The award for Best Analogical Zinger to a Shoddy Theistic Argument goes to…
Siamang, for this gem on a recent Friendly Atheist post:
Paul Copan:
“And, second, granted that the major objection to belief in God is the problem of evil, does the concept of evil itself not suggest a standard of goodness or a design plan from which things deviate, so that if things ought to be a certain way (rather than just happening to be the way they are in nature), don’t such ‘injustices’ or ‘evils’ seem to suggest a moral/design plan independent of nature?”
Just because we can perceive good and evil, or light and dark, or loud and quiet as different as relative to each other does not mean there is an absolutely loudest thing, an absolutely brightest thing or an absolutely good thing.
There is no such thing as the loudest sound of all time, against which we measure all sounds for their relative quietness. Rather, all one needs is two sounds to measure relative difference.
If some kids in high-school are cool, and some are nerds, and most kids can agree on which are which, does that mean that the fictional character Fonzie exists? Would answering this question be an adequate way to discover whether or not Fonzie exists, or if he is instead a work of fiction:
And, second, granted that the major objection to belief in Fonzie is the existence of nerds, does the concept of nerdishness itself not suggest a standard of coolness or a style and demeanor from which nerds deviate, so these kids ought to be cooler (rather than just happening to be the way they act normally), don’t such ‘nerds’ or ‘wimps’ seem to suggest a separate standard of what makes cool kids cool independent of nature?
I guess if “Cool” exists, and we are able to perceive it and differentiate cool kids from nerds, then certainly Arthur Fonzerelli is a real living being and not a fictional character on Happy Days.
