(or lack thereof). The joys of Technorati have brought me to a post on parabiodox today, titled “Moderate Christians, Fundamentalists and Atheists (where’s the connection?)”

Sadly this is an infuriating example of the theistic line of logic. Obviously when I say logic, I mean fallacies…

The post (in full) reads:

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Ignorant and Proud Labels: rants

“One does not have to be a fundamentalist to put a Jesus fish on one’s car. Some of those who do so are certainly fundamentalists, but many more would better be described as moderate Christians. And yet, they share at least something with the fundamentalists – some degree of pride in their faith (i.e., their belief of something without evidence).”

Also shared with the Atheist faith of course, if you accept the author’s premise.

But of course there’s a lot more evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for the non-existence of God.

Now, for so little words there is so much “illogic.” Starting with the first sentence: There is no such thing as the “Atheist faith.” It is meaningless. Any argument surrounding such comments is crying out to be accused of woo.

The second sentence is interesting – mainly in the way it is constructed. I actually know people called Jesus so I agree there is a lot of evidence that Jesus exists. If we are talking about a Jewish carpenter, 2000 years ago then I am also happy to accept that Jesus existed. The important issue is: Was this Jesus the Son of God (while being God at the same time)?

Now here the evidence retreats to the land of woo. What “evidence” is there that this Jesus is the son of God?

In addition to this, the argument uses a fairly blatant form of fallacy (False Dilemma). It tries to present the existence of Jesus and the non-existence of God as the two opposing sides with the implication that proving the existence of Jesus falsifies claims of the non-existence of God. This is nonsense.

There is more evidence for the existence of Reindeer than for the non-existence of Santa, therefore there is a Santa Clause. Evidence for the non-existence of something which doesn’t exist is notoriously hard to come by (what evidence is there that the tooth fairy, unicorns, floating teapots etc dont exist?). In general terms, what is required is evidence that something exists. The more fantastic the claim, the stronger the supporting evidence has to be for it to be accepted. Unless of course you are a devout theist, when no evidence is required for belief…