HAHA Ray Comfort can be funny!

Ray is such a stitch. He has a post up, I call it the "water is wet" post. He entitled the post, "Top Ten Predicted Atheist Objections to the Below Statement:"

"Water is wet." -- Ray Comfort

My response must have come in at number 11: "so what?"

I thought about how useless and inconsequential this statement is. And looking down his list, I came to the conclusion that he is pulling off a "Seinfeld;" a statement about nothing. He seems to want to show that something so obvious can be made to be contestable by atheists if it is uttered by a young earth creationist. [And I decided to leave out the actual real science which makes this statement absurd; along the lines of heat is hot, the sky is blue, ice is cold, etc.] Because real science is totally lost on people like Ray Comfort.

Instead, I thought about making another statement and propose similar rebuttals I predict Ray and other fundie Christians would say:

"God is good" -- Jeffperado

1. "Of course God is good, he's God after all"
2. "God has to be good, for he cannot be anything else by definition"
3. "If God were bad, then he would not be worthy of worship"
4. "Other Gods can claim to be good, but only God is good"
5. "God only does good things, so he must be good"
6. "The bible tells me so, and I believe in the bible"
7. "My parents taught me about God, and they said he was good, so he must be good"
8. "I go to church every week, and all I hear is how good God is. If my church tells me this, it must be true"
9. "Anyone who says their God is better, or says there is no God is wrong, therefore God is good"
10. "I believe, and my beliefs are right"

Just like the absurdity of the "water is wet" canard, the "God is good" is a canard as well. The truth lies in the nuance; what exactly does it mean to be 'wet' or for that matter 'good'?

Just like I would tell Ray that wetness is a property of water, and not an absolute one at that.
(Consider deep freezing water into ice -- is ice wet? Yet ice is still water). But can we do the same for God and good? Is there a way to seperate them? Christians would say no, that by definition, everything God does is good, and everything good that happens comes from God. Except, of course, when God --according to the bible-- kills babies, pregnant women, and small children. Or when an atheist does a decidedly good thing.

Then it isn't "God is good" any more; it is "God has a plan". And that plan is good.

Now go back and reread Ray's post. You will immediately see that what Ray is really saying is that he is projecting his own brand of convoluted illogic and lack of facts unto atheists in hops of convincing himself and others like him that atheists are really as screwed up and misinformed as he is, and thus his belief system is as valid as the system of reality found in atheism.

But really all Ray Comfort is, is funny in a sad sort of way.

Revisiting Ray Comfort

You know it has been a long while since I have mentioned Ray Comfort. I discussed him even before he had his own blog, Comfort Food. Reading his blog one thing becomes clear; simple questions to him beg absurdly simply answers. And more importantly, well-thought-out questions do not exist and thus have no need of answers. This is obvious in the types of "questions" which get asked and answered As anyone who peruses his blog can see. Nothing tough or above the simple strawman is ever addressed, just simple-minded questions and even more simple-minded answers. This leads one to wonder if this simplemindedness is the only level on which Ray Comfort is able to operate. He after all, is the arch-architect of the infamous "banana" argument for creationism. This alone should has disqualified him from and reasoned Christian discourse. But alas, he has hung around like that pesky "common cold" virus.

I have to admit that I am thankful. For if his is the level of Christian apologetics, then reason, logic, fact and reality have a chance in overcoming Christianity. We can all thank our good friend Ray for that.

Let us take for one example of this, this recent post by our good friend Ray, The Faithiest. He opens it by posing a "question" he recieved. One look at this question and you can instantly tell that it is nothing more than an overly simple question asked in hopes of being overly simply answered. And Ray jumps at the chance of making the simple completely over-simplistic:

"Life forms change over time and given enough time they can and did change dramatically. GET OVER IT! No one is ever, ever going to go back to the idea that species were created fully developed at a specific point in time. NEVER. The details of the theory may change but not the framework. There is no faith involved. Move on. Evolution happens." Milo

I cannot say that I know the mind of Milo, but I can say that his representation here is so absurd as to be laughable. Reality is that humanity learns on a daily basis, we know more today than we did yesterday. Thus what we consider to be factual from day to day never changes, how we interpret those facts as we learn more, changes. Faith is the complete absense of fact. A Muslim has faith in their god, as does a Jew in theirs, as does a Christian in theirs. No fact is involved. Consider a man standing atop the tower of Pisa with a stone in his hand. He cannot say to his friend there, that he has faith if he lets go of the stone it will hit the ground, and his friend cannot say that he has faith it will not hit the ground. This is because they are talking about facts of reality, the real physical world. But in terms of religion, there is no reality whatsoever. It is all faith-based. How can one supernatural god based upon some holy book be better or more real than another god based upon some holy book?

Just look for example at the bible: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" [Heb 11:1 NKJV]. Since all of nature can be seen of evidence of it seen, then none of nature can be considered in terms of faith. This includes evolution. We see evolution, we see evidence of evolution in the past, we have mountains of facts not just including fossils, which are all nature and thus not faith-based to back up evolution. We have the natural laws of physics to back up dating and relational chronographies. We have chemistry and bio-chemistry, DNA, embyonosis. All these are natural and fact based; thus outside the "unseen" realm of faith.

But none of that shows up in Ray's post at all.

Here is what we do see in Ray's response:

You have said, "Life forms change over time and given enough time they can and did change dramatically." This is what you believe. Its a statement that is based on faith. You weren’t there when the life forms were created, and you didn't see them change. You don’t know how life began; you simply believe that what you have been told actually did happen. Like it or not, you are a "believer" in the theory of evolution.

How life began is not an issue of evolution at all. Evolution deals only with how life, once it occurred, changed over time. How difficult is it for Creationists to understand this very simple fact. The origin of the chemistry of life is completely different from the origins of the diversity of lifeforms once life came into existence. One is a question of speculation, the origin of life, and one is a question of understanding all the facts of life and how well we understand the process that fits all those facts together. And here I repeat this simple, nay simply simple fact that every day we learn more facts and thus have a better -- more precise -- understanding of how all present species came to be like they are today.

But look more closely at what Ray actually does say. Take this quote, "This is what you believe. Its a statement that is based on faith. You weren’t there when the life forms were created, and you didn't see them change." Could this not also be said about George Washington? Who today could have personally seen George Washington? Thus according to Ray Comfort we can only "believe" in George Washington via "faith". Furthermore, we have witnessed lifeforms change, even change into new species. So not only do we have a flat out lie about not witnessing evolution, but we have either deceit or ignorance when it comes to the value (or lack of value according to Ray) of things we have not seen but can verify in totally natural records.

This is again in stark contrast to the supernatural and unknowable ways of any god, not just God or Jesus. Since the bible was written by humans and is undeniably rooted in specifically historical events, it is also natural not supernatural. Thus even the bible itself is not proof of anything supernatural other than the supernatural desirables of its wholly natural authors.

So again we come up against this whole canard of faith applied to the provable and understandable natural realm when it is defined solely by the unseen, unknowable and supernatural realm of the gods. Even the bible tells us this.

Ray Comfort, then must either be a charlatan or wholly ignorant of both real reality and biblical reality.

And more importantly, this is just an example. His entire philosophy and blog is exactly the same.

I Haven't Beat Up On Ray Comfort In A while, So...

Poor Ray, for someone who claims to be absolutely guided by an infinitely powerful and all-knowing force; his scribblings are amazingly amateurish. Simply comparing one to the other makes him out to be a cartoon. And if his knowledge/intelligence is that of the model Christian, then he proves Christianity is doomed to extinction, with no help from us "evil" atheists...

First check out this post from his new blog.

On December 8, 2008, the Omaha Police Department released a three-page suicide note left by Robert A. Hawkins, the 19-year-old who fatally shot eight people at an Omaha shopping mall before turning the gun on himself. In the telling note, it’s clear that Hawkins wasn’t the “loner” he was first made out to be. He didn’t lack friends. He said, “You guys are the best friends anyone could ever ask for.” Rather, the note says exactly why he “snapped.” It said, “I've just snapped I can't take this meaningless existence anymore . . . ” If the secular world insists on saying that there is no God and that we are the products of evolutionary chance, they are saying that they have no idea where we came from, what we are doing here, or where we are going after death. Robert A. Hawkins is the tragic result of that meaningless existence. [Emphasis mine]

Then peruse this post....

There was another “senseless” mass killing this week. This one was in Colorado. I’m hesitant to talk about it because I may sound simplistic and repetitive. I don’t think the killings were senseless at all. Something is not senseless when there’s a predictable pattern. Here was another disillusioned and bitter ‘backslider” (a false convert), who no doubt gave his heart to Jesus because of a promise of a wonderful new life in Christ, and when the promises didn’t deliver the goods, he was angry enough to kill.

It seems Ray has placed himself in the "nothing can touch me, no matter how silly I sound" category. If someone random shoots up some people, it is the secularists who are to blame. If it is a Christian who kills, then they were not a real Christian at all. Heads I win, Tails you lose.

Ray Comfort seems to live in a world where no Christian does anything wrong. They must somehow be flawed or otherwise "seperated from God." The problem is that this is Comfort's Achilles' heel. If no Christian can do any wrong, then what can be said about a non-Christian, even ((gasp!)) an atheist, who lives their entire life fully within the confines of Comfort's definition of morality?

Is that decidedly non-Christian who manages to live up to all Comfort's moral standards actually a Christian?

I don't know. Ray Comfort can never lay claim to being a strong logician, but he can at least come up with something which makes sense to those who would be willing to believe in God. But to give good ol' Ray the benefit of the doubt here, he does have a solid point about not being a Christian. Just look to all the hub-bub about Mike Huckabee's slam against Mitt Romney and his Mormon beliefs. Who really is a Christian? Are Catholics Christians? If their beliefs and rituals contradict those of Baptists, are Baptists really Christians? ...And so on. If merely accepting Jesus and some interpretation of the bible makes one Christian, then the field is opened up wide to gays being both gay and Christian, women who have abortions (and think it is acceptable in the eyes of God and Jesus) being Christian, Christians who oppose the death penalty, and Christians who support gun control. If all these are considered Christians, then how can a person who believes in Christianity suddenly be called a "backslider" because they sinned? The point here is that some many who consider themselves Christian sin in ways that other Christians call sin, but they, themselves do not think is a sin.

Ray has no answer for that. All he has is his own personal ideas as to what makes up sin and what makes up a Christian.

But then outside of "Christianity" it is the effects of "secularism" according to our intellectual mentor, Ray Comfort. Now, in line with this is this horrible article by Pat Boone at WorldNetDaily. (But I will examine this in more detail in a later post.)

I am reminded of the words of Jesus regarding sins:

And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. [Matthew 19:24 NKJV]

Jesus certainly seems to be railing against the rich here. But how much do you hear about Ray Comfort condemning the rich Christians as "backsliders" and sinners? And what about Ray Comfort (and Pat Boone for this matter) condemning women for wearing gold and fancy clothes into Church? Or women talking and singing in Church? Or women teaching men? All of these things are condemned in the bible and all Christian women who sin in this way are "backsliders". But Ray does not write any articles about the evils of women in church choirs, or women wearing their gold wedding bands into church. These are sins according to God. See the writings of Paul:

"Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says." I Cor 14:34,35

"in like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing" I Tim 2:9

"But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors herhead, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved" I Cor 11:5 (see also I cor 11:13 or I Cor 11:15 for why long hair can be considered a"covering")

"And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to bein silence." I Tim 2:12

All verses are the NKJV.

If all these are "backsliders" then who is left of the actual Christians? I guess only Ray Comfort (as his trusty sidekick, Kirk Cameron, is guilty of being rich)..

Ray Comfort at it again

I have to say that that calling things "stupid" does not make a convincing argument, but that is really all I can think of when it comes to Ray's latest "proof" of God. It seems that our dear friend, Ray Comfort, has given up on convincing anyone with an I.Q. above their shoe size that God is real; and is going for the "I don't know my right hand from my left" crowd only these days.

I simply must apologize for this plunge into logical fallacy, but for the life of me, I cannot come up with anything (at all -- like "nice typing") to refute his argument, because there is not one scrap of intelligible argumentation or fact at all. Don't believe me, read it for yourself. Electricity is invisible! Poof!! That means God is real!!!1!!!1!11!!! Case closed -- take that all you College Edu-macated atheists.

That really is the extent of his argument. This, from his second paragraph:

These men were rationalists, and electricity was said to be invisible [Link from original removed -- see Ray's article for reference]. They refused to believe in something that couldn't be scientifically demonstrated

Notice how right away Ray equates "invisible" with being "scientifically demonstr[able]". The mere fact that there are numerous things with are scientifically demonstrable yet invisible proves just how absurd this is. Yet this eqaution of the two is the entire basis for Ray's proof. Ray is saying if science can't see it, it is not real. The problem is that he then contradicts his analogy by saying that since we know electricity is real then God is real.

Ray's whole point is that science can test the existence of electricity and determine its reality, so denying it is just a big lie. But I have to wonder, how does Ray propose to test the existence of God, scientifically? Maybe he could pray to move a mountain. I miss the Smokey Mountains here in Nevada -- Maybe he could help me out and prove that God exists all at the same time by moving them to Nevada.

Oh, I forgot, God cannot be tested.
Matthew 4:7 "Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'"" [ESV]
Well, forget the scientific proof of God then.

P.Z. Myers has a very sarcastic take on this over at Pharyngula.

Cameron's Creationism

I just don't know if I can let this go without some more snark...

Creationism in all its forms (Intelligent Design, Old Earth Creationism, and Young Earth Creationism) has as its main weapon a certain intuitiveness to it. In that I mean it is simple, straightforward and clearcut. It requires no knowledge of the Earth, biology, chemistry or physics. In fact, it requires a certain ignorance on its main source, Genesis of the Bible. No matter what "big" words you add to it, it is always nothing more than the notion that "well God did it, and that is all that you need to know."

Creationism does no science, it does no medicine, it does no research into how the world operates on a day-to-day and eon-to-eon basis. Creationism, absent of science, would still lay claim to a flat earth that has a small golden disk arc over it in the heavens which only extends up so far, and then begins God's house. Creationism would still use leeches as a medical tool against most diseases, and would never have gotten around to investigating germs or the spread of disease. Instead Creationism would still lay claim to demons as the source of many diseases (that couldn't be cured by leeches).

Why? Because this is what the Bible says is true of the human condition. The Bible never speaks of germ theory, viruses, or genetic mutations (or recessive genetic traits) causing inheritable diseases. If no science had ever bucked the "God does it and we are powerless to understand it" tact of the Bible, then no breakthroughs in medicine would have ever occurred. This is not to say that medicine was done by heretics or atheists, rather it was done by people who had the audacity to question what was once beyond question -- God's plan.

Today, creationism is the last holdout of that failed worldview. Medicine, physics, astronomy and biology have all proven themselves to be not just valid and useful, but right -- and by right, I mean True with a capital "T". Creationism clings to that view that we cannot, by definition, ascertain how organisms change over time because God simply created them the way they are today. Oh sure, most, if not all, creationists agree that "microevolution" happens; even though they fail to get involved in any of that research, simply relying on real science to do that for them. But they all believe that there is some inherant "stop sign" in the genetic code, or wherever, that prevents all those accumulated micro changes from adding up to a species change. "A dog has never given birth to a cat" is their plea. But that is not what evolution says, not even close. Evolution can be more accurately (even though this simplification is not entirely correct either) described as a pre-dog gives birth to another pre-dog who gives birth to another pre-dog (and so on) and then after thousands of generations, that last pre-dog is nothing like the first pre-dog, it is now a pre-cat. Furthermore, other pre-dogs (identical to that first pre-dog) did the same thing through the generations and arrived at a pre-dog that is now nothing like the first pre-dog, but is more like today's dogs. Each step is a micro change, and each step led to two different lineages, one for today's dogs and one for today's cats. As proof evolution does not do this, creationists argue that two floors of a building are seperated by 10 feet. No creature has legs ten feet long, and thus no creature can step from one floor to the next. But build a staircase, and suddenly one step at a time you can get from the first to the second floor with considerably shorter legs. Creationists argue that the staircase is impossible because God said it was. Intuitive, indeed.

So let's apply all this to Ron Comfort who appears in Kirk Cameron's video. First I would like to make clear the two main points of this five minute section of that video.
1) Creationism makes sense intuitively, just look at how supportive the banana is for human consumption.
2) Because of this simplicity much less faith is required for believing creationism than for believing evolutionism (and by default, atheism).

The intuitive problem has already shown to be not just useless, but counter-productive, as intuitive views of the world and its origins leads to Biblical creationism and a "God did it" mentality. Once you accept that "God did it", then investigating how it works is pointless. Why investigate how bacteria mutate, or how viruses can jump from one species to another, if you accept that God made them exactly what they are, and any investigation is encroaching upon God's sole knowledge (which is unknowable to us mere humans). Why bother? Why not simply do what the Bible says and pray for the demons to be excercized, or use the "laying on of hands" to cure? The answer is those things do not work, the first scientists recognized this and began to look for themselves into the causes. The cures came afterwards. If the Bible worked there would never have been any reason whatsoever to look towards more naturalistic causes.

Sure the Bible's account in Genesis is simple and easy to understand. It was written almost three thousand years ago! Those simple goat herders had no knowledge of physics or biology from which to draw their stories of creation from. So they made up the simplest and easiest story they could. They came up with: "God Did It!" It takes very little faith or knowledge to accept that. But their severely limited knowledge of the world, and the universe, shows through in today's defenders of their creation story. They use only the simplest and most convenient examples to prove it. Ron and Kirk chose the banana. It was compared to a soda can. (I would have chosen something more nourishing and healthy than soda, but then again I am not a creationist.) The banana is easily held in the hand! The banana has an easy to open top! The banana has peels which make access convenient! It is all so clear and simple. Much more so than that ubercomplicated evolution. But what about coconuts? They possess none of those properties. They must be cracked open forceably, their access is inconvenient and difficult, there is no easy way to hold and eat it. What about potatoes? They must be dug up out of the ground, sliced into thin strips and fried in oil (peanut or vegetable). [Yes I am referring to french fries here...] Ron's simple claims of creationism look ridiculous when one thinks of how the real world operates. His is the simple faith that fails to match the real complexities of the world all humans actually live in.

This leads us into the second claim of Ron and Kirk. The amount of faith needed for creationism versus evolution. First let us consider what faith is. In the epistle to the Hebrews, faith is described as: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" [Hebrews 11:1 NKJV]. Hebrews 11:2,3 further describe those "things not seen".

I would like to open this rebuttal with this statement: "I do not now, nor have I ever, had any faith that 2 + 2 = 4." There is no need for faith to make that statement true. Faith in mathematics is useless. The same goes for gravity. I do not have faith that gravity will continue to keep me firmly attached to the surface of the earth. Faith is useless in this context as well. The same for the sun rising (i.e. the earth rotating), or the moon orbiting the earth. Faith is not a factor in these.

But suddenly when it comes to evolution, out of nowhere, creationists claim evolution is all about faith, and so much faith in fact, that it is far greater than the amount of faith necessary to be a Christian. I will point the reader to the New Testament and Paul's epistles to discern that faith is the only currency Christians have. Faith in Jesus is the path to heaven -- the ONLY path to heaven. And we know that faith is the substance of things hoped for. Not things known to be true, like 2 + 2 = 4. The point is that Christianity is founded on the idea of faith, this hope that things unseen are real. But what of evolution? Is it also based on faith? I have never seen one single article, book, essay, or manuscript that described evolution in terms of faith. In fact, the opposite is true of all the literature of evolution. Evolution is based solely on evidence, the things seen.

Thus there is a duplicitousness to the statement that it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does creationism. There is no evidence, the things seen, to back up creationism, whereas there are mountains of evidence backing up evolution. Thus the only real comparison of faith in evolution versus creationism comes down to what you trust more, evidence of things unknowable or that of things knowable (and already known). If taking things known is to be called faith, then you inevitably come up with having to claim that it must be taken on faith that 2 + 2 = 4, because it is knowable and known in exactly the same way that genetics and fossils are known.

Finally, how much must Christians (and Christianity) cheapen the foundation of their religion, if they are going to claim that it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does creationism (and Christianity). They are essentially saying that the bedrock of their religion -- faith -- is so tiny, when compared to the mountain of faith required to believe that 2 + 2 = 4 or that evolution leads to concrete results that they themselves use in their everyday lives (e.g. disinfectants to kill germs to protect from disease, new anti-bacterial medications). How can faith in Christianity be so small, when it is the entire makeup of the religion. How can it be less than "faith" in evolution. Wouldn't that make the Bible's definition of faith proof that evolution is real, since evolution requires "more faith" than Christianity, according to Christian doctrine, if Christianity is to be based solely on faith?

That Christians would be so willing to cheapen their own faith into non-consequence just to destroy evolution must tell you how little of substance there really is to Christianity.

And for the record: It takes zero faith to be an atheist. Atheists base their "religion" on what is known, that is, what is seen. If God is by definition, unseen, as Hebrews would have you believe, then there can be no faith to atheism, it is by Biblical proclamation totally faith-free. An atheist says merely that, "I see no evidence of God, therefore I don't believe in God." If the evidence changes, then the belief of the atheist changes, pure and simple observation. So far, that has not occurred.

End Note:
At least for the time being, the best and the brightest of Christian apologetics can point to the Kirk Cameron video showing Ron Comfort holding a phalic banana in one hand and poking it into his other hand (closed into the shape of a vagina) and saying this is the best evidence of creationism -- EVER! Certainly evolution is doomed after this intellectual display...

Kirk Cameron and Creationism

It never ceases to amaze me just how silly Creationists are. Kirk Cameron made this video to defend creationism. Watch the first five minutes of it. You will love the part about the almighty banana.

My thought on this: If the banana were such a perfect demonstration of why Biblical creationism is true; then what the heck is up with the watermelon? Certainly Gallager's smash-o-matic cannot be God's ingenius plan???

Thanks to Crooks & Liars (and all the other sites this clip showed up on!)


Update: I have written a new post here which points out the silliness of Kirk's video even more clearly.