It may sound rather weird, but in essence the claim is that since we all exist, that is proof that God also exists.
To illustrate this, here are a couple of actual examples …
And also an even crazier variation from here …
First Flaw: This is at best a Deist argument
You know that those that propose this argument will assert this as evidence for their specific god concept, and so will happily say that all other variations of god concepts are myths, and so dismiss them.
The problem here is that you can plug any claim in at all. Try this for example – “Everything has a creator, hence the magic pink unicorn that I worship created the universe, and so the fact that the universe exists is solid proof that the magic pink unicorn is real”.
Does that convince you?
Nope, and so it also cannot be used as “evidence” for any of the other various god concepts floating around either.
Second Flaw: It is not a logical argument.
Distil it down and this is the core of the claim …
- Everything was caused by something
- Because 1) must be true, there must be a first cause
- That first cause is God
The problem here is that there is no evidence that everything must be caused by something else. If this is truly correct, then the most obvious challenge to the above is to ask “What caused God?”.
The common reply is of course, “Oh but god has no cause”, and so we suddenly have an exception to the rule that we used to conclude that there must be a god. Since we can clearly have exceptions to this rule that was used to justify claiming that there is a god, then that completely obliterates the need to invent the god concept in the first place.
To put all that another way, adding a god concept as an attempt to answer a question we do not know the answer for does not actually answer the question at all, it simply adds another layer for no good reason. With no actual evidence to justify this additional layer of complexity it is rather pointless, and you still have no actual answer, and have only fooled yourself into thinking that you do.
Third Flaw: It is an argument from ignorance
The claim is indeed very much an argument from ignorance. In essence, “I have no idea where everything comes from or how we can have something from nothing, therefore god did it”.
We have of course always been doing this, because this is essentially what you could term “neolithic thinking”. For example …
- I have no idea what that big yellow thing in the sky is that produces light and heat, therefore it must be a god
- I have no idea why the days get colder and then warmer, therefore a god must be doing it.
- I have no idea how a seed can turn into a plant and grow, therefore a god must be doing it.
- etc…
You get the idea. We understand all that now, and have discovered that no gods are required.
What we can also observe is that for every single occasion when there was a “God did it” claim, that answer has turned out to be wrong. When faced with things for which we simply do not have an answer, the only honest response is “I don’t know”. Those that claim “God”, don’t actually know either, they are simply making up an answer.