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Every once in a while I like to see a random video on Godtube; it’s like YouTube for Theists. It’s an endless source of amusement and fury, filled with fun happy videos that truly exemplify the Christian ideals of love and peace. 

For example, I found this recent piece providing irrefutable arguments against atheism:

Well, that surely convinced me to disavow myself of the “atheistic worldview” and “atheistic system” I’ve long been adhering to! Such fine, proper logic. Bulletproof arguments one might even say.

Or, maybe not.

First, he trots out the age old “First Cause” argument, though he attempts to put a clever little sophisticand semantic spin on it to avoid the typical refutation of the “then what caused God?” retort: he operates under the assumption that god is immaterial and thus not subject to the causation principles. If you prefer, he defines god as “personal” and matter (or, simply, “dirt” as he argues) as impersonal. His argument requires the assumption of dualistic worldview. 

By begging the question of god’s form he believes himself to be solidifying his argument when, in fact, he’s simply creating a logical fallacy and undermining his whole argument.

The second argument our young street minister provides is even more fallacious; first, it relies on the straw man argument that atheists state “There is no god.” While it’s certainly true that there are some atheists willing to state such an argument it is not, by definition, what atheism means. Still, it is a fairly common connotation of atheism so we’ll let is slide; besides, as we’ll see his argument doesn’t hold up anyway.

Let’s presuppose, he argues, that an individual atheist hold half of all potential knowledge; that is, half of anything knowable resides within the mind of a single person. Our friend from JTTN  argues that such an atheist simply cannot argue that there is no god as there is potential knowledge in the other half of all knowledge.

This is another common argument from theists; atheists, they believe, have the burden of proof when it comes to the non-existence of god. This, too, is illogical as seen in examples like Bertrand Russell’s teapot to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. 

Faulty logic and arguments such as these are all too common as apologists seek to justify their belief and attempts to impose logical structure on said belief almost always fail. Rational logic and atheism often come hand in hand, so seeing such an improper application of logic is bound to evoke anger — especially when the arguments are presented again and again despite a bounty of evidence to their fallacious nature. 

BONUS VIDEO: A YouTube video refuting the First Cause argument:

This post is part of a semi-regular series of posts called Things Atheists Hate focusing on things atheists face each and every day that frustrate them, that anger them, and that cause them all sorts of annoyance.