Christian apologist Twitter user @WhyTrustJesus linked this article with the headline, “Logical and scientific evidence for existence of god”. “Great,” I thought, “finally we’ll see some actual reasons why we atheists should bother believing this crap.”

Yes, that pinging is the sound of your internet sarcasm detector hitting maximum and subsequently trying to kill itself.

In the article, the (anonymous?) author lists three supposed “laws” that prove the existence of a god, coupled with bible verses to try to back them up. Let’s examine them one at a time.

The first “law” presented is one of cause and effect (aka, causality), leading to the old and long since debunked cosmological argument. As always, asking where their god came from if everything must have a cause deals with this fairly efficiently; infinite regress happens if no special exception is made. If the believer tries the “god is first cause” argument, it’s easy enough to apply Occam’s razor to the problem, say the universe always existed, and save an unnecessary step (cue cries of “YOU ATHEISTS BELIEVE IN A UNIVERSE THAT CAME FROM NOTHING” now).

What is almost novel is the author’s attempt to short circuit the “Okay, but what god?” counter-argument by using bits from the bible as supposed proof, which only works if you believe the source material – otherwise, it’s a bit like proving Harry Potter is a real wizard by quoting The Prisoner of Azkahban. Every other religion can insert their own source material to result in a proof of their own deity; atheists rightly discount all of them for using circular logic, which works like this:

1. Deity X says the Text Y is true.
2. Text Y says Deity X is true.
3. ???
4. FLAWLESS ARGUMENTATION

Everyone but the gullible should laugh at this first “law” (which has no basis in science, as much as WTJ tries to pawn it off as). It tries so hard to appeal to a thin candy coating of reason in order to get to a soft, chocolatey center of comfortable belief surrounding the religious nut inside. [1]

Further reading:

• Uncaused Cause Argument @ Iron Chariots Wiki
• First Cause Argument @ Rational Wiki

Moving on to “law” numero dos, GQ asserts that the “Law of teleology” means everythings look designed. Again, this is assertion, not evidence. GQ also has one of those old “if the earth were a few inches/feet/miles out of current orbit we’d all die instantly” bits that get more and more laughable every time they’re used.

Countering the planet-scale issue is simple: If we weren’t in the “Goldilocks zone” as others have called it (not too hot, not too cold), we would either not be around to incorrectly attribute it to a mythical sky daddy, or we would have evolved differently to handle it (and then mental midgets would say the same thing). Choose your favorite lowbrow counter to this; I happen to like the one with people getting together and jumping up and down in unison to push us into the death zone. As far as organisms looking designed – that’s from evolution (which WTJ continues to rail against, of course). Even without the evolutionary answer, claiming design doesn’t make it so.

Yes, we can again accept the premise of the argument and say “designed by who?”, but it’s not particularly needed here.

Further reading:

• Argument from Design @ Iron Chariots Wiki
• Argument from Design @ Rational Wiki

Finally, we come down to the final (not a) “law”, which is that of biblical prophecies coming true. The article quotes a figure of 1,093 prophecies fufilled, though never mentions any sort of relevant ones. You’d hope that, at least internal to the fictional narrative, it would be consistent, but the bible is thoroughly riddled with inconsistencies and errors (see SAB resource below). Biblical scholars also know that the text has been edited through the centuries just so some of these supposed prophecies are “fufilled”, yet they still didn’t get things right.

Further reading:

• Contradictions in the Bible @ Skeptics Annotated Bible

All in all, this just turned into an exercise of “let me pick a few well-worn and totally debunked arguments and hope they work this time”. Oh well, theists fail again, no surprise.

Some credit to Twitter user @GRIMACHU for some lines of thought. Thanks!

[1] I worked really hard on this one. FOR SRS