Entry #036: Troy Brooks

The guy behind the infamous “4 step perfect proof for God of the Bible”. The argument is according to Brooks completely deductive (a word he doesn’t understand) and relies on no unquestionable assumptions. It is really quite interesting why he doesn’t do a better job of it – if you allow his hilarious fallacies to count as logically valid deductions, I suppose it would be relatively easy to prove the existence of God from any unquestionable assumptions, not only his dubious ones (the system needed would hardly be sound, but that is another matter). Among his “uncontroversial” assumptions are e.g. that evolution cannot be the whole story since it doesn’t account for “the spiritual and soulical” and “Even the unsaved exhibit an improvement in conscience, but since they reject Christ for their salvation which is an eternal choice, they are condemned to Hell for all eternity and permanently separated from God. They won't change their mind later after they are resurrected.” But enough; read it for yourself – every sentence in this proof is a worthwhile quote:

(notice also the change of goalposts from proving that God exists to challenging atheists to disprove the God of the Bible in step 3).

Here is the gist [this is the first paragraph of the “proof”]: “God said He proves Himself by observing nature. Let's see if He is right. 1) Something can't come from that which does not exist, so the universe requires a cause [yes, he assumes the cosmological argument]. 2) The universe can't always have existed because a) heat death would be far greater than it is, and b) mankind would have approximated into that alleged past eternity and not still be sinning to the extent it still does along the exponential progression of conscience we are clearly on. What other option is there than the uncaused (uncreated) created? [yes, his proof really assumes that argument from ignorance is a valid inference method]. Atheism is utterly destroyed and morally [?] bankrupt because it has no answer and never will. You would have to be God (having omniscience) to know if God exists when you hold out having to know all things to be sure. You are saying you won't accept proof of God unless you are God. Wow!”

Basically the argument is “we are continuously improving morally (we are morally better now than we were 5000 years ago, say); since we aren’t perfect yet, the universe must have existed for a finite amount of time; therefore: The Biblical God.” [yes, an implicit premise is "if the universe has existed infinitely, then humans must have as well].

It is discussed here. Don’t miss Brooks himself showing up in the comment section!

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Diagnosis: Inane bozo. Probably insignificant but representative of a real and substantial class of bozos out there. Manages to provide evidence that elementary critical thinking should be on any elementary school curriculum, though.