Rationally irrefutable proof of God's existence

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That’s very prescient, as someone who has masochistically tortured themeselves reading through his sankey, you’re spot on.

He doesn’t see it, nor is he the first to suggest tearing down all methods of objectively gathering knowledge, somehow justifies beliefs they can offer no objective evidence to support. Oh, and of course countering this by stating there is no such thing as objective evidence, as if that is a binary state that can’t be achieved because humans are by nature subjective.

He tacks the words logic and reason on purely as soundbites. Though he has even a cursory understand of informal logic, as is amply demonstrated in his rationale being riddled with known logical fallacies.

From there attacking well established scientific facts is unsurprising.

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I agree, he stopped being a leader in the field of evolution some time ago, as is to be expected after all. This doesn’t diminish his achievements, we don’t think less of Isaac Newton because Einstein’s work forced us to rethink part of Newton’s theories on gravity.

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Hi Guys:

I may be wrong, but his argument seems like a rehash of reasonings that were originally proposed by St. Thomas Aquinas . . . namely, that we can imagine a perfect God, and that such a God must exist, as non-existence would be a flaw in perfection, so the statement “God does not exist” is self-contradictory, or an “oxymoron.”

I give no credibility to such arguments, as I can imagine a perfectly straight line, an ideal gas, a temperature of absolute zero, a perfect vacuum, or a perfect mathematical point . . . and such things do not exist in nature.* Just because I can imagine these things does not mean that such things exist.**

I also think that it’s important to keep in mind that brilliant points in arguments do not mean that the arguments are correct.

Aristotle argued–quite thoroughly–that men have more teeth than women, but he wouldn’t ask a woman to open her mouth so that he could count them, as that would have been a form of manual labor . . . and manual labor is only fit for slaves.

Aristotle believed that a person could understand the nature and function of the Universe just by arguing about it . . . and he was simply wrong.

The original poster seems to have fallen into this same trap.

  • The only thing in nature that I can think of that seems to be perfect is a superconducting material at cryogenic temperatures that has zero resistance to an electrical current, but I think that this counter-argument is still quite a reach.

** This idea is not my own. Isaac Asimov suggested it in an essay called “The Judo Argument,” which was in a book called “The Planet That Wasn’t,” which was published around 1976 or so by Doubleday.

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That is a brilliant demonstration of the absurdity of the OP arguments. Ideal imagined properties like ideal gas, perfect vacuum, mathematical point, a perfect god remain just that – imagined properties and abstractions. To recap: OP even mentions uses a “perfect triangle” without even considering whether such a thing really exists. But of course it doesn’t exist as a physically realizable object, but only work as an ideal abstraction. In the same way as an ideal and perfect god is only an ideal abstraction, and thus does not necessarily exist as physically realizable. So rejecting the real/true God as perfectly real/perfectly existing is exactly the same as rejecting the physical realization of a perfect triangle, an ideal gas, a mathematical point, etc. And that’s the downfall of the “rationally irrefutable proof”.

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I have not checked in here in a while. Did we ever get that irrefutable proof the OP was talking about? Tomorrow is Sunday and I want to know if I should go fishing or to church. Shall I wallow in fun and feed my body or wallow in sin and save the soul I am supposed to have? Everything hinges on the conclusion of this thread!

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229

Nothing on sky news, the BBC, CNN, or Al Jazeera? Even the Catholic Herald seems to have missed this.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest the OP author was an arrogant example of the Dunning Kruger effect, with delusions of grandeur.

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As far as I have understood the theory here, it is OK to sin, as long as you regret it afterwards, confess your sins and pray to Jesus. It all follows the central guiding principle that it is easier to obtain forgiveness than permission.

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All of the entries in this thread are interesting, and I’d like to make one more point before I get out of bed and go to work.

The 2016 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate–chaired by none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson–explores the idea that the whole Universe may be a computer simulation.

Some theoretical physicists argue that the mathematics of string theory seem to reflect a kind of error-correcting software that seems to be built into the fabric of space and time . . . if I understood their points correctly.

So, who built the computer?

Maybe it’s "computers all the way down . . . "

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Another point (I’m on my coffee break) needs to be made about “irreducible complexity.”

The arguments about I.R. are interesting, but they ignore certian very big logical flaws.

A typical example normally held up for arguments about I.R. include a discussion of the bacteria flagellum.

The flagellum is an example of a natural motor. It has a stator, an axle, and so forth.

The idea behind I.R. is that if you remove any one component from the flagellum, then the flagellum won’t work at all. Likewise, the flagellum has no extra, non-functional components that can be removed . . . and yet still leave the flagellum functional.

The seems–on the surface–to be a very powerful argument in favor of God’s hand in creation, right?

Not so fast.

This argument makes the tacit assumption that a halfway-built flagellum is useless and does nothing . . . and this assumption isn’t true.

We have all used a tool for something that wasn’t intended. The other day, I needed a hammer in my garage when I was working on a project. I couldn’t find the hammer right away, so I picked up a heavy brick that I was using as a doorstop, and hammered in the nail with this brick.

In a like manner, a halfway-built flagellum is useless and non-functional as a flagellum . . . but is very good for other things, like cleaning metabolic waste products out of a cell.

Yersinia pestis (the microbe that causes bubonic plague) uses a “halfway-built flagellum” to protect itself against certain antibiotics, like pennicillin . . . which is why streptomycin and tetracyclines are the proper meds to treat this kind of infection.

There are other examples in nature. In many animals, urine not only serves to eliminate wastes and toxins from the body, but also as a “no trespassing sign” for other members of the same species . . . so urine is often a means of communication . . . which is one of the many reasons why dogs sniff around to find the exact spot to pee on.

And so forth.

The discussion of the flagellum is important, because it’s one of the examples that is often held up in court when Creationists sue over what is being taught in schools.

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A very important point to remember is that no challenge to evolution can remotely evidence creationism, or any deity. Even were they successful, which of course they are not, since evolution remains an accepted scientific fact, and an accepted scientific theory.

This is a simply logical fact that creationists choose to ignore.

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One of the other things that irritate me about creationists (and yes, I have a very long list) is how they always throw out that “evolution is just a theory,” as if claiming that something is a theory means that it’s more a matter of opinion, rather than a fact.

Universal gravitation is just a theory . . . but that doesn’t make it hurt any less when I slip and fall.

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The essence of creationism arguments is not to argue in favour of creationism, but to try to poke holes in the theory of evolution. I.e. their main business is to go anomaly hunting and cherry picking among scientific observations and theory, and to misrepresent them using misrepresentation, straw man arguments, false dichotomies, and other informal fallacies. At their current success rate, creationism arguments can be compared to try to poke holes in an armored military vehicle using an overripe banana.

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There may be a hidden, beneficial effect of having creationists around.

I enjoy arguing for or against a position, as–for me–it seems to help keep my mind sharp.

I also like to keep up on what’s happening in the Creationist movement . . . rather like staying informed on an enemy, or–as some famous Roman once said–“Keep your friends close . . . and your enemies closer.”

This is how one stays informed about how school teachers–in defiance of a state order–were holding prayer meetings during recess and lunch.

And so on.

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