34 Unconvincing Arguments for God

December 6, 2007 D. H. McKee

Off

From Pharyngula. And from the Minnesota Atheists. By August Berkshire.
Whoa. They had me at number 1.
Pharyngula: 34 Unconvincing Arguments for God

(1) God-of-the-Gaps (God as a â..free lunchâ.) – Almost every â..proofâ. for the existence of gods relies, at least in part, on a god-of-the gaps argument. This argument says that if we donâ..t know the answer to something, then â..God did it.â. â..Godâ. gets to win by default, without any positive evidence. But is saying â..God did itâ. really an answer?
Intelligent design, god-advocate William Dembski has authored a book entitled No Free Lunch. However, â..Godâ. is the ultimate â..free lunch.â. Consider the following:
We donâ..t know what gods are composed of.
We donâ..t know what godsâ.. attributes are.
We donâ..t know how many gods there are.
We donâ..t know where gods are.
We donâ..t know where gods come from or, alternately, how it is possible for them to always exist.
We donâ..t know what mechanisms gods use to create or change anything.
We donâ..t know what the â..supernaturalâ. is, nor how it is capable of interacting with the natural world.
In other words, we know absolutely nothing about gods â.. yet at least one god is often given credit for many things. Thus, to say â..God did itâ. is to answer a question with a question. It provides no information and only makes the original question more complex.
The god-of-the-gaps argument says that not only do we not have a naturalistic answer today, but we will never discover a naturalistic answer in the future because no naturalistic answer is possible. Thus, to rebut a god-of-the-gaps argument, we only have to show that a naturalistic answer is possible.
For example: We open the door to a room and observe a cat sleeping in a corner. We close the door, then open it again five minutes later. We observe that the cat is now sleeping in another corner. One person says â..God did it by levitating the sleeping catâ. (without offering any proof). Another person says â..Itâ..s quite possible that the cat woke up, wandered over to the other corner, and fell asleep again.â. Thus, although no one saw what actually happened, the god-of-the-gaps argument has been rendered implausible by a possible naturalistic explanation.

Comments are closed.

About This Site

As a guy who occasionally curates art shows and wrangles artists together, I often have to edit and post artist bios, profile pictures, and artwork images. This can be a problem, since many artists and writers aren’t used to selling themselves. Artists rarely know how to present their art for display in a brochure, and writers aren’t used to writing about themselves.

Writers often treat the bio like it’s an interview or something. Maybe like they’re having a conversation with you, the reader. While it may work sometimes, the most common way to write a bio is to write in the 3rd person.

I’m like those writers, and I’m talking to you directly, unlike the common way to do a bio. You should see my About page. It makes sense to me, since this is a bit which describes my blog’s website. When I get famous enough that I don’t have time to talk to you, I’ll have an intern write everything in 3rd person. Until then, you get to talk to me.

Like blogs of old, this one is a personal document of the comings and goings of me. Articles I’ve written, links I’ve posted, videos I liked, etc. Here, a first-person perspective is the way to go, at least for now. So, this is my site. I’m D. H. McKee, a sometimes artist, sometimes writer. Mostly just a guy on the internet.