From the immortal work of Douglas Adams' 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'

The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on the brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language.
The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistance of God.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Now insert any irreducible complexity claim fom the Intelligent Design (ID) department instead of the Babel fish, and there you have it.

Originally posted by nickybutt
From the immortal work of Douglas Adams' 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'

The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on the brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nouri ...[text shortened]... aim fom the Intelligent Design (ID) department instead of the Babel fish, and there you have it.

Originally posted by nickybutt
From the immortal work of Douglas Adams' 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'

The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on the brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nouri ...[text shortened]... aim fom the Intelligent Design (ID) department instead of the Babel fish, and there you have it.

Originally posted by dj2becker
[b]The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

Psalms 19:1 - "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork".

Hebrews 11:3 - "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."

[/b]

Originally posted by Coletti
nickybutt, do you think that the argument was valid???

Originally posted by telerion
Psalms 19:1 - "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork".

And the glory of God sheweth the handiwork of Muffy! Praise be to Muffy!

Originally posted by nickybutt
I'm not at all strong in theological philosophy, but it makes a little sense. You guys keep talking about faith, so perhaps there's something to it?

Originally posted by telerion
Psalms 19:1 - "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork".

And the glory of God sheweth the handiwork of Muffy! Praise be to Muffy!