Bad arguments

One of the most common creationist arguments you come across (especially on the internet) is a classic argument from incredulity. It's an example of someone making an argument based on the premise that since they can't understand how something could have happened a certain way then it must be false, oh and therefore "God-did-it". The something in this case is Evolution of course, and the argument is the "something from nothing" spiel as popularised by literalists Christians like Ray Comfort, or as everyone knows him, "the banana-man". I know people who have found this argument to be compelling, surprisingly, they hadn't ever been shown or considered the obvious flaw in it.

The basic argument runs something like this,

1. When you see a building you know it must have had a builder
2. When you see a painting you know it must have had a painter
3. When you see the universe you know it must have had a "universe-maker" and that's God.
4. We know this because it's impossible for something to come from nothing.

Let's look at the basic problem with this argument.

1. What builders and painters do is re-arrange existing material (paint, canvas, stone, bricks, wood etc.) in order to "create" whatever it is they're making.
2. If some God created the universe in the same way, then the materials for the universe must have existed before he made it, where did these materials come from?
3. If the materials didn't exist beforehand then the God must have created them from nothing, but this entire argument rests on the premise that's impossible.

There are many other problems with the argument, for example the conclusion that something can't come from nothing is a fallacious one based on a very specific and philosophical definition of "nothing" that is artificially crafted (i.e. man-made) to suggest this conclusion. In reality no one has ever experienced or tested a "nothing" like this, if it does exist then we have no idea what it's properties might be.