"I Can Scientifically Prove God Exists" - The Truth Critic

Today I will be critiquing Mikel G Roberts' hub "I Can Scientifically Prove God Exists". In this hub, Mikel writes that none of his critics have been able to show any logical fallacies in his proof. My objective today is to show some of the fallacies that Mikel has employed.

"For ease of reading, anything quoted from Mikel's hub will be in a quotes and formated such as this."

I am doing this for three reasons. First, I hate the perpetuation of false information through the internet. Secondly, Mikel has refused to accept any of my comments addressing his proof, and has failed to participate in a forum discussion on the subject. Thirdly, I am very passionate about the subject, which makes the first point even more important to me.

This being a critique of a proof, I will outline any logical fallacies, as well as any scientific fallacies, as they come up. An easy online resource to use to learn about logical fallacies is wikipedia, under 'list of fallacies'.

All definitions come from the American English version of the Cambridge Dictionary Online.

"To start off we need to understand the terms, the meanings of the words.

The definitions:

Supreme- Greatest in power, authority, or rank; paramount or dominant. 2. Greatest in importance, degree, significance, character, or achievement.

God- The best, the greatest form of life in existence, The Supreme Being.

Cambridge Dictionaries Online defines God as: a spirit or being believed to control some part of the universe or life and often worshiped for doing so, or a representation of this being.

Mikel's definition leaves out one of the defining aspects of God, being creator of the universe. Mikel's definition also appears to be one he made for his argument, as no dictionary I found defines God as he does.

Deity- 1.a god or goddess. 2.divine character or nature, especially that of the Supreme Being; divinity. 3. the estate or rank of a god: The king attained deity after his death. 4. a person or thing revered as a god or goddess: a society in which money is the only deity.5. the Deity, God; Supreme Being.

Many times throughout his proof, Mikel uses the term 'Supreme Being' synonymously with the term 'supreme being'. In English, when an adjective is capitalized, it is done so as a title in reference to a proper noun. Meaning that the title holds the same meaning as the proper noun would. In these cases, 'Supreme Being' has the same meaning as God, as it is a title for God.

Life Form- an entity or being that is living or alive.

Existence- is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them.

Cambridge Dictionaries Online defines Existence as: the state of being real, or of being known or recognized.

Mikel's definition throws into doubt the existence of things we cannot see or do not know of.

Science- (from Latin: scientia meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. An older and closely related meaning still in use today is that found for example in Aristotle, whereby "science" refers to the body of reliable knowledge itself, of the type that can be logically and rationally explained."

This definition come from wikipedia.com. The bolded selection is important to Mikel because he wants to present knowledge which is learned through subjective methods as scientifically proven. Mikel uses this old definition of science to help prove his point, but that is a logical fallacy, called an Etymological fallacy: reasoning that a historical definition is necessarily the same as the modern-day definition.

Cambridge Dictionaries Online defines Science as: the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the natural and physical world, or knowledge obtained about the world by watching it carefully and experimenting.

Mikel wants to remove the importance of experimentation and observation from the scientific process.

"If there are more than one forms of life and they are not identical, then one must be the lesser. If there is a lowest form of life, then there must be a highest form of life.

The highest form of life (whatever that is) is the Supreme Being... humanity has come to call that form of life, God.

If there is in existence only one example of life, that being would be the Supreme Being. Therefore: The only way for there to not be a supreme being, is for there to not be any beings."

I have already shown that Mikel's proof doesn't attempt to prove the existence of God. It only attempts to prove the existence of a supreme being, regardless of any Diety-based attributes.

His proof is clear that this is exactly what Mikel means. He believes that if you have 4 creatures in the entire universe, one of them is bound to be most advanced, hence the supreme being among them, and hence God. Unfortunately for Mikel, being the most advanced life-form doesn't mean that life form is God. It only works if you use Mikel's attempted definition, rather than the established definition, of God.

Secondly, Mikel starts with a logical fallacy, begging the question: the conclusion of an argument is implicitly or explicity assumed in one of the premises. He states that 'if there are more than one form of life, and they are not identical, one of them must be the lesser'. His argument begins with posing restrictions on possibilities. I could let this slide if Mikel attempted to explain what makes one life form lesser and one life form greater, but the possibility of two life forms being equal is dismissed from the beginning of the argument.

Then, Mikel says that 'the highest life form is the Supreme Being'. As I stated before, capitalized adjectives are titles that refer to proper nouns. Being the highest life form doesn't make that life form the Supreme Being. It [b]does[/b], however make that life form the supreme being(no capitals). Unfortunately for this proof, supreme being does not equal God.

Mikel fills the rest of his hub with attempts to support the fallacies in his proof. Unfortunately, he doesn't quote any of his critics who clearly point out the logical fallacies, nor his improper definitions.

Mikel also switches in his rationalization in the rest of the hub between the term 'supreme being' and 'Supreme Being', further proving that he doesn't understand the difference between the two.

Before any Theists flame me for trying to disprove God, let me state that I do believe in Deity. However, I don't believe we should try to prove Deity through pseudo-science, nor pseudo-logic. See "Why There Can Be No Scientific Proof Of God" for more information on why science can't currently prove, or disprove, the existence of God.