Article synopsis: A guy by the name of P.Z. Myers, a biologist from the university of Minnesota, criticized the "Pull the plug on Atheism blog." The author claims this is the result of his statement that "atheists believe that something came from nothing." He then uses a Quote from Mr. Myers' blog to set up the argument: "Prove god doesn't exist."
The first thing to point out is all of the criticisms were for varied reasons, and were not solely leveled against the strawman "atheists believe nothing created something." That is not really a big deal considering that most of Mr. Myers' criticisms could be accurately presented against such a claim. So the major point of the article is that Mr. Myers must admit that somebody created the universe (This is implied in the loaded statement: "He doesn't know how the universe got here, but he somehow knows the creator wasn't a 'who'.")
Loaded statements can be called fallacious reasoning because they require the assumption of some point as fact in order for the statement to be considered. For instance, the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is presented as requiring a binary yes-or-no response when in fact, the answer may be "I have never hit my wife!" So in the author's case, referring to the origins of the universe as the anthropomorphic "A creator" requires the assumption that there exists some sort of conscious "world maker."
After this the author "calls Mr. Myer's bluff" asserting you cannot be one hundred percent certain that god does not exist. He then demands that Mr. Myers explain how he knows god was not involved in the creation of the universe. This argument comes from not understanding the concept of the burden of proof. If you are going to assert something as fact then the burden of proof lies (or is it lays? I can never remember) with you. Even if you are not the first to speak in an argument, if you are defending a claim, then you must prove it to be so. In other words, if somebody said "There is no god" and you said that there is, then you would have to prove your position with facts and evidence. So in this case the author is making the positive claim and ignores his responsibilities in debate. Using similar reasoning, I could claim to be god and challenge disinters to "Prove me wrong. " This is most likely why Mr. Myers dismissed the author's challenge in this response. That, or he is just a dirty heathen.
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