Gene Cook

Gene Cook, Jr. is a Southern Baptist pastor who hosts the radio program The Narrow Mind, which focuses on Calvinist-brand apologetics. The show used to devote a significant amount of time to atheist issues and guests but now limits atheist callers and topics to "Atheistic Wednesday". Gene has stated the reason he decided to devote less time on the show to atheists is that no atheist has yet been able to understand his "teleological argument".

Cook's teleological argument

This is the argument by which Cook attempts to either undercut the basis for a scientific worldview, or to make the claim that there is an equal evidentiary basis for Christian belief and the scientific worldview. Gene says that he makes a presupposition that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and that that is the basis for all of his other beliefs. He claims, moreover, that without a similar presupposition, an atheist cannot justify belief in the laws of logic or science.

Cook routinely employs variations on the natural-law argument by suggesting that the laws of logic, for instance, need to be accounted for, and that the only way to do this is to infer a creator.

He also regularly falls into the logical fallacy of equivocation, in that he refuses to accept any but his own strain of belief as "Christianity". This is not uncommon among conservative Christians.