Eric Hovind, a Young Earth Creationist (i.e. believes that the Earth and the universe were created by God pretty much as-is about 6,000 years ago; implicit in this is Hovind’s belief that God is a dirty liar for installing vast reams of data for deep time apparently for no better reason than to trick humans), at a debate gets pretty thoroughly flummoxed by a pretty simple question from an 11-year-old:
[youtube HhDPrP-tpeo]
The problem for Hovind here is that he tries to use “logic” to justify “faith,” and his *big* problem is that he uses *bad* logic. His argument seems to be:
1) Unless you have *all* knowledge, you cannot claim to be 100% certain about anything (true enough, I reckon)
2) However, if someone else *does* have all knowledge, and there’s a rule that this someone cannot lie, then you *can* be 100% certain about anything that omniscient someone tells you
3) Thus: God.
A lot of fuzziness (to put it mildly) but there are some fairly blatant gaps, omissions or outright errors that can be pointed out:
1) Assume all-knowing, all-honest God. Assume also you ain’t all-knowing. By definition, if you are not all-knowing, you cannot be 100% certain that God is all-knowing, nor can you be 100% certain that God is all-honest.
2) Nor can you be 100% certain that you are, in fact, talking with God (as opposed to Satan, Loki, Darth Sidious or some mis-wired brain cells)
3) Assume all-knowing God. Assume also that God is *not* required to be all-honest. Thus, if an all-knowing but occasionally dishonest God spoke to you, this God might well say that he was in fact all-honest, when he’s actually lying.
4) Assume all-knowing+honest God. But he speaks through allegory, burning bushes, faces popping up on tortillas. For example, God tells you, “if you cross that river to fight your enemy, a kingdom will fall.” You think claiming 100% certainty on your part about what the actual outcome will be is sensible?
Faith is fine, when it doesn’t conflict with facts. Justifying the unprovable with logic and reason is fine… so long as your line of logic and reason isn’t a trail of rubbish.