Spoonseeking

I call it part 1.  If he corrects this problem, maybe there will be a part 2. Sye Ten Bruggencate is a presuppositional apologist that claims that he has a proof that God exists on his website:   http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/ At least, that's what I heard on The Thinking Atheist podcast today.  Apparently, not so much a proof, rather a series of questions.  That is not a logical proof.  So, let's go through and try to extract a logical proof. This is presented on his website as a series of questions: Now, by far, my favorite one of these, is the one in the bottom right.  It takes you to Disney's website. Comedy gold. But let's go through this from the agnostic perspective. I chose, "I Don't Know if Absolute Truth Exists".  This takes you to a second page: Based on the previous response, there is no acceptable answer here.  This forces you to pick "Absolutely True" based on your previous choice, but you already stated that

This is part 11 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPUU9Wb8yzQ C-14 Should be Missing McIntosh presents an argument that C-14 should not be found at all in a sample that is millions of years old, but that we do find that - which is a claimed problem with an old earth. Why should it be missing? A single piece of Nitrogen, an atom, has 7 protons, and usually 7 neutrons.  There is this thing that happens to nitrogen where it turns into carbon for a "short" while, then turns back into nitrogen. It starts when N gets hit with a neutron [N+n].  This causes a proton to get knocked out of the atom.  How an atom acts chemically is kind of based on how many protons it has, so this atom now starts acting like carbon [

This is part 10 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPUU9Wb8yzQ Not Just What, but How I have made many blog posts about this.  For this one, I'll go a little deeper into how I researched this topic, and why my dismissals tend to be short and, at times, seem incomplete. Claims of Early Dating of Dinosaur Bones At 48:45, McIntosh claims: People who are on our side of the fence have done some C14 dating of dinosaur bones. And found significant amounts of C14.  So when you combine both issues, soft tissue and C14 significant measurements, what is that telling you?  That these bones are not 65 million years old.  By their own reasoning, concerning C14 decay, it has to be less than 100,000 years. He states this while dis

This is part 9 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPUU9Wb8yzQ Catastrophe At 12:37, McIntosh is talking about a moth fossil with impressions of it swings and states: In order to get that impression, its telling you it must have been buried quickly [...] He returns this several times throughout the talk, showing examples of "fast" fossil formation of moths, damselflies, dragonflies, ferns, octopus, mass dinosaur / crocodile / turtle graves, and maybe more. He is saying that these fossils seem to require a fast burial.  McIntosh uses the term catastrophe. Evolution and Catastrophe It seems that one point he may  be making is that this type of fast burial is a problem for evolution.  If so, he needs to refere

This is part 8 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPUU9Wb8yzQ Stasis One of McIntosh's main points is the concept of stasis .  This means that things don't change for a long time (things like feathers and turtles).  It seems the point here is: "so evolution is wrong". He seems to be saying that either everything evolves by changing constantly, or his version of young earth creationism is true.  There are many other options of course. It could be that evolutionary theory can explain this.  It could be that aliens made life on earth.  If this were indeed evidence against the current theory of evolution, that would not make it evidence for young earth creationism.  Maybe if every species could be shown to be in u

This is part 7 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPUU9Wb8yzQ Evil-utionists Persuasive speeches often employ subtle techniques to influence the audience.  When listening to the video, one thing that immediately stood out to me was the way McIntosh pronounced "evolutionists". It sounds like he is saying "evil utionists".  I only bring this up in case anyone else has that reaction. The way McIntosh pronounces this is the proper pronunciation for the UK. Old Mouse At 5:56 McIntosh states: "[...] you can find a huge number of mammals displaced from the region where the evolutionists would say that they should be.  We do actually find mammals even down [...] in the Jurassic [period]" McIntosh does

This is part 6 of a series of commentaries on material presented by Andy McIntosh.  This material was presented at a church that I attend.  It has been presented other places as well. For reference, related arguments were presented by McIntosh in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNIwh6-KEe0 The Rest This post will address the rest of the presentation by McIntosh. One note: my response to many of these is that they represent an argument from authority.  I would like to pre-clarify that this is a response to the McIntosh presentation, not the external source.  Nagel may have a valid argument, for example, but we weren't presented with his argument.  We were just asked to accept it. And this is why I'm usually not swayed by these sort of things.  Rarely do you actually get presented with an argument. You get presented with experts and emotions. McIntosh does not go deep into these points, and I will not either.  I suspect the reason is time.