Paddling against the tide

Well, how could I resist this!?

Doing the rounds of the Internet and suffering the barbs of media mockers like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is a bit of video of Fox talking head and bombast extraordinaire Bill O'Reilly vs. the atheist.

Of course, Bill gave us a great example of the logical fallacy: argument from incredulity (or argument from ignorance) or a "God of the gaps." Pose a question which you insist there is no answer and propose that as the evidence for supernatural agency.

In this case, it was the tides. "They go in, they go out. You can't explain it," he challenges the atheist. The problem is, most of us with junior high school level of education can as was pointed out by a viewer in his YouTube response.

"You pinheads who attacked me? You're just desperate." Well, Bill, we're not the one's flailing around to defend a clear foul-up of logic. He even goes so far as to pose a series of other seemingly God-proving questions like "How did the moon get there?" "How come we have the sun?" "Why doesn't Mars have (a moon)? Or Venus?"

Well, as has been pointed out, Mars has two small moons. Venus doesn't but so what? Objects called nebulae in the night sky have been shown to be forming stars and planets. And how does any of that prove the existence of God?

Of course, it doesn't disprove "God's" existence. But it also doesn't prove or disprove the existence of unicorns, fairies, Thor, Zeus or the great Flying Spaghetti Monster and his sacred son Googamooga!

The irony of it all is that someone can display such ignorance of basic science using a medium that is the direct products of science and which makes scientific knowledge so accessible.

Perhaps Bill should make better use of that technology.