Trent Horn is a Catholic apologist and posted a
2-min video with the above title. Following is a script of such, with my comments
(in red):
Many atheists I talk to say,
“Of course, I’m open-minded, show me the evidence or proof that God exists and
I’ll believe.”
But when they are presented
with proofs (no, they are unsupported claims
only) for the existence of God those same atheists
will say, “That’s just fallacious God of the gaps reasoning (yes, it is).
Your evidence for God comes from ignorance. You say, ‘I don’t know what caused
the Big Bang, therefore God did it.’ I’d rather wait for science to provide the
correct explanation and not rush to put God in a gap of my knowledge.” (true)
But if you say that any
possible evidence for God isn’t good enough (who says that? not
any atheist I know), then you
aren’t really open-minded. You assumed beforehand that no evidence is good
enough so you’ve already made up your mind beforehand. (no)
If you’re an atheist take a
minute and try to honestly answer this question: What specific evidence would
convince you that God exists? (I don’t know,
but God would) Don’t say what
type of evidence would convince you; come up with a specific example. A common
one I hear is that if after praying an amputated limb grew back, then that
person would believe in God. But isn’t that a God of the gaps argument? Aren’t
you saying, “I don’t know what caused this limb to grow back, therefore God did
it?” (there is much further to go before such an extraordinary claim is excepted, especially since many lower animals can do this)
The arguments for the
existence of God don’t take the form of “I don’t know, therefore God.” Instead,
they take the form of, “There are good reasons to believe effect X can never be
explained naturally, therefore it must have a supernatural explanation, or
God.” (THIS IS the “God of the Gaps” argument!! In
science, NOTHING is assumed to have a supernatural explanation. Give an example
of something we don’t presently know that “we have a good reason” to believe it
never can be explained naturally.)
If you agree that
limbs can’t come into existence from nothing (many lower animals can do it) and
therefore any such regrown limbs require a divine cause (no), then
if the universe came into existence from nothing (no evidence for such), wouldn’t
that require a divine cause? If not, why not? (no, because the whole paragraph is a strawman fallacy)
If you’re truly open-minded,
then check out the reasons for God that the best philosophers past and present
have put forward (philosophy is not
evidence, it is only claims). Even if
they don’t convince you, at least after critically examining them you’ll be
able to say why they don’t convince you. (all
syllogisms for a God have a least one false premise) That’s better than just assuming they don’t
succeed and not bothering to do some critical thinking on one of the most
important questions of all time. (just because a question is important doesn't give license to accept claims for answers without evidence)
