Thursday, December 16, 2010

Bob Enyart: Foolish and Smugly So

I hadn't heard about convicted criminal Bob Enyart before, but based on yesterday's posting, I haven't missed much.

He gives a list of what he calls "typical atheist clichés" and then refutes them in a single line. Unfortunately, most of his "clichés" are straw men -- arguments that I've never heard, or rarely heard, anyone put forward, let alone atheists.

Let's take #1: "There is no truth!" Who ever said that, and what is it even supposed to mean?

Other of his "clichés" make sense, but only if you interpret them in a reasonable way. For example, #2 is "Truth is unknowable!" But the only sensible interpretations of that statement are (for example) that some truths are unknowable (which we know to be true from Gödel), and that other statements that we believe we know with certainty (such as our own birthdate) are, in fact, only held with justifiable and strong certainty, not irrefutable knowledge. Enyart's proposed rebuttal "How do you know?" is just nonsensical.

Enyart says "If your worldview can be dismantled within eight seconds, then get a better one." I'd say, if you think you have dismantled someone else's worldview in 8 seconds, you're just fooling yourself.

3 comments:

Alex said...

He's obviously an idiot, but the main problem with his "argument" is that most of his points have nothing to do with atheism.

Also, the part I find most amusing is that his answer to #7 implies that science is inherently atheistic. I guess, in his view, theists couldn't possibly be scientists.

Curt Cameron said...

I listened to a couple of his shows over the weekend. His arguments are pretty pathetic. Here's an example: the headline article from a recent episode is "Dawkins proves a Creationist Right!"

What was the basis of this paradigm-shifting admission?

Thirteen years ago, some random dude called into Enyart's show, telling him he needs to learn more about evolution, and suggested that he read Dawkin's book Climbing Mount Improbable. Enyart said that the problem with evolution books is that they assume their conclusion, that they assume that evolution is true and then show facts in a way that they would support that.

Now, thirteen years later, Enyart got a clip from Dawkins promoting his recent book The Greatest Show On Earth where Dawkins says that his previous books had talked about evolution, but hadn't laid out the evidence that shows how we know it's true, and TGSOE does that.

So that's how Enyart was proved right - Dawkins said something fairly obvious which agrees with a point Enyart had made 13 years before to some random caller.

Another recent episode was headlined by the astounding announcement that humans and sea sponges have 70% commonality in our DNA, which according to Enyart means that scientists think we evolved from sponges. Those scientists can't make up their minds! They used to think we came from monkeys, now it's sponges! What a bunch of indecisive idiots!

So that's how he conducts his show.

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