Creationist wins a debate

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhDPrP-tpeo[/youtube]

"You would have to know everything OR someone who knows everything would have to tell you. Before that you can't be sure"

The kid actually has a point. Eric Hovind's argument was pretty crappy, he could not effectively counter what the kid said.

The title is wrong.

"The only way you can be sure that 2+2=4 is if you know everything, or someone who knows everything tells you that 2+2=4!"

Wow. Just wow.

Like father, like son.

I think that argument actually favors the skeptic. I know nothing unless someone who knows everything tells me.

I know nothing. It means I don't know if someone exists that knows everything.
Even if someone said they know everything, how do I know they are not misinformed or lying.
If we know nothing, then how do we know god even exists. its actually supports the position of an absolute skeptic. Its not a good believers argument.

That 6th Grader should read some Carl Jung.

Discworld win.

so... if you believe in god. Then you believe that god knows everything (because he is god afterall) and therefore you can trust what god says. So you know that everything god tells you is true. So you atleast you know that what god told you was true. So you alteast know SOMETHING (ie the stuff that god told you), even if you cant be sure of anything else.

But if you dont believe in god. Then you cant be sure of ANYTHING. Because there isnt even a subset of things that you 'know' that really do no KNOW to be so. So..in effect- you dont know anything because you dont know if what you know is so.

Have I gotten it right?

It is Turtles all the way down.

ruveyn

For the most part, you've gotten it right. And... He did not make trees in his image.

Even IF you do believe in God, you can't be sure of anything. Belief and disbelief in God requires faith in what is truly unknowable. It is an article of faith. We truly know nothing in the final analysis, and even people who do not believe in God have to acknowledge that.

What the abrahamic faiths have is the old testament. It is the book of Gods words, we at least know that. The book of God's works, however, is still to be understood, even by those who discount the book of Gods words as a work of fiction.

It's an immunizing move that's part of a common form of apologetics known as Presuppositional Apologetics.

That being said, the latter doesn't actually work. It's the escape hatch to have the faith-based solution solve everything, but given that you can't know that the person you know knows everything, you really can't use that as knowledge. So, if I said "I know everything", and then I tell you a bunch of stuff, perhaps outright lies, that wouldn't be something you could straight-forwardly treat as knowledge. Because of that, a divine liar is also a possibility that would have to be taken into account. Any solution that allows us to check a divine liar would allow us to criticize real liars, and thus create an account of knowledge that doesn't require being spoonfed everything.

To be fair, the person in the film constructed it carefully to make his example workable. He fixed his scenario with an all-knowledgable entity who cannot lie. So what if you entertained that as well as the possibility of a divine liar?

What solution do you have to check a divine liar? I ask purely out of curiosity. And I have not made the connection between it and what allows us to criticize human liars.

Sure, in that specific scenario, he'd be right.

Now, prove to me that is the case. Just try. You'll fail where every other religious person in the history of mankind has failed.

edit for clarity:

What I mean by asking for proof, is prove to me that there is an all-knowing entity incapable of lying.

Please drop the demand for proofs. We can ask and entertain the question of God within a physical theory, but cannot answer it within a physical theory. You can prove electrons and decode genes, but you are dealing with mathematical interpretation and deconstruction of a physical world, so the question of proofs is to be left out of this, and anything beyond the hard sciences. All you can do then is entertain it with philosophical argumentation until you have the instruments to sense and measure what is currently, or may always be, unsensable and unmeasurable.

I'll stop demanding evidence when religion as it currently exists ceases to interfere with the lives and/or education of any human being that doesn't believe. When religious people stop demanding that other people follow their moral code, when they stop coming to my door in an attempt to recruit me, when they stop trying to control the way people think, when they stop denying science in favour of their fairy tales, I'll stop demanding proof.