This post is like Internet Atheism 101:
Maybe we should create the same shirt and simply add at the bottom: “Fallacy!!!!”
Given AtheistRepublic’s statement, “All gods are imaginary,” we can decipher the reasoning (or lack thereof): Zeus is imaginary, Mars is imaginary, Thor is imaginary; therefore, Jesus is imaginary. This is known as an association fallacy, which is an informal inductive fallacy of the hasty-generalization or red-herring kind. It asserts that the quality of some things within a category is a quality of all things within that category.
For example, it’s fallacious to reason from “some politicians are corrupt” to “Therefore, all politicians are corrupt.” This is too hasty a generalization. It may be true that some politicians are corrupt, but it may also be true that some are not corrupt. We would have to take each individual politician and assess the evidence as to whether he or she is corrupt.
Moreover, it’s a red herring because the corruption of politician A and B has no bearing whatsoever on whether politician Y is corrupt. It’s a total distraction from the real question at hand: Is politician Y corrupt?
The reasoning in AtheistRepublic’s post is just as fallacious. It asserts that Jesus, who is a claimed deity, must be imaginary because reason has judged that other claimed deities are imaginary. But we cannot transfer the “imaginary” quality of Zeus, Mars, and Thor over to Jesus simply because he, like the others, is a claimed deity. This is too hasty a generalization. We would have to take the claim about Jesus’ divinity individually and assess the evidence as to whether his divinity is imaginary.
Moreover, that Zeus, Mars, and Thor are imaginary has no bearing whatsoever on whether Jesus is divine or not. This is a total distraction from the real question at hand: Is Jesus’ divinity real or imaginary?
Now, someone might counter, “You’re misreading the post. The meaning is that reason has concluded that all these claimed deities are imaginary.” Or he might say, “Reason has concluded that the concept of ‘imaginary’ is essential to the concept of ‘divinity.’”
If we’re misreading the message, and we should read it in the first or the second way, fine. These folks are entitled to assert what they think reason has concluded: Jesus is imaginary. And a Christian could just as easily create a t-shirt asserting the opposite. Regardless, the question remains: Is the assertion true, whether it’s AtheistRepublic’s or the Christian’s? And that’s a question that we can have a legitimate discussion about, a discussion that requires a bit more than what can be put on a t-shirt.