#147: Doug Giles

Pastor Giles is one of the most vehement critics of atheists in … well, on ClashRadio, at least. Or in Miami. As far as I can tell he resides in Miami. His master argument against atheism is that everyone knows God exists and that atheists deny it because they want to justify their hedonistic lifestyles. Well, so it is not really an argument per se – more a conjunction – but his audience doesn’t really need arguments in any case. The closest to a premise I could find was “the apostle Paul states that God has made Himself known, via creation, to all men”. Since God has made himself so painfully obvious through creation, then of course everyone has to know (the argument is not as strong as I’ve made it sound here). More here.

He appears, in a different screed (but with the same, uh, argument) here, in the company of luminaries such as Mike S. Adams, Dinesh D’Souza, David Limbaugh, Marvin Olasky and Michael Medved.

Giles attempts a jovial, jocular style for his bigoted screeds, and it doesn’t quite work. For instance in the anti-gay screed here (well, it cannot possibly be anti-gay – I mean, Giles assures us that he has “several friends that are gay”), the argument seems to start off from: “I'm not homophobic but chick-o-centric. Let's keep it positive, okay? It's not that we dislike you, the gay guy; it's just that we really like girls.” And without any other discernible premises, it is supposed to follow that hence gays shouldn’t have rights and it is OK to discriminate against them.

You can test your Doug Giles knowledge here. Doug generally equates being (truly) Christian with voting Republican, gun rights and tea bagger capitalism.

I think he thinks he is funny.

Diagnosis: The stupid is so strong with this one it burns. Wingnut and nutjob. He seems to be popular with a certain type of believer, but his overall impact is unclear.