I found these "6 Reasons" to be disappointing at best and infuriating at worst. Of course they were; this article and the website are geared towards students, whose capacity for critical thinking tends to be horribly feeble. Hell, nearly everyone's capacity for critical thinking is feeble because it's not most people's natural way of thinking (it's certainly not mine).
So let me see if I can stomach these 6 abominations long enough to tell you why each of them is pathetically stupid. I strongly recommend clicking that link and reading the "reasons" and the explanations they give.
"1. Does God exist? The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today."
Oh great. Just fucking great. Intelligent design right off the damn bat. Does it never occur to these people that the reason we can survive on this planet Earth is because it happens to be the one, out of quite probably billions, even trillions, of planets in the observable universe that can sustain the delicate chemical processes that make up life? Oh no, we're so arrogant that it just HAD to be an intelligent, probably humanlike, being that carefully made everything the way it is out of a special interest in us.
Even worse, they keep referring to the Earth and our Solar system as "perfect." Perfection is relative, dumbasses. It's a concept that wouldn't exist without people to think about it. This "perfect" planet is also home to natural disasters and diseases, and I'm sure if the influenza virus had a brain it would think that this planet was perfectly designed for it, too. Do you think of those things as "perfect?"
These guys state a bunch of science facts and say, "Come on, this just had to have all been made this way especially for us!"
It's a pretty big universe out there, guys. Weird shit like liquid water and organic life is bound to happen somewhere, and it just so happens to be here. Because if it wasn't here, it would be somewhere else, or maybe it wouldn't. What would we think then, huh?
"2. Does God exist? The human brain's complexity shows a higher intelligence behind it."
This is the exact same bullshit they tried to pull in reason 1, only this time making it even more obvious that they're appealing to our human vanity and arrogance. Again they state a bunch of facts and then they don't even provide an argument. They just end with the rhetorical question, "How does one explain the human brain?" This isn't an argument; it isn't anything but a weak and rather inane appeal to a very unimaginative mind. Our brains are as big as they are because it turned out that apes with nice, big, smart brains were better at surviving to child-rearing age than dopey apes with bigger muscles. Or maybe the Reptile Aliens from the planet Xolotixl III DESIGNED us so they would have an intelligent (but not TOO intelligent) population of potential slaves, which they will come to claim in the year 2012.
Seriously, these guys aren't even trying, and it's only the 2nd reason. Come on guys, this is getting boring.
"3. Does God exist? "Chance" or "natural causes" are insufficient explanations."
Okay, a little better. But it's still baloney. In this section they treat organic life and DNA like some kind of magic that could never occur 'by accident' (such a harsh term, surely it would be fairer to say it came about 'by a marvelous, incredible chance'?). It's not magic or supernatural at all, geniuses. It's astoundingly complex series of chemical reactions that developed over three point something billion years, and you're telling me that "God did it" because we haven't figured out exactly how it works in the 50 or so years since the structure of the DNA molecule was discovered? Bugger off.
This gets even funnier: "Also, natural causes are an inadequate explanation for the amount of precise information contained in human DNA."
Nice try, guys. I suppose you didn't know that up to 95% of the human genome is made up of junk DNA? It's true! This means that the vast majority of DNA in our cells actually don't code for anything; they're just ancestral remnants that get passed down because they're harmless. If you're calling our genetic structure divinely designed, then God sure left a lot of crap in the finished product.
"4. Does God exist? To state with certainty that there is no God, a person has to ignore the passion of an enormously vast number of people who are convinced that there is a God."
I'm trying very hard not to bust a gut laughing... oh man, this is rich...
AND IF BILLIONS OF PEOPLE TOLD YOU THAT MOST HUMAN HANDS HAVE SIX FINGERS, WOULD YOU BELIEVE THEM?!
This is the funniest shit I've seen in ages. They claim "This is not to say that if enough people believe something it is therefore true." Yet in the very next paragraph, they say, "Throughout history, billions of people in the world have attested to their firm, core convictions about God's existence -- arrived at from their subjective, personal relationship with God."
Okay, and this means what to me?
"Many are sure that a loving God exists and has shown himself to be faithful to them. If you are a skeptic, can you say with certainty: "I am absolutely right and they all are wrong about God"?"
Um, fuck you. If any skeptic anywhere says, "I am absolutely right and they are all wrong about [insert controversial topic here]," I will personally punch them in the face. With brass knuckles. Skepticism is about suggesting reasons why somebody might be wrong despite a good argument or popular belief, it is not, and will never be, about declaring oneself to be definitely, absolutely right. We have fundamentalism and whackjob conspiracy theorists for that.
This entire "reason" is based on a cheap appeal to herd mentality. 'Look at all these nice people here who believe; how could you be such a big meany?' Shut up and stop treating me like a sheep. We're supposed to raising ourselves up to a higher level, not degrading ourselves to the level of herd animals. At least I think that's what we're supposed to be doing.
"5. Does God exist? We know God exists because he pursues us. He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him."
Okay, this isn't funny anymore. This is reason 4 reduced to a personal, rather than global, level. They point to the fact that atheists spend more time thinking about God than most religious people, trying to find ways to disprove God's existence.
Yeah, so what? This doesn't prove a damned thing. For one thing, it isn't always true (not all atheists are the snobby, stuck-up kind that are convinced of their intellectual superiority), and it can also be at least partly attributed to the fact that atheists are a very small minority and anyone who declares themselves an atheist is very likely to be pestered by people telling them they're going to hell and that Jesus loves them. When you're surrounded by attacks on your world-view, the natural, human thing to do is to rationalize and validate that world-view to yourself. Saying that atheists sped time thinking about theology because God is trying to reach them is a crock of shit, and the fact that this guy can quote C.S. Lewis doesn't make it any less a crock of shit. Lewis was an eloquent and very good writer, but he was a second-rate philosopher, based on what I've read (that being "Mere Christianity," a very inspiring and persuasive book for the half-convinced, which I am not).
By giving accounts of various nonbelievers who changed their minds, they're basically telling the reader, "Eventually you'll have to give up and see it our way." Baloney.
"6. Does God exist? Unlike any other revelation of God, Jesus Christ is the clearest, most specific picture of God pursuing us."
Wait, what? What happened to proving the existence of God? Now you're ranging off into the territory of "Christianity is the true religion/word of God etc." Did you think I was satisfied by the previous 5 reasons that God exists and that you were free to start explaining why YOUR God is the Real One? Shut the fuck up and get back on track, dipshits, I'm not done yet!
Okay fine, I'll play your game. Hm... okay, let me get this straight: Jesus is the true prophet because he said so, Jesus was right because the Bible said so (more specifically, it said he performed miracles).
Yeah. That sounds about right. Whatever. I'm tired.
In closing, I am not an atheist. I am open and undecided on the subject of the existence of a Supreme Being, but I can't stand cheap shots and phony logic. I strongly recommend Thomas Aquinas to anyone who's interested in a good Christian philosopher, and "The Religious Case Against Belief" by James P. Carse because it's a great book.
