Updated: part of the original post was missing below
Submitted by Michael:
YouTube critic Paulogia has done another episode on breaking down the nonsense of a David C. Pack (DCP) video, as usual with research and well-done graphics behind it.Most here will probably agree that Dave is one doozy of a blowhard, charlatan, and tyrant, even bordering on if not psychotic, but here Paulogia is only dealing with the logical non-sequiturs and sloppy arguments in one particular DCP video.
Some notable time points:
"Any true god would never leave his creation - mankind - in doubt about whether he exists"
at 7:00, DCP makes the following shocking statement:
"Now think hard, who is more intelligent, God who made perfect food, or men who find every possible way to alter and degrade it before consuming it?"
Not a logical fallacy, but just had to chuckle at this at 22:50:
"I have *personally* seen a photograph of [Lucy's] supposed skeleton...."
As if viewing a photograph (probably on the internet) somehow gives DCP extra credence? Honestly, I thought he was going to say something like he had personally seen Lucy's bones at the National Museum of Ethiopia, but no, not even that lol, just "I have personally seen a photograph", as have hundreds of millions of other people on this planet. What was the point, really, of that boast?
Those interested can view the video if desired, but WCGers, in particular, will appreciate how DCP ends his videos:
"Until next time this is David C. Pack saying: Goodbye friends",
Which is funny, because it never ceases to amaze how some of the splinters feel they have to emulate HWA in every single facet, yes, even in using the exact wording to sign off lol. Even down to using the middle initial, as "Herbert W. Armstrong" used to do. That is one sign of those in a cult, wanting to emulate their cult hero in every form possible.
All in all, DCP drags out old, poorly researched points, most quoted from popular books that have been critiqued and debunked in the past ad nauseum.
Incidentally, the original DCP video has a sizable 623,000 views, what's up with that? And RCG site has 193,000 subscribers? This seems awfully fishy for a splinter which can't possibly have more than 10K members if that many.
Here is the first article we did on this series by Paulogia if you missed it:
Dave Pack Gets Annihilated In New Video Examining His "Does God Exist?" Video
11 comments:
Dave Pack said: ""I have *personally* seen a photograph of [Lucy's] supposed skeleton....""
That's the stupidest excuse to confirm an argument I have ever heard. Though, in Armstrongism this is the end-all when it comes to "proof" of pet theories for some church leaders.
This is the " logic" Bob Thiel uses:
I read a book about the Mayans, therefore, I know everything.
I read an article by Herbert Armstrong therefore I am now a world-renown theologian.
I read an article about Nostradamus therefore I am a true prophet.
At 1:16: "Any true god would never leave his creation - mankind - in doubt about whether he exists"
I'm no David Pack advocate, but I don't think he's saying that God has failed because atheists exist.
Rather, God has provided all sorts of evidence that He exists. Whether atheists and agnostics doubt that existence is on them, due to free thought.
Cartoon character is unshaven, has messy hair, and doesnt have a suit and tie on.
THUS- cannot be taken with any seriousness or as an "authority"! ;-)
Dave strays out of his area of non expertise, theology, when he tries to parrot Creationist "Science" Nice presentation. A man that is suppose go with "he that comes to God MUST BELIEVE that he is.." should not find it necessary to prove anything. Dave is just required to believe and that should be his message to others as a quasi theologian
Hasnt everyone seen a photo of that skeleton?
The Real War.
The RCG videos contain a lot of dated information and already refuted arguments. They would be convincing only to someone who was unable or unwilling to do a little research. I admit I did not watch all of either video. So there may be a gem of sound argumentation lurking somewhere in there. What I did watch made me think that a freshman taking Biology 101 could lay away most of the pro-Creationist assertions. There is no war between science and religion here. The battle was just not joined.
But there is a real war. I am a theistic evolutionist. I believe that evolution is just a tool that God used to proliferate and refine the flora and fauna of this planet. I have supporting arguments for Adam and Eve, the Flood, Pauline theology, etc. But there is one point on which I stand in opposition to the scientific model of evolution. I believe that evolution was to some degree guided. I don't not believe it was entirely a random process.
If God used it as a tool then, of course, if was not simply a collection of random outcomes. For instance, I do not believe that an advanced sentient creature on this planet would have arisen out of the reptilian line rather than the mammalian line. I believe that God manipulated genomes. Evolution left to itself might have just produced survivalist blobs of protoplasm.
I also believe that for random natural selection to produce the variety and complexity of flora and fauna that we have, it would have taken much, much longer. I believe God accelerated the process. Another point is that a minister in the WCG once told me that God had created our flora and fauna but angelic beings confined to earth modified them and produced, say, T Rex. I believe God produced T Rex.
My two cents.
******* Click on my icon for Disclaimer
Dave once totally discounted Albert Einstein "because he has wild hair" Personally, I discount Dave's sermons because he has thick glasses and is too tall.
NEO, would you like to comment on this observation?
* John Wheeler, Comment to Wallace Smith, News Reporting Fail: The National Science Foundation Survey, February 17, 2014:
It takes real religious sensibility to believe that evolution could even get started naturalistically. Recently I went through the odds of coming up with the smallest known self-reproducing system, in a universe three times older than ours is, and which is 10(100) times larger than the visible universe, in which every atom is replaced by a group of atoms or molecules trying to put together such a system a billion times a second, and assuming a trillion such systems could work. The resulting odds are still something like 10(133) against it ever happening in 30 billion years. (I deliberately made my assumptions even more outlandish than the set given in a book I have.)
George Gaylord Simpson, in his book Horses as I recall, said he considered the odds of a horse evolving were 1 followed by 3 million zeroes. His “out” against such mind-boggling odds was that somehow, natural selection is non-random. Nice try, but natural selection can only explain the survival of the fittest – not the arrival of the fittest. The very point is that the processes causing the selection are random and variable. They have no goal.
Much more happens with genomes than selection but I simply don’t have the faith to believe that naturalistic evolution could even get started, let alone “goo-to-you-by-way-of-the-zoo”. And it does take faith to believe that. Adaptive radiation we can observe, faunal and floral succession we can observe, other things we can observe – the problem is confusing these with what doctrinaire evolutionists really require to make their point stick.
R.L. wrote:
"Rather, God has provided all sorts of evidence that He exists. Whether atheists and agnostics doubt that existence is on them, due to free thought."
Well, the fact remains that atheists and agnostics are definitely "in doubt about whether he exists". Regardless of what Pack thinks the evidence is, they are left in doubt, just as an objective fact, whereas Pack says a true god would not let this happen.
Anonymous (5:59)
I do not believe it has to be a binary decision: either natural selection is random or it is not. I think that it can be both even though that is a challenge for me to accept. I prefer guided evolution throughout. I think of a myriad of complex organisms functioning together in an ecosystem in the forests of central Africa. Natural selection with its reliance on mutation over long duration seems too feeble for the task - at least within the time frame we know about.
By asserting that natural selection is both random and non-random, I mean to say that it may be bipartite. Many creations are the product of randomness and others came into existence by divine guidance. It is a system that may blends randomness with teleology. To maintain that evolution does not work if the engine of randomness is tampered with, is to deny the omnipotence and omniscience of God. Someone who made the universe can orchestrate the development of flora and fauna with the needed interdependencies among organisms even with the operation of some randomness.
I believe that our flora and fauna were created with some influence of asethetics and even a Dr. Seuss-like sense of humor. I doubt that God deistically started up the engine of evolution and just let it rip. And then Jesus might have been a sentient crocodile. Another way of saying it is that I believe God supplied a lot of the mutations for the engine of natural selection to operate on. Now ask me how I can prove that. I can't. It is all based one an intuitive sense about what comports well with the idea of a Godly creation and the stochastic computations, like what you reference, concerning how unlikely all of this is to have just randomly happened.
******** Click on my icon for Disclaimer
Both the views and subscriber number on the YouTube account were purchased through massive advertising spend around 2010-2015. Tens of thousands, and with some years (hundreds of thousands) of dollars per year in ad spend. That is why the channel is basically stagnating, the ad money isn't flowing to it as freely now. That money is mostly going towards home purchases, campus improvements and maintenance.
Post a Comment