It’s only 4 minutes long, but it’s just packed with ‘clever’ arguments for god.
If you don’t feel like wasting 4 minutes on this guy — and I don’t blame you — here is his logical argument: if, in the future, people can invent an app that lets you instantly teleport a package to Nebraska, therefore God. If, in the future, we could 3-D print human tissue, therefore God. If, in the future, we decide not to color our tech in sleek black boxes, but use earth tones instead, therefore God. If you can imagine miraculous future technologies, then why can’t you imagine God?
OK, his first example has physical limits that make it extremely unlikely, his second is one researchers are already working on, and his third is trivial. Fundamentally, though, I don’t think you get to analogize human technological progress to a god poofing things into existence by miracles.
Man, that guy is thick.
IF, small word – big meaning my high school English teacher used to note if we used it in an essay. Why do I remember stuff like that?
God was omnipresent during the turn of the century ‘beige box’ era, I guess.
It sounds like a dumber version of Smart’s Jubilate Agno (M is music and therefore he is God) without the artistic merits.
‘Poofing’? Does Poof mean the same in the US as it does in the UK?
I think I’ve heard variations of apologetic in the past. Something along the lines of “if you can imagine the most perfect thing in the world, then something slightly more perfect is God” or some such bullshit. I immediately dismiss theistic arguments these days the same way a doctor should dismiss the four humors theory of medicine or a physicist should reject the idea of luluminiferous aether: It’s nonsense by default.
I can imagine quite a few mythological and fictitious beings–from mermaids to Great Cthulhu, but my ability to dream up a magical being doesn’t make them real.
Were they beige enough to be used in Tom Brokaw’s house?
(Homestar Runner reference.)
Seems like a Christian stumbled over Arthur C Clarkes’s Third law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws ) and decided to try reverse engineering it so that trying to develop sufficiently advanced tech = magic = Gawd!
Becoz if tech can’t yet do it but they’re trying to something something god already can do it becoz magic! Thgus GAWD!!TY!!1!
Thereby totally missing the point not that Clarke wasn’t one to offering supernatural; undue credibility at times..(Cough, the otherwise excellent & thought-provoking Childhood’s End, amoing others, cough.)
Also not to taxonomise “ïdiots” here but non-sequiteur much?
Or that Clarke story where those (Buddhist~ish?) monks get all the names of God via supercomputer and the universe then blinks out whatever that was called?
Then there was the admittedly better twist he put on the supposed Xmas star being a novae or supernovae that wiped out an amazing alien civilisation..
#4: Yeah, this is vaguely the ontological argument, only made much, much dumber.
…if, in the future, people can invent an app that lets you instantly teleport a package to Nebraska, therefore God.
But if the package ends up in Texas instead, therefore Chthulu?
If you can imagine miraculous future technologies, then why can’t you imagine God?
What makes this idiot think we can’t imagine God? There’s virtually no limit to the things we can imagine, with or without actually believing they’re real.
…Something along the lines of “if you can imagine the most perfect thing in the world, then something slightly more perfect is God” or some such bullshit.
I think that’s a variation of some Medieval bullshit by St. Anselm: “I can conceive of that than which no greater can be conceived.” Like, if I imagine something that’s perfect (because I imagined it so), then that thing would have to be real, because otherwise it wouldn’t be perfect, therefore the thing I imagined is God, therefore God is real, Checkmate, Atheists, NEENER! Or something like that. Does my explanation make it clearer? If not, it’s not my fault.
#7 The Nine Billion Names of God
I really like that story. He also wrote a short story about a Jesuit on spaceship traveling to a star that went supernova causing the star of Bethlehem while wiping out an entire civilization in the process.
I can imagine a lot of things but can tell my imaginings are FICTION.
Such stupid navel lint weaving arguments based on the progress of technology and computers can only have one inane result…some technofascist dingbat asserting we live in a simulation because excess weed smoking in a hot tub he was then kicked out of:
Indirectly based upon a movie that took inspiration from a postmodernist who thought signification had superseded referentiality. The movie was actually about emerging from Plato’s cave but got lost in the smell of its own flatulence.
@SteveoR #7. Yes, Clarke’s postscript to Childhood’s End admits his credulity when writing it and Randi’s convincing him that Geller was a fake.Clarke continued to believe in telepathy though. I also admire greatly The Star and the irony of a Jesuit finding the civilisation. The Nine Billion names is very good too though he points out the problem of the speed of light himself.
These aren’t reasons to believe.
They are rationalizations to believe and not very good ones at that.
People don’t believe in the gods because of the evidence for their existence.
That evidence is nonexistent.
Research has shown that the main reason people believe in the gods, is childhood indoctrination, i.e. being born and raised in a believing family.
If you can imagine teleporting packages to Nebraska, you can imagine that the gods exists.
Then again, if you can imagine teleporting packages to Nebraska, you can imagine that the Invisible Pink Unicorn exists.
All the proofs for the existence of the gods also prove that the Invisible Pink Unicorn, Elves, Fairies, Orcs, Dragons, UFO aliens, and Mickey Mouse also exist.
Fooled by a friend’s card trick –> god
Your sportsball team wins championship –> god
You snag popular toy for child’s xmas –> god
Your home survives a wildfire while your neighbor’s homes don’t –> god
Larry @ #15 — “Your home survives a wildfire while your neighbor’s homes don’t –> god”
Yet, you all go to the same church praying to the same god with equal fervor —> god is fickle
robro @16
Neighbors weren’t living right so had it coming. Sparing your house indicates God’s favor. Don’t gloat as you comfort neighbors knowing they will see hell.
Hemidactylus @ #17 — Ok, but if it’s your house that burns then god works in mysterious ways.
If God does exist, he (she?) could clear up the confusion in no time by simply making an appearance and clearing up the confusion. That he (she?) does not do so tells me that either there is no God, or God doesn’t care if humans get it right or not. And if the latter, then if God doesn’t care, why should I?
It strikes me that if you are God, and you want the whole world to know of your existence and your expectations, merely leaving behind a now 2000 year old book is just about the least effective way to make that happen imaginable.