In an article that cannot be read without laughing out loud, Andrew Zak Williams of the New Statesman interviewed an army of the world’s leading atheists so they could offer their most convincing arguments for why they do not believe in God. What makes the article so unwittingly funny is the fact it is chockablock with a startling array of logical fallacies. Reading the article is almost like engaging in the logical fallacy-equivalent of a word search—there’s a logical fallacy in each paragraph, but you’ve got to find them!
More amusing than the head-spinning variety of logical fallacies is the way Williams carefully cites the respective occupations of the atheists before including their quotes defending atheism. If the hilariousness of these logical fallacies alone aren’t enough to send you into fits of laughter, the shocking ironic experience of seeing the word ‘philosopher’ underneath a person’s name only to be slapped in the face with a stunningly sophomoric and patently fallacious argument like this one would definitely do the trick:
I do not believe that there are any such things as gods and goddesses, for exactly the same reasons as I do not believe there are fairies, goblins or sprites, and these reasons should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten. – A.C. Grayling
So the best argument A.C. Grayling—an Oxford-trained, D.Phil.-wielding philosopher—can articulate is the following obvious non sequitur:
– Fairies, goblins and sprites do not exist
– Therefore, God does not exist
How one can be an Oxford-trained philosopher while demonstrating such a marked estrangement to the rudiments of Aristotelian logic is beyond me.
Only shockingly high levels of hubris can explain how atheists can utilize such overtly spurious arguments in defense of their position, yet still be audacious enough to intellectually patronize Christians. You’d think these people would be retreating in shame! In what universe can these people be considered “the brights”?
As the incomparable Christian philosopher Dr. William Lane Craig explains, atheists can only be considered intellectually bright to people who cannot differentiate between logic and Lego. (In much politer terms, obviously.)
Clearly, the article demonstrates the intellectual emptiness of the atheistic position.