There Are No Atheists in Heaven

I can never watch a show about religion for any length of time before I’m driven to retort the absurdities that are presented. I have no idea what these folks (usually guys) final arguments are; because, if I come across an uncorrected assumption and it remains, not only uncorrected but a pillar of their argument, I can’t go on. Nothing that follows will be correct, so why bother watching. 

That’s my excuse.

Case in point: a recently watched YouTube video on why there logically can’t be any atheists. I never got to the guy’s final argument as per above. The part I did see had him making a syllogism. He began by drawing a circle and saying, “For sake of argument, let’s say that all the knowledge in the universe is contained within this circle.” Okay, we can do that. He continued: “Then, can we make a dot in the center of the circle and agree that it represents your portion of the universe’s knowledge?” Sure, we can do that.

But before we go further, I’d like to point out that “knowledge” is never defined. Is knowledge the same as information? Is knowledge restricted to living things? Does the galaxy possess knowledge in the sense we use it? How would that manifest itself? Offhand, I’d restrict “knowledge” to living entities, although I wouldn’t rule out endless amounts of living creatures in the universe.

He should have stopped there. He went one step further; he said, “All that other knowledge in the universe, the stuff you don’t know, that had to have been put there by someone.”

Uh-uh. False. That’s the uncorrected assumption: the assumption that knowledge was “put” anywhere. Now, not only don’t we have a definition of “knowledge,” we don’t have a definition of “put.” Bill Clinton would be happy. I won’t even get to the rest of the syllogism.

Ergo, whatever followed in his argument, if it was relying on his proof to be correct, could not be correct. Undefined assumptions are no-no’s in debates, sorry.

Coda:

I’d like to further point out that atheism is not the opposite of theism, as is commonly thought. Theism argues that there is a god. Atheism does not argue that there is no god; it argues that there is no evidence nor logical probability for a god.

Thank you, and good night.