What do you think of this argument?

Druid

I stopped being a JW altogether when I went into college and took philosophy classes and started thinking for myself. I understand a lot of you former JW's are still theists, in fact it seems probably the majority of you are. I am agnostic, meaning I don't feel there is enough evidence for against either cause to subscribe my lifestyle to one belief.

The biggest arguments I have for a JW, to turn them agnostic are as follows:

JW Argument: Jehovah is for sure real because look at how complex our world is, this couldn't have possibly came about on accident! Life happening the way it is now on accident through a "big bang" would like a tornado going through a junkyard and assembling a 747!

My rebuttal: Complexity is all relative. For example. If a human to Jehovah is the same leap as an ant to a human, then consider this:

Ant spends a year with 1000s of other ants building an ant hill. Upon completion of the project, the wind blows a nearby mound of dirt into a very similiar shape. In the ant's extremely limited understanding of the universe, this random reaction of two elements seems like a miracle because it created someone just as complex as it spent a year building.

Humans spend the last two hundred years perfecting optics from a pinhole camera to digital technology, yet it is still inferior to the human eye. The human eye must be intelligently created because it is so complex (to us), how could it possibly be created on accident?

God (or his equivalent) looks down at the humans on earth (ants) and see's us spending 200 years trying to perfect a mechanical eye (ants building an ant hill), then laughs when we marvel at the human eye, when to him it was just celestial wind blowing particles together that created it.

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JW Argument: There is no way the universe got here on accident, after all everything has a maker, how could it just appear one day?

Rebuttal: How was god never born, but always existed? You readily accept that as being unfathomable so you accept it knowing it is beyond human wisdom to understand. How can you accept one Paradox but not another? How is an all powerful being that has no beginning and no end any harder to imagine than a universe creating itself from an explosion of particles?

I am not an atheist, like I said I am agnostic. But this is the argument I give any JW relatives when they ask me why I no longer believe.

I look at it like this, both Atheism and Theism cannot be proven, and cannot be disproven. If they could either be proven/disproven, the only people that wouldnt believe the proven one would be the same people that eat glue and lick windows.

Lore

Good arguments, unfortunately they rely on metaphor and witnesses are generally to dumb for that.

God (or his equivalent) looks down at the humans on earth (ants) and see's us spending 200 years trying to perfect a mechanical eye (ants building an ant hill), then laughs when we marvel at the human eye, when to him it was just celestial wind blowing particles together that created it.

Because of their incredible lack of understanding of evolution a stupid witness will take that analog and think you mean that eyeballs spontaneously came into existance from wind blowing particles around. . .

The sad truth is, I think it would go over their heads.

simon17

Eh, the first one doesn't really work. I think the illustration is a non-sequitur. It may or may not be valid to compare those two scenerios.

The second line of argument works better but by itself doesn't really lead you to any useful conclusion because at best you will both accept that you are choosing one of two paradoxes as the most likely solution.

Druid

My goal really is to get people thinking, noone is going to change their beliefs in one conversation. If you can think of a better example for the ant > human > god thing let me know, i was trying to make it simple to get the point accross, but maybe someone more skilled with words can understand my point and rewrite it better.

cptkirk

i thought his illustration was decent. not trying to be argumentative simon, just wondering why you saw it as a non-sequitur? also i think that was the point of the 2nd illustration, not necessarily to win, just to cancel it out to make a point. they arent exactly earth shattering illustrations, but i thought they were decent, and was interested to hear your elaboration on them being paradoxical non sequiturs.

simon17

If you just want to get a conversation going, I think they're fine. Its just that anyone who is well-versed in logic or debate would cut right through you with those.

simon17

to CP:

Well I (or they) may not accept that "God : Man :: Man : Ant" first of all

More importantly, ant hills are pretty complicated structures with pathways, rooms, etc etc. Quite honestly if the wind just blew a ant hill with all those details together by one chance blow, well then I'd be pretty impressed. And if the wind would not randomly blow together such a compound then the argument falls apart (and actually backfires).

Druid

I agree the anthill, if thought about in more detail (like you pointed out) ruins the argument. I probably should have just said "complexity is relative" and hoped people understood what I meant. Does anyone have a better illustration to demonstrate how complexity is relative to intelligence?

Meeting Junkie No More

OK, I liked your argument - especially the first one.

When I was only 7 or 8 years old and doubting the existence of God, my agnostic parent used a similar argument to get me to actually BELIEVE! Today, after my 40+ years with the WBTS, I am an agnostic myself (although I lean toward belief in a higher power). The gist of the argument was that an ant, crawling around on a dining room chair, would have no comprehension of the fact that the surface it was crawling on was in a diningroom because its 'brain' was too limited to fathom that large and complex an entity, literally 'outside its experience'. Similarly, we roam the earth, as well as the universe, but God is so large and all-consuming, our small brains can't fathom his size nor existence. I couldn't argue with that one! So I continue to 'believe', but of course, as you say, coincidences can look like 'miracles'.

Druid

One beings miracle is a higher beings accident, lol

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