Via Luke Muehlahuser's Common Sense Atheism, we see Stephen Colbert ripping on Bill O'Reilly's spurious use of the teleological argument for the existence of God.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Bill O'Reilly Proves God's Existence - Neil deGrasse Tyson | ||||
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The obvious lesson here is that the argument from design is at the very least not so evidently persuasive that you can just refer to it like O'Reilly does, but to be charitable to him (which I'm loathe to do), I see this as a shorthand way of referring to some other experience of being more rigorously convinced, just like someone might dismiss the Bible as ridiculous just by gesturing at the implausible events that it describes. This kind of prima facie argument works well in most practical situations, e.g. why you think Harry Potter-style magic is fictional, but just doesn't happen to work if you have a much more historically complex situation, i.e. an actual controversy. So O'Reilly is not rigorous or thoughtful. I can't say that's a revelation, though it is funny.
See my earlier post for more Neal deGrasse Tyson.
-Mark Linsenmayer
[…] Here’s another brilliant take-down by Colbert of Bill O’Reilly’s argument from design: “Thank you Bill. You’re like St. Thomas Aquinas. … In that your understanding of the world is also from the thirteenth century.” A feel a little stung on Aquinas’ behalf by the association with O’Reilly and his half-baked theology. […]