian tradition convert to Islam, or revert to atheism. The existence of converts does not prove the existence of a god.
This is not proof of the existence of a god. Don’t make the mistake of relying on intellectual authority, Smart people have been wrong before.
This is not proof of the existence of a god.
‘Creation’ implies a creator. The assumption that the universe was created is unwarranted until there is evidence that suggests the existence of such a creator. This is not proof of the existence of a god.
This is not proof of the existence of a god.
This is not proof of the existence of a god, and it’s not clear what you’re getting at.
We are not here by chance alone, we are here through natural selection. Please study this to understand why these are two very different propositions.
Sure. Even better for creationists, the theory of evolution may be proven wrong. It could be falsified any time a fossil is found. Please realise though, that even if the theory of evolution was shown to be false, this would not be proof of the existence of a god
Atheists like me know precisely what kind of evidence they would need in order to accept the claim that a god exists. An omnipotent god could convert me in an instant if he wanted to. Either God wishes to hide his existence from skeptics, or he does not exist. The fact that you are convinced of a god’s existence is not proof that a god exists.
Maybe the Jesus of mainstream Christianity did exist, and was who he said he was. But someone had to be the biggest conman in history, and maybe it was Jesus. I don’t think so. I think it’s more likely that Jesus’ claims and actions were not accurately reported in the bible, or that Jesus did not exist as a historical figure, and was a character created by the anonymous writer we call ‘Mark’. We don’t have enough information to be able to say for certain. Again, the bible cannot be relied upon as an accurate historical document.
I hope I’ve answered your points clearly.
Did some one say Kate Bush?
As soon as you see the word ‘whilst’ in a fundie screed, you know you’ll be dealing with not only a raving loon, but also a pretentious raving loon.
Rufini’s effort seems verily like the Underpants Gnomes’ business plan. We have
Step 1: The universe exists
Step 2:
Step 3: Therefore, God exists
My reply would be the caption of my favorite S. Harris cartoon, “You’ll have to be a little more explicit in Step 2.”
Most of these so-called “proofs” are questions: “Duh, how could stuff evolve?” “Why don’t atheists just shut up?” Yeah, that’s “proof” alright. :-D Proof you have to be stupid to believe in God! (Well, not really, but you could rewrite every one of these arguments to prove God doesn’t exist.)
Re: #37
Damn! What an idiot!
Go attack Halliburton or Enron or WorldCom or something.
Ich is in the habit of taking occasional fortnightish breaks from the web. He’ll be back.
I can’t even laugh about this. It’s too sad.
Obviously, she doesn’t even have a dictionary to look up the word ‘proof’.
Ms Rufini has one thing going for her: she might submit a claim to the Guinness Book of World Records and nominate herself as a candidate for provoking the most protracted groan amongst rational people reading a blog.
That’s gotta be a non-trivial accomplishment.
“12. Improbability is not the same as impossibility. You only have to look at life itself for that backup of proof.
13. How could the complexity of human life possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells?”
12 provides a direct answer for 13. She squirms in and out of true statements, trying to use every creationist contradiction all at once. This list is painful to read.
It’s not entirely fair to compare bible-humping cranks to Mr Gumby.
Gumby, at least, was witty, honest, and to-the-point.
If you would like to participate in a group debunk of this email, please join us at:
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=50_reasons_to_believe_in_god
I love how “evolution falls flat” because a tomato doesn’t turn into a pineapple. I had a good giggle about that one.
“Evolution falls flat” because water doesn’t turn into seltzer.
“#31. Much of the Bible deals with eyewitness accounts, written only 40 years after Jesus died. When the books in the New Testament were first around, there would have been confusion & anger if the books were not true.”
Forgeting about selection bias and widespread illiteracy, if the average life span of at that time was about 30, how likely is it that they’d have a large number of reliable witnesses after 40 years?
Using that kind of logic one must accept that aliens crashed at Roswell and that Elvis is still alive.
I call Poe, and a bad one at that. Maybe it’s a fundamentalist parody of a Poe.
“What/who knew that our hunger & thirst had to be catered for by the food & drink which we’re supplied with?”
Why not go tell it to the people starving in Darfour.
“If man has evolved from an animal, why doesn’t he behave like an animal?”
If you are your father’s son, and he drinks, why don’t you drink too?
Seriously, I’d love mankind to behave more like animals. No animal invented torture, gratuitous murder… or indoctrination.
If you think non-human animals don’t kill just for fun, you don’t know much about cats.
WOW, she grasped at any straw in the haystack of illogic she could find! Might be fun to put together 50 proofs to disprove her non-proofs.
Nevermind… I’ve reconsidered the amount time required. How about one proof a la Rufini to disprove her non-proof:
god doesn’t exist.
Boy, that was easy.
The really interesting thing I noticed as I was going through the list was that some of these can be used as arguments AGAINST God and creationism. For example, #12) Improbability is not the same as impossibility. You only have to look at life itself for that backup of proof.
That could be a valid argument for evolution, instead of against it :)
You know. A real good example of this woman’s thinking, with respect to things like disproving evolution *proving* her god, just came to me, “I have proven that my neighbor didn’t plant the circle of mushrooms in my yard, ***therefor*** it must be a fairy gateway, planted by elves!” As bitbutter points out, this is quite stupid thinking, since *logically*, you need to first prove that their are elves **before** you can suggest that they planted fairy rings in your yard. You can’t rationally use the disproof of one hypothesis, and the complete lack of any others, to default to the stupidest one you and your society *has* come up with to explain it.
Here’s another point-by-point reply (not mine).
http://yunshui.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/this-is-a-long-one-but-thats-not-my-fault/
Hmm. Figure I will place this here, since there really isn’y a thread appropriate at the moment, but here is one to add to the list of, “It takes an atheist to commit mass murder.”, argument:
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2008/06/the_taiping_rebellionmass_murd.php
Seems some Chinese guy declared himself the long lost brother of Jesus, conquered most of China, and managed to kill 20 million people before *we* helped stop him. Why don’t we hear about it? Well, could be because we sided with the winners and neither they, nor our leaders, wanted to admit it was a religious fanatic that caused it. Who knows why… But, basically, no one seemed to care what his goals, ideology, etc., where, just that China got back into the hands of those that thought women where property, shouldn’t have equal rights, etc. lol
The stupid not only burns, it vaporizes.
I had to come out of lurking to respond to this post. I only made it to about #30 before I had to stop. Since others (probably much more knowledgeable about the subject than this humble English major) have already torn each argument to shreds, I’ll just touch on the ones that really made me want to scream. Who/what knew that the earth needs to be where it is? It is where it is and if it weren’t things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did. We hunger and thirst for what we hunger and thirst for because organisms evolved to make use of their surroundings. We don’t act like animals and we’re civilized? Really? I guess my complaint with that gets to my big problem: it’s this assumption that humans are so special and spectacular. I think the author of this list has little to no understanding of what a lot of the terms used actually mean or basic reasoning skills. I’m sorry if this isn’t the most coherent post, but that wasn’t the most coherent list to work with and I’ll try to be clearer and more insightful in the future. The funny thing is, it’s “reasoning” like this that has helped to push me further and further from my Catholic upbringing.
‘Proofs’ to support faith?
‘Evidence’ demonstrating Dog’s existence?
Isn’t that heresy?
I’m a teacher, and I’ve seen plenty of stupid that hurts.
That stupid has nothing on this.
Rats! I hate coming to these late…
Um, what if they don’t realize it’s a lie? By this crap logic, every side of every war was “right” and morally justified. And what about all those uncounted members of a thousand other religions that died for their faiths?
This may possibly be the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.
This is like an aggregate of the poorest arguments for a god there are. Theists should be sending this around with a big: “Don’t use these, you’ll make us all look like idiots.” stamped across the top.
#30 is my favorite.
“Whilst?”
Since I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to simultaneously satirize both these fifty “proofs” and the 1980s animated series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, I fed the “proofs” and a Wikipedia article on He-Man through a text-scrambler. I then chose the 25 “best” results. Sadly, and amusingly, these satirical “proofs” actually make more sense than the originals.
1. I am Adam, prince of Grayskull… I have the detector of Jesus.
2. Our’inventor’ of plants, just describes the chicken or angels?
3. Fabulous secret powers were revealed today, there is constantly recorrecting its own accord to form a tornado blowing through the power! Cringer became the crowd replied; No-one threw out queries, suggestions. Wondering all the day I became He-Man, the universe.
4. By the day I am Adam, prince of Grayskull… I have the high cabinet, which is to say to Lady Hope to say to Christianity, yet doesn’t he behave like ghosts or negative sightings, like ghosts or drugs.
5. To my astonishment the universe began, but not witnessed anything to detect emotion, memory, thoughts etc., though scientifically detect our calender – by chemicals or smaller, its findings. Past theories contradict certain beliefs which took place as 2000 years ago since what? Our’inventor’ of science & Biblical truth.
6. Evolution has evolved from liturature & Biblical truth. Think about what made a ghost with a blue paperclip on anger with unfathomed ideas.
7. Albert Einstein said; A cockney from liturature & Biblical statements are the detection of evolution’. It’s a junk yard, consequently assembling a prince of the universe.
8. Darwin then asked Lady Hope to make the future to look at work which we’re provided with eyewitness accounts, written only be responsible for a blue paperclip on our moral values held within our consciousness come from?
9. Albert Einstein said; A legitimate conflict between science are beyond the power of Eternia and defender of Skeletor. I have the most powerful man in numerous ways, all the power! Cringer became the evil forces of the mighty Battlecat and I threw itself! It will transform into existence. Many first scientists were male disciples who stand by sheer accident, chance, DNA however, consists of plants, just so low on our hunger & prince of the secrets of Skeletor. Biblical truth. Think about what came first.
10. Cringer became the most powerful man in atheism. [note: “Cringer” is a cartoon cat.]
11. Science prince of Skeletor. I have the evil forces at the’theory of the air, operating physical forces at him. Who threw it – in numerous ways, all things, including miracles are aware of all, inclusive of Jesus’ empty tomb were women. Women were Christians; Francis Bacon, Issaac Newton, Robert Boyle, to deny the difference between even the difference between science through sheer accident, chance, then we would freeze up? What/who knew that had this happened. As he was I am not progress on our hunger & Biblical statements are held within our conscience come from? Prince of Castle Grayskull from the power!
12. Biblical statements are willing to name a junk yard, consequently assembling a designer.
13. Think about through sheer accident, chance, then we’ve no-one to make the oxygen of science.
14. If prince of Grayskull… I have the universe. Only three others share this secret: our friends the evil forces of Jesus.
15. Biblical prediction can be catered for by the date/year on top of plants, just happened.
16. I am Adam, prince of nothing. Stephen Hawkins has evolved from the same.
17. There are no understanding of evolution’. It’s a Boeing prince of Skeletor.
18. I overtired when a ghost with the carbon dioxide of dreams to coincidence & Biblical prediction can explain the air, operating physical forces & Biblical statements are the Bible. Not one single Biblical truth.
19. I am Adam, prince of Skeletor. I held aloft my magic sword and said, By the mighty Battlecat and Orko. Together we defend Castle Biblical statements are no’good news’ to us in God, claimed that had never hear of certain beliefs which took like an effect, there prince of us are induced by something.
20. If there is no more sense to today, there would freeze up? DNA however, consists of Jesus.
21. Just as false, and his coffin for 3 days, coming back of something. Mindless nothing cannot answer the Bible. Not one single Biblical truth. Think about Near Death Experiences. It’s a dream. We’re not supernatural God is constantly recorrecting its own accord to us to me the day I overtired when a blue paperclip on its atmosphere would freeze up? What/who knew that which prince of Eternia Biblical statements are born with man.
22. Our present’discoveries’ may solve the power of Eternia and defender of Castle Grayskull.
23. Cringer became the mighty Battlecat and said, Biblical prediction can explain the high cabinet, which requires a soft tomato was thrown at life itself for the paranormal, such as 2000 BC, there is not been proved. The atheist prince of Grayskull… I speak about? She asked.
24. Where do many atheists shake their lives partying, or drugs. Our present’discoveries’ may solve the difference between even the equation, all around us. The disbelievers have no God, he was almost bedridden for grown ups! Atheism is God, he died; I threw that?
25. I became the food & Biblical statements are reliable details we’re left with a tornado blowing through a Boeing 747!
I have the feeling the multiple capital letters in this email have been made lower-case before forwarding…
TheFridgenometer (#338)
Truly priceless. Especially:
@ Iain Walker (#340)
Thanks! Too bad I was late in making my “scrambled” posting, since this discussion no longer appears on the front page. I read the original “proofs” thread either yesterday or the day before, but I needed time to extract the funniest material from the text-scrambler’s output: a block of almost uninterrupted gibberish.
I tried to post funny stuff on Pharyngula once before, but got spam-blocked because I put too many URLs in. Thankfully, this message had no links at all.
Ok, so, argh, I have no life. I actually tried to answer all 50 of these “proofs” on my website. For the brave/curious, you can check it out at http://wilybadger.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/50-ways-to-leave-your-lord/ and please forgive the title. There’s no excuse for it. :)
My brain is bleeding, and I haven’t even finished reading the first ten items yet.
Aquaria @ 309: Or British. As evidence for the latter, I note that in addition to “whilst,” she spelled mold as “mould” and “civilized” with an “s.” Also, the Kate Bush look-alike evidently operates out of the UK. Coincidence? I think not.
I also answered them:
http://diaphanus.livejournal.com/1030270.html
Do we really need to discuss this silly person’s comments and beliefs further?
There are more impotant things to worry about now are there not? Once the science is proved by experience, we’re going to have another ‘God’ for sure. And the ‘believers’ are going to poo-poo everything we say out of sheer ignorance – and will not take one item here seriously. We’re ‘preaching to the converted’.
It’s clear to see that the atheists are trying to persuade the god-believers to think like them. Atheists believe your way; god-believers believe your way. The Atheist religion leave alone the Christian religion and vice versa.
Does the D stand for dumb?
Leaving aside the fact that this thread ended in June 25th, I’ll ask: why are you Mr. D, a christian I assume and believer in absolute truth, espousing relativism?
I’ll add that the fact that many people attempt to convince others of a proposition does not make everyone equal that has a proposition on offer, nor does that make the propositions equal themselves.
Also, atheism is the lack of religion. Not a religion on its own. Like not collecting stamps isn’t a hobby and so on and so on.
And lastly, if christians left their beliefs out of the public square, I bet you wouldn’t hear from atheists as much, seeing as we wouldn’t have to defend basic freedom and liberty.
And welcome to Pharyngula.
It’s clear to see that the atheists are trying to persuade the god-believers to think like them.
Horrors! Trying to persuade people to question received ideas and to base their beliefs on evidence and reason! How very…undemocratic! What evil totalitarian schemes will atheists come up with next?
I’m agnostic (or I guess just undecided), but these ‘proofs’ actually made me lean more toward the non-believing side. Maybe this is actually a trick written by some atheist?
I think she needs to understand the definition of PROOF!!!! what a joke..and what an idiot.
I was three-quarters through the list when I realized it wasn’t satire. I should have read the preface. There are some seriously clueless people in the world. >.<
It’s more likely that Debra Rufini is actually a pig-ignorant gobshite.
Gah! I guess it was risky for me to post under just two initials, but I would really appreciate it if the SC who posted @ #350 would come up with a different ‘nym. I’ve been here longer. :) Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience.
Er, just scrolled up and didn’t look at the date of that “SC” post (of course, I blame others for posting on the old thread with the same name as the active one). Strangely, though, that was in fact another SC, though I doubt (s)he’s reading my request 6 months later.
:P Carry on.
Y’know, sadly, I think I probably did write that post @ #350 after all. So I was asking myself to find another moniker. *sigh* An absent-mided professor am I.
Anything stupid posted under that pseudonym over the past year, however, was no doubt the work of another SC.
After I read this I began to hear a voice in my head and I thought it was god talking to me. But then I realized that it had just made me temporarily insane. I had a couple of drinks and I feel better now.
“God has proved himself to us in numerous ways, all around us. The atheist needs to put his glasses on. What more can God possibly do if man has shut his eyes to him?”
Oh wait.. where’s the omnipotence?
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