Professor's Proposition: Only Two Logical Choices

[Blackrook]

Is there anyone here who believes my father is wrong about this?

Yes your father is wrong. But to understand why you'll need to do more than simply offer an argument from authority, which is a logical fallacy.

Yes, it would seem that every atheist has that arrow in his quiver: that every argument from authority is a logical fallacy.

And yet, how many of us make important decisions based on authority?

Do any of you question your teachers who taught you history, mathematics, and biology? After all, the only reason you believe what you believe is because your teachers told you it was true.

And if you look in books to check up on your teachers to confirm what they say, aren't you relying on authority when you do that too?

When it comes down to it, how many of you actually do any independent research to determine that the Battle of Gettysburg was fought on such and such a date and that the South was defeated for all time at Pickett's Charge?

If you were truly freethinkers you wouldn't believe anything your teachers told you or anything you read in books. You would be suspicious of all information and declare that all truth is unknown and unknowable.

And yet, you don't do that.

But at the same time, you blast away at Christians who rely on a book called the Bible for authority that there is a God.

In what way are you better than we are?

And what makes the Bible less reliable than all the books you rely on?

Factual errors, you can pick on, but don't all authors introduce errors into their books?

Every time I read a newspaper article about an event I know about, I see that the article is rife with errors.

But that doesn't mean the event described didn't happen.

If you're going to toss out the Bible than you have to ask yourself what DID happen to the Israelites all those thousands of years. Was everything the Jews wrote about themselves a LIE?

And if it was all a LIE what was the motive to make up all those lies?

Let's face it, the atheist position requires a lot of faith. You have to believe that the entire Bible is one lie after another and none of it never happened and a bunch of Jews got together one day and cooked up a bunch of lies to fool the world.