rationalskepticism.org

greystoke0710 wrote:A speech my 13 year old son is presenting next week at his school. This is the original version which was restricted to only 2 minutes. The teacher has now expanded the time limit to anything up to 5 minutes.

Before I begin, I would like to say that I am not a religious person in any way, shape or form, and I will therefore be arguing against the existance of any form of deity. I therefore apologise if my speech upsets anyone.

I am also aware that I can not possibly disprove the existance of any god, however I will attempt to point out the flaws in religion that, at least for me, make it so unlikely that I would not ever follow a religion. My points mostly apply to christianity, however some are true for many religions.

For starters, for any of you that may not already know - what is religion? Well, according to the dictionary, a religion is 'the belief in and worship of a super-human controlling power.' Secondly, the definition of 'belief' is 'an acceptance that something exists or is true without proof'. Now, I know that this will not be enough for many people, but already religion seems unlikely due to the fact that, by definition, it is a worship of a 'super-human controlling power' with a complete lack of proof or evidence suggesting that it in fact exists. Does this seem sensible to you?

A second point is the mention of 'the great flood' . There is, however, evidence to suggest that the world was never entirely covered in water. For one thing, The Great Pyramid of Cheops was built between 2589 and 2566 BC - roughly 230 years before the flood, however there are no water marks on it. As well as this, the Egyptions had complete historical records for hundreds of years before and after the supposed flood, but they do not mention a flood anywhere. This shows that they were not only not aware of the flood, they were not greatly affected by it. In fact, outside of the bible, there is no historical or physical evidence suggesting a world-wide flood during the time period specified by the bible.

In addition to all of this, the atmosphere only holds enough moisture to account for about an inch of water worldwide. To cover even Mount Ararat, where the ark was supposed to have landed after the flood, in 40 days would require over 400 feet of water per day. And no, I don't mean even 400 inches of rain - but 400 feet of rain every single day for these 40 days! That is an average of nearly 17 feet of rainfall every hour - surely this is completely impossible?

My final point today is known as the 'Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit', and although it is difficult to undersand, I feel that it is a good point for disproving the existance of a God. It was first introduced in Richard Dawkin's book 'The God Delusion' as an attempt to use logic to disprove the existance of any god. It is an argument against the argument for design, which states that a complex or ordered structure must be designed - therefore saying that all life must be designed by something, which supposedly proved the existance of God.

Richard Dawkins, however, uses this very argument to say that a god that is responsible for the creation of a universe would have to be at least as complicated as the universe that it creates. It would therefore also require a designer, and it's designer would require a designer, and so on. This argument points out that God can not be the origin of complexity, complexity would have to have always existed. This, although incredibly hard to understand, essentially logically disproves the existance of a God.

I would now like to thank you all for listening to my speech, and although I essentially only made 3 points in my speech, I feel that these points outline the flaws in religions and I would hope that they allow you to understand that the existance of any Deity is unlikely

Criticisms? Tips?

I have to say i was a bit chuffed when he emailed me a copy and i read it over. Great to see critical thinking skills developing.