Stupidest Anti Evolution Argument Ever.

[Esquilax]

He was serious, seriously uneducated about cavendish bananas. He's since retracted.

Ha, no. Retraction would have been an intellectually honest move, and Comfort can't have that! What actually happened, as far as I can remember, is that he claimed that we evil atheists were taking his argument out of context, and that his full argument- which was basically the same concept repeated about a Coke can, and so was flawed for the same reasons- was still completely fine. After the whole thing, banana and can both, completely vanished from his repertoire, Comfort moved from claiming that the argument was sound, to using it as a self effacing joke in seminars, without any intermediate steps.

I know there's video of that out there, I wish I could find it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Ah...really, I thought that he'd made some comments like "hmn, I wasn't aware of the history of the banana, my bad"

He just went with the same shit about a coke can? What a douche.

[Darkstar]

After the whole thing, banana and can both, completely vanished from his repertoire, Comfort moved from claiming that the argument was sound, to using it as a self effacing joke in seminars, without any intermediate steps.

I know there's video of that out there, I wish I could find it.

Here it is! Warning: you may die of laughter. (If you're impatient, skip to 10:35)

[robvalue]

Wow, he can prove all that with a banana? I wonder what I could prove with a pineapple.

I've just been reading and watching stuff about simulations and.. I have to honestly concede that intelligent design could turn out to be true (no sarcasm this time), but not in the sense that any religious person wants it to. In fact the opposite. The argument goes something like this, someone correct me if I've misunderstood:

We are fast approaching having the technology to be able to simulate something as complex as our universe. It could contain "artificially conscious entities" or ACES, which are as complex as humans. So if we have managed to reach this level of simulation (assuming it does actually happen) then it's quite possible another civilization in another reality has done the same. So the question becomes, are we in reality, or in a simulation?

Being in a simulation makes a fucking lot of sense to me. It makes sense of the fact that nothing make any sense at all. Douglas Adams may prove to be somewhat of a visionary, if you are familiar with his view of the Earth. What I think of as "me" is... what the hell is it? What am I? I can only say that I am my DNA. I am not the cells that make me up, as they get replaced all the time. My whole body has been replaced. What is the constant? My DNA. My programming? Am I an object in some object-based program, my cells being the medium through which I manifest? How odd that humans could come to understand that they are not real. It may be possible to prove this is a simulation by the breakdown of our "laws" at an artificial "border" of the universe.

So are we in one, or not? I was watching the video below and it kind of stunned me. If we get to the point where we can make simulations, you can expect we're going to make billions of them. So the ratio of simulations to reality is going to be virtually infinite : 1 . So... if any other reality exists and has reached the simulation stage as well, that means that statistically the odds of us being in one of those simulations rather than in the/one of the reality/realities is virtually certain. And... now it gets real messed up.

Say this is right and we're a simulation. The civilization that is simulating us... could also be a simulation. In fact, by the same reasoning, they almost certainly are. And so it goes on backwards... And forward, through our own simulations. A fucking next of simulations within simulations.

OK this can't be real, right? It's science fiction gone mad. Part of me thinks this is just not going to hold up somewhere, and it's all speculation. Part of me thinks this makes more sense than anything I've heard before. And weirdly, it pulls together lots of religious type ideas.

Intelligent design... check. But instead of giving us meaning, we have fuck all meaning, we're a program. And our creator could be the biggest dumbass in his reality, which may itself be a simulation. We could be a forgotten experiment.

Deism... check. There's something out there that made us. It's not a god, it's a computer being operated by some nerd.

Solipsism... check. Everything we see could me unreal, generated just for us. We either don't exist, or we're a program object.

Religion/god... check. If we are indeed a program, then I would argue that the nerd who made us could BE a god in terms of our universe. He could tweek anything he liked, at any time. He could make changes at any time. Now, I argue as much as anyone else that we have natural laws that explain what has happened and there is no reason to believe anything has been tweeked after the big bang. But get this: the programmer could change things to another "state" at any time, and retroactively change all our memories and evidence to be in line with the "natural" way we got to that state. And we wouldn't know it had happened. It could happen all the time. We don't know it because our memories are seamlessly reprogrammed. Heck, we could even all be switching bodies. Anything could be going on. It just seems like things have been this way since the big bang because that's what our memories and evidence tell us. But in a program, anything can be manipulated.

The practical upshot of all this is... nothing really. But it's very interesting. So am I a "simulationist" now? I see it as the most likely position, if I'm going to take any at all other than atheism. I'm not saying I am totally convinced that this is more likely than not, but I think it's more likely than any other "explanations" anyone has ever come up with. So yeah, here's the video. The technical stuff comes in towards the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb6IjGYmjDA

[Tonus]

Ah...really, I thought that he'd made some comments like "hmn, I wasn't aware of the history of the banana, my bad"

I think he did, perhaps at first. Then he realized that he could double down on his original mess and believers would be satisfied with that and the money would keep rolling in. Lucrative gigs don't grow on (banana) trees, after all.

[Darkstar]

Wow, he can prove all that with a banana? I wonder what I could prove with a pineapple.

A pineapple, huh? Funny you should say that.

In a video uploaded to his official YouTube channel, the New Zealand-born leader of The Way of the Master ministry said that the spiny fruit could only exist in a universe created by God.

"The pineapple is the physicist's nightmare," he explained. "This humble fruit single-handedly destroys their argument that the universe began at a single point in space 13.77 billion years ago.

"Now according to the atheists and scientists, everything in the universe started at one single point and eventually traveled to their current locations. But how is that possible?

"I think we all can agree that the pineapple is one of nature's strongest fruits. But even considering its incredible strength, it's hard to imagine pineapples surviving the trip all the way from the center of the universe to Earth.

"Maybe rocks, mountains, and even oceans can voyage though deep space. But what about the rest of God's creation? How did things like pineapples, carrots or goats travel all that way? God must have created them, right here on Earth."

Yes, the above is parody. Apparently there was a thread on this: https://atheistforums.org/thread-19353.html

[RobbyPants]

Can anyone top this one?

I'd just throw it right back at them. All he's doing is misrepresenting the opposing view horribly and using a physical prop. Just reverse it:

"God is supposed to be everywhere. If he's everywhere, he'd also be inside this jar of peanut butter." *opens lid* "Nothing. God doesn't exist."

I mean it's stupid, and they'd point out it's stupid, but it's no different than his argument.

[The Grand Nudger]

@Robv
-You've simply assumed intelligent design. Even if we were living in a "simulation" that would not lend an iota of credence to the notion of ID. I could argue that you are, in fact, living in a simulation.....being run inside your skull....not some "exterior world" and it is a very unintelligent non-design (hence all of the sensory and cognitive hiccups).

[robvalue]

Well yes, I probably didn't phrase it well. I meant intelligent design as in an intelligence is running the simulation, if the hypothesis is true. Are you saying it could be a simulation, but one not set up by anybody? Or are you referring to solipsism?

[robvalue]

Sure, someone could be running a simulation in/through my mind. Maybe you are saying a simulation could come about without being orchestrated? I guess you could say that, but the point of the simulation argument is to talk about specific scenarios of a civilization in one universe simulating another.

Sorry I don't quite get your point