An Australian creationist made this video 3 years ago.
I guess they thought it was so good that they made a remake this year.
They haven’t improved it at all — it’s still a terrible awful argument.
First, there’s the strawman dentist who turns to his patient and disagrees with her expression of religious sentiment. This is not credible. I know Christians relish that feeling of martyrdom, but atheists don’t care if you say you believe in gods — we just would rather you didn’t require us to believe in them. And what dentist is going to be rude to a patient?
And then we get the supposedly killer argument: I don’t believe in dentists. If there’s such a thing as dentists, then why do so many people have broken, infected, and missing teeth?
ORIGINAL SIN! No, wait, that’s their excuse.
The question isn’t whether things get broken — that’s a common, natural phenomenon — but what repairs them. I believe in dentists because I can look in my mouth and see fillings and crowns. I had a root canal once, and it was memorable. After I’m dead, someone can dig up my bones and see clear evidence of dentistry in my jaws.
I don’t believe in gods because they don’t seem to do any of the things believers claim they do. Christians have the same dental problems as atheists, so faith doesn’t seem to prevent tooth decay.
Maybe one yes. Don McLeroy, the Texas State Board of Education Creobot.
That’s perilously close to “the tooth fairy” ya kno?
I think it’s a great ad. It shows how willing Xtians are to reject real evidence, simply to justify their belief in nonsense. I think it can be a powerful ad for atheists. It could be expanded upon; a Xtian driving with an atheist passenger. The atheist says, “The light’s red!” The Xtian says, “I don’t believe in red lights.” The atheist, knowing she has only one life, jumps from the car and the Xtian dies in a fiery explosion due to a collision with a gasoline tanker driving through the intersection. The ad ends with the atheist dusting herself off and a voice over saying something like, “Reality, it’s what’s really happening now.”
Ah, yes, this does make a lot of sense. After all, dentists claim to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipresent. So continued dental problems are just as much of an issue for the existence of dentists as these other, global, human, even universal problems are an issue for the existence of the Christian god. I’ll be sure to sink to my knees next time I visit my dentist. Not out of pain and fear this time, but out of devotion. My dentist is an awesome dentist, but his wrath is terrible to behold.
I wouldn’t trust a dentist with my teeth who would be left flustered and speechless by such an asinine argument.
The other bit of idiocy is the bogus implication that atheists don’t believe in god because of wars and plagues and dead babies. A shitty world filled with evil is not disproof of God. In fact, the Bible pretty much hinges one upon the other, its petty adolescent vengeful God wreaking ruin upon both friends and enemies alike, the disasters being absolute evidence of the deity’s unjustified anger. Greek and Norse mythology is largely the same, bad things being the result of gods in action. So if there were a bearded asshole up there throwing lightning bolts at every dude who looked at his wife wrong, AND WE COULD SEE HIM, then bad things would count as evidence for, not against, gods. Whereas the reason atheists don’t believe in gods is because there’s no evidence, and their lives don’t require supernatural codswallop by way of explication. The plague and wars and dead babies canard is the stuff of C.S. Lewis’s The Problem Of Pain (if God is all-Good and all-Powerful, why does bad shit happen?), and is a question for Christian theologians — these idiot creationists are using the wrong damn argument.
Besides, how could any dentist look at teeth and see the handiwork of a benign creator god? Wisdom teeth need I continue?
Reasonable design would be a regenerating bony ridge. That’s assuming god wasn’t kind enough to give us carbon crystal choppers.
@7 Marcus Ranum
I always hoped for shark teeth, personally. Don’t need that row of teeth anymore? Time for the rest to move up. ‘Twould make tongue kissing awkward, though.
Among all the other problems with the video, the implication is that Christians who go to God no longer suffer from wars, destruction, poverty, or anything wrong. Just as you go to a dentist to fix your broken teeth, you get on your knees, ask God, and wham! all your problems go away! That’s how Christians know that God exists. It’s like visiting the dentist and seeing her in person and walking away with new crowns — paid for only by your groveling gratitude..
Frankly, if that were the case then even atheists would realize that God exists. Christians would all be leading charmed lives. Instead, God usually just helps you “cope” with your problems by letting you know they’re all your fault and/or they’re deliberately put there to help you build character through suffering. It would be like a dentist treating your cavities by drilling the holes even bigger. Or, rather, like someone doing nothing with their teeth and pointing to the remaining ones as evidence that Nature is a dentist and was sure watching out for that one, you bet.
[Seinfeldic reference alert]:
Anti-dentites, you!!!1
So they don’t believe in dentists when one is looking in their mouths, but they do believe in Yahweh who is nowhere to be seen or heard? Makes perfect sense.
[synchronicity]:
Nerd of Redhead… @ # 1: And what dentist is going to be rude to a patient?
Maybe one yes. Don McLeroy, the Texas State Board of Education Creobot.
By all accounts McLeroy is personally most amiable: loony as hell, but the very model of civility.
Texas Republicans in general have long since moved past that modality, of course.
Frankly, if that were the case then even atheists would realize that God exists. Christians would all be leading charmed lives.
The fact that Las Vegas exists and is profitable is proof that there’s no divine power that listens to prayer.