"Invention is the mother of necessity." - Thorstein Veblen ***
Bad Arguments for the Existence of God
"Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, "It is a matter of faith, and above reason."
- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
... The Bible is Historically Accurate. Therefore what it says about Jesus is accurate... that's like saying that everything in "Gone With the Wind" is true because there really was a Civil War...
FYI, here's a great quote from Paul Doland on Evolution and Probability:
"I will borrow an analogy that I read somewhere, but I cannot remember the source. In this analogy, the person said to imagine someone driving a car, ignoring all signs and just making random turns. A few days later he calls me and tells me he is in Chicago. I explain to him that is impossible. The probability that he would have taken each and every turn necessary to end in Chicago is so small that he couldn't possibly be there. Of course he had to wind up somewhere. Yet anywhere he ends up, I could calculate the probability that he ended up there to be very small. Any probability discussion on whether life exactly as we know it could evolve faces a similar problem. Yes, the probability that life exactly as we know would evolve is very small, but it proves nothing about the probability of life as we do not know it evolving...
You're Just Mad at God
In other words, I really believe that God exists, but I think he's a jerk. While it's true that I think the Christian God would be (at best) an insecure codependent and (at worst) murderously psychotic if He existed, that doesn't mean that's the reason I disbelieve."
Addendum: The driving to Chicago story is a lot more intuitive than Dennett on Mephistopheles and coin flipping
