Although not hard-core counter-apologetics per se, Seth Andrews of The Thinking Atheist has put out a most excellent video in response to Josh "my watches are more expensive than what a minimum wage worker makes in a year" Feuerstein's $100,000 challenge. Seth in a simple but thorough manner hits on burden of proof, following scientific evidence to its logical conclusion and the problem of evil to name a few.
What I found interesting, Seth brings up an informal survey he conducted concerning Abraham and Isaac. Counter to that, I have seen "claims" from Christians who have also stated that they would follow God's command simply because God commanded it. So it seems Christians can't seem to even agree on that simple point.
And, he "went there" with the men with nipples, got to love it!
BTW I am currently reading a book(let) How to Prove God Does Not Exist
by G.M. Jackson, I will be writing up a "review" some time in the near future. But based on conversation and other readings, the so-called inability to prove a negative, is my one possible reservation to Seth's presentation. I say possible because I am still formulating my own thoughts on the matter, but if my novice understanding of the topic is "correct" it comes down to this:I know the myth of "you can't prove a negative" circulates throughout the nontheist community, and it is good to dispel myths whenever we can. As it happens, there really isn't such a thing as a "purely" negative statement, because every negative entails a positive, and vice versa. Thus, "there are no crows in this box" entails "this box contains something other than crows" (in the sense that even "no things" is something, e.g. a vacuum). "Something" is here a set restricted only by excluding crows, such that for every set S there is a set Not-S, and vice versa, so every negative entails a positive and vice versa. And to test the negative proposition one merely has to look in the box: since crows being in the box (p) entails that we would see crows when we look in the box (q), if we find q false, we know that p is false. Thus, we have proved a negative.Simply explained by my friend Dave Foda, also borrowing from Richard Carrier,
"This box is full of crows."
To "prove the negative," all we have to show is that the box is full of something other than crows. The negation comes in the idea that crows are in the box, but if there's something other than crows in the box, we've proved the negative.In other words, according to Dave's reasoning,
Taken to it's logical conclusion, if God exists, certain things would be true, including the possibility that Newton's Third Law of Motion (every action has an equal and opposite reaction) has exceptions. But it doesn't, which is why it's a scientific law, rather than laymans' guesswork.
If we know of the reaction, and can measure it in some way, then we must also - by default - be able to assess and measure the causative action. If we can't measure what we think is the causative action (i.e., God), then either our thinking is wrong, or our methods (science) are wrong. Since our methods (science) otherwise lead us to viable, concrete conclusions, then it must be our thinking that is wrong (God exists; in the form of god-of-the-gaps).
The Feuerstein Fallacy - YouTube
