Interview with Ray Comfort: Discussion, Pt. 2

Recently, we had well-known evangelist Ray Comfort here for an e-interview.  We tried to stick to honest questions rather than attempting to create some kind of theological traps, but we're still going to comment on his ideas.  As I noted in the first part of this discussion, Comfort is obviously quite busy, so I don't expect him to be able to respond here personally, but as usual, anyone who feels that they can shed some light on my questions about these issues is more than welcome to comment.

The next question concerned the Biblical "kind" and how such a concept would be defined in biological terms.  Comfort's answer:

The word "kind" is the biblical word for "species." God created dogs to reproduced dogs, cats to reproduce cats. Every animal was created to bring forth after its own kind. The Book of Genesis repeats this many times in the first chapter to make it clear, for those of us who are a little slow. We see evidence of this, both in the fossil record, and in living creation. The meaning of the word "species" has changed over the years. At one point it was synonymous with "kinds." However, nowadays it is used differently in different circles.

Those who are familiar with Comfort's work will be unsurprised at the ignorance of basic scientific and biological concepts here, but on the off chance that Mr. Comfort himself is reading this, let's see if I can explain this in simple language.

Regardless of what the Book of Genesis states, organisms do not remain biologically identical from generation to generation.  Even a very small amount of "genetic drift" is all we need for natural selection to begin working.  The Genesis definition of "kind" is interesting, but it's not useful as a scientific criteria, is it?  Within relatively few generations, organisms can undergo very significant changes from the original species.  I mean, we would expect a useful definition of "species" to be able to tell us when speciation has effectively occurred, right?

That's what we would be looking for, here.  Because we pro-science folks claim that speciation does occur (we can even cause it in a lab, right in front of our eyes, no less), to debate that claim we obviously have to agree on a definition of species that would tell us when the organisms would become a different species.  By your biblical definition of "kind," we could show you organisms bred in different directions for any length of time, becoming vastly different organisms, and they would literally be impossible to ever get to two different species!

The next question is all about this fun biology stuff, too.  I'll just reprint the whole thing:

"Have you met, chat[tted] with or otherwise communicated with an Old Earth Creationist named Adnan Oktar (pen name of Harun Yahya)? His argument for creation is that despite Millions of years of existence, the fossil record shows that all kind[s] of creatures does not display any form of change at all. A fossil of a fish seems to be the same as a modern fish, a fossil of a bird seems to be the same as a modern bird, etc. He says that this clearly shows that creative genius of his Creator, Allah. What fossil evidence can you point out to him that he is clearly mistaken, that micro-evolution does happen and that an ancient fish is very dissimilar to a modern fish. An ancient bird is very dissimilar to a modern bird, etc.? What physical evidence can you show him to demonstrate that the God of the Bible is the creative force behind all of these micro-evolution? Evidence that is so compelling that nothing in the Koran can dispute to it's truth?"

Comfort's answer:

 I have never heard of Mr. Oktar and I am therefore not familiar with his arguments, other than what you have related. Those who believe that a fish fossil is "ancient" reveal their unquestioning faith in dating methods. The fact that a fossil of a bird is different from a modern bird simply means that the Creator made them different. There was no transition from one species to another, so micro-evolution has nothing to do with Darwinian evolution. We can see micro-evolution throughout the entire creation of God--both in the fossil record and living things--from the small finch to the large albatross, from the massive Great Dane to the tiny chihuahua. These are variations within species.

As for the God of the Bible being the Creator. That's simple. The moral Law , which Moslems embrace (the Law of Moses), leaves all of humanity condemned to death and on the path to Hell. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only God-given means of escape. Islam has no answer to that, our biggest dilemma (see John 8:31-32).

Again, if you are reading this, Mr. Comfort, I apologize.  I really, genuinely don't wish to make fun of people, but  please try to understand how scientifically ignorant that first paragraph is.  I myself have no more than a layman's minimal self-education in the most simplistic, dumbed-down scientific concepts, and even I can tell that these statements are so hilariously wrong that I nearly pissed myself laughing.

First off; "unquestioning faith" in dating methods?  Mr. Comfort, take this as friendly advice in how to increase the effectiveness of your ministry.  To people who understand the scientific method and are willing to look at the evidence without biased assumptions, the reliability of scientific dating methods can be proven about as thoroughly as the fact that you'll lose your house if you refuse to ever pay your mortgage again.  Even if you could show 100 cases of grossly inaccurate dates derived with radiocarbon dating, isochron dating, etc., you would still not be approaching the hundreds of thousands of verified accurate cases.

On a side note, why do evangelists like to take basic conclusions like the general reliability of scientific dating methods and insist that we must have "faith" in them?  They themselves claim that faith is a reliable method of discovering truth!  When pressed, some religious persons have even insisted that faith is simply a religious, spiritual synonym for "reason," and that they hold things by "faith" only when those claims have stood up to evidence and logic (an entertaining statement in it's own right).  Whatever the definition used, how on earth do they disparage our conclusions for supposedly being faith-based, while simultaneously claiming that their own claims are very reliable exactly because of faith?!?!

Secondly, about there being no transitions from one species to another - this is, again, a clear indication of gross scientific ignorance.  This is really just horrifyingly inaccurate.  There are, or course, multiple instances of observed speciation; there is even an entire classification system for organizing speciation events, for Pete's sake.  The claim that so-called "micro-evolutionary changes" only occur within species is not only falsified by direct observation, this artificial distinction betrays an ignorance of the scientific method as well.  Ziztur and I have blogged about this before, but briefly, science doesn't test histories (because then science couldn't operate on any phenomena outside of our direct observation), it tests mechanism and predictions.  The mechanisms that operate in so-called "micro-evolution" are the exact same mechanisms of "macro-evolution," yet creationists must claim that while evolutionary predictions can be directly tested and verified on a small scale, they will be grossly inaccurate on a large scale!  Since there is no meaningful distinction here, any tests of predictions of the mechanisms will serve to either support or falsify evolution as a whole.  If there is a meaningful distinction to be made between "micro-" and "macro-evolution," then creationists who wish to falsify evolution theory have to first describe what separates the two mechanisms, and then show that while the predictions of "micro-evolution" are accurate, they will somehow be inaccurate on a large, "macro" scale.  Obviously, they have not even tried to do this.

You have to wonder just how deeply ignorant a person must be of basic, fundamental biology to arrive at such grossly inaccurate conclusions, but we get verification of Comfort's scientific ignorance - ". . .from the small finch to the large albatross, from the massive Great Dane to the tiny chihuahua. These are variations within species."  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, 'birds' are a species.  It was at exactly this point that I came dangerously close to peeing in my pants.

No, Mr. Comfort, Aves are actually a "Class," several levels higher in taxonomy than "Species."  Actually, there are some 10,000 different species in the Aves Class.  Seriously?  You don't know that a Finch and an Albatross are different species?!?!  Wow.  Wow, wow, wow.  My brain and bladder hurt.  I give up for today.  More later.  We're such gluttons for punishment.

Interview with Ray Comfort: Discussion

After several days off for the holidays, we're back to discuss some of Ray Comfort's ideas that we saw in his e-interview that he was kind enough to provide for us.

The first question observed that many Christians don't recognize Ray Comfort's name, and asked if he was possibly more famous among atheists.  His reply:

Not every Christian watches TV or reads books. However, it seems that most atheists (thanks the Richard Dawkins and others) are pretty familiar with the brainless idiot known as "banana-man."

It's not just Comfort, though; if you name Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, William Lane Craig, etc., I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a higher proportion of atheists recognizing these names than Christians.  I can't cite hard data here, so this is just speculation rather than observation, but bear with me.

Two possible perspectives on this possibility.  From my perspective as an atheist, it seems to be the case that self-described "atheists" as a group are self-selecting for people who seek out other perspectives and willingly challenge even widely-held opinions.  In a culture like America, so saturated with religious and spiritual belief, people who reject religious and spiritual claims are clearly far less likely to simply "go with the flow" and accept the perspective of their culture.  This is not to say that all atheists are shining beacons of rationality, incapable of error - far from it (there are certain conspiracy theorist nutjobs I could mention, and there's always Ayn Rand . . .).  Even these individuals, though, are still more likely, as a rule, to actively familiarize themselves with differing perspectives.

Of course, the common theist has a simple response; we atheists (or any other culturally non-conformist label) are clearly quite convinced that we're wrong on some level, and we are "seeking answers" not because we want to be certain that we're not mistaken, but because we actually believe that we are mistaken.  When Ziztur and I visit different churches, on occasion we will politely inform church-goers who ask about us that we're atheists.  Far and away, the most common response we hear is that we've found ourselves in the pew because we are being "called" or "led" to search for God.  To this, all I can say is that in my own limited experience, such church services or apologetic books are no more convincing to we atheists than the "new atheist" books are to your average theist.  After many churches and many books, our atheism is, if anything, is less dispute than it ever was.

The next question was, seemingly, an extremely simple theological question; it asked Comfort to define "the Gospel."

In a nutshell--that Christ died for our sins and rose again on the third day. The word "gospel" means good news, and the gospel doesn't make sense until we see why we need it, in the same way the good news of a cure makes no sense until we understand that we have a disease. The terminal disease is sin. If it's allowed to take its course, it will not only kill us, it will justly take us to a terrible place of punishment called "Hell"--because each of us has violated God's Law (the Ten Commandments). He sees lust as adultery and hatred as murder. He is morally perfect, and that leaves us all in big trouble. The good news is that God is rich in mercy, became a human being, and took our punishment upon Himself. That means, because Jesus paid our fine and rose again from the dead, God can legally let us walk out of the courtroom. He can forgive us and let us live. Our case can be dismissed upon repentance and trust in the Savior. The good news is that any of us can have everlasting life. Read the Gospel of John for details.

Interestingly, this "Gospel story" is possibly the single largest barrier to my ever becoming a Christian (and that's saying something, considering all the other reasons I could name).  To put it simply, if I tell you that this season's particular strain of the flu could be very nasty, and that you should get vaccinated ASAP, I can explain why.  If you ask, in all innocence, "So this flu thing . . . is that bad?  Why?"  I can explain that the flu could give you headaches, muscle aches, a cough, and just generally make you feel like crap, and that a few people who are particularly susceptible can even die from it if they catch it from you.  Now, here's the important part - if you ask, "Why does the flu do that?" I could answer that it's simply a result of how the flu virus reproduces with the living cells in your body.  I could say that the flu doesn't have a mind, and that if it did, it would be wrong for the flu virus to hurt and kill people like it does.  Thus, it's easy to understand why you should get vaccinated (in theory, anyway . . .).

I should mention, first of all, that not all Christians believe in a literal hell, to their immense credit.  With or without this traditionalist theology, though, the Gospel story raises more questions than it answers.  Why does God feel the need to punish us with eternal torture simply for disbelieving in him?  Why is there such a harsh penalty for having lustful thoughts, especially when every single human being has lustful thoughts, without exception?  Even without a literal hell, are "anger" and "lustful thoughts" still sins?  Who should rationally be held responsible for lustful thoughts or anger being universal amongst human beings, us or the being(s) who created us?

Additionally, how does the death of Jesus Christ absolve us of our crimes?  I've noticed that whenever Comfort discusses our "criminal actions" as sinners, he almost always uses the analogy of a legal fine being paid for us so that our case can be thrown out of court.  I would have thought that it's obvious why this analogy isn't convincing to non-believers:  If a crime of any significant severity is committed, the court doesn't just administer a simple fine - the offender goes to prison.  If hell is an appropriate punishment for sin, then the analogy of a legal fine is grossly inaccurate (in fact, there really is no good comparison at all, because in America we don't even punish our very worst criminals by torturing them to death, which is still far more humane than the traditional concept of hell).  Perhaps the closest we can come is the death sentence, or in societies that don't even permit the death sentence on ethical grounds, perhaps life imprisonment without any possibility of parole.  Why doesn't Comfort use these punishments as an illustration of the punishment we deserve for our sin?  Why does he use the very lightest punishment that our system has for any crime, a mere fine?  It's possible for a person to pay a fine for someone else, simply because there's no good way to make sure that the guilty person pays it themselves.  A prison sentence, to say nothing of a death sentence, on the other hand, obviously must always be paid by the person who committed the crime. 

So, there's one of the single, largest questions I have about Christianity.  It seems to me that the very first principle of anything resembling justice is that you punish the person who actually committed the immoral act, and do not punish someone else in their place.  Imagine a society built around the principle that a person who commits a wrongful act cannot atone for their own wrongdoing, and the only way for justice to be served is for an innocent person to be punished ( and that the more innocent the punished person is, the more righteous and just the punishment will be).  If this society does every single other thing with their courts, prison system, and police force correctly, they are still doing nothing correctly.  They could get justice right in every single other way, and would still basically have a completely unjust society.  This Christian, Gospel idea of wrongdoers being incapable of atoning for their immoral actions and instead being redeemed by the punishment of a completely innocent person is not simply incorrect justice, it is not merely mistaken justice, it is the polar goddamned opposite of justice.

More about Ray Comfort coming soon.  Obviously, I would love for Ray to hang out here and reply to our perspective, but I totally understand that he's very, very busy, so I won't see his absence as proof that he can't answer our questions.  Of course, our standard modus operandi is to welcome any dissenting opinion, so I look forward to anyone who can shed some light on this seeming contradiction.  That last question, in particular, about Gospel justice has vexed me all my life.

Interview with Ray Comfort!

The other day I got the opportunity to send Ray Comfort (who blogs here and writes just about everywhere) some questions. Here they are!

Dear Mr. Comfort,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to e-interview you on my blog. I know you do lots of interviews, so I tried to ask you some questions in this interview that are a little bit out-of-the-box. Of course, you're not obligated to answer any of them. Some of them are questions that were suggested by my commenters.

A very odd thing happens when I try to talk to Christians about this famous Christian named Ray Comfort – none of them seem to know who you are! Do you think you're more well-known to atheists or to Christians, and why?

Not every Christian watches TV or reads books. However, it seems that most atheists (thanks the Richard Dawkins and others) are pretty familiar with the brainless idiot known as "banana-man."

(Asked by my friend Pastor Keith): What is the gospel?

In a nutshell--that Christ died for our sins and rose again on the third day. The word "gospel" means good news, and the gospel doesn't make sense until we see why we need it, in the same way the good news of a cure makes no sense until we understand that we have a disease. The terminal disease is sin. If it's allowed to take its course, it will not only kill us, it will justly take us to a terrible place of punishment called "Hell"--because each of us has violated God's Law (the Ten Commandments). He sees lust as adultery and hatred as murder. He is morally perfect, and that leaves us all in big trouble. The good news is that God is rich in mercy, became a human being, and took our punishment upon Himself. That means, because Jesus paid our fine and rose again from the dead, God can legally let us walk out of the courtroom. He can forgive us and let us live. Our case can be dismissed upon repentance and trust in the Savior. The good news is that any of us can have everlasting life. Read the Gospel of John for details.

(Asked by reader Gord) Can you define "kind"? What is the closest equivalent to "kind" in taxonomy? Species? Genus? Something else?

The word "kind" is the biblical word for "species." God created dogs to reproduced dogs, cats to reproduce cats. Every animal was created to bring forth after its own kind. The Book of Genesis repeats this many times in the first chapter to make it clear, for those of us who are a little slow. We see evidence of this, both in the fossil record, and in living creation. The meaning of the word "species" has changed over the years. At one point it was synonymous with "kinds." However, nowadays it is used differently in different circles.

(Also asked by Gord, long question): Have you met, chat[tted] with or otherwise communicated with an Old Earth Creationist named Adnan Oktar (pen name of Harun Yahya)? His argument for creation is that despite Millions of years of existence, the fossil record shows that all kind[s] of creatures does not display any form of change at all. A fossil of a fish seems to be the same as a modern fish, a fossil of a bird seems to be the same as a modern bird, etc. He says that this clearly shows that creative genius of his Creator, Allah. What fossil evidence can you point out to him that he is clearly mistaken, that micro-evolution does happen and that an ancient fish is very dissimilar to a modern fish. An ancient bird is very dissimilar to a modern bird, etc.? What physical evidence can you show him to demonstrate that the God of the Bible is the creative force behind all of these micro-evolution? Evidence that is so compelling that nothing in the Koran can dispute to it's truth?

I have never heard of Mr. Oktar and I am therefore not familiar with his arguments, other than what you have related. Those who believe that a fish fossil is "ancient" reveal their unquestioning faith in dating methods. The fact that a fossil of a bird is different from a modern bird simply means that the Creator made them different. There was no transition from one species to another, so micro-evolution has nothing to do with Darwinian evolution. We can see micro-evolution throughout the entire creation of God--both in the fossil record and living things--from the small finch to the large albatross, from the massive Great Dane to the tiny chihuahua. These are variations within species.

As for the God of the Bible being the Creator. That's simple. The moral Law , which Moslems embrace (the Law of Moses), leaves all of humanity condemned to death and on the path to Hell. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only God-given means of escape. Islam has no answer to that, our biggest dilemma (see John 8:31-32).

(Asked by EdW) You have talked to a huge number of people about their beliefs over the years, atheists and Christians alike. According to your understanding of Christianity, broadly speaking how many would go to Heaven if the world ended tomorrow?

God only knows. The only way anyone can have assurance of everlasting life is to repent, trust Jesus alone for their salvation (without good works--see Ephesians 2:8-9) and show the genuine nature of your repentance by living a life free from hypocrisy (something the Bible calls "holiness"). You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that there aren't too many who do that. The modern church is full of pretenders, and they will be sorted out from the genuine, on the Day of Judgment.

Can you comment on the claim that part of your introduction to the 150th anniversary edition of Origin of Species was plagiarized?

No.

You're voting in a local election, and you have a choice of voting for two candidates: one candidate advocates all of the policies you advocate for, and seems rather intelligent, qualified and is an atheist. The other candidate stands against all of the policies you stand for, does not seem qualified, seems a little dim and is a Christian. Who do you vote for and why? (For me, if the situation were reversed and I had the choice of voting for an unqualified atheist or a qualified Christian, I would not hesitate to vote for the Christian)

I would never vote for anyone who advocated the murder of children in the womb. If an atheist was pro-life, of course I would vote for him. However, I will qualify that answer. A person who is surrounded by creation and yet denies the axiom that there is a Creator, isn't smart in the truest sense of the word. So an atheist disqualifies himself from the race, by the very nature of his life-philosophy. Any person who is a Christian, however dumb he may be in your eyes, is very wise because he has obeyed the gospel and has everlasting life. The day will come when you will see that to be true.

Have you ever been really stumped by a question someone asked you on the blog or on the street? If so, what question stumped you?

There are many questions I can't answer. One is why God allows suffering (it's not that suffering exists--the Bible explains it in that we live in a "fallen" creation). But why does God allow it? This is a mystery but it is not a dilemma to me. The day will come when we (those that love God) will have complete understanding. In the meanwhile, I trust Him with all of my heart, mind, soul and strength (almost every other question has a rational answer. I published something called The Evidence Bible that contains 100 of the most commonly asked question of the Christian faith).

What do you think of all of the atheist billboards that are going up across the USA?

I love them. They make people think about God.

Do you think that atheists and theists should try to coexist? Why or why not? How?

Yes, I think we should co-exist. There is a problem though. I regularly pray for atheists, buy them meals, send them money/vouches to restaurants, give them gifts, and yet they return hatred for my love. If you think I am exaggerating, Google my name and get ready for your ears to tingle. So the problem isn't with Christians--we love atheists. It's with the angry, militant, God-hating, God-blaspheming, God-denying atheist, who sees it as his mission in life to rid our country of any semblance of God. These folk meet regularly to talk about God and how He doesn't exist. They write books about Him. They hang around Christian blogs like bugs around a campfire. They put up billboards about God, and they see us as the enemy. So if a sword exists, it comes from your side, not ours.

Obviously, I have read your entire book (You Can Lead an Atheist To Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Think), given that on my blog I responded to something on almost every page. What books by modern biologists or atheists have you read? Have you read any to the same depth?

Evolution For Dummies (I'm sure some would say that that is an appropriate book for me). The Wild World of the Future talks about future evolution speculation, as opposed to the usual evolution speculation of past. The last book I read was the modern biologist's bible--On the Origin of Species. I read it from cover to cover and found it a difficult read because most of it is pretty boring. I have heard atheists say the same thing. However, thanks to our generous giveaway of a total of 205,000 copies, others can read for themselves what Darwin actually believed, and make up their own minds. Thanks for letting me give my side of the argument. Best wishes.

I’m interviewing Ray Comfort

Ray Comfort, the person who wrote You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But you Can't Make Him Think and who recently published a 150^th anniversary edition of Origin of Species with a special 50 page introduction, has agreed to do an email interview with me on this blog.

You might remember that we analyzed all (and I mean all) of Ray Comfort's You Can Lead… and so getting to correspond with Comfort after all of that blog fodder is an interesting prospect. Obviously, Comfort and I disagree on a great many things, but we can certainly still have a civil conversation with each other.

Comfort actually answers a lot of questions in interviews that are challenging to his viewpoint, but I'd like to ask some out of the box questions – something he might not hear everyday. Here are some I am thinking of asking:

A very odd thing happens when I try to talk to Christians about this apologist named Ray Comfort – none of them seem to know who you are! Do you think you're more well-known to atheists or to Christians, and why?

If you take a gander at statistics, you'll see that the rate of crime has fallen since 1990. There are lots of different theories floating around as to why this is. What's your take?

You're voting in a local election, and you have a choice of voting for two candidates: one candidate advocates all of the policies you advocate for, and seems rather intelligent, qualified and is an atheist. The other candidate stands against all of the policies you stand for, does not seem qualified, seems a little dim and is a Christian. Who do you vote for and why?

Have you ever been really stumped by a question someone asked you on the blog or on the street? If so, what question stumped you?

What do you think of all of the atheist billboards that are going up across the USA?

Do you think that atheists and theists should try to coexist? Why or why not? How?

Obviously, I have read your entire book (You Can Lead an Atheist To Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Think), given that on my blog I responded to something on almost every page. What books by modern biologists or atheists have you read? Have you read any to the same depth?

Do you guys have anything you're just dying to ask him?

Ray on Occasional Days: 8:7 and we're DONE!

This is it. It's official. This is the last bit of Ray's book, so this will be the last "Ray a day"/"Ray on Occasional Days".  I must say, Ray really goes out with a bang. Read on. This was originally printed on Ray's blog, so I'll quote the whole thing:

Hello. My name is “Unreasonable.” I am a very proud demon. I love to hate, and I live for lust. I am extremely prejudiced. Come too close, and I will hiss out my venom. I don’t fear God or man, and I live in the House of Atheist.

If you want to enter my house, know that I control who and what gets in, and I'm in complete control of what comes out. Try knocking to see if I will open the door. Before you even try, let me tell you that I despise truth and will not let it enter . . . unless I think it’s in my best interests.

Take the subject of bats. The Bible says that bats are "birds," probably because they have wings and fly. That’s ridiculous. Bats are not birds. Now if science had said that having wings and flying makes them a form of bird, then that makes sense. In fact, it makes perfect sense.

How about Cain and his wife? Where did she come from? They say he married a sister. I won’t even come to the door on that. It's moronic. However, if science said that we trace our human ancestry back to one individual, then that truth is welcome, because it makes sense.

I can look directly at this vast, intricate creation and say that it’s not proof that there is a Creator. I need give no explanation. Such talk flies in the face of reason and common logic, but I don’t care.

There is a reason I don’t like truth. It’s because it carries light, and I don’t like light . . . unless I can control it. There is a room inside my house that I like to keep dark. Very dark. It is what I call an "adult" fantasy room. You know what I mean. That room keeps the residents here, and it keeps me in control.

I like to call evil good, and good evil. I do this because I hate absolutes, because absolutes speak of truth.

Each time I am unreasonable, I fortify my house.

I love living in the House of Atheist with my other demon friends. That's because we are very welcome here. When the resident is seized by my master and taken to his permanent place, I will just move on and find another house. There are plenty out there.

Actually, I know that everything the Bible says is true. The Word of God makes me tremble. In the face of what I have said, that makes no sense. I know that . . . I'm just being Unreasonable.

Part of me just wants to let this sit here. Essentially, I think it speaks for itself. Alas, the last nail of the coffin must be hammered in. I really wanted you guys to read that without breaking it up. Now we can go through it bit by bit.

Hello. My name is “Unreasonable.” I am a very proud demon. I love to hate, and I live for lust. I am extremely prejudiced. Come too close, and I will hiss out my venom. I don’t fear God or man, and I live in the House of Atheist.

Ohai! Unreasonable means something like ‘inconsistent with reason, logic, or common sense”. Sure, I would not disagree that atheists reject common sense, but I have no idea what hate and lust have to do with atheism or unreasonableness. Unless Ray is just trying to throw in as many negative-sounding words as he can to describe the target of his bigotry.

If you want to enter my house, know that I control who and what gets in, and I'm in complete control of what comes out. Try knocking to see if I will open the door. Before you even try, let me tell you that I despise truth and will not let it enter . . . unless I think it’s in my best interests.

So this demon “Unreasonable” has this house called the “House of Atheist” where I guess the atheists go. Got it.

This is coming from a guy who continually goes on about how much he cares about atheists. If I said this about my mother, would you think I cared for her? It is so interesting how people like Ray can claim to care about someone while at the same time denigrating them. This type of writing is patently irresponsible – by creating a strawman of “atheists” as evil, vile people, publishing it in a book that millions can purchase and read, Ray is doing nothing more than perpetuating hatred for an entire group of people who, to my knowledge, are just as moral and ethical (often more moral and ethical) than theists. Imagine, for a moment, that these words were written about gays, or woman, or blacks, or Catholics.  Imagine if, “House of Atheist” was instead, “cathedral”. The bigotry is oozing out Rays ears.

Take the subject of bats. The Bible says that bats are "birds," probably because they have wings and fly. That’s ridiculous. Bats are not birds. Now if science had said that having wings and flying makes them a form of bird, then that makes sense. In fact, it makes perfect sense.

It is easy to take lame examples of Bible contradictions that non-theists don’t care about, show how silly they are, and then proclaim that therefore non-theists are absurd. I don’t care that the Bible labels bats as birds. The Bible labels bats as birds because the Bible is not a science book. It also says you can breed animals in front of spotted sticks to create spotted animals. This is demonstrably false. If the Bible is divine, it should not contain demonstrably false information. Of course, once you have magic on your side, you can beg your way out of any question. Maybe back before there was a lot of sin, you could breed animals next to spotted sticks to produce spotted animals! Maybe back then, the laws of physics operated differently!

The point that people make when they point out inconsistencies in the Bible is this: if the Bible is supposed to be completely, absolutely perfect, then it should contain no errors. If it contains errors, then it is not perfect. This would not be a problem if people did not claim the Bible was inerrant in the first place. Pointing out consistencies is a way of showing someone how absurd it is to say that a book is inerrant.

It’s fascinating when apologists try to do the same thing to, say, Origin of Species, as if pointing out an error in the book will falsify evolution. We don’t think Origin is perfect, so pointing out an error will likely lead us to say, “Yup. And?” It just doesn’t have the same power, because no claims of inerrancy were made.

How about Cain and his wife? Where did she come from? They say he married a sister. I won’t even come to the door on that. It's moronic. However, if science said that we trace our human ancestry back to one individual, then that truth is welcome, because it makes sense.

Cain and his wife is a very legitimate criticism of the morality of the Bible and the story of creation. So are criticisms of Abraham Solomon having 700 wives and 300 concubines while being praised by the Christian god repeatedly. As an outsider, I ask myself why we might want to teach our children these stories, along with other stories in the Bible which promote sexism, racism, genocide, etc.

‘Science’ does not say things. Scientists makes observations, use reason and logic to develop mechanism for how those observations came to be, experiment, and come to conclusions. Scientists do not posit that our ancestry can be traced back to one individual. Biblical creationism does, however, so I find it quite interesting that Ray uses this as an example. If our observations, rational thinking and experimentation led us to conclude that we did arise from a single individual, then of course I would accept that. Our observations/rational thinking/experimentation do not come to this conclusion, and so nor do I.

This is what being open-minded means – allowing your conclusions to be amenable to evidence. When I am in a disagreement over someone about some objective trust, I like to ask them what evidence they would need in order for them to change their mind. If they respond by telling me nothing can change their mind, then our conversation is over. Their mind is closed.

I can look directly at this vast, intricate creation and say that it’s not proof that there is a Creator. I need give no explanation. Such talk flies in the face of reason and common logic, but I don’t care.

Saying that creation proves there is a creator is begging the question, or using circular logic, which flies in the face of reason and common logic. Circular reasoning is one of the first logical fallacies people tend to learn about. If you assume your conclusion in your premise, you can prove anything. For example: I can look at this vast whorl of a universe designed by processes not guided by an intelligent force and say it is proof that the universe was not created. This is an absurd argument because it presupposes in the premise what I am attempting to conclude. As far as explanations go, plenty of those have been given. Plenty of explanations have been given to Ray himself, so I do not understand how he can miss them.

There is a reason I don’t like truth. It’s because it carries light, and I don’t like light . . . unless I can control it. There is a room inside my house that I like to keep dark. Very dark. It is what I call an "adult" fantasy room. You know what I mean. That room keeps the residents here, and it keeps me in control.

Here are some more examples of Ray’s bigotry toward atheists – claiming we hate ‘light’ (an obvious metaphor for ‘good stuff’) and love ‘dark’ (blatantly a metaphor for sexual depravity).

I like to call evil good, and good evil. I do this because I hate absolutes, because absolutes speak of truth.

What does “I like to call evil good, and good evil” have to do with absolutes? I can’t speak for all atheists, but I am no moral relativist Most Comfortian Christians are moral relativists, even as they decry moral relativism.

Moral relativism is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances. Christians do this all the time to explain why they do not follow the Bible with regard to behaviors like stoning disobedient children or not eating shellfish. There was a reason for the law then, or for that culture, or for those individual people, but not now.  Or, it is perfectly just for god to order individuals to hack off 200 foreskins, but it’s not okay for me to hack off 200 foreskins. This is the definition of moral relativism!

It is interesting that Christians cling to this idea of moral absolutism, because moral absolutism in their mind implies a moral lawgiver, which implies their god. Yet they are moral relativists, and so is their holy book.

Each time I am unreasonable, I fortify my house.

So whenever the demon Unreasonable is unreasonable, he makes the House of Atheist stronger.  Ray sounds like the demon of bigotry, again.

I love living in the House of Atheist with my other demon friends. That's because we are very welcome here. When the resident is seized by my master and taken to his permanent place, I will just move on and find another house. There are plenty out there.

The “resident” I guess is an atheist? Is the “master” in this metaphor a god, or Satan?

Actually, I know that everything the Bible says is true. The Word of God makes me tremble. In the face of what I have said, that makes no sense. I know that . . . I'm just being Unreasonable.

If everything in the Bible is true, then your god is a jackass.

Thanks Ray. It was a good ride. I really wish you would stop reinforcing the fact that atheists are the most hated minority in the US, though. It's irresponsible and disgusting.

Ray on Occasional Days: 8:6

Onto the last stretch of The Atheist Starter Kit:

8. Deal with the threat of eternal punishment by saying that you don't believe in the existence of Hell. Then convince yourself that because you don't believe in something, it therefore doesn't exist. Don't follow that logic onto a railway line and an oncoming train.

Let me answer your analogy with another analogy, Ray.  If we were standing on a busy railway line with a train approaching, you would be quite correct to flail your arms like a lunatic, screaming that we're going to die unless we get off of the tracks.  Happily, we're actually standing in the middle of a grassy field with no train, or even train tracks, in sight.  You are still madly flailing, foaming at the mouth, insisting that we're in imminent danger of being hit by a train.  We politely ask the crazy person exactly how he comes to that conclusion, and you reply that we actually do know that the train is coming, we just don't want to have to move off of our nice, comfy patch of grass.  We politely ignore you and finish our picnic.

And this is why Christians should stick to respectful discussion, without devolving into condesending mockery of atheists' conclusions.  We can make fun of Christian beliefs too, and frankly, it seems that we're better at this game.

9. Blame Christianity for the atrocities of the Roman Catholic church--when it tortured Christians through the Spanish Inquisition, imprisoned Galileo for his beliefs, or when it murdered Moslems in the Crusades.

Wow, we really love the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, don't we, Ray!

The Roman Catholic Church and Christianity were synonomous until just a couple hundred years ago.  What does Comfort think happened between 100 AD and 1517, when Martin Luther puked forth the Protestant Reformation?  Did Christianity simply not exist during this time?

Also, again, Protestant denominations have been no less bloodthirsty, simply on a somewhat diminished scale (and this due to comparative lack of numbers and resources, obviously not a difference of ideology):  The "hunting" and slaughter of "witches" with massive bodycounts, Oliver Cromwell, institutionalized slavery, or one could actually read the writings of John Calvin or Martin Luther (or Adolf Hitler, who admired Luther a great deal, without reservation).  Protestants are certainly no strangers to atrocities.

I find it telling that a Protestant's complaints against the Catholic Church, such as those above, are so strongly supported by a biblical ideology. The root conflict, as a Protestant claims, is that Catholics don't follow the Bible strictly and to the exclusion of all other factors, yet out of all the actions committed by the Catholic Church, on any scale, the persection and slaughter of heretics is perhaps the easiest to justify with explicit Biblical scripture.  It's very entertaining that guys like Comfort, who wish to distance their own religion from the atrocities committed by others of that same religion, must resort to criticizing those horrifying actions on some vague humanistic basis.  Do they realize, on some level, that you simply can't condemn discrimination and even genocide against any variety of "unbeliever" on a strictly scriptural basis?

10. Finally, keep in fellowship with other like-minded atheists who believe as you believe, and encourage each other in your beliefs. Build up your faith. Never doubt for a moment. Remember, the key to atheism is to be unreasonable. Fall back on that when you feel threatened. Think shallow, and keep telling yourself that you are intelligent. Remember, an atheist is someone who pretends there is no God.

Again, this is hilarious.  The massive irony here is that The Atheist Starter Kit is posted on Ray's website/blog; Atheist Central.  The vast, overwhelming majority of atheists that have read this Starter Kit are visitors to a blog all about how stupid atheism is!  Ziztur and I are always up for dialogue with a theist; we consider such discussion to be the very best and most entertaining type of conversation there is.  We go to a different church each week, for fuck's sake!  We read Comfort's blog and his books (obviously), we listen to Bott Radio 91.5 FM, we read every apologist book that we can get our hands on.  Both of our libraries are stocked with Lee Strobel.  Our next piece of meat is C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.  I have several friends who believe in God, and we talk about religion all the time.  If atheists so desperately need to only hang around and listen to other atheists to cling to their shallow belief system, we are obviously failing miserably to disbelieve the way we should.

Apparently, we atheists have to be so unreasonable to maintain our lack of belief.  If this is the case, then how is it that virtually all arguments for the existence of God rest on logical fallacies?  Why can every such argument be easily shown to be invalid when applied to other situations?  If atheism is so unreasonable, then why can't anybody seem to show what's wrong with it?  I hope, Mr. Comfort, that over the course of your latest book we've demonstrated pretty conclusively how flawed your beliefs are.  We don't tell ourselves that we're intelligent, we strive to improve our thinking by rigorously testing our conclusions and discarding those that fail.

Again with the "an atheist is someone who pretends there is no God" shit.  Okay, listen.  Here's my question about this, Ray.  You insist that we actually do believe in God.  If we did believe in your God, then shouldn't it be obvious that we've broken his law with rampant sin?  If we did believe in your God and the Bible, then we would also believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we're sinners and are going to hell.  My question is; why on earth would we then reject your god, and Jesus?  The reason you always give for our rejection of your god is that "we want to remain moral free-agents."  If our motivation really is completely selfish, as you insist, then there's no conceivable way we would reject Jesus and go to hell.  Your whole assertion makes no sense.

The simple fact that we do reject Jesus should demonstrate conclusively that we don't believe in your god, or his moral code, or his threat of hell.  It's obvious why a person would believe in your religion, even if they turn out to be wrong; it could give them comfort regarding their own mortality, or it could be nothing more than an evolutionary by-product of pre-human societies.  We can accept these explanations of your beliefs, while still concluding that those beliefs are mistaken.  You cannot do this; your Bible insists that everyone has a knowledge/belief in God, so that's what you claim, but it simply makes no sense at all to insist that we believe in your God and Bible, and thus in your god's morality and hell, but that we still reject him.  The only this could possibly make logical sense is to claim that we have a terribly misguided moral principle that causes us to reject your God, even if we sacrifice ourselves in hell to stand up for that principle.  However, you then go on and on about how we only reject God out of pure selfishness.

It's just staggering, Ray.  The sheer breadth and depth of your worldview's logical failures astounds me.

Ray on Occasional Days: 8:5

Onto the rest of the Atheist Starter Kit, reprinted in the back of Ray Comfort's You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence:

4. You can also deal with the "whoever looks on a woman to lust for her, has committed adultery with her already in his heart," by saying that there is no evidence that Jesus existed. None.

Well, one could potentially refute Comfort's assertion that any degree of lust is a terrible sin by pointing out that there is little evidence for a historical Jesus, and even less evidence for his divine, spiritual authority as the earthly incarnation of God.  The assertion itself is an Argument from Authority fallacy; Comfort (as well as just about everyone else who would claim that looking at someone with lust is exactly equivalent to adultery) makes no attempt to justify this statement, except to say that God says so.

However, this just doesn't get to the heart of the matter.  Even if it is a logical fallacy, simply pointing this out doesn't necessarily prove the assertion false.  Much simpler to just point out how stupid it is to insist that there's no difference between feeling lust for someone and, say, cheating on a committed partner behind their back.

Comfort is extremely fond of this line.  The appeal is obvious, I suppose; lust is one of the most nearly universal aspects of human existence.  What better way to make your religion's guilt system truly inescapable than to make simple, unenacted lust a capital offense?  I could also point out that it's sexist; from this line, one would assume that Jesus was completely ignorant of similar female biological urges.  Could it be that Jesus's opinion was formed in the culture of that place and time, where women weren't expected to have sexual urges?  The simplest way to point out the idiocy of this statement:  It ignores a relatively common situation:  What if the persons in a relationship are actually *gasp* half-way mature, rational people, who aren't offended by their partner(s) being attracted to other people?  Ziztur and I point out hot chicks and dudes to each other all the time, even if we would never in a million years deceive each other to fool around on the sides, behind each other's backs.

5. Believe that the Bible is full of mistakes, and actually says things like the world is flat. Do not read it for yourself. That is a big mistake. Instead, read, believe, and imitate Richard Dawkins. Learn and practice the use of big words. "Megalo-maniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully" is a good phrase to learn.

Daniel 4:10-11 describes how the king saw a vision of a great and mighty tree standing in the middle of the earth; it was "visible to the ends of the earth."  Obviously this is only possible if the earth were flat, but it would clearly be dishonest to insist that "the Bible says that the earth is flat" on the basis of this verse alone, even if it is slightly suspicious that Daniel, full of the wisdom and knowledge of God, failed to correct the king of this obvious scientific ignorance.  Revelations 1:7 claims that when Christ returns, "every eye will see him."  Still, some liberal or open-minded Christians would counter that the whole of Revelations is so outlandish and bizarre that the whole book is likely metaphor.

On the other hand, Matthew 4:8 says that Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms of earth at once, from a tall mountain.  Is this story of Jesus's temptation a mere metaphor?  I think a vast majority of Christians would claim that this story must be literal truth, yet it could not have occured on a spherical earth (unless one claims that the writer of this story was ignorant of all the human civilizations in the Americas, further out into Europe and Africa, and the Far East, which is hardly a better position if one wishes to defend the Bible's scientific knowledge).  Isaiah 40:22 states very matter-of-factly that God "sits enthroned above the circle of the earth;" a circle, of course, being a two-dimensional (read:  flat) object, exactly as one would describe the earth if they believed that it was flat.  I'm very entertained that so many Christians actually insist that the Bible claims a round earth based on this verse.  All of this nonsense about the Bible not describing a flat earth also completely ignores the obvious fact that the Christian faith considered the earth to be flat for thousands of years (and this conclusion was based exactly on the Bible), until science conclusively proved that the earth was spherical.  There is no record of anyone, ever, claiming that the Bible said that the earth was a sphere or ball until after science had proven that it was.  It is either utter stupidity, gross ignorance, or complete intellectual dishonesty to claim that the Bible describes a round earth.

In any event, I sincerely hope that I've made it painfully obvious that atheists do, in fact, read the Bible.  In fact, I have found that on average, self-described atheists know more about the Bible than most self-described Christians.  Even Dr. Brad Harrub, a young-earth creationist and fundamentalist Christian, admitted this to Ziztur and I as we chatted after one of his seminars.  As I've said in the past, in response to Comfort's assertion that atheists avoid reading the Bible like the plague (an analogy that is not entirely inappropriate, even if it's factually incorrect), I didn't know anything about science, philosophy, or other world religions when I gave up my belief in Christianity.  I simply read the Bible.  I would never ban or restrict the Bible from being sold, distributed, or read in any way - not only would such censorship be unethical even if it did create more Christians, but it would remove the Bible itself as a resource for atheism.

Conversely, I didn't read any Dawkins at all, until a few months ago.  I was an atheist for years before I read The God Delusion.  I've never read any Hitchens, very little Harris, and hadn't heard of Dennett until a couple months ago, but I have read the entire Bible several times.  Many Christians do this with the few famous atheists out there; they seem to project their own following of an authority onto non-believers.  Do they simply assume that because they, as fundamentalist Christians, must have an authority to blindly follow in life, that outspoken atheists do too?

6. Say that you were once a genuine Christian, and that you found it to be false. (The cool thing about being an atheist is that you can lie through your teeth, because you believe that are no moral absolutes.) Additionally, if a Christian points out that this is impossible (simply due to the very definition of Christianity as one who knows the Lord), just reply "That's the 'no true Scotsman fallacy.'" PLEASE NOTE: It cannot be overly emphasized how learning and using these little phrases can help you feel secure in dismissing common sense.

I know that when I say that I was a Christian, that I believed in God, and that Jesus was his son who saved me from my sins, you have to believe that I'm lying.  As has been pointed out before, yes, this is the No True Scotsman fallacy.  Ray, you don't even try to show how a No True Scotsman fallacy can, in fact, be a rational argument.  Additionally, your fallacy is especially stupid.

I take it that Comfort believes that he is a *True Christian* (TM).  Even if we do accept his NTS definition of a "Christian," it's still quite possible to change your mind about something that you thought you "knew" for certain.  A child can easily say that they "knew" that Santa Claus existed, before they grew up and realized that he doesn't.  Does this mean that they were never really believers in Santa?  I used to say that I "knew" that evolution hasn't occurred, yet now I realize how ignorant I was of the scientific method.  Comfort insists (though only on this particular issue, of course, when it suits his purpose) that if you ever change your mind, you didn't actually have that opinion in the first place.  The really bizarre part of this ridiculous definition is that if you can't be a True Christian unless you never change your mind about it, then we can never know if you're a True Christian!  Because we human beings have finite intellect, we can never be 100% certain that we won't change our mind on a particular subject.

7. Believe that nothing is 100% certain, except the theory of Darwinian evolution. Do not question it. Believe with all of your heart that there is credible scientific evidence for species-to-species transitional forms. When you make any argument, pat yourself on the back by concluding with "Man, are you busted!" That will make you feel good about yourself.

A great deal of Comfort's material is good for a laugh; you've gotta give him that much.  This is hilarious.  Now, again, I didn't know anything about evolution or science itself until years after I gave up belief in God, and a huge portion of Christians (many of the more intelligent and ethical ones I've known) accept the fact that evolution is exceptionally well-supported science.  I also don't know how so many Christian fundamentalists can insist that atheists, who so often subject every single sacred cow they find to the most violent questioning and rigorous skepticism, accept evolution theory on blind faith.  It's particularly entertaining to me that the only anti-evolution argument that he attempts in this small sound bite is the certifiable "there are no transitional forms!", even going so far as to insist that accepting the existence of transitional forms (which is a misconception in and of itself) requires you to "believe with all of your heart."

I quite like The Atheist Starter Kit, actually, it's a very conveniently-compressed dose of Ray Comfort's unique brand of insanity.  Stay tuned, folks.

Ray on Occasional Days: 8:4

Almost there! Nearing the end of Ray Comfort's book, "You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Think." A long while ago, Ziztur and I briefly had a laugh at Comfort's expense over this. In the back of the book, entertainingly, right after a rant about how he preaches to us because he loves us so much, he reprints "The Atheist Starter Kit," a wonderfully insulting, dismissive, and sarcastic how-to for budding atheists.

If you are a beginner atheist, there's a belief system you should embrace and a language you should learn, or you will find yourself in trouble. Here are ten suggestions for the novice:

First off, this is a common misconception.  While it's possible that an atheist could potentially claim that his or her lack of belief in God is itself a belief, I've never met an atheist who claims this.  It seems that the vast majority are like Ziztur and myself; that our lack of belief in a god is more accurately described as a conclusion than a belief.  I have no difficulty acknowledging a Christian who might claim that they don't believe that Jesus is God, they have come to that conclusion by weight of evidence.  Of course, I think that they're wrong, but I can simply argue that they are mistaken, or don't have all the facts.  I don't have to insist that they have no "evidence" for their "belief."  As for the "system" and "language" an atheist should learn, they're nothing more than critical thinking skills, logic, knowledge, perhaps the scientific method, and humanistic ethical principles.  I should add that everyone should learn these things, not just atheists, and that these things are, more often than not, the cause of atheism, not ideas embraced after the fact.

1. Whenever you are presented with credible evidence for God's existence, call it a "straw man argument," or "circular reasoning." If something is quoted from somewhere, label it "quote mining."

When I originally read this, my first thought was, "What's with the quotation marks around 'straw man argument' and 'circular reasoning'?  Does he believe that an opinion can still be valid even if it's a logical fallacy?  Does he know what a logical fallacy is, or how logic works at all?"

I'm afraid that this is exactly the situation in far, far too many cases.  A "straw man argument" is when you distort or misrepresent your opponent's position as a position that can be easily rebutted.  For example, Comfort continually insists that atheists believe that nothing created everything.  This is completely counter-intuitive, but it's not what atheists "believe," so he hasn't accomplished anything.  If this still isn't clear to those who don't understand basic logic, let's try a different example:  If an atheist like me says that, "Christianity claims that you will get anything you pray for, but this doesn't happen, so Christianity is false," have I proved anything?  No, because Christians don't claim this.  I've committed a strawman fallacy (even though this is still debatable, because the Bible does, in fact, say this).

If your argument can be applied in the exact same way that you use it to a different situation and your logic completely breaks down, that means that there is something wrong with your logic.  This is all that's necessary to show what's wrong with a "circular" argument.  When Comfort says that "Creation proves the existence of a creator," he's assuming in his premise that the universe is, in fact, a creation.  An atheist can say that "The naturalistic, undesigned universe proves that there is no creator," and say the exact same thing:  nothing.  An atheist stating this as evidence that the universe has no creator would obviously be completely illogical, yet this is the exact same type of logic that Comfort must rely on to "prove" the existence of his god.  He seems to be mocking us atheists because we point out the glaring logical failures of his thinking.  I'm very curious as to how someone would even attempt to make the case that a blatantly circular argument is perfectly rational.

2. When a Christian says that creation proves that there is a Creator, dismiss such common sense by saying "That's just the old watchmaker argument."

Comfort is correct that simply saying, "That's just the old watchmaker argument." isn't a valid rebuttal.  The point of that response is that the "design argument" for the existence of God has been rebutted so many times that, at this point, any rational conversation about this argument would have to begin with the theist's response to the rebuttal.  Since Comfort does not do this, it's probably safe to assume that he doesn't understand the rebuttals to this old, tired argument.

3. When you hear that you have everything to gain and nothing to lose (the pleasures of Heaven, and the endurance of Hell) by obeying the Gospel, say "That's just the old 'Pascal wager.'"

Again, the point of that seemingly-simplistic response is that, frankly, Pascal's Wager is a top contender for the single stupidest argument for the existence of God (or more accurately, the stupidest argument for the desirability of claiming that you believe in God, even if you're lying).  When an atheist says something like "That's just the old (extremely old and rebutted a thousand times over) argument," it's not that they don't have a response.  It's just their frustration at hearing these stupid arguments over and over again.  You have probably heard these responses from atheists in the past, Ray.  Just trust me, they weren't trying to dodge the question, they're just very dissapointed that you didn't have any intellectual weight to add to the conversation.

There are ten of these helpful hints altogether, so stay tuned!

Ray on Occasional Days: 8.3

We're in the final throes of Ray's book, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think, in the section entiled, "Further Food For Thought".

What Ray says in this section can also be found here, so I feel it is appropriate to reprint the whole thing:

Do you like to snuggle up in a warm bed on a cold night? Do you have a favorite position for going to sleep? Have you ever woken from a nightmare, and taken about ten minutes to shake off a feeling of terror?

Has your whole body suddenly "jumped" because you thought you were taking a step, just before you dropped off to sleep?

Do you get annoyed when someone asks you personal questions, or do you feel a sense of identification, because you have had these experiences?

I hope you do identify with me. The reason for this is that it's my knowledge that you are just like me that drives me to try reach you with the gospel.

Whether you like it or not, you are like me. You have many of the same loves, fears, desires and concerns. You, like me, want to enjoy the pleasures of this life. No one in his right mind wants to be unhappy, and you therefore instinctively don't want to die. Everything within you pulls back from the experience of death. It's the ultimate root-cannel for which there is no pain-killer outside of conversion to Jesus Christ.

So, if you don't know the Lord, ask yourself some personal questions about me. What is my motive for pleading with you like this? I don't get paid for having a blog. I don't sell advertising on it. I have never asked for your money, nor do I want it. Christianity doesn't do anything for my ego. Neither is my motive to get you to join a church or a religion. It's simply a deep concern for your eternal welfare. Please, repent and trust the Savior before death seizes on you, and it's too late.

Of course we're alike. We're both human beings. There is a very good reason we're so alike. Humans evolved as a population of animals to do the things that we do. It's no wonder we are so similar.

Ray is  right that we don't usually want to die. We fear death. If, as a species, we did not fear death or have an insatiable urge to survive, then we probably would not survive. Death is the ultimate root canal for which there is no painkiller, and the sentence should end right there. there is no compelling proof that Jesus ever existed. there is no compelling proof that your god exists. If your god did exist, he would be a vile entity and I would not worship him or pretend he is the most amazing entity alive because I fear death and want to survive it. I would rather die and join the army of Satan than follow that character. In a religion where one's biggest enemy is one's god, oneself, and one's own inability to follow impossible rules, it boggles my mind how people can love their god so much; how they can see it as a pillar of perfection while it supposedly orchestrates and carries out the vilest acts imaginable. I really don't understand, and the more I immerse myself in Christianity, the less I understand it.

People hate knowing that one day they will die. It's hard to imagine that one day your brain and heart will stop, and your body will decay. It's hard to imagine that the building you are in will one day crumble. Your city will one day crumble. The earth will one day be uninhabitable by any living creature. Humans as a species will die out, and the universe will die a slow, aching death.

Knowledge of one's own mortality is a powerful, scary thing. As an outsider, religion and god look to me like a way to see noneternal things as eternal. Gods are eternal, souls are eternal - they remain when everything else passes away.

Think of a sandcastle some children (perhaps your own children) have just built on a beach. Their sandcastle is beautiful and magnificent, yet the sun is setting and the tide is rolling in. Most people would be compelled to "immortalize" the image of this sandcastle - to photograph it, to draw it, to at least take it in and let the image of it burn into their memory. We want to keep it but we know we cannot, so we make an image of it.

The sandcasle is worth building, even if it is washed away and no images are made of it.

Ray on Occasional Days: 8.2

For today's decimation of Ray Comfort's book, we're going to look at a little story Ray tells his readers. He tells the story of a friend of his who is going overseas to visit New Zealand, but New Zealand officials deny him entry into the country because he has a previous jail record. The guy is nice, a "Genuine Christian" but the rules of the country bar entry to former criminals. He says that even though he was angry at this New Zealand has the right to make rules about who can and cannot enter their country.

Heaven apparently is a lot like this. Lawbreakers are not allowed in, but if you believe in Jesus and become a Christian, your criminal record is erased and you become a new person.

I'm glad the justice system we have does not work like this - people should pay equally for their crimes. I hate to be crude but I completely understand why so many criminals in prison convert to Christianity - they may not have their crimes washed away in this life, but they can have them washed away in the afterlife.

It is interesting that Ray shrugs his shoulders and says, "well, that's okay. NZ has the right to have rules". What if the rule was that if you were a criminal NZ officials locked you up on a floating cage and let seagulls consume your flesh until your body fed the fishies in addition to not allowing you into the country? Would Comfort shrug then? I hope that illustrates how much this analogy doesn't apply.

Moving on, Ray makes one more unfalsifiable appeal: he says that becoming a Christian is like this:

If I look at a heater and believe the heater is hot,  I have an intellectual belief. But if I say to myself, "I wonder if it really is hot" and reach out and grip the bar, the second my flesh burns, I stop believing it's hot. I now know it's hot. I have moved out of the realm of belief into the realm of experience.

That's what happens the moment you are born again (when you become a Christian). You will move out of the realm of "belief" into the realm of "personal experience." A Christian is not someone who has a "belief," but someone who has a relationship with the living God. You come to know him.

(P.S. you can read this text for yourself here.)

This would be a great analogy if there were independent, objective verification of the phenomenon known as the Christian god. What if we were to add to this analogy that other people touched the heater and were not burned - in fact they felt no heat at all? How about if we had a group of people who once were burned by the heater, but could now put their hands all over it without feeling any heat? What if instruments used to measure heat registered the heat of the heater as being right around room temperature, while true believers in the heater continued to burn their hands while simultaneously receiving no actual, physical burns?

We would think that the people with burning hands but no evidence of burning were insane.

Unless they insisted that they respect the fact that they were experiencing terrible burns, or got angry at us for denying their experience. In that case we'd be forced to say it gently, "we think there is the chance there could be another explanation..."

I know this may be hard to understand but experience by itself does not equal knowing. If you believe something will happen but have not experienced it and then you experience it, you've moved from belief with non-experience to belief accompanied by experience.  One might consider this a form of knowledge, but said knowledge should still be subject to revision. If you hear voices in the room, but no one else hears those same voices, you might be right to conclude that they are a product of your own neurons and not due to actual voices.

Ray's analogy can once again be used to prove just about any supernatural belief one wants to prove. If belief+experience = knowing, then I know that the universe is entirely materialistic and guided by natural, rather than supernatural processes. A crystal healer knows that crystals balance the qi and heal cancer. A UFO abductee knows he's been abducted by aliens and somehow infused with alien sperm. These people don't have beliefs - they know.

The best part about learning to deconstruct arguments is that one can learn how to argue by learning how not to argue.

Ray on Occasional Days: 8.1

You might have noticed that Ray a Day has become something more like Ray on Occasional Days. I figure you won't mind so much, as you survived without it for almost a month.

Moving on to the conclusion of Ray Comfort's book, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Think, Ray posits a thought experiment:

Imagine he is offering you a choice of these gifts:

1. The original Mona Lisa.
2. A new car.
3. A million bucks.
4. A parachute.

Which do you pick? Here's some additional information - you have to jump out of an airplane, flying high.  Obviously, you'll choose the parachute because none of those other things will keep you from falling to your death.

Apparently, this is analogous to which religion you should choose among:

1. Hinduism
2. Buddhism
3. Islam
4. Christianity

Here's some additional information: One day we will die. Just like in the airplane scenario, you know what the law gravity will do to you if you jump. Similarly, you know about the moral law (you know, the one that tells us that the Christian god's rotten behavior means he is extra perfect, while our good behavior means nothing because we're filthy sinners) and how to use it to make a choice when you die. You fear god's law. You know about the ten commandments. The Bible is true, and you know you're going to be judged one day. So which religion do you choose?

Ray goes though each of the four religions and explains why none of those other religions are True®:

Hinduism: Those people believe in reincarnation, which is like "when you jump out of the plane, you'll get sucked back in as a different passenger"

Buddhism: They don't believe in any god! They believe life and death are an illusion which is like saying "I'm not really here, and there's no such thing as the law of gravity"

Islam: Those guys believe that doing things, rather than believing things, will get you a ticket to the afterlife, like "jumping out of a plane, and believing that flapping your arms is going to counter the law of gravity"

Christianity of course, is totally different, because Jesus gave you a merciful and awesome parachute. Christianity is the only religion that fits. therefore Christianity is obviously the best one.

Pardon me if I get a little snarky here - but no shit, Sherlock! This is a very complicated and yet still unimpressive way to create a giant circular argument, where Comfort's premise (that Christianity is the One True Religion®) is the same as his conclusion (that Christianity is the One True Religion®).

You could literally use this thought experiment to conclude that any religion or belief system is true.  Example:

We know that bald men are going to be creampied for eternity in the everlasting cock of our God, Oneeye, unless they grow hair or get a wig before they die.  So which religion do you choose?

1. Christianity
2. Hinduism
3. Buddhism
4. Oneeyeism

Christianity:  believes you have to believe in Jesus. That's like believing gravity will just work for you.

Hinduism: Those people believe in reincarnation, which is like "when you jump out of the plane, you'll get sucked back in as a different passenger"

Buddhism: They don't believe in any god! They believe life and death are an illusion which is like saying "I'm not really here, and there's no such thing as the law of gravity"

Oneeyeism is the right religion, because Oneeye gives you a loving and merciful parachute if you'll just grow your hair or wear a wig.

 Here's a little secret: if your argument can be broken down into its component parts and applied in a similar situation, but if in that situation your argument completely breaks down or can prove anything, then that means there is something wrong with your argument. A Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist could use this same analogy to show that their religions lead to the "parachute" while the others do not - A Muslim, for example, could say that Christianity is like jumping out of an airplane and believing that you'll be saved, whereas Islam is like actually putting the parachute on. The entire analogy rests on the presumption that Christianity is true.

Comfort goes on to tell us how awesome Jesus is for dying for our sins, and says that in the airplane situation, the individual handing us the parachute is the one whom we will find the most credible. I suppose this is supposed to mean that we should find him credible, but again, any other religion could say the same thing about adherents of their religion.

Of course, Comfort has abjectly failed to demonstrate that Christianity is the One True Religion®, where as it is actually demonstrable that a parachute is preferable to a car when one is jumping out of an airplane, assuming one wants to live. Obviously, if Comfort's particular version of Christianity is true then these other religions will fail at allowing you to obtain your salvation. Here is the argument, broken down even more simplistically:

1. Religion X is true.
2. Your have to follow religion X to obtain salvation.
3. You want salvation.
4. There are other religions which are not religion X.
5. These other religions will not lead to salvation according to religion X.
Therefore
Religion X is true.

Or perhaps even simpler:

X = Christianity is true
Y = all non-Christian religions are false

If X, then Y
Y
Therefore X

--Which is a shining example of the formal fallacy known as Affirming the Consequent. Dude, how many fallacies can you wrap into one thought experiment?

A personal Thank You to Ray Comfort

This past week, Ray Comfort sent Flimsy and I a $25 gift certificate to Red Lobster, no strongs attached. He also sent over a copy of The Atheist Bible and a signed copy of "You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics - yeah, so now we've got two copies of this book.

Obviously, a thank you is in order - not only has Ray given me a wonderful springboard for blog posts, but he has now fed Flimsy and I - and you know how much atheists love food.

Ray and I completely disagree with each other theologically, and I am against a lot of the things he stands for. We've obviously come to completely different conclusions about the nature of morality and how the universe operates.  At the same time, It is clear that Ray sincerely believes what he preaches. He sincerely believes that his god is real, that we have souls, and does not want to see said souls spend an eternity in maximal punishment.

I'll echo something similar to something Penn Jilette said - if I sincerely believed that a meteorite were going to crush your house with you inside of it, I would do everything in my power to get you out of your house. I would not care if you believed a meteor were coming. I would not walk away because I felt it would disrespect your beliefs to drag you kicking and screaming out of your house. To leave you in your house and not bother to pull you out would make me a terrible person.

In a way, Ray and I are doing the same thing - we've come to a conclusion about the world, and we're acting on it because we sincerely care about those around us. Obviously, I have many reasons for thinking that my conclusion actually reflects the nature of reality.  My methodology is much better, but that's beside the point.

So, Ray Comfort - thank you. You care about us more than your god does.

Ray a Day: 7.6

Today, as we near the end of our painful dissection of You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think by Ray Comfort, Ray's angry skeptic asks why Jesus had to die to pay our debt to god, given that Jesus and the Christian god are one and the same. Ray responds by saying that god is inseparable from moral law, since both his god and his god's law are perfect, holy, just and good.  So the ten commandments is issued directly from the character of his god, and said law is written in stone.

He asks us to:

Think of it like this. A man has viciously raped and murdered six young girls. He is not insane... the judges wrath will be in direct proportion to his goodness. If he is a good judge, he will be unspeakably furious at that wicked man ... God's wrath is in direct proportion to his goodness...

Oh. So the Christian god is supposed to be unfathomably wrathful, because he is also unfathomably good. I get it. So when his god goes around generally being the most hateful character in all of existence, this actually demonstrates his holy perfection! We're supposed to look at all of this hate and understand that his god's wrath is only so incredibly immoral and wrathful because he is actually absolutely perfect. I don't know if I need to explain how bizarre this is - I think it stands on its own.

Fury is not the mark of a "good judge". The mark of a good judge, I think, it the ability to consistently, logically and objectively apply the law to individuals. Fury is entirely unnecessary. In Ray's worldview, the better the judge, the more fury he should have at minor crimes - with his god being the most perfect judge of all, who flips out and gives people maximal punishment for the most minor of crimes, or for arbitrary behaviors said judge has labeled as crimes. In other words, the more horrible his god is, the more he demonstrates his perfection.

Wow, the implications of that line of thinking.

Ray goes on, saying that the judge himself came down and paid the fine himself, which demonstrates the justice of a holy god and the love of a merciful god, and we can't understand how awesome this is until we humble our hearts.

I don't know how humbling my heart will make me understand this thing. To be, this god character Christians love so much has a totally arbitrary and nonsensical thought process. If it actually made sense, it would make sense to me whether I believed in this god or not. Humbling one's heart is not an objective way to get at truth.

Last, Ray relates to his reader a story of meeting up with two rollerblading atheists on the street, and convincing them to understand his god's perfect judgment.  He relates his story about these two atheists not being able to answer where cows came from.

Just because you think you have all the answers does not mean that you do. I would much rather say, "I don't know" then make something up that sounds good. Really, it's okay not to know.

And that, my friends, IS THE END OF THE BOOK, except for the 15-page conclusion, which has more goodness in it for us to go over.

Ray a Day: 7.5

Today we get to talk about cute kittens! Ray's angry skeptic points out that if the flood actually happened, then God drowned all of the kittens. Here's my favorite line, "Kittens, Ray. He drowned jillions of kittens - and you worship him.

Ray asks his questioner why he is so upset, and says that since he is an atheist, he believes that no one made those kittens, that being an atheist means that life has no rhyme or reason, and that there are no moral absolutes. If there are no moral absolutes, Ray says, then his god didn't do anything wrong.

He goes on to ask is the questioner is angry at veterinarians for killing kittens, and says that if his god made the kittens, then his god has the right to kill said kittens - besides, kittens have to die in order for there not to be jillions of kittens overpopulating the streets.

Last, he says that if someone believes in evolution, then evolution kills all kittens, so we should all lighten up.

First of all, I and every other atheist I know would strongly disagree that there is no "rhyme or reason" to life and no moral absolutes. Why is it that Christians like Ray insist that atheists believe there are no moral absolutes? I find this especially hilarious because Christians who believe that the Bible is completely true are necessarily moral relativists, even as they flail about, insisting that moral relativism is evil.

1. In the Old Testament culture, it was morally just to stone blasphemers.
2. in our modern culture, it is not morally just to stone blasphemers.

If you believe that it was just for blasphemers to be killed in the OT, and you think it is unjust now, then you, my friends, are a moral relativist, holding that morality is relative to culture or time.

I hold the position that there are rational, objective moral absolutes - of Secular Humanism. I believe that the ethical moral system of secular humanism is morally right, regardless of culture or time. Whether one lives in 6000 B.C.E, 2009 A.D., England, Israel, or wherever. This is moral absolutism - the position that morality is the same, regardless of culture or time.

Now then, here is the problem. Because I hold the position that there are moral absolutes, and Ray believes in moral relativism, he believes it it okay for his god to kill jillions of kittens. He believes his god did nothing wrong, because his god is incapable of doing wrong. I am going to go out on a limb and assume that Ray thinks it is immoral for me to drown a jillion kittens. This is also moral relativism:

1. It's perfectly moral for god to drown a jillion kittens
2. it's not perfectly moral for me to drown a jillion kittens.

So, Ray thinks that if you're an atheist, life is meaningless and there are no moral absolutes, so his god was right to drown a jillion kittens. If you're Ray, you think your god was right to drown a jillion kittens, because whatever god does is right.

Ray does on to say that veterinarians kill lots of kittens, so he asks why we're not out picketing veterinary offices.

Perhaps Ray does not see the difference between torturing 99.999999999999997% of humanity by drowning them, and putting kittens to sleep due to their illness or overpopulation problems. Surely though, there is a difference between an entity torturing another entity, and an entity ending the life of another entity in a humane way.

If we are to lighten up about Ray worshiping a god who kills kittens (almost all of life on earth), then I suppose we should lighten up about people who, say, drown their infant children in toilet water. After all, that kid would have died one day anyway, right?By drowning that kid, mom gave him a one-way ticket to heaven, right?

WRONG.

I do not respect, nor worship, any entity that supposedly tortures other living creatures. The problem is that this particular god Ray worships tortures other living creatures, and he calls this god perfect, perfectly just and perfectly loving. Then, he berates atheists for having no moral absolutes and just being able to justify doing whatever pleases them.

Also, I have yet to hear an appropriate justification for why an entity that creates another entity has the right to do whatever he pleases with his created entity, including torture, drown or destroy it.  Why? 

Just because kittens have to die in order to prevent overpopulation does not make it right to drown a jillion kittens. Overpopulation is not a justification for drowning kittens. People have to die too in order to prevent overpopulation of people, but that is absolutely not a justification to drown people.

"evolution" does not kill kittens. Even if one were to make that argument, that does not mean it is right to kill something just because some other process kills something.

So, lighten up, I will not. Torture of living creatures by a sentient morally-aware conscious being is not something anyone should "lighten up" about, and I am simply flabbergasted that Ray would suggest such a thing. Honestly, I am glad that the world is not populated by people who think like him - as he believes torture is morally permissable and that we should ligthen up because it's perfectly okay for the character he bases his moral convictions on to torture living things.

Ray a Day: 7.4

We're back to doing Ray a Day's, aren't you happy?

For those of you who've just started reading this blog in the last month and a half, Your fearless bloggers Flimsy and I have been using bits of Ray Comfort's book, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Think" as a springboard for blog posts. We've actually gone through almost the entire book at this point.

Today's gem is a little letterbox on page 115 (which was also published here) that reads:

A loving Christian brother just emailed me and said, “Man-o-man. There are some bitter, furious, Christian hatin' bloggers out there!!!” I told him that he is seeing comparatively nice ones. They know that I delete anything with blasphemy or cussing. He’s right though. Some of the atheists that are part of this blog are pretty nasty. So, I have decided to return a bit of the fire (in love, of course).

There are some bitter, Christian hating bloggers out there, but there are probably equal or more atheist-hating bloggers. Some people are just angry, and that's fine. Anger on it's own is amoral. Sometimes anger is justified.


When people are part of a group that is hated and oppressed, vilified for being immoral when morality is incredibly important to them, told to shut up for suggesting that people can be good without believing in god, and bombarded with viewpoints they don't agree with on a near-daily basis. it tends to make those people angry. I think that when Flimsy and I personally express anger on this blog, it is justified.

My new theory is that perhaps atheists evolved from the chicken, because they not only have chicken characteristics--a head, eyes, mouth, skin, neck, heart, earlobes and legs (homology structures), but they also have the chicken’s tendencies--they are chicken livered. They hang around Christians like annoying little bugs hang around light, trying to inject their poison whenever they can.

I don't understand why "chicken tendencies" are described as hanging around with Christians like bugs, trying to inject poison. I don't think chickens hang around people like bugs and inject poison. I recall that earlier in Ray's book, he told his readers that atheists only like to hang out with other atheists so they can reinforce their own beliefs. Which is it?

If you are an atheist, I hope I’m ruffling your feathers. I want to get under your skin and ask why you don’t have the courage to even whisper to Muslims what you keep shouting at Christians. Prove me wrong. Get onto a Muslim website and tell them that you don’t believe their god exists. Do your little “I don’t believe in Zeus” thing. Tell them they believe a myth. Make sure you use the word "fairytale." Talk about Mohammed as you do Jesus (use your usual lower case for Mohammed). Do your “I don’t believe in the flying spaghetti monster” thing. Tell them that you believe that they weren’t made by (a) god, but that they evolved from primates (that will go down well).

This really doesn't get under my skin. Not addressing Muslims has nothing to do with cowardice or fear. I live in the United states, where Christianity has more of a direct effect on me than Islam. Muslim's aren't trying to get creationism taught in the schools in my country, for one. I've only encountered a few Muslims in my life. I haven't read the Quran. If I were approached by a Muslim who wanted to engage in a conversation about our differing beliefs, I'd be happy to do so. If I lived in a Muslim country, Islam would be my main focus.

I could say the same thing about Mr. Comfort. How come you haven't addressed Buddhists? Why don't you go tell those guys that you believe they will go to hell instead of being reincarnated? Further, why don't you have the courage to whisper to Muslims what you shout at atheists? Prove me wrong - go start a Muslim Central blog, where you do your "Muslim's deny Jesus so they can be moral free agents" thing. Tell them you think Allah is a false idol.

Explain that you think they are blind simpletons to believe the way they do, and that even though there is a creation, you don't see any evidence that there is a Creator. Let them know that you think that it's intelligent to believe the way you do. You may as well explain that even though you don't believe in God's existence, you use His name as a cuss word, because you think it's worthless. Also, let them know in no uncertain terms that you believe that the Koran is full of mistakes (give some examples), and that their mosques are full of hypocrites.

I think that the reason people use your god's name as a "cuss word" has nothing to do with their subjective feeling of worthiness. I think it has more to do with social upbringing.  I'm not even sure what Ray means by this. By cuss word, do you mean saying "god damn it"?

Profanity is a really interesting subject for me, and I'd really like to study it from a neurological point of view. What parts of people's brains light up when they read expletives, or say them, or hear them? How does that compare to expletives from other countries, or regular words spoken as if they were an expletive? But we're getting off topic.

You wouldn’t dare, because you are chicken-livered. You know that they are not like Christians. Despite the “anonymity” of your little chicken coop, they would come after you to lop off your head. And when they find you, you would fall on your knees and be praying to God for help, quicker than I can move a fly swat . . . and I'm pretty quick. So, think about what you are doing, and think about how much you value your life. Then think about what we are telling you. Think.

You sir, are a bigot, both toward atheists and Muslims. You're seriously saying that Muslims are so hateful that if someone says something negative about their religion on a message board, they will hunt you down and kill you. Wow.

See, part of the reason that SOME Muslims express hatred toward Americans is because of people like you. When you're bigoted towards a whole group of people or a whole religion, that tends to happen. You express hatred toward them, they express hatred toward you, in a vicious cycle of stupidity.

Hey I know - Maybe those hateful Muslims aren't "true Muslims" because no true Muslim would hurt anyone.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 4.3

Guess what? Flimsy and I are finished with our review of Dr. Harrub’s Truth About Origins seminar! This is our last post, unless something entertaining happens, like we get comments that are worth expanding into an entire blog post, Dr. Harrub actually bothers to show up here, etc.

Soon, we’ll be back to the good old Ray a Day posts. When we finish that, we’re going to move on to another book to explore – probably something with a little more substance. Ray’s publisher is also sending me a new book to read – The Atheist Bible. Plus I’ve had a copy of Secularism and Postsecularism for months, and have not had a chance to give my thoughts on those books either.  

So before we end our segment on Truth About Origins, I’d like to revisit Dr. Harrub’s idea that the Quran isn’t inspired, while the Bible is inspired. He said at the beginning of his B.s. (That’s Bible study, guys) that there is a difference between the works of Shakespeare, the Quran, the Book of Mormon, and the Bible. He told his audience that if he could prove the Bible was inspired, it would make it stand out among these books as The Truth®.  He went on to fail miserably at proving the Bible was inspired by his god.

Here is how he dismissed the others: Shakespeare is mean as a work of fiction, so that’s obviously not inspired. The Book of Mormon was written by a liar, and the Quran has too many contradictions and failed prophesies to be inspired.

It’s so interesting how people like Dr. Harrub can easily point out the flaws in other holy books, yet are blind to the flaws of their own holy book. He literally dismissed the entire Quran in one single sentence. He made this dismissal right after telling his audience that evolution is false because if you put a seed of corn on a shelf for 75 years, it won’t grow into a fern when you stick it in the ground.

So, I hope that you readers have enjoyed our thorough review. I also hope I haven’t come across as undeservedly disrespectful of people or ideas that differ from my own. Thanks, Dr. Harrub and the West End Church of Christ for giving me yet another reason to use my headsludge to dispel misconceptions. It was a fun month.

Ray a Day Guest post: Sam

 Today's Ray a Day is from Sam of Jesus Was a Tit Man.

Last month, Sam debated Ray Comfort at a University on New Zealand. So, he is yet another cool atheist making up for Ray's abuse of the awesome Kiwi accent.

Ray a Day 7:4
In which an angry skeptic asks why if god is so great, does he spend so much of the Old Testament acting like Hitler in the grips of three-week coke binge.  

So when we last left Ray a Day an angry skeptic was asking Ray whether god in his infinite righteousness, forgiveness and mercy could ever be such a douche that he couldn’t forgive himself? And Ray was answering by saying that

“God… is perfect. He is without sin. He is absolute purity of holiness. He cannot have an evil thought or make an evil decision… all of his judgments are righteous and true altogether.”

While this has already been dealt with by Ziztur, this is worth considering here as it demonstrates that Ray is not only a lousy human being, a woefully incompetent writer, a liar, a fraud, a mountebank and an embarrassment to the south Pacific - if not the whole Pacific - but also an incompetent Christian who knows no more of theology than the pope’s cat.

The question of how god could be all good and all-powerful is a major problem, as it is, as Ziztur pointed out, logically contradictory and impossible.  If god is all-powerful he must be able to commit evil acts, meaning that he is not perfectly good. Conversely if he is perfectly good and could not commit evil then he is not all-powerful. Matters were made worse by Anselm of Canterbury’s positing of god as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived." As such if it turned out that god was limited either in his goodness, or his power, then his perfection and therefore his godhood would be rendered partial as one could always conceive of another being of greater power, or more perfect goodness.

Anyhow the solution they came to was what was called Devine Volunteerism, or the compromise that though all-powerful, god had chosen in his perfect goodness to constrain himself to be only good. While this might seem a piddling distinction, there is an important implication here as, god’s goodness is, as the term implies, voluntary and could be retracted at any time.

And this is where Ray shows himself to be not only an ignorant idiot, but also a dangerous idiot. Although Ray often comes over all flushed and dizzy when considering the immorality of the godless (see Ray a Day 5:9), Ray himself possesses such a twisted and repulsive lack of any, even adumbral understanding of morality, as to put one in mind of Nietzsche’s warning that  “if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

To look into the craven and sinisterly empty mind of Ray is to look into the mind of every Eichmann, SS Officer, death camp guard and secret police gun thug and death squad trigger man, and revolutionary guard strong man, who ever gunned down pregnant women, or shepherded a Jew into a gas chamber, or made a troublesome teenager disappear or raped a young girl so she could be hung without breaking the Islamic prohibition on executing virgins, and who slept soundly that night, secure in the knowledge that they were just following orders. If you think this is going a touch far, consider that when asked the perfectly valid question of how a moral perfect god could have spent so much of the old testament ordering rape, genocide and slavery, Ray replies, with all the baleful and blood curdling enthusiasm of a Klan rally:

“If you think that was bad, how about the fact that god has proclaimed a death sentence upon every man, woman and child? It gets worse. Eternal Damnation in a terrible place called hell awaits everyone who has done evil. Everyone. The day will come when absolute justice will be done. That’s wonderful news … if you’re not a criminal in god’s eyes. And if his judgment upsets you, here’s a verse to think about: “ All of god’s judgments are righteous and true altogether.” I trust him and I am not at all offended by anything he does.”

I understand that it is all too easy to become inured to Ray’s deceptive demagoguery and bloody minded bombast,  and think that, whatever he says is just Ray being Ray. However, to put the above in some sort of context I would urge you to compare it with Rudolf Hess’s claim that

“The National Socialism of all of us is anchored in uncritical loyalty, in the surrender to the Fuhrer that does not ask for the why in individual cases, in the silent execution of his orders. We believe that the Fuhrer is obeying a higher call… There can be no criticism of this belief.”

If you can spot a substantive difference here, then I would be glad to hear it. And this is where the rubber meets the road. Ray is that most dangerous of all moral degenerates, the slimy little sycophantic spit licker who is evil not because he enjoys it, or revels in it, but simply to show his loyalty and dedication to his unrequited love. As such, Ray is convinced in his own moral righteousness and ethical purity, though neither ethics nor morals have the power to touch him.  For Ray is, by his own lights, always right. As whatever he does is the will of god, and as god is the well spring of all morals (as demonstrated by God’s righteousness, which, as it can only be measured against god’s self same righteousness) is always perfect.

And it is this terrifying tautology that marks out the true maniacal menace. For, to return to the beginning, what happens when and if god gives up his self-imposed and voluntarily goodness? What happens if Ray wakes to find god, booming in his head about the need to kill the queers or liquidate the libertines? From what Ray has said, we can only assume that he would mutter “the ways of God are strange,” as he pulls on his boots and checks the edge on his knife.

Ray a Day Guest Post: Marc Newcomb

Aww, have you guys missed Ray a Day? Well guess what, our friend Marc decided that it was his turn. Enjoy:


As Ziztur's now busy with reviewing the trip to the Truth About Origins seminar, I'm doing a guest post to help with the extremely lengthy task of correcting the many errors in Ray Comfort's new book.

Today's "angry skeptic" states,

"The God that I read about in the Bible is quite capricious. You never know when he might smite one."

In the first part of his response, Ray claims that the skeptic only thinks this because he is unable to understand God's judgments.

"I can understand why you feel that the God of the Bible is capricious. To you, His judgments make no sense. That's because you are not God. I'm not being facetious. I'm reminding you that you aren't omniscient. It is because He has all knowledge that all of His judgments are righteous and true altogether. Your knowledge is extremely limited, so how could you begin to understand the judgments of Almighty God?"

Obviously the skeptic has made no claim to omniscience. It is possible to admit that our own knowledge is limited, while using what limited knowledge we have to form ideas about morality and assess whether certain characters (such as Jehovah) appear to be acting morally.

If our knowledge is just too limited to make any judgment at all on the morality of God, as Comfort seems to be claiming here, then the logical response is to withhold judgment, refusing to call God's alleged acts either good or evil. Comfort generally rejects this option, and chooses to judge God's actions as good, despite having the same limitations as the skeptic. He doesn't seem to realize that by calling God's actions good, he is making a judgment on God's morality just as much as any skeptic is. Judging God's actions to be good is still judging them. It is hypocritical of him to dispute the right of others to make the same kind of judgment just because they come to a different conclusion. Asking how the skeptic can possibly understand the judgments of God is especially hypocritical when Ray makes far more precise and wide-ranging claims about God's judgments than any skeptic does.

Comfort continues,

"Let's look at your moral judgments for a moment. Do you think homosexuality is morally wrong? Of course you don't (I'm guessing). How about fornication? Adultery? Murder? Rape? Lying and stealing? If you say that any of these things are morally wrong, from where do you get your standard of judgment? Is it your own moral standard? Perhaps you say that it's whatever society considers to be morally correct."

But where does Ray get his moral judgments from? The commands of God? Why does Ray consider that a good moral standard? Perhaps he think that he owes God for the good things God has provided. But then don't we have a similar obligation to society, for the things society has provided? What consistency or basis does Biblical morality have that makes it any less arbitrary than just following society?

"So then if society says that homosexuality is morally okay, then you agree. If society says that fornication (sex outside of marriage) is okay, then you agree."

And if God says marrying and having a child with your half sister is okay (as Abraham did, with God's approval), then Ray must agree.

"Then if society says that it's morally right to exterminate Jews, then you must say that it's okay, because you have no moral absolutes."

And if God says that it's morally right for those same Jews to be tortured in Hell for following the right God in the wrong way, then Ray must agree. If God says that it's morally right to exterminate Amalekites, then Ray must say that it's okay, because Ray has no moral absolutes. He has only blind obedience to, and approval of, commands which he does not understand.

Most people that I have met, whether skeptic or Christian or anything else, seem to base their morality on empathy and enlightened self-interest. Despite the claims of Ray Comfort and other Christians, people in general are not wholly evil and selfish, and even if they were, most people can appreciate that injustice and random violence are not in their own best interests.

Ray's amorality continues into a final paragraph:

"The thought of you ending up in Hell grieves me. I can hardly entertain it. But I know that if a holy and perfect God judges you by His perfect moral standard, that is where you will end up."

It grieves Ray? He can hardly entertain it? Why is Ray Comfort so grieved by what he considers justice? Is it so regrettable for justice to be done? How can Ray be sorry that I am going to Hell, and yet approve of the decision to send me there? The inconsistency here reveals that Ray is instinctively against punishment in Hell, but ignores its obvious immorality because he thinks God demands it.

"You may go kicking and screaming (like a murderer to the electric chair), but you will still go there. Please look for a moment at the Ten Commandments. Go through them and ask if you have kept them in light of what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. If you are honest, you will come to the same conclusion that I came to one night in 1972. I am a sinner. I need a savior."

Ray's answer ends as it began, with a collection of unsupported statements. Apparently Ray's idea of being "honest" means accepting God as a moral authority. Blindly obeying a God whose reported acts seem to me to be immoral is not my idea of honesty. Ray has provided no evidence for the claim that there is a God judging us, and even if there is one, there is no guarantee that denying our own morality to obey the commands of an ancient text will make that God approve of us. We can't know how a god might judge us, but we can be loyal to our own sense of morality and reason. As a certain Jean-Luc Picard once said, if we're going to be damned, let's be damned for what we really are.

Ray a Day: 7:3

So today's angry skeptic asks Ray a common question. He asks, "Can God create a rock so big he cannot lift it?"

Ray doesn't actually answer the question at all, other than saying that yes, some things are not possible for god to do, like sin or lie. He then goes on to say that his god is a perfect judge and that if we trust in Jesus, god will lift up the massive stone of sin hanging over our heads.

Okay so here is what I think of this whole big rock business. I think that it's an irrelevant question because it is asking if an entity can do something self-contradictory. Is "the ability to do something self-contradictory" included in the definition of omnipotence? If so, then omnipotence is illogical. But I think that when we include this as part of the definition of impotence, we're creating a strawman version of omnipotence.  In this way, it seems to me that we're no better than when someone says, "an atheist is someone who believes nothing created everything". Only we're saying, "A Christian is someone who believes his or her particular brand of god is so powerful it has the power to do self-contradictory things."

Obviously, the logic goes like this:

P. X is defined as an all-powerful entity.
Question. Can x create a rock so powerful X cannot lift it?

1. If X can create a rock that is so big X cannot lift it
2. X is not all-powerful, because X cannot life the rock X just created.

1. If X cannot create a rock so big X cannot lift it.
2. X is not all-powerful, because X cannot create a rock so big he cannot lift it.

When you break this down into what the argument is really asking, it is asking this: Can an all-powerful entity do something that it cannot do? Can this all-powerful entity do contradictory things? A similar question would be to ask if someone's god can create a round square.

Infinite power is a logical impossibility, because infinity itself is an abstraction. Christians generally say that their god is omnipotent, but they also say that there are some things their god cannot do - such as "violate his nature". So generally, I think they are speaking in hyperbole, where "omnipotent" really means something closer to, "the most powerful thing". I could be wrong though, as I am obviously not a Christian, but I generally think that Christians and other theists over the age of thirteen have heard this paradox a thousand times.  Proving that any given god is not infinitely omnipotent doesn't really prove that that god does not exist.

On the other hand, if a theist insists that their god is infinitely ompotent and said omnipotence surpasses logic (such as, for example, if their answer to the god paradox is that he will create a rock so big he cannot lift it, but then he will lift it) then you may as well end your conversation right then because any god that is defined as an entity which does not follow the laws of logic cannot be defined or spoken about in any meaningful way whatsoever. If any indifidual definition of god includes the trumping of logic, then that definition is totally nonsensical and pretty meaningless.

Ray a Day: 7.2

So today in Ray's book we have an angry skeptic asserting that since Jesus told his disciples to up and take a donkey from a villager, and if the villager protests to simply tell him that Jesus needs it and take it anyway, that this is the definition of stealing.  The skeptic is probably referring to this:

When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' you shall say this: 'The Lord has need of it.'" So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, "Why are you untying the colt?" And they said, "The Lord has need of it." And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. (Luke 19:29-34)

Okay so, these dudes come up to your donkey and go to take it, and you ask them what's up, and they tell you it's for the lord, and... who knows what happened after that, but I guess the owner said, "Oh, okay!"

The simplest explanation is that Jesus wasn't stealing a donkey because the owner gave it to his disciples once they explained why they needed it. Big deal.

However Comfort does not explain it like this, and instead does something that fails in an epic way. He says that Jesus didn't steal the donkey because Jesus was god, and god made the donkey. The owner was just holding it for him, but he really owned everything because he made everything.

This "explanation" would work for any act Jesus committed. If he came down to earth and made himself a bed out of the stretched and tanned skins of sixty-five newborn male infants, brutally tortured every woman who came across his path, stole bread from starving families and ensured that his followers would facilitate the spread of HIV in the name of religion (oh.. wait....), according to Comfort he would still be morally perfect because he owned and created those babies, women, families, etc. So now, we've got a problem: Jesus's actions have absolutely nothing to do with his status as being morally perfect, because he is morally perfect regardless of his actions due to being defined as perfect. Comfort could have explained the donkey story easily, but instead he chose to explain it in a way that makes his worldview look dangerous and obscene, not to mention logically bankrupt. Comfort says this (that Jesus owned the donkey) is hard for atheists to swallow. It's hard for us to swallow because you're doing this again:

 

Comfort goes on to "explain" the second moral problem with Jesus, which occurs when he apparently disobeys his parents. He's talking about this:

And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress." And he said to them, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?" (Luke 2:42-49)

Comfort says that this is not an example of Jesus disobeying his parents, but an example of bad parenting. Apparently Mary and Joseph were irresponsible for not making sure that the son of god "went up according to custom".

So.. Jesus knew that his pack was leaving, but he deliberately did not go with his parents and instead stayed on Jerusalem, and his parents had to search for him, but since Jesus is morally perfect, he must have been doing the right thing. Once again, Jesus' actions have no bearing on his status as morally perfect. If he had kicked his mom in the teeth, Comfort would say she deserved it. I've mentioned before how this thinking is dangerous here, here, here and here.

The third problem is when Jesus apparently lost his temper when he cleared the temple. Ray says that this wasn't anybody loosing their temper, this was premeditated because Jesus took the time to make a whip. Here is the whole bit:

The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade." (John 2:13-16)

So Jesus came into a temple and noting the money changers he made a whip and then drove them all out. I don't really get why it being "premeditated" means that Jesus didn't lose his temper. After all, people are often known to do this - say, for example, that a woman realizes their husband is cheating on her out at the local bar. So she drives home, grabs a knife, drives back and slashes his tires. Premeditated? Check. Moral? Probably not. but apparently as long as one does something in a premeditated fashion, one is not losing one's temper - especially if it's Jesus. Also, since he made those money changers and owned them, he can do whatever he wants, right?

In the end all I can say is... who cares if Jesus stole a donkey, spat on his parents, and overturned some tables? I mean sure, the overturning of the tables pretty much guaranteed that he'd be crucified, but this is some pretty minor stuff to quibble over. Jesus is a million times more moral compared to the Christian god anyway - and they are supposed to be the same entity. Both are apparently morally perfect. Huh? Just write that stuff out of the next version of the Bible or something. 

Ray a Day - 7:1

Quick note:  Early on, we sort of half-heartedly and not entirely intentionally merged two chapters into one, and then we started numbering our reviews in the above format.  Meaning, the 5:Xs are actually Chapter Six, and now we're on Chapter Seven.  Sooner or later, we'll get around to changing them up and putting them in the proper format . . .

So!  Chapter Seven is titled "The Witness of Jesus Christ and of God's Holy Spirit."  In the introduction, we have here a rather obnoxious story and some staggeringly poorly reasoned assertions.

Ray Comfort describes how he once went to a New York synagogue, attended the Jewish service, and then, of course, attempted to proselytize the orthodox Jews gathered for worship.  He is shocked and saddened to find himself expelled from the synagogue:  "I was guilty of the terrible crime of belonging to Jesus Christ, and their justice was swift for such wickedness."  Oh, by the way, he wore a spy camera during the service, and was joined after by his full camera crew to film his aggressive evangelizing and subsequent ejection.  If Ziztur and I tried to pull any bullshit like this in our Faith Infiltrations, any establishment we visited would be more than justified in kicking our asses out.  Why do I have this feeling that if an atheist behaved like this in the headquarters of Comfort's "Living Waters" ministry, that it would be exhibit #1 in the hateful, bigoted, intolerant actions of those who deny God's existence?  How can he so dismally fail to comprehend that such actions are so obnoxiously pushy and aggressive when he does them?

Comfort uses this story as an example of sinners (in this case, one of the Jewish folks) being very uncomfortable with just saying Jesus's name.  Here's the main point that Comfort is trying to make here:

Isn't it strange that sinners have such trouble saying His name in truth, but when they use it in blasphemy, it rolls off their tongue without a problem? . . . They are still living in sin, still fighting the Holy Spirit, and therefore any reverential mention of Christ's sacrifice makes them uncomfortable. . . . Their very discomfort proves that the Spirit of God is real and active; otherwise, why would they feel anything at all at the mention of God or the name of Jesus Christ?  Their discomfort is the Spirit's testimony to His existence and His desire for them to know Christ.

Yes, you read that correctly - some people who don't believe in Jesus are slightly uncomfortable when someone like Comfort aggressively evangelizes in their general direction, and this proves that Jesus is real and wants what's best for us!  I'm sure that Comfort wouldn't be at all uncomfortable if someone walked up to him, on his property, followed by a camera crew, and started saying "Hail Satan!" into his face over and over again (drowning in sarcasm . . .).

See, Mr. Comfort, when you speak of people saying the name of Jesus "in truth," you mean for us to say, "Jesus is the eternal Son of God and the Creator of all the universe" or some such nonsense.  Of course those who don't believe in Jesus are uncomfortable saying that!  Of course those who don't believe in Jesus are uncomfortable saying, "I believe in Jesus"!  We say his name in "blasphemy" so easily because when we say that Jesus was not the son of God, we accept that as the most reasonable conclusion, based on the evidence.  You constantly insist that we atheists actually do believe in God, but that we only deny this because we just love being immoral people.  Your case would be stronger if you claimed that atheists were only feigning discomfort with Jesus's name, and that we actually we're actually very uncomfortable with blaspheming against him.  However, as you point out, we frequently commit the greatest biblical sin without any hesitation or discomfort.  Doesn't this demonstrate pretty conclusively that we do consider your Jesus, your heaven, and your hell to be nothing more than myth?

Or, to put it another way, I want you to repeat after me, Ray:  "Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the messiah of the Jewish scripture and of the Christian Bible, was a deranged, drooling, half-bright con man."  Are you . . . uncomfortable saying this, Ray?  If it makes you so uncomfortable, that obviously means that it's true, right?  Or does it, more likely, mean that there's something horrifyingly wrong with your logic?

Ray a Day: 5:10

So, today Ray's book gave me another dose of atheophobia, and an interesting subject: prayer.

In Ray's book, an angry skeptic mentions that he prayed to god when he was a believer but god never answered. Ray responds by touting the same nonsense he's repeated several times about the difference between "believers" and "Christians". He says:

Every sane human being is a "believer" in God's existence. Some people pretend he doesn't exist (atheists) but they know He does. I know what an atheist knows because God's word tells me that he has given light to every man.

He goes on to say that believers have prayed to his model of god and gotten no response because believers have to do what his god wants before his god will answer them. There is some sort of appropriate procedure to follow. Said procedure is repenting and trusting in Jesus.

Comfort then gives his reader a common parable about his god - concerning prayers, his god always responds, and the response is either "yes", "no" or "wait".

I have covered this nonargument about atheists knowing there is a god several times over, so I'll not repeat myself. There is no compelling evidence for Comfort's god, so no, I do not "know" that his god exists. I could say that comfort is merely pretending that his god exists so that he can feel good about his special place in the universe, but I do not wish to stoop to his level of pandering. I could say that he is just pretending that Thor does not exist, so that he does not have to be held accountable when Thor's gigantic godly hammer comes crashing down. As amusing as that would be, we don't have any compelling evidence for Thor's existence, either.

I also don't need to show you, my dear reader, how silly the "yes/no/wait" prayer argument is because someone else has already done so fairly well, in the form of a youtube clip by GIIVideo:

Ray a Day - 5:9

Now, obviously Comfort takes great pleasure in insulting atheists (and anyone else outside of his "true Christianity").  If you think you've seen some horrifyingly baseless and utterly absurd fear-mongering so far, get a load of this single page from his book.  Of course Comfort completely dodges the actual challenge here, but that's par for the course.  There is a bigger issue here.  This is in response to a skeptic questioning why so many Christians seem to be afraid of atheists (the skeptic suggests that perhaps some Christians are afraid that their belief system is so easy to take apart):

A very wise man once said, "Most I fear God.  Next, I fear him who fears Him not."  Atheists are probably about as dangerous as "religious" people (as opposed to those who truly love God).  Religious people have killed millions throughout history in religious wars (the Crusades of the Catholic church, Islamic terrorism, etc.), the Spanish Inquisition (the murder of Christians by the Catholic church), the killing of the prophets of God (by religious Jews), the murder of Jesus, the persecution of the Church (see the Book of Acts for details, or read Foxe's Book of Martyrs for greater and horrific detail).  Religious hypocrites come in a close second to atheistic communism, which is responsible for 100 million deaths throughout history.  If someone doesn't fear God, they will lie to you (if they think that they can get away with it), they will steal from you (if they think that they can get away with it), and they may even kill you (if they . . . you know why by now).  The atheist thinks that he's getting away with his sin.  He denies that there is a God, and therefore he believes that there is no judgment for his actions.

Of course, I'm going to go over this bit by bit, but I wanted you dear readers to be able to read this all at once.  Just let this mountain of fail sink in for a moment or two . . .

Where to begin?  ". . . as dangerous as 'religious' people (as opposed to those who truly love God)"  Again, Ray, if you claim to love God, you are, by definition, religious. You use the adjective "religious" as if it's a grave insult, yet you have no rational basis for denying that you yourself are religious.

*List of terrible shit that the Catholic Church has done* - Still, with the ridiculous assertion that Catholics are not Christians!  Do Catholics believe in the Bible? Check.  Jesus?  Check.  Were Jesus and God one and the same?  Check.  By any reasonable definition, they're Christian.  Get over it.  Again, what's your basis for insisting that Catholics aren't Christians?  They're theology isn't perfectly straight, according to the Bible?  The Catholic Church created the Bible.  If you're disgusted by the Catholic Church, Ray, take a good, hard look at your own religion, because to all intents and purposes, your religion is Catholicism by a different name.

Islamic Terrorism:  Islam is also a Judaic religion; it's from the same school of thought as your religion, Ray.  Islam is not as different from your religion as you obviously think.  Did you know that Jesus is an extremely revered and honored figure in Islam?  Muslims even agree with you that he was born of a virgin.  Consider:  It can probably be safely assumed that atheists universally reject any supernatural attributes of Jesus Christ, if they believe that he existed at all.  Islam agrees with Christianity that he existed, was born of a virgin, was a great prophet, performed many miracles, and was taken into the sky, into heaven, by the monotheistic Jewish God.  There is no real guilt-by-association to be explored here, but if there were, it would not be within atheism.

"Religious hypocrites come in a close second to atheistic communism, which is responsible for 100 million deaths throughout history."  See, now, this is exactly the sort of thing that would warrant a reference (preferably more than one).  The obvious implication here is that atheism caused the human rights abuses that took place in communist Russia and China, which doesn't logically follow at all.  The governments in question were also made up of people who wore clothes.  Did communist human rights violations occur as a result of a pants-based ideology, as well?  Besides which, there is a crucial distinction that is completely ignored here:  Communistic regimes invariably begin with an authoritarian worldview, which shares many doctrines of common philosophical support with most monotheistic religions.  However, the regimes in communistic Russia and China absolutely did not follow the principles of Secular Humanism.  It's one thing to say that history demonstrates that communism as a political philosophy is very seriously flawed; it's quite another to say that communists had a certain attribute in common and that attribute is the direct cause of that government's gross human rights abuse.

"Most I fear God.  Next, I fear him who fears Him not."  People who don't "fear God" will apparently lie, steal, and commit homicide as long as we don't think that we'll get caught.  One big question, made up of a very small word - why?  Why does Comfort know with such certainty that we atheists are horrible people?  I have two major responses to this:

1.  As has been mentioned on this blog numerous times, atheists, agnostics, and all varieties of freethinkers are no more likely to commit immoral actions than persons of any other demographic.  We're no more likely to divorce, cheat on our partners, or commit a violent crime.  This correlation that religious bigots want to see so badly simply isn't there, in any way, shape, or form.  As many such religious bigots do, Comfort tries to explain this by claiming that persons who commit such immoral acts are not "true Christians."  Of course, this actually defines religious bigotry as part of their worldview.  No religious group can reasonably claim that their "true" members are, for example, people who believe in God, the Bible, and Jesus, and behave in a moral way the vast majority of the time.  One would need a truly staggering volume of evidence that their particular group is almost always moral to even attempt to demonstrate that such a qualifier could be rational.  Many, many religions claim to have a monopoly on morality, so this qualifier is completely meaningless.  I can state unequivocally that atheists are no more intrisically moral than anyone else.  Why can't folks like Comfort do the same?

2.  So, Comfort makes no bones about it; he's certain that people who don't fear God will commit any immoral act, if they think that they can get away with it.  How on earth does he come to this conclusion?  Every single atheist that I know has morals that they follow, and every single one has many morals that are completely independent of a threat of punishment.  This is the main thing that worries me about folks like Comfort - why would he be so certain that people will act immorally when there's no threat of punishment, unless he himself would act immorally without threat of punishment?  Comfort states this many, many times; all humanity is horribly sinful and immoral.  So he doesn't actually mean that "people *who don't fear God* will commit immoral acts if they think that they can get away with it," he means that everybody will commit immoral acts if they think that they can get away with it.  He just thinks that people who believe in a wrathful God "know" that they'll never get away with it, because their God sees all.  That's the main issue here (possibly the main issue with Comfort's entire worldview . . .):  In Comfort's world, not one single person does anything moral out of an actual moral conviction!  Genuine ethics literally don't exist!  In his world, the only reason that anyone does anything moral is merely to avoid punishment!

No, Ray.  People do have genuine morals and ethics.  Altruism and compassion are real parts of being human.  These humanistic principles stand on their own merit - the betterment of our world and humanity are worthwhile goals in and of themselves.  A person who is truly moral is exactly a person who does the right thing without the promise of reward or the threat of punishment, and the real, godless world out here is full of such people.  Your bizarre theology genuinely depresses me, Mr. Comfort.  It is your worldview, not atheism, that is so forlorn . . . dismal . . . indescribably bleak.  What a sad, pathetic fantasy world you live in.

Ray a Day - 5:8

Well, we're in the last 30 pages of Ray Comfort's book, "You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics".

Today, Comfort's Angry Skeptic says:

Welcome to a dangerous new era - the Unlightenment - in which centuries of rational thought are overturned by idiots. Superstitious idiots. They're everywhere - reading horoscopes, buying homeopathic remedies, consulting psychics, babbling about "chakras" and "healing energies", praying to imaginary gods, and rejecting science in favour of soft-headed bunkum. But instead of slapping these people round the face till they behave like adults, we encourage them. We've got to respect their beliefs, apparently. ... Why should your outmoded codswallop be treated with anything other than the contemptuous mockery it deserves?

 I looked up this quote on Comfort's blog and noted something interesting - it is a quote by Charlie Brooker, from an article published in The Guardian. The blog commenter (or "angry skeptic", if you will) made it clear that he was quoting someone else, by clearly citing who he was quoting.  Comfort takes this quote and though he obvously knows from the original comment that this quote was authored by Charlie Brooker, he fails to cite the original author of this comment in his book.

I am not nearly this dishonest, so I will give credit where credit is due. The text above is from a column in the guardian. The entire column can be found here.  Charlie Brooker has been writing for tv and media for decades and has written several books.

I am fairly sure that Comfort could get sued for using quotes from an article written in the guardian without crediting the author. I do not think that it matters that the quote came from his blog comments (He can use his blog comments due to fair use laws) because the commenter was quoting from someone else, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, Comfort says that he agrees with Brooker. He agrees that we're surrounded by crazy people who'll believe anything. He says that he and Kirk Cameron once snuck a hidden camera into a psychic store, but they got kicked out because their "questions cut too close to the bone". He thinks healing energy and imaginary gods, seeing mary in a cheese sandwitch is all a bunch of bunk.

So far, we're with him, right? But what does he have up his sleeve? Oh, he says we should "go one step furthur and say to stop all this nonsense and to love and serve the Living God". He says that he's going to make a prediction, and that his prediction is this: his blog will make us mad, and when we read that we'll decide we aren't mad, and will then get confused about how to respond.

You see, to an atheist, or to someone incredulous, there isn't much difference between healing energy and non Comfortian Christian gods or comfort's particular brand of god. There is no more evidence for his god than for any of these other things. Why is it that Comfort can so easily dismiss the claims of other religions but is incapable of applying the same logic to his own? What is the difference between a "false god" and thw apparently "true god" Comfort believes in? Why is it so easy to dismiss other gods as foolish, but you can't let go of your own using the exact same tools you used to dismantle the others? I'll never understand this.

I am going to guess that Comfort and Cameron got kicked out of the psychic store maybe cause they... had a camera on business property. I don't really know, as I can't find any verification that this took place aside from in Ray's book - but since he seems to be a master heckler, I am going to go out on a limb and guess that he may have been heckling and creating a schene.

Oh and, Comfort's prediction was incorrect. This does not make me mad. It makes me think. When you're an outsider to religion, people's different religious beliefs sort of blur into a fuzzy spectrum (The Religion Spectrum). People who have beliefs that do not infringe on the believers' ability to function in daily life, are ethical, moral and do not undermine science or take away my rights don't particularly bother me, even if they are a fairly far cry from reality. To me, the only difference in the Christian and Muslim god, for example, are the behaviors of their believers and some minor specific beliefs. They both fall squarely in the categoy of "mythology".

Ray a Day - 5:7

So, today's Ray a Day is about Mahatma Gandhi.  A skeptic recites the commonly heard quote of Gandhi's, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."  Comfort's response is that no one is like Jesus.  He challenges us to try and live one single day like Jesus, being completely perfect.

Well, for one, it seems obvious to me that Jesus Christ was not perfect.  I should make clear, I do think that Jesus was an excellent moral teacher for his time.  Even by the Bible's own standards, however, Jesus failed:  saying that we must all hate our mother and father in Luke 14:26.  In John 4:2, he blatantly insults his mother, Mary.  The Bible makes it clear that any failed prediction conclusively proves that a person claiming to give prophecy is a fake, yet in Matthew, Chapters 16, 24, and 26, Jesus claims that his return will happen very soon, within the lives of the people he was speaking to (these predictions are repeated in Mark 13 and Luke 21).  By humanistic morality, such as my own, Jesus fails as well.  He ranted frequently about hell.  I strongly object to the concept of a person who so thoroughly approves of the idea of hell being morally perfect.  He was also racist.  Was the rest of his culture racist?  Definitely.  Do I consider him a terrible person based entirely on his relatively mind racism?  Not at all.  I do, however, think that it firmly establishes Jesus, at least as he is portrayed in the Gospels, as being considerably less than "morally perfect."  (Verses in question are Mark 7:24-30.)

Concerning Gandhi, Comfort goes on to say that it seems that Gandhi did not accept Jesus as his savior, and so is burning in hell, and certainly was not perfect in word, thought and deed, like good 'ol Jesus.  Now, it should be obvious that the skeptic was not claiming in any way that Gandhi was perfect, he was simply using a well-known quote to illustrate that while Jesus was an admirable moral teacher on some issues, a great many of his followers are not (pay close attention to this part, Ray!).  Many followers of Jesus are overbearing, judgemental, dishonest people who hide behind an air of self-righteousness.  If folks like Comfort don't want to give people a bad impression of their religion, then it wouldn't hurt to actually take some of Jesus' advice. He might start by actually apropriately and honestly answering the point of a question instead of simply dodging it while adding a sprinkle of ad hominem.  Ghandi's point was that even though people claim that they are following the teachings of Jesus, they are very unlike Jesus or his teachings.


Oh yeah and - happy Jewish zombie day! Today's the day the dead people crawled out of their graves and walked around Jerusalem, but no one noticed except Matthew (who wasn't even there).

Ray a Day - 5:6

Today, I'll hit a specific pathology of Ray Comfort's; those familiar with Comfort's apologetics will recognize this argument instantly.  We don't even have an actual question from a skeptic today - Comfort only publishes the beginning of a question, that reads, "When I was a Christian . . ."

Here, Ray explains that "It's important to speak truthfully about our experiences, by using the correct terminology.  Rather than saying 'When I was a Christian,' you should say 'When I professed to be a Christian,' or, to be biblically sound, 'When I wa a false convert.'"

He references John 17:3, which reads:  "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."  To Comfort, the only acceptable definition of 'Christian' is one particular biblical verse, and he interprets it to mean a personal, direct knowledge, and he must define "knowledge" as information that is completely accurate, and that the person who holds the knowledge will never change their mind.  This is just wrong, on so many levels.

I'm sure that someone somewhere has at some point stated something to the effect of "atheists know there is no god."  How stupid would it be if I simply quoted this line and insisted that the only "true" definition of "atheist" was a person who knows that there is no God, and that therefore anyone who has any belief in a higher power has never at any point in their life been an atheist?  What if I can't be a liberal unless I know that liberal social and government policies are the most fair and just policies, therefore, if I ever vote Republican, I was never a liberal?  Where does this stupid word game end?

If a person cannot hold a belief and be a true member of a given demographic unless they never change their mind, then how do we know that Comfort is a 'true' Christian?  We don't - he could (um, yeah, highly unlikely, but theoretically possible) change his mind, which would mean that according to his bizarrely narrow definition, he was never a Christian.  If we can never know with 100% certainty that a person won't change their mind in the future, nobody, including Comfort himself, can actually call themselves a Christian!  The same goes for any other belief or opinion that we could apply such weaselly semantics to.  Sometimes people change their minds.  It's not dishonest, as Comfort says, to say that I was once a Christian and am now an atheist, nor is it dishonest for Comfort's buddy Kirk Cameron to claim that he was once an atheist and is now a Christian.

I think that this might be Comfort's bigger picture:

The other thought is, if you were of the disposition that you could be deceived, how do you know that it's not happening again?  The essence of "deception" is that the deceived person doesn't know that he's deceived.  That's why we need God's Word as a guide.

Yes, Ray, and that's exactly the point.  The person who recognizes that he or she could be deceived is far more likely to spot a deception or irrational fallacy in an assertion than one who insists that they could never be deceived, like you.  Most particularly if a person has been deceived in the past, and after looking at the logic and evidence of the deception, has given up their faulty opinion or belief, they are even more likely to spot a deception.  You simply assert that "we need God's Word as a guide."  How do you know that you aren't being deceived by the Bible?  After all, 'the essence of deception is that the deceived person doesn't know that he's deceived," right?  Comfort's language is designed to sound convincing by weight of his own conviction, but it obviously doesn't actually demonstrate anything, because it can be used to "cast doubt" on any assertion at all.

Ray a Day 5:5

Today Ray's angry skeptic says that if he (or she) ever becomes a believer, he might believe in deism like Antony Flew, but he (she?) would never believe in the Christian god - as a reason, the skeptic says "I could never worship a god that could quote possibly be torturing Anne Frank"

For those of you out of the loop, Anne Frank is an adorable girl who died in a Nazi concentration camp when she was fifteen. Here diary was discovered and published posthumusly. Isn't she absolutely adorable? Too bad, because this cute adorable face is suffering eternal torment in hell because she didn't think correctly, according to Comfortian Christianity.

Ray says, "It seems that this skeptic is willing to believe in a God who created all things, but he's not willing to believe in a God who is a God of Justice. ... imagine that perhaps Anne heard the Gospel from those with whom she was captive in Nazi Germany, and as a Jew she embraced the Jewish Messiah. then our skeptic friend will therefore end up in hell, when he could have instead ended up in heaven with Anne Frank"

He's missing the whole point. The problem is not that the skeptic has a particular problem with a just god, the problem is that the skeptic is using the evidence of the Christian god's supposed actions and behaviors and coming to the conclusion that the Christian god is an unjust god. What comfort is doing here is asserting that the skeptic does not like justice, when in fact the opposite is true - the fact that he sees justice as a positive force is precisely the reason he rejects the christian god. Comfort, on the other hand, thinks that his god is defines as "a just being", and so no matter what this god does, it is a just god. It can do things that we would consider horrible, but it is still just, simply because it says so.

I've said this before in a different way, but it is worth repeating. here goes:

There are two ways (there are possibly more, but two for the sake of this argument) to decide that something/someone/some action is just:

1. Look at any given entity X and observe it's characteristics and determine the status of its justice based on those observed characteristics and a working definition of the word "justice". In this case, justice is determined based on experience I.E. a given entity is just because we have observed that is fits the definition of "just".

2. Define a given entity X as just, and define any action any given entity X does as just, in which case no observable characteristics will change its status as a just thing. In this case, a given entity is just in spite of any flaws one might encounter - those flaws are dismissed as not actually being flaws, because the given entity has already been defined as just. This is using an a priori definition and is independent of experience, I.E. A given entity is just because it is just.

The problem occurs when we do both in the same argument - by create a working definition of a word (in this case, justice) and then applying it to entity X, but then defining entity X as justice. Then even when entity X does things that are counter to our prior definition of justice, we simply say that entity X is just, and so even if it looks as thought entity X is being unjust, entity X is not being unjust, because that's impossible. Make sense? No. It doesn't.

The first way of deciding that something is just fits in with our observational model of the world - observe, experiment, and think about what has been observed and experimented on. The second way has nothing to do with our observed world. The first way is rational, and the second is not.

Imagine, if you will, that I think Flimsy is perfectly just. If I think he is just based on my observation and experience - if he always behaves in a morally right way based on ethics, rationality, law, fairness, natural law, equity, etc - then his justness is subject to change say, if he decides to kill my dog to punish me because I blinked at him the wrong way. If he does something unjust, then I will question whether he is a just person. If he repeatedly acts in an unjust manner, I will decide that he is not just.

If I think he is just because he is just and he defines justness, then his actions do not matter, as his justice is not based on my observation and experience and not subject to change. He can do whatever he wants and because he is perfect justice, whatever he wants to do is the just thing to do. He did the right thing. I am the one to blame.

If he holds out his hands and says, "in my right hand is a blue bead. In my left hand is a red bead. I am freely giving you the choice to take whichever you want, because I love you and care about you and want you to have free will" and I choose the red bead, and he says, "Um no. If you don't choose the blue bead, I am going to beat you to within an inch of your life, rape you, kill your pets, cut out your eyes, and set you on fire. But I love you, so I want it to be your choice. No really. Choose whichever you want".

If I tell my parents that my perfectly just boyfriend gave me this choice, what are they going to think? They are going to think it is appropriate for me to get as far away from him as possible. They are not going to think, "wow, that guy really knows how to follow Biblical moral principals!"

This type of reasoning is, frankly, dangerous.

Of course, there is also a third type of belief concerning Justice and god - a lot of people believe god is perfectly just and does not do unjust things, so whenever an unjust thing is attributed to god's doing, the believer chooses to believe that those attributing an unjust behavior to god are just wrong. A similar situation might be if a friend of mine told me that Flimsy had robbed a bank - I would not believe that individual, because I don't believe that is something Flimsy would do. If I saw Flimsy arrive in his car with a bag of cash while being pursued by the police, I would have ample evidence to change my mind. Since the only behaviors I can attribute to a person's god are those attributes the person tells me their god happens to have, I can only look at an individual's god as a character, and decided based on that god's actions if their particular version of god fits the definition of a just god. 

Also, how does pretending Anne Frank is in heaven by pretending she accepted Jesus helpful? The point is that Anne Frank was a good girl who suffered terribly in a concentration camp and died, and it does not seem just to inflict maximal punishment by eternal torment in hell because she happened to be born in an environment and under circumstances which did not give her the opportunity to repent and accept Jesus as her savior.

Let's take a break, ye of little attention span...:







That was fun! Moving on...

He then goes on to quote himself from another book he wrote called The Evidence Bible. He talks about a televangelist who claims to believe that all of the people who died on the Holocaust went to heaven. He says we should really think about the implications of this statement: His statement limits the salvation of Jews to those who died in the Holocaust:

If the slaughtered Jews made it into heaven, did the many Gypsies who died in the Holocaust obtain salvation? ... Perhaps he was saying that the death of Jesus on the Cross covered all of humanity, and that we will all be saved ... this means that salvation will also come to Hitler and the Nazis who killed the Jews. ... Such a statement would have brought the scorn of his Jewish host, and of the world whose compassion has definite limits. If pressed, he probably didn't mean that only the Jews in the caps went to heaven, because that smacks of racism. He was likely saying that those who died were saved because they died in such tragic circumstances. ... So is there another way to heaven - death in a Nazi concentration camp? Or is Salvation limited to German camps? If their salvation came because of the grim circumstances surrounding their death, does a Jew therefore enter heaven after suffering for hours before dying in a car wreck...if he was killed by a drunk driver who happened to be German?

 Okay. First of all, this whole idea of suffering being the entrance into heaven is a derailment of the topic - it reminds me of this terrible debate I saw once in which the atheist (who I feel lost the debate, sadly enough) asked his opponent exactly where Jesus went after he descended onto heaven - space? But he can't breathe up there! He would have burned up in the atmosphere!

No, the televangalist is not saying that suffering is the key to heaven - he is saying that it is not ethical to torture people (for eternity.) who don't believe in Jesus while they are alive and the people who do believe in Jesus are the ones killing them. Because it's not ethical, God would not do that, since god does not do unethical things. Therefore, God did not punish the Jews for not believing in Jesus. He believes the third way mentioned above - he uses a working definition of justice, and sees if his god fits that definition. If he does not, then he determines that his god did not do the thing that did not fit the definition of "just". Ray believes God is just in the second way - no matter what his god does, it's the just thing to do.

More? More!

Comfort says:

I'm a little weary of hearing atheists parrot their popular and old phrase about "God torturing His Children". presumably speaking of God sending sinners to hell. God will not "torture" anyone. He will give them "justice". A criminal may believe that his being thrown into a cold prison because he viciously raped three teenage girls, is torture. The judge rather knows better. He calls it "justice".

 Guess what.  I am more than a little weary of hearing Christians parrot their popular and old phrase about "hell being perfect justice". Hell, as described by the Bible, is torture, and that's the point. The point is not to teach people a lesson so that they will stop being bastards, the point is to make them suffer eternally in maximal, conscious, irreversible punishment. The point is not justice, the point is suffering. A criminal is thrown into prison because prison is a place to:

1. Put people who are a danger to society.
2. Put people so that they may be reformed and then re-enter society.

The point of prison is not eternal, irreversible conscious torment. You simply cannot compare prison to hell and then claim that hell is mere justice, just like prison. Hell is torture. Ray is basically saying "Oh no.. god doesn't torture people, he only tortures them, but we call it justice because that sounds more fair." Yes, and I didn't rape that little girl, we had consensual sex.

Grah! There is so much for me to write about in this one blog post. I'm not even done yet. Comfort goes on. He says that sinner will be damned "from all that is good in a prison called hell. ... So they will get what the Bible calls "Equity". Equity, according to the dictionary, is, "the quality of being fair or impartial; fairness, impartiality; the equity of Solomon." ... In other words, equity is doing that which is right, fair and just". Sinners are not God's children. The Bible makes that clear. We are not his children until we are washed away from our sins by the grace of God, and are born of his spirit through the new birth of John 3:1-5.

Hey look, Ray has cited another source without referencing it or crediting the source. Of course though, if he wants to cite five paragraphs of himself, does reference it. What's up with that? Here is the definition of Equity, from Dictionary.com (see what I did there?)

Equity (n)
1. the quality of being fair or impartial; fairness; impartiality: the equity of Solomon.

So what Ray is saying here is that because The Bible says that people will get equity, and equity according to the dictionary means fair and impartial, that means that his god is fair and impartial. Also, apparently no human is the child of Comfort's god until they repent, accept Jesus, and get born again. In other words, God does not give a shit about Anne Frank. Even though he created her. Since we can't be Comfort's god's children until we do the Jesus thing, and since Comfort's god apparently considered Anne Frank to be a worthless sinner whose perfect and just outcome was maximal, infinite, irreversible punishment, what then is the impetus to care about, say for example, unborn babies? Unborn babies, according to Comfort, cannot possibly be his god's children.

Isn't it fun to follow a premise to its logical conclusion?

Ray a Day - 5:3

So here we are, in the midst of Comfort's chapter about the why Christianity is unique - that all "religions" are man-made and that they rely completely on self-righteousness because they require you to actually do good and refrain from doing evil.  This is what sets Christianity apart from man-made religions, Comfort explains.  Christianity recognizes that no good works that we do can be of any moral value, and the only way we can be saved  is by belief in Jesus, regardless of how ethically we actually behave(!).

At this point, Comfort slips into super-repetitive mode.  He more or less simply repeats the above paragraph over and over again, in response to every single skeptic.  Here's some highlights.

One skeptic brings up census data and violent crime rate information, pointing out that in 2007, both general crime and violent crime, as well as teen pregnancy rates, were far higher in portions of the country that described themselves as being very religious.  The skeptic acknowledges that this doesn't even remotely prove that religion causes violent crime, but that it does disprove Comfort's constant insulting claims that the nonreligious are such dangerous moral degenerates.  Comfort's reply is the common stock response that they are all "false converts;" that they cannot be "true Christians" if they have an immoral lifestyle.

This is a very interesting contradiction on Comfort's part.  He has asserted repeatedly that any so-called "good works" of anyone, Christian or atheist, are completely worthless.  He even states outright on page 93 that, "our 'good works' (religious deeds) are in truth attempts to bribe the Judge of the Universe."  Yet here, he also states outright that we can tell who is a 'true Christian' and who is a 'false convert' by whether they are a moral, ethical person.  Now, when most people contradict themselves, they do so with two different statements that they believe to be rational or ethical on their own, yet contradict each other if they are claimed to each be part of the same worldview.  For example, a person might claim cultural moral relativism and, as a result, assert that a patriarchal society was perfectly ethical for ancient civilization X, but would be wrong in our modern, enlightened culture.  However, this same person will then say that ritual female genital mutilation is unethical in any society, regardless of the fact that is it an integral part of many African and Middle Eastern cultures.  This person has contradicted themselves, but we can at least give them credit for abandoning their faulty logic in a specific ethical situation.

Comfort, on the other hand, contradicts himself by saying that ethical behavior, even that of Christians, is completely worthless, and even offensive to God, yet that a person who is unethical cannot be a "true Christian."  This . . . this is about as horribly wrong as a person can twist a moral philosophy.  Beyond the blatant logical failure of the conflicting statements, the first is plainly the opposite of morality - morality is striving for ethical behavior and refraining from unethical behavior.  Comfort somehow claims the exact opposite; that morality has nothing to do with moral behavior, and everything to do with one specific, ethically neutral thought that you must hold in your head.  His second assertion could, if he wanted to be consistent, state that, clearly following from the first statement, Christians are not any more likely to be moral or ethical than atheists, because Christians are defined only by their belief in God and Jesus, not their ethical behavior.  Comfort instead pulls a complete 180 on his first statement, not only blatantly contradicting himself, but insisting that someone who behaves unethically cannot be a "true Christian," adding overt religious bigotry to the mix!

Join us next time for Anne Frank, and more of Comfort dodging simple questions!

Ray a Day: 5:2

Today's questioner asks Ray how we know we've got the right god.

Ray says that this is a good question, and goes on to explain a few of the other gods (the Mormon, Aztec, new age) and even throws in "evolution as a god - "You could make evolution your god, and give it praise for creating everything through (super)natural selection". I shouldn't have to point out that evolution is a process, and so saying that you could make evolution your god is about as bizarre as saying you could make economics your god.

Here is how, Ray says, you can know you've got the right god.

-you have guilt.
-the ten commandments says stuff.
-the conscience produces guilt about not following the ten commandments.
-this guilt is a product of our impending judgment.
-It's true whether your believe it or not.
-the Bible says Jesus suffered to take away your sins and guilt.
-The Bible promises you won't feel guilty anymore if you repent and trust Jesus.
-Then, we won't feel guilty for anything - lust, adultery, etc.
-No other religion can wipe away the guilt you feel for doing bad stuff.
-all those false religions still have sacrifices through prayer, doing good works, etc.
-Not Christianity! Once we trust Jesus and repent, we're literally not guilty anymore of doing bad things.
-This is so simple a child could understand it. "Obey the gospel, and guilt is replaced by absolute assurance of everlasting life"

Without writing out the whole paragraph, this is literally what Ray is saying. I hope that any Christians reading this realize that Comfort it making a mockery of your religion. People should feel guilty for not doing good works, because doing good works is the ethical thing to do. I cannot believe that Comfort continually mocks and berates atheists for being the scum of the earth while simultaneously claiming that his savior will wash away all of his crimes and he will no longer have to feel guilty for committing any of them.

On top of this did Comfort really even answer the question? The right god is apparently the one that makes all of your guilt for doing bad things wash away. Honestly, I don't understand this. Comfort claims that atheists reject god so that they can do whatever they want without feeling guilty, but his version of Christianity seems to imbue the exact same sentiments that he rails against. What is to stop someone from committing adultery and then saying, "It's okay! It's no big deal! I accept Jesus, so I don't feel guilty for betraying my wife. God will forgive me!" The only "argument" he has to fall back on, then, is the argument that if you're a "True Christian", then you'll never do bad things. I am going to go out on a limb and assume that Ray considers himself a "True Christian" yet he admits that he has broken every one of the ten commandments - he says this is okay, because Jesus will forgive poor little sinful Ray Comfort (p55). Apparently atheists are terrible scum because they are "moral free agents", but with all guilt for immorality washed away, Comfortian Christians are more morally free than atheists - believe in Jesus and if you hurt society, you don't have to feel guilty because you are forgiven. Be an atheist, and if you hurt society you feel guilty because you've gone against social morals. This form of moral extremism is dangerous to society and I can't understand why Comfort is advocating it.

If you're forgiven for doing bad things, and your god allows you to feel no guilt at all for doing bad things, what is the impetus to stop doing those bad things? I'd personally rather people follow a god that makes people feel appropriately guilty for harming others. Lack of feelings of guilt for doing bad is a classic sign of sociopathy.

Ray Comfort's morality scares me. It offends my ethics. If a subjective feeling of guiltlessness at one's moral crimes is how one finds the right god, I hope that no one finds the right god.

Ray a Day 5:1

Onto a new chapter in our review of Ray Comfort's book.  Our good Catholic friend, Augustine79 has already hit a few bits of this chapter, so today I'll try to give a backdrop of what this chapter is all about.  It's titled, "What Sets Christianity and Christians Apart?"  In a nutshell, this chapter is all about why Christianity is the one religion to rule them all, and why all other religions are false.

In the introduction, Comfort says that some people may have been deprived of any knowledge of "genuine" Christianity.  As he says, "All they have seen is the inside of a dead Catholic church."  He says that many Christians insist that he is 'casting pearls before swine' in trying to minister to atheists, but that he will persevere.  One must wonder how on earth he can believe that he will convince atheists to change their minds while insulting them as frequently and as vehemently as he does.

I want to touch on a truly deranged sidebar titled "Hope for a 'True Atheist'."  Here we have the 'testimony' of a former supposed atheist who was saved by Jesus.  Pay attention here, this is what Comfort describes as a "True Atheist":

I was a true atheist, addicted to pornography and a big fan of torture. I hated the Bible and literally looked at "contract killer" as a career option. I favored Darwinian abortion of potentially disabled children and agreed with the majority of Adolph Hitler's statements about the disabled and invalid. I fantasized about murder and contemplated suicide and held nothing but hatred in my heart for anyone who told me I was wrong.

So obviously, we have a true sociopath here.  This person is actually criminally insane . . .  And this is what Comfort calls a "true atheist."  Comfort does not specify where he got this supposed testimony, but he posted about it on his blog, Atheist Central.  Ziztur and I hunted, but could not verify this testimony in any way.  The only bit that we came up with was that a commenter under Comfort's post claimed to be this person, Jacques Reulet, and he has a pretty useless blogger profile here.  Let's take this apart piece by piece.

1.  Pornography is not harmful to myself or anyone else.  If it is a genuine addiction, then that would be a different matter, but it would be the addiction that would be harmful to the individual or society, not the pornography.  I personally do have a soft spot in my heart for pornography, because I was celibate for a good long while.  My enjoyment of pornography does not infringe upon anyone's rights, therefore it is completely ridiculous to put it in the same category as the other 'sins' in this list.

2.  "A big fan of torture."  Seriously?  Really, dude?  This line alone makes me doubt the honesty of this 'testimony."  Even if it is accurate, this will make this dude the one single atheist I've ever heard of who would actually say that he was a "big fan of torture."  Besides which, um, . . . do I even need to point out that Comfort's God will torture everyone who doesn't worship him forever?  Ray Comfort makes no bones about it - anyone who has ever felt lust (which we all have felt) is guilty (yeah, that means all of us) and deserves the punishment that God has chosen for us, and that punishment is to be burned alive in hell forever.  Ray Comfort (and a good many other theists I could name) are literally bigger 'fans of torture' than any atheist I know.

3.  I don't have anything against any individual Bible, obviously, but it would not be completely inaccurate to say that I hate the morality and science that can be found there.  Funny that I despise biblical morality precisely because it offends my ethics, in the same way as most of the above paragraph does.  As mentioned in #2, torture and gross injustice and oppression offend my moral conscience, and that's why I reject biblical morality and the biblical God.

4.  How does one even attempt to break into the 'contract killer' business?  Mob contacts?  Military training?

5.  What does 'darwinian abortion' even mean?  Miscarriages?  'Cause, um . . . that's what we would actually be talking about here.  Those women who are least likely to miscarry will obviously have a greater chance of giving birth successfully, thus passing on such traits.  As for aborting potentially disabled children, I also don't know of anyone who actually advocates a societal policy of such a thing.

6.  I'm not entirely sure what Adolf Hitler had to say about the 'disabled and invalid,' it's tough work fishing for such quotes in the sea of love that Hitler had for Jesus.  But seriously, again, no one I know agrees with Hitler on this stuff nowadays.  This seems like just another cheap shot for them to use, to accuse atheists of gross immorality.

7.  If this miniscule sample size (literally, 1 [one]) were in any way indicative of reality, then the prisons would be filled to overflowing with atheist murderers.  I'll even leave out the snarky, sarcastic response to this . . . just Google "atheist prison population" or something similar to get figures if you're interested.  Suffice it to say, atheists (as well as agnostics and other freethinkers) are a moderate-sized chunk of the population at large, yet are a practically non-existent portion of the prison population, especially when it comes to violent crime.

8.  What if I stooped to this level, Ray?  Here's my deconversion story, then:  I was a "True Christian," I went to church every Sunday, I never ate shellfish, I prayed often, I was sure to stone to death any same sex couples that I found, and I never failed to kill someone who blasphemed against God.  Then one day, I realized what a giant fuckwit I had been.  I gave up my silly belief in God, I treated the Bible as nothing more than a silly, ancient tribal myth, and tried my very best to be an ethical person, treating others with respect, compassion, and human rights."  Would I ever say such a thing?  No, that would be completely dishonest.  Would I publish it if I found such a testimony?  No, that would imply that at least a significant portion of Christinans fit this horrifyingly condescending stereotype.  Would I find such a testimony, publish it, and them explicitly state that this is what a "True Christian" is like?  Absolutely not, that would mean that I was acting like Ray Comfort, and I'm quite insulted by the mere thought.  That anyone could read this and not see how actively and deliberately Comfort is fomenting hatred and bigotry is completely staggering to me.

Ray a Day - 4:4

Here we have a question from a skeptic and "answer" from Comfort that is just extraordinarily entertaining.  A skeptic asks, "So, a talking snake, a man living in a whale's stomach for three days, a virgin pregnancy, and a man walking on water don't contradict logic?"

Comfort's reply:

So, a talking parrot, three hundred people flying through the sky in a big tin can called a 747, a human being growing inside another person, and men walking on the moon don't contradict logic?  Of course they do, if you are small-minded.  However, science and technology have exploded the word. . . . when we are born again, the supernatural takes logic into a new realm.  When we discover that the supernatural is a reality our mind is suddenly expanded and logic explodes.

*Sigh*  Where to begin?

Okay, first off, do we even need to explain the obvious differences between the talking snake in the Bible and a "talking" parrot?  We have evidence that certain types of parrot can mimic human speech, the most obvious evidence being the fact that we can directly observe this as often as we feel like.  It does not  "contradict logic" to accept a claimed phenomenon if you can easily observe that phenomenon.  Ziztur tells me that in very rare cases, parrots are capable of actually forming sentences and responding to a stimulus with an actual intelligent thought process (usually, they simply mimic human speech).  We have mountains of evidence that snakes are not as intelligent as parrots.  The snake in the Bible was not simply mimicking human speech, he was forming actual thoughts and audible speech as intelligently (or more intelligently) than Adam and Eve.  This hasn't ever been observed, and in fact we have no reason to believe that such a thing would be even remotely likely to occur.

That's all this little list of his is, really.  It should be obvious that everyone knows that these things don't contradict logic because we can observe these things happening (the bit about a human being growing inside of another person is particularly stupid).  It's espesially bizarre that Comfort goes on to say that all these biblical claims are possible because anything is possible with supernatural forces involved.  Every one of the counter-examples that Comfort gives (parrots, 747's, etc.) can be explained with purely physical explanations, without resorting to the supernatural in any way.  Yet, "supernatural forces" is exactly the so-called explanation that Comfort and the like must resort to in order to explain biblical claims like these.

The way I see it, the root of the problem is this:  Comfort applies his reasoning in a completely inconsistent way, and, of course, completely dodges the actual question.  He claims that accepting Jesus opens our eyes to the existence of the supernatural, and that all these seemingly impossible things become easy to "explain" with supernatural forces involved.

If supernatural forces exist, and all possible phenomena are easily capable of occurring when supernatural forces are involved, then how can we know anything for certain?  How can Comfort know that evolution hasn't occurred?  How does he know that it's not just snakes and parrots, but also mice and dolphins that are much more intelligent than us humans, and are laughing at us behind our backs?  How does he know that the Bible is completely useless, and that God actually wishes for us all to study science and behave in an ethical way?

And that is the heart of the matter:  To all these questions, Comfort is left with only one possible response - because the Bible doesn't say so.  But that, of course, begs the question:  Why does he believe in the Bible, thus accepting all of the Bible's supernatural claims, while rejecting supernatural claims that contradict his scripture?  This is the question that he dances around in his response.  If a Christian wants to convince a naturalist that they should accept the Bible, or any other supernatural assertion, then they have to actually provide evidence or a logical argument to this effect.  To simply say that, "Once you believe in the supernatural, then supernatural forces explain how the illogical can be logical!" is a cheap dodge, and obviously circular to boot.

Ray a Day Guest Post: Augustine79

Here is a guest post by Augustine79, our resident ethical Catholic!

In Ray Comfort’s book, You can lead and Atheist to Evidence but You Can’t Make Him Think, he proposes that Christian theology purports that human moral action does not lead one to salvation. In other words, God does not care about right living with a pure conscience, as long as a human being believes in Christ. My intention here is to expose, to the best of my ability, accurate Christian teaching that flows from human reason, from scripture, and sacred tradition.

Logically, if God is just then it would follow that the deeds of His creation would be taken into account depending on upon whether their actions are immoral or moral. Otherwise, humanity would have absolutely no intrinsic value and goodness, insofar as it can be known either through reason or divine Revelation, would mean nothing.

Before I refute Ray’s uncompassionate, heart-wrenching view of God, here is the actual excerpt I will be contesting:

“All manmade religions still offer sacrifices. That’s the altar upon which they are built – the sacrifice of prayer, of giving money, of giving time, doing good works, of doing penance, of fasting, etc. They have to sacrifice, because they still have guilt, because the conscience demands a continual sacrifice. Not so with Christianity. The guilt is removed because the sacrifice was accepted. Completely. And our guilt is dismissed through simple repentance and faith in Jesus.”

Most of the audience who reads this passage would be quite bewildered by these clearly contradictory statement to Christian living. The Bible explicitly states that good works are organically linked to faith as a part of the equation of infused salvation. Ray subscribes to Sola Fide, or faith alone; bringing one to salvation. Ray, and many fundamentalists hold this view based on Romans 4. However, St. Paul never used this term, and furthermore exposed that justification by faith is something you have you do as well as believe. The only place in the Bible where ‘faith alone’ is used is in the Epistle of James. This passage also proves that salvation involves right action. ““What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him? …You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only…? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” (James 2:14, 24, 26)

In addition to this, the sacrament of Baptism is known in scripture and tradition to remove original sin. However, Ray would view this as a human work, therefore no grace would be infused within the individual. It is arrogant for Ray to assume that he is saved for eternity based solely on belief, and moral works are superfluous.

Here are excerpts from catholic.com providing scriptural and traditional evidence that this notion supported by most fundamentalist protestants is one hundred percent plain wrong.

“Scripture teaches that one’s final salvation depends on the state of the soul at death. As Jesus himself tells us, "He who endures to the end will be saved" (Matt. 24:13; cf. 25:31–46). One who dies in the state of friendship with God (the state of grace) will go to heaven. The one who dies in a state of enmity and rebellion against God (the state of mortal sin) will go to hell.

For many Fundamentalists and Evangelicals it makes no difference—as far as salvation is concerned—how you live or end your life. You can heed the altar call at church, announce that you’ve accepted Jesus as your personal Savior, and, so long as you really believe it, you’re set. From that point on there is nothing you can do, no sin you can commit, no matter how heinous, that will forfeit your salvation. You can’t undo your salvation, even if you wanted to.”

“Regarding the issue of whether Christians have an "absolute" assurance of salvation, regardless of their actions, consider this warning Paul gave: "See then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off" (Rom. 11:22; see also Heb. 10:26–29, 2 Pet. 2:20–21).”

“One can be confident of one’s present salvation. This is one of the chief reasons why God gave us the sacraments—to provide visible assurances that he is invisibly providing us with his grace. And one can be confident that one has not thrown away that grace by simply examining one’s life and seeing whether one has committed mortal sin. Indeed, the tests that John sets forth in his first epistle to help us know whether we are abiding in grace are, in essence, tests of whether we are dwelling in grave sin. For example, "By this it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother" (1 John 3:10), "If any one says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20), "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3).”

“Likewise, by looking at the course of one’s life in grace and the resolution of one’s heart to keep following God, one can also have an assurance of future salvation. It is this Paul speaks of when he writes to the Philippians and says, "And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6). This is not a promise for all Christians, or even necessarily all in the church at Philippi, but it is a confidence that the Philippian Christians in general would make it. The basis of this is their spiritual performance to date, and Paul feels a need to explain to them that there is a basis for his confidence in them. Thus he says, immediately, "It is right for me to feel thus about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel" (1:7). The fact that the Philippians performed spiritually by assisting Paul in his imprisonment and ministry showed that their hearts were with God and that it could be expected that they, at least in general, would persevere and remain with God.”

It is important for theists and atheists/skeptics alike to know this simply because most people receive incorrect information regarding Christian doctrine, and are consequently turned off from organized religion altogether. Its astounding and appalling that Ray dismisses sacrifices that are inherently part of Christian living. Prayer, fasting, charity, and putting yourselves before others are all integral to the Christian faith. Christianity is not only about saving yourself, but spreading peace throughout our world through humble servitude. St. Augustine stressed in his grandiose work, The City of God, that Christians are on this earth to improve upon the temporal world by serving the interests of society in general through the enhancement of social ethics and morality.

Ray a Day Guest Post: Tom

May I introduce to you, Mr. Tom!

This segment of Ray's book opens with our atheist asking,

I would like to ask you a couple of relevant question pertaining to the "sacrifice" of Jesus and its purpose. Please logically explain why an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent God would need to sacrifice Himself(as Jesus) to Himself(God) in order to forgive man of sins against Him(God)? The entire premise seems totally absurd."

     When I read this, I was looking forward to read how Ray was going to justify this "sacrifice", and hopefully understand this for as I've been wondering this myself. Now, the first part of his reply, on the surface at least, appears to be agreeing with our atheist, by saying "I appreciate the way you said that the sacrifice of the Cross seems absurd. It does." Did anyone else catch that? If read quick, it appears as though he is agreeing with our atheist's saying that the sacrifice seems absurd, while in reality, he isn't.

Instead, he goes on to one of his little stories to try to explain his point of view, in a very similar manner to the one he used back in Ray a Day 3:1.

He starts it out with "Imagine if I said to you, 'I just sold my house, my car, and used all my savings to pay a fine for you.'" And then, in the very next paragraph, he rewords his whole story to take it from making no logical sense, to making even less sense, by making it sound like the person with the fine has really messed up, with the fine coming from numerous violations that just mount one on top of the other. And now, out comes the use of verses from the bible to try to support his point. Here, I actually did something that I haven't done in a while, got out a bible and looked them up, so that I could see exactly what he was referencing.

He claims that we don't know that we've broken God's law and are in trouble. And, just for good measure, he tries to put down atheists by saying that are in a "drunken atheistic stupor" before continuing to say that we have ignored our conscience while rushing to sin. Last time I checked, paying attention to your conscience and being an atheist, or any religious preference for that matter, are mutually exclusive. From here, he goes on to describe how god is "all knowing", and how our "behavior" has made him angry at us.

At this point, he is referencing verse after verse to support his point, and so far they are in support of his point.

Now, he decides to show how as you lie to people that are more important, the punishment goes up. That's something that I've known since I was little, and most other people also know.

And now, a demonstration of Ray's logic, just to prepare you.




We're back, and Ray is going on about how sacrifice doesn't work to reconcile your "sin", and how the Aztecs would conduct human sacrifices to appease the gods when they felt that they had angered them, and then says that "any sacrifice we make is an abomination to God."

Here, I must contradict Ray, by also quoting verse. If you look to Leviticus 1:1 to 7:18, it not only outlines how to make sacrifices and offerings, but also how to atone for one's sins and transgressions as well. If god were so against sacrifices, why then would he have told Moses the process, in detail, for conducting sacrifices and offerings? The only part of what Ray said regarding sacrifice that agrees with this part of the Bible is that human sacrifice isn't acceptable, and is an abomination.

Then, he goes back to trying to explain how Jesus' dying on the cross was a sacrifice to save everyone from sin, after saying himself that all sacrifices are an abomination. And what's he do, quote another verse. Here he introduces a rather interesting irony. Jesus was actually god on earth, but of the three verses he referred to, one actually says it, one implies it, and one is barely even related to what he is trying to say. Now, if Jesus was god, then how is sacrificing him actually a sacrifice? Going back to his story, it would be like the one who was going to pay the fine for you being the one that it was paid to. Doesn't look like much of a sacrifice if you ask me.

Ray is trying to claim that the fact that Jesus was sacrificed on the cross was too save us from death by mentioning that he was raised from the dead. This, when looked at from a scientific standpoint, and knowing what happens when someone is crucified, would be impossible. When someone is crucified, from the angle that they hang at on the cross, their lungs will start to fill with fluid. They also have a hard time breathing, and the only way to get a deep breath is to pull their body up with their arms, which from the location of the spikes, creates excruciating pain. Those two things together, along with exposure, combine to kill the victim. And, once dead, your body immediately begins to decay, and the brain is the first thing to be affected functionally, while the digestive tract is where the main decay begins at. This would make his rising from the dead impossible, and based scientific fact regarding what happens after you die, the biggest hoax in human history.

He's tries to use this to show why giving money to charities, praying, and other self sacrifice won't help you when it comes to sins. If you look at the fact that when the bible was originally written, livestock was the measure of your wealth and social status, then this actually makes very little sense. If you were to update the instructions on how to make a sacrifice according to what is written in Leviticus to modern terms, you would literally give money to the church, for the priest to sacrifice for you, to atone for your sins.

He proposes that the whole reason that god sacrificed Jesus as atonement for our sins is that it would be out of his character to just forgive us. Now, if it were out of his character to forgive us, then why would he have Jesus die for our sins as a sacrifice, after providing everything needed? If his character isn't one of forgiveness, and he were bound to his character, then why would he go out of his way and give us a means to forgive those sins? It just doesn't add up. Only for him to say that if we don't repent, we'll pay the price. Now, if you don't believe in a heaven, hell, or afterlife, then what price could he be talking about? There has yet to be any solid scientific proof that heaven, hell, or any other afterlife exist that I've seen, so how would we pay for not repenting? By dying, which everything that is living is bound to do at some point.

Ray finishes up by claiming that he has proven his point, which he has danced around as carefully as he could. He failed to logically explain the "sacrifice" of Jesus. Nowhere did he say or explain how it makes any sense to make a sacrifice to yourself, and still have it count as a sacrifice.

He closes this section up by saying "For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God," only to throw in a post script saying that if it still seems absurd to read that quote through to figure out why it seems absurd.

From reading this, he seems to only like the parts of the Bible that he can use to support his opinion, and to pretend that the others don't exist. And the whole while, when asked a question that needs a logical explanation, to dance around it and provide no real answer to the question. If I were to base my religious decisions off of Ray Comfort, I would be looking more at anything other than Christianity.

This has been Tom doing my guest Ray A Day post. Hope you all have also seen the lack of true logic that Ray uses. Thank you Ziztur for this opportunity.

Ray a Day: 4:3

Today's angry skeptics asks Ray:

the Bible itself is presumed to be the Word of God written down by inspired men simply because the men said they were inspired? Or is there something else? Also, if the entire Bible, OT and NT, are the inerrant Word, how are the differences between the OT and NT reconciled?

Ray responds by saying that there are lots of questions one can ask about the Bible, but the whole point can be summed up as man violating the law of his god. Comfort says that death and then damnation in hell are our just (I.E. the correct) punishment for the crimes we have committed against God (the usual crimes: lying, lust, adultery, hatred, etc). that's okay thought because God is so merciful. He is merciful because he knew that the human beings he created were going to sin and thus deserve hell, so he sent himself down in human form to sacrifice himself to himself so that instead of humans suffering death and hell, he suffers death. Ray says, "He freely gives the gift of everlasting life. that's the gospel, and if it's true, then it is the most incredible news that humans could ever hope to hear"

He goes on to say that if he picked up an instruction book for some kind of appliance, he would know that said instruction book went to said appliance by testing it's claims - follow instructions in the book for the appliance and see if the book's instructions match up to the actual performance of the appliance.

The is the claim of the instruction book, "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest [reveal] myself to him" (John 14:21). Either that's true, or it isn't.

He basically ends his answer by saying we should trust what the book says and if we do, we'll see that the Bible is awfully true, and questions we ask will "be asked in a humble awe"

You'll probably notice that Ray not-so subtly didn't bother to answer the question at all. He Basically says that we should assume the Bible is inerrant, and if we do, we'll see that it is inerrant.

It is interesting that Ray speaks of this "incredible truth" that his god created us knowing that we would sin and damning us all to death and hell, but then he sent himself down to earth as the most perfect blood sacrifice instead of us.

this is the most bizarre type of justice I have ever heard, and I am surprised that so many people believe it without really questioning what it is really saying. to be flat out honest, I didn't think much of this story for the longest time, it just seemed normal to me - I think this is because even though I have been a secularist all of my life, I have heard the Jesus-came-down-to-save-us story so many times, it took me a long time to realize how bizarre it actually is. The god character of the Christian Bible just does not make sense.

The whole appliance analogy just does not fit with the specific analogy that Comfort uses. If you want to believe the Bible is true, then you will twist and contort your thoughts to make it so - just like if I want to believe that I am an Indigo child. This is not a testable claim because it is not falsifiable.

Most of the belief-centered claims in the Bible are not testable, and this is why they are not worthy as a hypothesis.

Remember the witch-hunts or early modern Europe? People were really into post-hoc reasoning then - witches accused ot witchcraft were examined for the devil's black mark - if found, then they were hanged for witchcraft. If not found, people often accused them of being so witchy that they were able to make the black marks vanish upon inspection.

Pretty much anyone can see that this kind of reasoning is fatally flawed and dangerous. When applied to belief in the Bible, the same exact reasoning goes unchecked - if you're a "true believer", then you see the Bible for it's "inerrancy", and if you're not, it is because Jesus hasn't opened your eyes to the magic and wonder of the holy texts.

The same logic applies to other holy texts: He who believes in Allah and Mohammad as his prophet will have Allah reveal himself to him. Same logic, but try this on a theist and they will probably protest. This same sort of thinking applies to people who believe in psychics, EVP's, and other "paranormal" trappings. You apparently have to want the bible to be true before it can be shown to be true. Telling me, an atheist, that I don't believe the bible and don't understand the bible because I have not accepted Jesus into my heart is a cheap cop-out and fails to address any issues I have brought up.

Ray a Day Guest Post: Alien

Here is a guest Ray a Day by The Alien, who is my longtime friend (we've known each other like 10 years):

I am sure I am adding to the beating of a dead, decimated, now barely visible as once a living being horse here with my post, however that does seem to be the point of the Ray A Day blog entries, so I will also enjoy adding to the sense-ful beating. Ray says:

Yet God, in His justice and holiness, cannot let our sins remain unpunished. More than that, because of His love for us, He hates it that sin separates us from Him. He knows even better than we how desperately we need saving, and the only One powerful enough to save us is the One Who created us in the first place. God, therefore, did the only thing He could do that would satisfy both His justice and His love for us. In the Person of Jesus Christ, he took our sins upon Himself, thereby paying our debt and offering us a chance at salvation and a restored relationship with Him.

The Alien holds her head in her hands as she reads this, amazed at the fact that a rather educated-seeming man could write something that contradicts itself not once, but twice, in just one paragraph. It starts with idea that God is All. There is Nothing Without God - note that starts the bible itself. It's the first...words. "In The Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth."

If God created everything, and everything is created by God, then nothing can be not created by God. The snake, the devil, all was created by him...and what the Alien fails to understand how the Devil cannot be his creation or become something different than his creation - if nothing else exists that is not of God's creation. I will attempt to render this in mathematical format as I see it. Let's represent God as one. We'll represent the Devil as 0 as it is seen as different, outside of God.

1=1 (there is nothing else)

1+0=1 (Even with the addition of something new, everything still equals God.)

We'll take more numbers here. Thinking of everything God has created, we can assume that they were all a part of him at some point as everything was God to start. The number is huge, so I will make a more comprehensible number here, let's say 321.

321 = 1^321  (All parts of God)

321+0=321 (All parts of God plus devil...don't do anything)

No matter what we do mathematically here (in basic math anyway), the devil does not, cannot, hurt anything. It cannot separate or divide something which is part of a larger something. How is it, Mr. Comfort, if 0 cannot separate 321 parts of God, how can the devil? He cannot, of course, because in the normal world (not the mathematical one), he does not exist! He cannot exist as away from God when it is impossible by the words of your own bible, to be separate from him! No matter what we do, feel, think, or say, we are saying everything that can only exist because we are a part of Him!

Of course, the next part just reads even more insensibly using my same thoughts above. By the words of the Bible and by Comfort here, apparently a Part of God came down to reside in another Part of God to help cleanse other Parts of God from something that does not exist.( I shall use the |, which means Restriction.) Mathematically, 1+1=2 | 0

So us Parts of God needed another Part of God to pay our debt against a nonexistance that does nothing to us in order to guarantee our restoration of a relationship with God.

The Alien wonders if any Christians actually think of the mathematics behind their God and Devil's existance -  because no matter what way I crunch the numbers, even if God exists, God is highly more likely to exist than the Devil is, and Jesus suddenly seems...unnecessary.

Ray a Day Guest Post: Nigel

Here is a guest post by Nigel!

This section was quite interesting as it's something I have never really looked into very much 'End Time Prophecy'

Here is what the 'Atheist' has to say.

The question raises (for me at least) the whole issue of the rapture. Proof for the existence of God? I think that would pretty much do it for me... According to the myth, people will vanish, the dead will rise and head off to heaven - and will most likely be under the control of a Jewish homosexual world leader... Let us not forget that we will also get a red moon and a black sun - a huge meteor will burn one third of the grass and trees - 200 million horse like creatures will run rampant - oh and fresh water will become blood. Tell you what, if all that bunk comes to pass - I will have another think about this god, I can't promise anything, even then, but I will certainly have another think. Really water turned to blood and horse-like creatures - golly.

Wow scary stuff. I thought I better look up and see if his claims really fit the bible. Now some of this stuff was actually a lot harder to pin down than I expected. Lots of hits in google for Homosexual Jewish Antichrist, but frankly not many of them seem to specify bible verses to back up the claims. This is nothing against our 'Athiest' because a quick google will indicate that many many people (like John Hagee) think this is all true, but the biblical basis is actually pretty thin.

Apparently the origin of the Antichrist being Gay Jew is this verse.

Daniel 11:37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all

And Jewish is also apparently from a Tribe (Dan) being mentioned in Jerimiah 8:16 and NOT mentioned in Revelations 7.

Here is the relevant verse about the sun and moon being covered.

Revelation 6:12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

And of course Water to Blood is a relatively common bible theme including

Revelation 11:6 These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.

Revelation 16:4 And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood

The Meteor has name by the way, 'Wormwood'.

Revelation 8:7-11 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up

And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;

And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

And here is our Army of Monsters. (Horse-like doesn't really begin to describe it)

Revelation 7-10,16

And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.

And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.

And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.

And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months

And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them

Wow some fantastic stuff there, lets see what Ray has to say.

May I say respectively, you may have been watching too many Hollywood movies, or the Discovery Channel, or maybe reading stuff on weird Web sties, or eating too much cheese before you got to bed (that can cause bad dreams).

I wonder if Ray included Kirk's 3 'Left Behind' films in this assesment?

I would suggest that you take a deep breath, then read the Bible with a humble hear, praying that God would show you what is prophetically symbolic and what is literal. If you don't do that, you will end up with the nightmare that you have just related. The Bible is a book filled with symbolism - from Ezekiel's wheels, to the dreams of Joseph and Daniel, to the Book of Revelation, and of course, many of the words of Jesus. Again some things are literal and some are symbolic.

Wait, what? Did I read that correctly...

Again some things are literal and some are symbolic.

Huh, ok, so Ray is quite happy to accept that some of the Bible is symbolic. Just not Genesis 1&2 I guess. Couldn't possibly be, No way, No how.

When Jesus said that He was "the Door," He didn't mean a do with literal hinges that swing back and forth. He is the entry to heaven(see also John 14:6). When He said that his flesh was meat and we were to eat it, He wasn't speaking of cannibalism. We spiritually "taste and see that the Lord is good." When He held the cup of wine and said "This is My blood" and told us to drink it, He wasn't speaking of His literal blood (He couldn't have been, because His blood was still running through His veins)

Wine is often used as a symbol of blood - Jesus turned the water into wine at the Cana wedding, and God turned water into blood with the plagues of Egypt. All these symbols and events have hidden and wonderful meanings behind them for the are willing to dig a little. If you think about it, thing that we value in life usually have to be searched out - gold doesn't just like on top of the ground. You have to search for it. It's the same with the silver, diamonds, pearls, etc, and it's the same with Biblical gems. You have to dig a little to find the riches.

Alright so this hits on one of the I find quite interesting about the way people view the bible. You read it, and then interpret it. You decide to take what sections literally, and what symbolically, and then decide what the verses actually mean. It really is a case of 'Pick your own biblical meaning', no wonder there are so many branches of the church.

As much as I would like to be, I am not a prophecy expert of a even a prophecy buff. I don't get too deeply into it, because so many people end up with weird and strange scenarios, and what's more they all they it right. I prefer to put my time into trying to read people like you with the Gospel. Your salvation is finitely more important to me than my eschatological interpretation.

So basically Ray is saying "Eh, I don't know anything about bible prophecy, don't ask me, get saved"

Then why include this question in the book?

Ray a Day Guest Post: X-Zilla

Today's Ray a Day is by blogger/commender X-zilla, who blogs over here.

Here is the text I chose to send off to him, in it's entirity:

Just how long are the “last days” supposed to last?... The Bible says that none knows when the end will come, but then it gives some clues. And the clues it gives are all things that have happened since the dawn of human beans.

Yes, the questioner did write “beans” instead of “beings,” revealing that he has a strange belief about where we sprouted from, or he’s a big Mr. Bean fan, or he’s just like the rest of us and makes mistakes when typing.

Human beings are prone to err, and the greatest error any of us can ever make is to be wrong about God. The religious leaders at the time of Christ made that mistake continually. They came to Jesus with questions for which they didn’t really want answers. Instead their intent was to trick Him so that they could catch Him in His words. One such time was when they asked Him about the resurrection. They concocted a scenario in which a woman had seven husbands who died one after the other. Then they asked, “In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as a wife.” Jesus answered, “Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God?” (See Mark 12:18-27 for the whole story.)

The same answer could be given to 90 percent of the questions asked by skeptics. According to the Bible, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all those who do His commandments” (Psalm 111:10). So a professing atheist who has no fear of god also has no understanding at all of the character and power of God. Even those of us who know Him know only tiny drop in an infinite ocean of his greatness. He is omnipresent-he dwells everywhere, filling the infinitude of space. Every tiny atom in the universe is displayed before Him. He is omnipotent-nothing is impossible for God. He is omniscient-seeing every thought of the human heart. These thoughts are too much for human brains that can barely juggle a few thoughts at a time, let alone comprehend the greatness of the God who gave us life.Skeptics also don’t know the Scriptures. Most of the verses cited in questions are read with an ignorance of corresponding verses to give them their biblical context.

So, in answer to the question: God’s timeframe is different from ours-“For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past…” (Psalm 90:04), and “…with the Lord one day is a thousand years and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). The Bible tells us that the “last days” began on the Day of Pentecost (see Acts 2:17). We have been in the last days for two thousand years (not much in God’s timeframe). Most of the signs that the Bible speaks of have been around for many years; however, prophecies about the increase of travel and the increase of knowledge are far more evident in recent years. And, of course, the Jews obtaining Jerusalem in 1967 is the fulfillment that started the prophetic clock ticking. How long will the last days last? God only knows… but we are certainly getting close to when the door of His mercy closes.

 X-zilla says:

The question presented is not the question of a ‘skeptic’ or an atheist. It is a question from a person who is curious. The question alone does not indicate any belief system. It does however indicate a healthy curiosity about the world and the constructs we live under.

End time prophecy surrounds us in American culture. The Weekly World News, the A&E and History channels, Evangelical Protestants, Catholics, Hollywood movies, the Left Behind book series, Tom Robbins, Muslims, and Jews present and/or perpetuate myth about the end of the world. The concepts of a prophetic end of the world envelopes our culture. The power of these myths is fascinating. The deconstruction of prophecy is interesting. More interesting is the progression of these ideas over time. That these ideas subtly and dangerously permeate our politics and diplomatic agendum is frightening absolutely terrifying.

Fortunately for me and the spot on my wall where I bang my head in flabbergasted frustration Comfort does not deconstruct Revelations or Daniel for us. He ultimately answers the question with, “God only knows” so repent and accept Yeshua as Jesus Christ before the horn blows and the righteous disappear leaving nothing behind but sinners and neatly folded clothes.

Comfort begins his response with a lighthearted teasing about a typing error on the questioner’s part, noting that he’s just like the rest of us and makes errors. This is used as a segue into the danger of being wrong about god. The next segue is a subtle and scary one. Comfort equates questioners now with the skepticism of religious leaders during the week leading to the crucifixion (picture Jewish caricatures ala Mel Gibson jeering at Christ) which does nothing but further the divide between non believers and Comfort believers. His example is taken out of historical and political context as well. Yeshua (a member of a fringe Judaic group) came to town, declared himself the Messiah (Christ) and then flipped over the money changers table in the Temple (this sealed his fate, if you want to get nailed to a tree so you can suffer the sins of man and grant absolution and then prove this through resurrection and ascension the thing to do would be to espouse radical concepts and go after the money changers). Other people had reported miracles and supernatural attributed to Christ but that was other people’s observation and Christ himself refused to perform miracles for skeptics to validate his claim. I am one to seriously avoid victim blaming but really if Yeshua was treated poorly and looked upon with disdain by the powers that be it was because he was seriously asking for it. Many people before and after Yeshua have claimed to be a prophet or even the Messiah. It is good whether you believe in no god or Yahweh or whateverism to ask or even demand verification of such claims. Comfort claims that these skeptics do not know the power of god and neither do current skeptics. In order to understand even a little bit of the power of god you must fear him first. In the interest of finishing this review part I’m just going to state that fear is not an effective vehicle for promoting understanding and knowledge.

“Skeptics also don’t know the Scriptures”, Comfort states. Some believers also don’t know the scriptures (are they true believers then?). Some believers and skeptics are well educated in regard to ‘the scriptures’. Using blanket statements about a skeptic’s ignorance of the scriptures is not enough to validate your belief in what they mean.

In the final paragraph of his answer Comfort provides us with verses that indicate he has a non literal interpretation of time as represented in the Bible. Apparently time exists differently for us than it does for god (Does that make god a singularity or does he just live in one?). References to time are metaphorical and not literal. Except of course in Genesis where it is the literal inerrant word of god. Confused? Thankfully we have Ray comfort who knows which is which and what is what.

Ray a Day: 4:2

Today, Ray's angry skeptic brings up the fact that the bible has some funky things to say about wisdom. specifically:

So God doesn't like smart people/ the thoughts of the wise are worthless...that's flirting with contradiction. The unavoidable implication is that God like 'em dumb and ignorant.

Ray responds:

But let me see if you are a "wise" person. Can you make honey, from nothing? How about a glass of milk, from nothing? ... Make me a fully functioning eye, using no materials.

Since when does "wise" mean "having the ability to make those things for which their is no known maker?" You can't win arguments br redefining words to suit your own personal agenda. Besides, even when the Bible speaks of being "wise", it does not mean, "having the ability to make those things for which there is no known maker", so I honestly can't figure out what is even going on here. So we'll just move on:

The next skeptic wonders how one can accept that the bible is the word of god, taking as evidence only that those who wrote it claimed as much. Said skeptic also wonders how the Bible can be the inerrant word of God when there are so many differences and contradictions.

The interesting thing here is that when theists are presented with obvious contradictions in the Bible, they will move mountains to try to convince you that such contradictions are not, in fact, contradictions. It seems to me that the whole body of "apologetics" is about insisting, to patholigical and nonsensical degrees, that the Bible is perfect, even when it is abundantly clear that it is not. People like this can easily point out contradictions in other religions, I.E.the Top Ten Reasons Islam Is NOT a Religion of Peace. Here, a theist might argue like this: "Islam says it is a religion of peace, but the Quran advocates whipping adulteresses and adulterer. Thus, it is not a religion of peace:

(24:2 Strike the adulteress and the adulterer one hundred times. Do not let compassion for them keep you from carrying out God’s law—if you believe in God and the Last Day—and ensure that a group of believers witnesses the punishment. (MAS Abdel Haleem, The Quran, New York: Oxford UP, 2004)

When you point out that the same kind of brutality is present all over the Bible, people jump through hoops to try to justify it.

"And the man that committeth adultery with [another] man's wife, [even he] that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." (Leviticus 20:10)

To me, there's not much of a difference between Christianity and Islam - the texts on which they are based are both equally illogical and horrific.

Speaking of Islam, I'm on page 80 of Ray's book. On page 115, Ray goes on to say that atheists are "chicken-livered" because they criticize Christianity and not Islam, because atheists "know" that if they do, Muslims will "come after you to lop off your head."

It's almost as if religion is a brain-virus when people can easily point out the inconsistencies in other religions, can easily use logic and rationality to condemn religions other than their own, but when it comes to their own religion, somehow it is perfect, even in the face of identical contradictions. It feels like I am overhearing a conversation on a coffeehouse where all three women are of a victims of domestic abuse:

Woman 1 (to woman 2): If your partner beats you, you need to leave him. Your relationship is not healthy and he won't change.

Woman 2 (to woman 3): Yes, you are not to blame for your partner's abuse. He is wrong. You need to find someone better for yourself.

Woman 3: You guys need to end your relationships. My boyfriend, on the other hand,  is so awesome.

Woman 2: Wait.. Didn't I see him hit you the other day?

Woman 3: Oh no.. I totally deserved that. But you guys really need to end your relationships. NOW. Your partners are clearly evil for beating you. Don't let him convince you that you're the victim.

Woman 2: Oh no. My partner yells and might hit me a tiny bit, but I know he really loves me and is doing it for my own good. You guys though.. your partner can't possibly love you if he hits you and yells.

Woman 1: You guys need to get real and stop insisting your man is perfect - he can't be perfect if he hurts you. I don't know what you're talking about with my partner though, he's perfect for me. You have to understand the hitting in context. You're taking it out of context.

Woman 3: Duh, your man can't be perfect. What context? I know my man hits me only because I am a rotten person, and have been since we got into the relationship. I am the bad one.

... and so on.

If you define any given thing (The Bible, God, your hateful partner, whatever) as perfect and insist that everything that entity does/says is perfect even if it appears to be horrible, imperfect or contradictory, then you are not using observational evidence to determine whether or not something is perfect - evidence, in fact, does not matter at all. If you define something as "perfect" and do not use evidence to determine it's "perfection", then the whole idea of it being perfect becomes pretty much meaningless, as it's status of perfection is incapable of changing. This is what apologietics does - it takes whatever observations it has and twists those observations until it fits into the apropriate mold. This is not rational, it's certainly not scientific, and it gives logic a gigantic, leather-bound middle finger.

In every other aspect of our lives, we determine somethings goodness or perfection based on observational evidence - we observe it's lack of flaws, we observe it's apropriate fit, and we determine based on these observations that something is perfect.

We say that a round peg fits perfectly into a round hole when it actually fits. Apologetics is the fine art of saying that a square peg fits perfectly into a round hole after cutting, burning, carving and stomping the peg into a somewhat circular shape, and then carving out the round hole until the square peg finally fits.

Ray a Day - 3:6/4:1

This chapter of Comfort's book, titled "Salvation in Christ - The Promise of Heaven and Eternal Life," is basically just a sermon.  Lots of simple talk about how great God is for allowing us worthless humans into his perfect home in heaven, etc.; not much original or interesting material.  All I want to note here is a very brief discussion of alternate theologies.

A skeptic says, "If 'salvation' is a 'supernatural' act of a 'supernatural God,' then evangelism would be superfluous, no?"  Comfort responds by briefly discussing Armenian and Calvinist theologies.  I'll refrain from giving an exaustive analysis of these, but I would encourage anyone who is interested in looking into them further (that is, if you're even partially as interested in theology as I am).  Briefly, then, Armenian theology (or more commonly Arminianism) and Calvinism have a few differences between them, some minor, some major, depending on your theological persuasion.  Of course, to an atheist, saying that these slightly divergent theologies are "diametrically opposed to each other," as Comfort says, is like saying that there's a huge difference between Scottish folks and Irish folks, when their all just crackers to a brotha.

The interesting point here is that Comfort actually extolls people to not willfully divide themselves over minor points of theological contention.

Sadly, church history has shown us that Christ-centered men of God have clashed over these isssues (e.g., Westley and Whitefield).  More recently, I have seen brethren make a theological stand and much to their dismay, they were marked by their home church as "troublemakers."  Fine missionaries have been pulled from the field, pastors fired from the ministry, and churches have split, simply because of different views of God's sovereignty.

Well Ray, that's a nice thought and all, and personally, as I hinted above, I'm always a little confused when theists of slightly differing theologies so radically divide people into True Christians and False Christians.  However, I find it difficult to give you any points for this statement, considering that:

1.  On page 7, he states that evolution is an 'idol,' and that no one can worship an idol and Jesus at the same time, therefore, you cannot accept the Theory of Evolution and be a Christian.

2.  On page 12, he rants about how Catholics are not Christians.

3.  On page 36, even a Christian who says that, "I think that men who don't have God can be good, normal people, just not perfect," is way off base according to Comfort.  He says that there is no one "good" except for God, and this is apparently such an important theological point that Comfort is made to"doubt the genuine nature of the Christian's salvation, because it seems that he has no biblical knowledge of sin himself."

Onto the introduction to Chapter Five, The Testimony of Holy Scripture.  This will be a very interesting chapter, as it seems to be all about the biblical proof for the existence of God, and biblical questions raised by skeptics.  In the into, here is what he says about biblical commentary on "wisdom:"

There are different types of wisdom.  There is the wisdom of this world ("after the flesh"), and there is the wisdom of God.  The message of the passage is that God has chosen a seemingly foolish message of childlike faith, to confound those proud folks who think that they are wise.

So it seems that at least a portion of this chapter will be all about how badly the Bible abuses the concept of "wisdom."  I've noticed that many Christians are fond of quoting a number of Bible verses that seem to praise wisdom, yet without acknowledging that more often than not, in Bible-speak, "wisdom" means fearing and obeying God, and actual knowledge is called "foolishness."  Comfort makes such a distinction between "Godly knowledge" and "worldly knowledge" here, but without acknowledging that it is "worldly knowledge" that has enabled humanity to improve our civilization.  It is true that there is scientific knowledge, philosophical knowledge, and/or theological knowledge (among others), and they are very different.  Is Comfort really going to argue that out of these, it is theological knowledge that is most important?

Only one other thing to point out:  Comfort mentions, as an example of a shallow example of biblical dificulty raised by skeptics, the story of Japheth, who Comfort acknowledges sacrificed his daughter to God.  Now, first off, Comfort doesn't reference the Bible verses that this story comes from.  Perhaps so that people won't actually read this story?  Judges 11:29-39, by the way.  Secondly, his name is, so far as I know, properly translated as Jephthah, not Japheth.  Third, Comfort's explanation makes no sense.  He claims that the Bible merely recounts the story of Jephthah sacrificing his daughter, but does not condone it.  This is dead wrong - in the Bible, verse 29 specifically states that God 'came upon' Jephthah, verse 30 states that he made this vow directly to God, verse 32 states that it was God who gave the enemy into his hands, and it states several times that he vowed the sacrifice to God.  Not once does God ever forbid him from doing so, set him straight, or save his daughter.  It is impossible to come to the conclusion that God did not approve of the sacrifice, based on an objective reading of the text.

This chapter seems to be all about the difficult questions raised by skeptics concerning the Bible, and proofs based upon scripture.  As I myself rejected Christianity literally by reading the Bible, I admit that I'm looking forward to this chapter.  Stay tuned.

Ray a Day: 3:5

In today's Ray quote, Ray talks about heaven, and says that science has discovered lots of "invisible realms" in the last couple of centuries. He gives radio and television "waves" as an example, saying,

We can't see them, but they are there whether we believe in them or not. It's the same with the spiritual realm. It, like television and radio waves, is invisible to the human eye.

No, it's not the same. There is a massive difference between the "invisible realm" of radio waves and the "invisible realm" of heaven. Radio waves have an observable affect on the universe. We can measure them and their affect. Reliably. Replicably. The same is not true for heaven, which is akin to an invisible dragon in one's garage.

I am now going to quote a small chunk of Carl Sagon's delicious book, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, in a completely unapologetic manner:

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility.

Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative-- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons--to say nothing about invisible ones--you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages--but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence"--no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it--is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

Comfort is clearly comforted (um... ...ha?) by the dragon in his garage. He goes on to talk about how wonderful heaven will be, how it will actually come down to earth from... wherever it's coming from (?)... how the earth will be restored to the purity of Eden, how those who trust Jesus will be given bran new bodies, how there will be no natural disasters, lions will lie down with lambs, there will be glorious fruit and fish and birds and waterfalls... He says that we won't need the sun because God will be the light.  But if we don't trust Jesus, we'll end up in hell. Comfort says that we justly deserve this eternal torment instead of pleasures that "don't even come close" to the pleasures on this "sad old earth" because we won't change our minds and repent.

It is very sad to me that so many people in this world believe that this earth is a sad old thing. If one believes that this earth is old and that Jesus is coming to rain heaven down to the earth and make everything new again, what is the onus to protect the planet? What is the onus to make life better here, if it is to be so much better later on due to supernatural intervention? Why intervene to have a positive impact on humanity, if you believe your god will do it for you?

The other day I attended a lecture by a fellow occupational therapist, Frank Kronenberg - author of Occupational Therapy Without Borders: Learning from the Spirit of Survivors.  Frank talked (among other things) about the philosophy of Ubuntu, which can be summed up succinctly at thus:

A person with ubuntu is open with others and affirming of their intrinsic value. They delight when others are successful, able and good without feeling threatened if they do not do the same. The reason they do not feel threatened or ashamed is because they recognize that they are a part of the larger whole that is humankind. He or she is uplifted when others are uplifted and recognized, and diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, tortured, oppressed, or treated as less than who they are. For people with ubuntu, social harmony is the greatest good and anything that subverts or undermines this good is to be avoided. A person with ubunto says "I am because you are. My value comes from my positive interaction with those around me."

 A Comfortian Christian, on the other hand, is nearly the polar opposite of this. Instead of affirming an individual's intrinsic value, he affirms an individual's intrinsic worthlessness. Instead of delighting when others are successful, he asserts that they are incapable of being good. Success is measured not in actions or deeds but in firm, unwavering belief in a deity and that deity's ability to save us from our own worthlessness. We are seen as deserving of consequences that by their definition cannot be equal. The greatest good is not social harmony but servitude, thanks and belief of the entity with the most power. Comfortian Christians, believing that eternal torment for those who reject god is absolutely perfect justice, are not humiliated or diminished when others are tortured - for how could one possibly be diminished by perfect justice? They see eternal torment as perfectly justified and an example of perfect morality and righteousness. I guess this means that they are actually lifted up by this perfect justice - a concept I find to be abjectly repulsive.

From the mouth of St. Thomas Aquinas: "In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned." [Summa Theologica, Third Part, Supplement, Question XCIV, "Of the Relations of the Saints Towards the Damned," First Article, "Whether the Blessed in Heaven Will See the Sufferings of the Damned. . ."]

P.S. This is my 300th post!

Ray a Day Guest Post: Gordon

Good day and welcome to today's special edition of Ray-a-Day, written by me, Gordon, master and commander of this defunct blog. Much thanks and hugs should go to the wonderful Ziztur and Flimsy for hosting this book review party. Please grab a comfy seat, a stiff drink and try not to spill anything on their upholstery.

Today's "angry skeptic" is somewhat peeved at Ray Comfort over something:

I just wanted to let you know that you're an @$#!! You start out talking to people by questioning them on their bad behaviors, then you tell them they're gonna burn in hell. After scaring them with this method you turn around and start running your mouth about Jesus and how he died for them and how you don't want to see them go to hell, which then makes them sad. You think you're getting results when you do this? You think you're changing lives? Maybe for those couple of seconds when you twist people's emotions around and warp their mind into believing they are terrible people and they will die and go to hell. You talk to them like you're the @!#$& higher power! And you have the nerve to talk about self righteousness? You're a joke, take a good look in the mirror before you go out judging others. Who knows, that may be you burning in hell's eternal flames, and your little %$@!# buddy too...

Allow me to begin by confessing, I have no idea what this person is referring to when he/she is slagging off Comfort. My only exposure to Comfort prior to reading Ziztur's review of his book, is a clip of Comfort performing this comedy routine:



Seriously, to this day I still believe this was a silly attempt at Poe-rady, and I harbour half a hope that Ray and Kirk would pop up one day and say, Python-esque: "Sorry, ladies and gents, that was all for a lark. Wasn't it tip top stuff, eh?". That's the thing about Poe's Law, there's always a non-zero percentage chance that this would happen in the future.

But thanks to this book review assignment, I am forced to dig up Comfort's other works, better known as "The Way of the Master" ministry. A sample of what they... em... "do", is in videos like the ones below:

After witnessing these few videos I am even more convinced Comfort is a parody and, as the "angry skeptic" have pointed out, a joke. How anyone can attempt such a blatantly transparent three card trick in this age is certainly laughable. (Thunderf00t offers a simple refutation of this clumsy ploy, from 02:30-07:20, or what I like to call "The Heathen's Gambit")

Yet Comfort and his crew of evangelists seem to win many fans amongst their quarter, so for the moment I shall grant him the benefit of doubt and treat him as a serious preacher and not as some sly street-corner snake-oil salesman.

Comfort's reply to the "angry skeptic" is as thus:

It's true that I do ask people about their bad behavior, and I do tell them what the Bible says about hell. But how could I not? If I am fully persuaded that someone is in terrible danger, I have to at least warn them.
...
There is one thought that skeptics don't seem to take into account. What if hell does exist? What if the Bible is right? What if God is holy and just and will punish murderers and rapists in a terrible place called hell? What if every single person will get what's coming to them? If what we say is the gospel truth, then what we are saying is justified and most necessary.

Ahhh, the familiar yet severely vulture-pecked carcass that is Pascal.

Ever since I was a little kid, I often wondered what is the deal with the theological preoccupation with this Hellfire thing, and why is it at all frightening? Sure, eternity is a long time ;-) , but being roasted continuously... hmmm... on a pain scale of one to ten register no more than a mere six. And it doesn't score much on the imagination scale neither.

If I was to be scared of hell, it would a hell where 10,000 volts are jolted through every one of my appendages, whilst I am languishing in a sea of Sulphuric Acid, at the same time crushed on all sides by a tonne of radioactive fissionable Plutonium-239, where they easily achieve critical mass to cause a nuclear chain reaction around my material body... as well as within my immaterial soul... for all of eternity. Now that is a ten out of ten kinda hell!!

Now for argument sake, I am "fully persuaded" that:

1. The almighty Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, and he presides over this Electric, Acidic, Nuclear Hell^TM.
2. The noodly FSM considers anyone sporting any facial hair to be a abominable sinner.
3. The merciful FSM will send all such sinners straight into this special Hell^TM.

I am duty bound to warn Ray Comfort that his afterlife is in peril and he must repent to FSM, to shave off his mustache and do the chicken dance after downing 14 shots of vodka. If he doesn't, a grim radioactive annihilation awaits him.

So should Comfort follow the bidding of the lord FSM? I certainly hope not.

For fear not, young Ray Comfort, this Hell^TM have as much evidence for its existence as your standard garden-variety fiery hell. And if any fundamentalist FSM worshipers try to convert you with such a shallow sales pitch as "What if Hell^TM does exist? What if the FSM is holy and just and will punish the beardy and the moustachy in a terrible place called Hell^TM?", you are well within your rights to laugh vigorously at their faces, like any rationally thinking folks will do for you.

Ray continues by insisting he is able to critically examine himself when it comes to his own sins:

... I am as bad, if not worse than most of the people to whom I speak. I have broken all of the Ten Commandments, in spirit if not in letter. I have committed a multitude of sins, and that's why I need a Savior. Being a Christian means that all that sin is forgiven.

Sorry, come again?

Being a Christian means that all that sin is forgiven.

I just want this statement to sink in a little bit here.

Which brings us back to this point, there is something truly appalling about this whole enterprise which can arbitrarily set the definition of a sickness, a sin, and then arbitrarily prescribe a cure only they can administer. But for Comfort to parade around his contemptuous banner of "I am saved, but you will burn (if you don't do as I say)", is compounding the bile that rises in my throat.

Only now can I truly appreciate what this "angry skeptic" is railing against, the comedy act that is Ray Comfort is beyond a joke. A hypocrisy dressed up as a self-righteous pretension. You sure can lead an atheist to evidence, but so far all I can witness from Comfort is an argument of "neener-neener-neener, God likes me better than you".

And this makes his "Banana ergo Deus" argument positively cerebral.

Ray a Day - 3:4

Today's question-and-answer from Comfort't book is very interesting.  This skeptic feels that Christianity would never have been nearly as successful as it is, were it not for the fear of hell (I don't consider the fear of hell to be quite as significant as the aggressive religious and military campains of centuries past, or as important as the near-universal indoctrination of one's offspring into one's religion, although the fear of hell is certainly an important factor in the latter).  Indeed, this skeptic even mentions how children can be traumatized by this irrational fear.

Comfort agrees that people, even children, can be suffer psychological damage from the fear of hell.  Of course, he disagrees that this fear is irrational or even undesirable, saying that "I think that you are right.  The existence of hell is a legitimate reason to come to the Savior, and it is perhaps why so many profess faith in Christ."

Comfort goes on to say that no children he knows that were raised Christian have been traumatized by the fear of hell; they actually don't fear hell at all, because they know that they are saved from it by Jesus.  Well, Ray, that makes sense, but only if none of these children ever stop to consider just how many people are being tormented in hell under the "moral law" of your perfectly just god (or if they have and still don't care because they personally have escaped hell, then they are horribly unfeeling, selfish little bastards).

Comfort also says that there is a different legitimate fear that psychologically cripples people:  Death.

As an atheist, what do you tell your beloved children when they, with fear in their eyes, say, "Daddy, I don't want to die!"?  Do you tell them that it's nature's way, and that they just have to deal with it?  Or do you tell them that they shouldn't think of negative things and to concentrate on life?  Christians don't need to cop out when that question is asked. (emphasis added)  We can tell our children how we were created (you don't know), why we were created (you don't know), why we are all going to die (you don't know), what happens after death (you don't know), and what we can do about it (you refuse to listen to that one).

So here we have an interesting question about how people deal with a very touchy topic:  Teaching your children about death.  Of course, it's immediately followed by a hilarious example of the pot and the kettle.


Well, first off, I personally intend to explain to my child(ren), in an age-appropriate way, of course, that everyone will die someday.  However, we have time here on earth in which to live, and the fact that it will end one day only makes our time alive that much more important.  Think of all the infinite possible people that could have been born, and it is only us that have life.  Fate has given us life, and so we must use this life to make a positive impact on the world.  That is how we live forever, that is true immortality; ensuring that our deeds were selfless and just, and that the world is a better place for our having lived in it, for the world will survive when we are long gone.  Aristotle and Socrates, Confucius, Jesus, Jefferson, Paine, Edison (irrelevant side note:  why are dudes named Thomas such badasses?  I'm naming my kid Thomas, hands-down), Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, FDR, MLK, etc.  All long dead, but through their great deeds, the world progresses; humanity grows.


As far as the rest of this foolishness, Comfort doesn't even attempt to consider the naturalists' perspective.  Let me get this straight:  The atheist, asked about death, replies that while it's true that everyone dies, this is all the more reason to make our lives a worthy and positive impact on humanity; to ensure that our actions make the world a better place, because the world and humanity will survive us.  The believer in an afterlife, asked the same question, replies that human beings somehow keep living after our heart and lungs stop working and we keep thinking after our brains cease to function.  The believer says that this is why we don't need to worry about death, because in essence, it doesn't really happen, not in any meaningful sense (regardless of what all our powers of observation and logic tell us).  Aaaand . . . it's the naturalist that has to "cop out" in his reply?


This is exactly the problem with naturalism vs supernaturalism.  Naturalism has one answer, but it's not a very satisfying answer to many.  Supernaturalism has a different answer, a much more satisfying one . . . except that supernaturalism actually does not have an answer.  It is simply calling the terrifying unknown factor something else.  They give it different properties to make it sound better, but there is never any evidence to believe it.  It is up to each one of us whether being happy and  satisfied with an answer is desirable enough that we should accept it, regardless of whether we have a logical reason to do so.  For my own part, I want the truth, regardless of how comfortable, or otherwise, it makes me.  I can only attempt to change a fact that makes me uncomfortable if I accept that fact in the first place.

Ray a day: 3.3

Today's Ray a day questioner tells Ray that it's okay because when he dies he will have paid for his since, since the bible says "The wages of sin are death".

Ray responds by saying that those who say such things are gambling on the meaning of the word "death", and assuming it means "termination". Ray says:

But it doesn't, and a little reasoning should reveal that fact. Take Hitler for instance. ... Was his death the "wages" of his unspeakably terrible sins? If death is the end, then God has given you the same wages as Hitler. That would mean that God is unjust, which is unthinkable.

 Okay, let's break this down into it's component hypothetical reasoning:

P. The wages of sin given by God are X.
1. Hitler will suffer X.
2. I will suffer X.
3. My wages are the same as Hitler's.

P. Two people paying the same price for radically different crimes is unjust.
1. Hitler committed unspeakable sins.
2. I did not commit unspeakable sins.
3. My wages are the same as Hitler's.
4. This is unjust.
5. God created this law.
6. God is unjust.
7. An unjust God is unthinkable.

Ray thinks that by proposing eternal torment as a wage for sin instead of just death, he is solving the problem of the unthinkable conclusion that his god is unjust. But the problem is not solved by insisting there is a hell, and everyone goes there unless they believe in Jesus. Instead of looking like the example above, it looks like this:


P. The wages of sin given by God are X.
1. Hitler will suffer X.
2. I will suffer X.
3. My wages are the same as Hitler's.

P. Two people paying the same price for radically different crimes is unjust.

1. Hitler committed unspeakable sins.
2. I did not commit unspeakable sins.
3. My wages are the same as Hitler's.
4. This is unjust.
5. God created this law.
6. God is unjust.

7. An unjust God is unthinkable.

You'll probably notice there is actually no change, except that now, instead of a comparably peaceful death in which Hitler goes underpunished, we now have eternal torment, in which people are grossly overpunished. There is no difference. If it is unjust for two people to have to pay the same price for two very different crimes, then the idea of heaven and hell is unjust. If the only thing that matters to Ray's god is belief that he manifested himself as human to save humanity from himself, then people have no reason to be good to each other.  People can absolve themselves of the guilt of their crimes simply by believing that belief is enough to wash their sins away.

I fail to understand how maximal punishment for all people - regardless of their works -due to a technicality, is just.

There is, of course, more:

In Christ, God freely justifies all those who come by childlike faith to the Savior. That means He proclaims us innocent - as though we had never sinned in the first place. however those who die in their sins "fall into the hnds of the Living God." That's a very fearful thing, because He will give them justice - their wages, and if that happens, there will be hell to pay.

 I fail to understand how coming to childlike faith absolves you of all sin. How is this just? This means that if Hitler comes by childlike faith to Jesus at the end of his life, he gets to spend an eternity in paradise, while someone who is a positive influence on humanity but does not accept Jesus gets maximal punishment.

According to Comfort, what this means is that because Hitler believed in Jesus (he was Catholic, after all), Hitler has more of a chance of obtaining an eternal reward than all of the millions of Jewish people (who did not believe in Jesus) he killed. If Comfort believes Hitler went to hell, then all of the men, women and children he murdered are suffering the exact same eternal torment. This being called "perfect justice" makes my head hurt. It is just about as far from "just" as I can imagine.

Perhaps it makes people feel good that there is a perfect judge waiting around to even out all of the badness in the world. I get that Comfort does not like that Hitler was a terrible human being and when he died he just died. I suppose this is why other people believe in Karma, but the justice Comfort describes is as far from Karma as one can get.

It's not comforting to think that some people get away with rape, murder,  torture, or all of the other atrocities humans are capable of performing. I hate the idea that the world is unfair. The world is full of injustice, and we can either do something about it, or sit back in smug satisfaction that one day an Ultimate Judge will fix everything. I prefer doing something about it, and if the Ultimate Judge is the god Comfort describes, I'll take my world full of injustice, thanks. No one deserves eternal, maximal punishment - the punishment can never fit the crime, as we're incapable of inflicting anything like infinite punishment or harm. The idea if an eternal maximal punishment is by definition far out of proportion to any crime we could possibly commit.
 

Ray a Day Guest Post: Petter

For those of you just joining us, I've decided to let my commenters take a crack at doing Ray a Day blog posts. Originally, I was going to start them next week, but I've just been hit with a load of work - I'm graduating in May! Thus, I am eternally thankful for Petter who got his post to me early, which lessons my burden. Here we go:

Hi there, fellow Zizturians. I’m Petter, a materialist rationalist atheist humanitarian who runs Ubuntu, all of which makes me feel kinship directly or analogously with Ziztur herself; and I have been invited to tackle an installment of Ray-a-day. If you read this and want to read more of my thoughts once the exhaustion wears off, you can find my blog here (or by RSS; you can use tags to narrow it down to essay-style posts, or only posts related to skepticism or religion).

---

When I first saw the snippet from the book that Ziztur had assigned to me, my initial reaction was disappointment—it seemed so trite and vacuous that I wasn’t sure I could write anything about it. Upon further reflection, though, it provides a fairly illustrative microcosm of his style as a whole; and since I am but a guest poster, I shall deconstruct it at some length, such opportunities being rare… I’ll intersperse my own thoughts among the Comfortian ejaculations, but first, let’s set the scene. The “Angry Skeptic” asks,

The difference between the Bible and an instruction book is the myriad of untestable (and detestable) claims the Bible makes. How do you know that if I “sin” I will go to hell? Only from the Bible, which is a source of such dubious credibility as to be laughable. Can you prove to me that ANY of what the Bible claims about hell and “sin” is true? Can you prove to me that hell exists? If not, you, along with all your pulpit-pounding ilk, are nothing more than a carnival ride of empty threats.

To which Ray replies,

Hell is no empty threat. If I believed it was, I wouldn’t bother warning you. However, the way for you to avoid the subject is to say that you don’t believe in God. That cuts the problem off for you at the Source. All you have to do is ignore your God-given common sense. He doesn’t exist because you don’t believe in Him. You could carry this further if you didn’t like gravity, history, the wind, or love. These things can’t be seen, and therefore wouldn’t exist if you didn’t believe in them either. Anything that you don’t like will not exist if you just say that you don’t believe in it.
The key to being a committed atheist is to be totally unreasonable. When someone denies the obvious, you can’t reason with them. That’s why you can be presented with the absolute and clear evidence of Creation (which screams of a Creator to any reasonable person), and you can say that there’s no evidence for God.

We first notice that, true to form, Ray’s immediate response is to avoid meeting the question. The ad hominem accusing every skeptic of being dense, unreasonable, and lacking in common sense has all been seen before—Ray is increasingly looking like a one trick pony. What should leap out at us is that if we go back to the “Angry Skeptic’s” question, the question does not in any way imply that the questioner is an atheist. For all we know, the question could have come from a deist, a non-Christian theist, or a different flavour of Christian who doesn’t accept the Bible as an authoritative source and doesn’t believe in hell. Ray’s accusation, therefore, isn’t just avoiding the question and issuing an ad hominem, but also a red herring, packing a remarkable number of fallacies and dishonesties into such a short space.

(May I suggest a side project, Ziztur, of measuring the book’s fallacy density? I suggest that a fallacy density of N per thousand words, N being established by critical analysis, be dubbed a “kilocomfort” [the “comfort” being the average fallacy/word ratio]. People like Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman presumably deal in microcomforts or less, C.S. Lewis in decacomforts, Ray by definition in kilocomforts, and slime like Phelps in the same ballpark.)

Belief in a ‘Creator’ does not necessitate the belief in the god of the Hebrews and Christians, Yahweh. Belief in Yahweh does not necessitate belief in the Bible as inerrant—while this sort of literalism is characteristic of Islam, such a blindly literal and accepting reading is not diagnostic of all Christianity. And even if you believe in the Bible, there’s precious little mention of hell… He never does return to why belief in a Creator necessarily implies a belief in hell; he simply asserts that the one must lead to the other. (Granted, attempts to do so have always been a bit heavy-handed and short on intellectual persuasion. For example, a sect in mediæval France believed in the New Testament, but saw the wrathful tyrant God of the Old Testament as a different entity altogether, and rejected the Old Testament as lies of the devil. They were wiped out in a brutal crusade. It was in the siege of one of their cities that the cardinal leading the attacking army was asked how the soldiers should tell heretics from innocent city-dwellers and famously replied “Kill them all; the Lord will know His own”.)

Ray also trots out that tired old horse, flogged perhaps to death and beyond, that “you can’t see the wind, but you know it exists; God is the same way”. But this is a stunningly naïve assault on empiricism. We philosophical materialists certainly acknowledge the reality of wind, but we do so precisely because it can be empirically verified to exist. In attempting to find something that cannot be seen but both sides agree upon, the apologists necessarily eviscerate their own argument. The painfully obvious reason is, of course, that seeing isn’t the only way of materially perceiving, and we happily rely on our other senses, as well as mechanically, electronically, optically, and otherwise enhanced versions thereof. It’s true that the wind doesn’t cease to exist if I cease to believe in it, but my belief can be shown to be erroneous by use of a balloon, windsock, or weather-vane.

A related argument is that “you can’t see love, but it’s real; God is love or is analogous to this”, which appears to assume from an agreement that “love exists” that we also agree that love is something justifiably reified. But love can be observed to exist only where it is expressed in words or actions. Underlying it may very well be something as material as neurochemicals and electric impulses through neurones and glia. To say that God exists in a similar way is trivial and uninteresting: Certainly God exists as a concept, but not all concepts deserve to be reified, let alone deified.

---

Next is the moral portion of today’s Ray—by which I mean “the portion concerned with morality”; moral it is not. In fact, it is so full of egregious errors and immoralities that I hardly know where to begin. Here’s what Ray has to say:

If you were reasonable, I would say that we know that hell exists because we know intuitively that God is good. And if He is good, He must by nature punish a man who has tied up and raped three teenage girls, and then one by one, strangled them to death. In this case, justice delayed is not justice denied. God will bring that murderer to judgment and see that he gets exactly what he deserves, and hell is the place of God’s justice. It’s His prison. Common sense says that if God is good, it is right that He is also just. However, God is so good He will also punish thieves, liars, fornicators, adulterers, blasphemers, and everyone who has violated His perfect and holy Law. That leaves us all in big trouble. Without a Savior we will get exactly what we deserve, and that is a terrifying thing, whether we believe it or not. If you want proof, then simply repent and trust Jesus Christ, and you will know that what I am saying is the Gospel truth.

The simplest way to address this is to say that even if we accept a number of propositions that I am not prepared to actually subscribe to—“God/Yahweh exists”; “God is good”; “God is just”; “God punishes sinners”—it does not therefore follow that all punishments should be or necessarily are equal. While Ray and his peers may claim at the pulpit that multiple rape and murder is equal to telling a lie in the eyes of God, as both are sins and both fall short of Divine Perfection, I expect that no one actually feels that they are equivalent. Rape and murder are terrible crimes that destroy lives; telling a small lie may hurt no one at all (though I advocate and practice a policy of never telling lies, because dishonesty morally offends me and because honest communication is conducive to good and healthy interpersonal relationships). Even if I were to accept that they both deserved divine punishment, I would never accept the notion that they deserve equal punishment. And, as has been often pointed out, infinite torment is by definition out of proportion to any crime it could possibly be inflicted for.

But I take a further objection to this whole idea, because it appears to be entirely based on human desires for retribution. These are natural and serve a useful function in our biology and social lives, not because retribution is somehow morally appropriate and good but because it provides a deterrent to wrong-doing. If we weren’t vengeful, bad people wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of us. Knowing that we will take offense and may take revenge, they are deterred. Prisons and corrective facilities serve as this sort of deterrent. We don’t send them to prison because it’s morally right to imprison criminals. Maybe they “deserve” it, but we don’t send them there because they deserve it—we send them there to scare others away from doing harm; or we send them there to prevent them from doing more harm; or perhaps we send them there in the hopes of reforming them. “Deserving” it is the moral justification that gives the rest of society a right to do so, but it is not the motivation. In other words, the whole point of our judicial system (and, I confidently hypothesize, of the vindictive instinct itself) is not predicated on a goal related to criminals, but making life better for non-criminals.

From this point of view, Ray’s view of divine justice seems extremely misguided. Terror of hell is indeed a deterrent in the same way (qualitatively) as fear of imprisonment or execution. The other goals, however, fly right out the window: We don’t need eternal torment to keep dead criminals out of trouble (it’s quite enough that they are dead; obliteration is more than sufficient), and clearly there is no hope of reforming (they are tormented eternally no matter how much they repent).

What, then, is the purpose of inflicting eternal torment to punish a victimless crime? It doesn’t help anyone—there’s no victim to help. It doesn’t help make the sinner a better person; he is denied any possibility to improve. All it does is increase the level of suffering of humanity as a whole. It is the human instinct of vindictiveness raised to an ideal, the inflicting of suffering for its own sake rather than for anyone’s benefit; a horrifying climax of the uglier side of human nature.

---

Having read and thought about this, it seems abundantly clear to me that Ray’s book is not actually intended to persuade anyone of anything. The arguments are far too vacuous, all questions too consistently evaded rather than answered. I cannot believe that Ray is so stupid—or rather, that the conglomerate of Ray along with his flunkies, editors, agents, and aides are all so stupid, in the face of feedback, blog comments, and so forth—as to be less than perfectly aware of how flimsy his arguments are, how inaccurate the strawmen of concepts like atheism and evolution. He has no intention of addressing them honestly; if he did, he’d have done so by now.

Instead, this book is intended to insult us; its target audience is not skeptics, not even agnostic fence-sitters, but the most insulated and uneducated masses; those either most stupid, or least availed of education and critical thinking skills (or both). It is, in a sense, very much the mirror image of the book that many Christians have claimed that Dawkins’s The God Delusion is, with the difference that Dawkins actually attempts to answer theists’ questions head-on. Ray provides no mirror image of that honesty; he never gives a straight answer where he can deliver an ad hominem; never accuses anyone of being misinformed when he can accuse them of being unreasonable or morally deficient.

And from this perspective, the possibility emerges that it’s not that Ray doesn’t care about representing his opposition honestly; rather, it is in his best interest not to do so. If he presents skeptics’ arguments in a straightforward manner and tackles questions like evolution honestly, if he acknowledges the real intellectual and moral positions of atheists, then he exposes this potential target audience to reasonable counter-arguments. Argue against the reality of evolutionary biology and you have to present present an argument (compelling or not) against a well-reasoned theory; if all you want to do is cater to the ignorant and despise the enemy, it is much easier, indeed strategically a better idea, to say “Hur-hur-hur, those stupid evilutionists think that men and women just happened to evolve to have tab A compatible with slot B”. It also explains the infamous banana video, which otherwise invokes nothing so much as Poe’s Law.

I do not mean to say that he would necessarily undercut all of his arguments and conclusions—I’m sure that he could address the real concepts of evolution and atheism and still believe as he does. But if he presented the real opposition rather than strawmen, his readers would be forced to acknowledge that even though they reject the alternatives, there are alternatives. Some of them might think; some of them might falter. And that’s not what anybody wants: You can lead an atheist to evidence… isn’t about making people think, or tackling serious challenges to apologetics. It’s about keeping the ignorant ignorant and provide a sense of superiority in their ignorance, a theocratic circle jerk; about bolstering the faithful’s misconceptions and ensuring that they continue to take an unreasoned stance against propositions they do not understand.

Ray a Day: 3:2

I'll start off today's Ray a Day with a quote by Ray:

Mockers think that they have a "smoking gun" as evidence against God, and are the sort of people in the front row of a lynching mob. ... They can't see clearly because they have a sequoia in their eye.

While I am somewhat amused that Comfort is saying Bible mockers have huge redwood trees (sequoia) in our eye. Is he saying we're missing the forest for the trees? If so, this is actually sort of clever, and so if this is what he means then I am officially awarding Ray another point. He now has two [2] points. Of course, the fact that he is one again painting atheists as terrible people ("in the front row of a lynching mob...") is pretty ironic considering in the next paragraph he tells us to stop whining about God commanding his followers to dash the heads of infants on rocks because that same God also ordered the death of all humans ("as a result of their sin").

Ray goes on:

The reason [when I was a child] that I believed in a creator was simply because I had a brain. ... the dictionary can help those who are a little slow to figure this out by checking out the words "creation" and "Creator".  Creation - noun, "the Creation, the original bringing into existence of the universe by God". Creator - noun, "the Creator, God"

 Thank you, Ray, for this absolutely perfect illustration of just how circular your position is. Not only did you (once again) not bother to cite the source you are quoting from, but your source is self-referential. Once again - the dictionary is a source of words and their commonly-used meanings. We're already aware of the fact that one uses creation and creator in these ways, so consulting a dictionary can only tell us how people commonly use words.

Moving on:

The reason anyone should fear God is because He is to be feared.

 Cool! and the reason God does not exist is because he doesn't exist. Moving on, a skeptic says, "Everything dies, everything dead rots, and everything rotten may serve as fertilizer for new life." Ray responds:

Skeptic's often unwittingly talk in the language of "absolutes." They say that "no one" can know if God exists, or, "no one" can know if there is life after death, or, as in this case, that "everything" dies and rots. Yet, those who talk in absolutes (as though they had absolute knowledge) reveal a lack of knowledge. For a skeptic to say, "No one knows what happens after death," he must know what everyone knows in order for him to know that no one knows. ... to be truthful, he has to say, "With the limited knowledge I have at present, I have come to the conclusion that no one knows what happens". ... The professing atheist is in the same boat. He can't say, "There is no God" and be truthful. ... The Skeptic isn't aware that God never dies. What's more, God promises that any living human being who comes to Him through repentance and faith in Jesus will not perish, but have everlasting life.

  So, in the same paragraph, Ray insists that anyone who talks in the language of absolutes reveals a lack of knowledge, and he then goes on to talk in the language of absolutes. This is obviously not the only time Ray has talked in the language of absolutes, so I find this to be beyond ironic. Apparently he is allowed to talk in the language of absolutes, but others who do so when claiming things he does not agree with reveal a lack of knowledge.

Truthfully, when I say something like, "everything dies and rots" I am speaking in shorthand. I am saying, "with my knowledge and observation, coupled with the knowledge and observation of those around me, coupled with knowledge and experimentation by scientists, and coupled with rational thinking, I have come to the conclusion that everything (that is, everything carbon-based, with the possible exception of Twinkies) dies and rots." If I had to say this every time I wanted to make a claim about the natural world around me, my conversations would take twice as long, so we use shorthand.

Interestingly, we can make absolute claims without revealing any kind of lack of knowledge at all. For example, I can say, "All bachelors are unmarried" and this will be true - indeed it will be true independent of my experience with bachelors or unmarried men.

This is what is known as an analytic proposition. So too, is "creation has a creator". However analytic propositions do not tell us, for example, if bachelors exist (in this particular world we have overwhelming evidence that they do), or if a given man is a bachelor. Analytic propositions are grounded in meaning.

Contrast this to synthetic propositions, which are grounded in fact (according to Quine) and rely upon experience as a determinant of truth. A few examples: "All bachelors are happy", "God punishes sinners", etc.

We can, in fact, say something like, "there is no god" and be truthful. Once we come up with a reasonable (falsifiable) working definition of God, we can refute it in the same way that we can refute the idea that drinking 8oz of cranberry juice cures facial paralysis.

If I were to claim that drinking cranberry juice can cure facial paralysis, how would we decide if my propostion were true? We would observe, experiment, and think about it. If we give people (with facial paralysis) 8oz cranberry juice to drink, and this doe not cure their facial paralysis, are we wrong to say that cranberry juice does not cure facial paralysis? If we give 100 people the juice, and no one is cured, can we still claim it works? If we give it to 1000 people, conduct double-blind, placebo controlled studies, and not one person is cured, are we wrong to say that cranberry juice does not cure facial paralysis? Do we need to give 8oz of cranberry juice to all people who have facial paralysis to conclude it doesn't work? Will we then say that since we can't possibly test all people (since some of them have died, and eventually we will die and our research will halt, leaving people with facial paralysis to never try the remedy) and so therefore we can't possibly say with absolute certanty that cranberry juice does not cure facial paralysis? Technically yes, but qualifying our knowledge with, "with my knowledge and observation, coupled with the knowledge and observation of those around me, coupled with knowledge and experimentation by scientists, and coupled with rational thinking, I have come to the conclusion that cranberry juice does not cure facial paralysis"

Demanding absolute knowledge from empirical evidence is a cop-out. It is a red herring. It is untenable. But in the everyday language we use, when scientists say, "entity Z always does Y", they really mean that to the best of our knowledge, entity Z always does Y. The Confortian theist, on the other hand, really does mean "entity Z always does Y", which is one of the biggest problems I have with theism. When confronted with a skeptic, a comfortian theist admits he cannot know for sure, but then insists that he does.

Ray a Day - 3:1

On to Chapter Three!  This chapter is titled "Humanity's Sin Deserves Punishment."  Maybe this chapter will explain why victimless "sins" deserve an eternity of torment in hell.  Right?  Um, no.

The introduction to this chapter is highly entertaining.  Comfort gives an analogy.  He describes how his 'earthly' father left his family by themselves for long periods of time, physically beat his children, including Ray Comfort, and even killed a defenseless animal with his bare hands.

He then gives us some "missing information."  His father left his family to work long hours, ensuring that his family was well provided for.  His "beatings" were corrective spankings, given only out of love.  The animal he killed was badly injured and dying, so he killed it out of compassion.

This is Comfort's analogy for a negative portrayal of the Bible and the biblical god.  He says, "Quote mine the Bible and you can, as some atheists do, paint God as a tyrant."

Well, first off, Comfort obviously doesn't know what quote-mining is.  Quote-mining means to take a quote completely out of context in such a way as to make it sound like the source is saying the opposite of what they actually are.  See here for a textbook example of quote-mining from Ben Stein's travesty . . . er, movie, Expelled:  No Intelligence Allowed.  Comfort himself is very fond of quote-mining, especially Stephen Hawking, for some reason.  You might recall a few such instances here and here from previous portions of this book.  He also dismissed accusations of quote-mining in "The Atheist Starter Kit," which can be found on his website and in the back of "You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence . . ."

1. Whenever you are presented with credible evidence for God's existence, call it a "straw man argument," or "circular reasoning." If something is quoted from somewhere, label it "quote mining."

So . . . Comfort quote-mines all the time, he dismisses the idea that quote-mining is not a legitimate debate method . . . and then accuses atheists of using arguments that are irrational because they are quote-mining the Bible.  Wow.

Furthermore, I've never seen an atheist quote-mine the Bible.  For example, I could post these verses from the book of Numbers, saying:

³²And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.
 ³³And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation.
 ³⁴And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him.
 ³⁵And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.
 ³⁶And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses.

Now, it would be a very different story if verse 37 read:  "And the Lord spake to Moses and the people, saying, 'See, guys?  That is what I would command if I were a complete sack of shit.  Happily, I'm not, so I forbid you from killing people just because you found some random dude gathering sticks on a certain day of the week."

Atheists (or any other non-Christian) don't have to quote-mine the Bible.  The decrees of Yahweh can be quoted completely in context.

Comfort, of course, doesn't give any examples of such, unfortunately.  He describes how, like in the analogy with his father, God gives us life and comfort, as well as salvation from hell, regardless of how it sounds if you only have a small amount of info from biblical "quote-mining."  The difference between his analogy and the Bible is that he obviously words his information about his father in as deceptive a way as possible to hide the truth.  Is Comfort saying that the Bible does this?  Does the Bible hide the truth as deliberately and deceptively as Comfort does in his analogy?

If the Bible isn't hiding the truth deliberately, as Comfort's analogy does, then we can have a rational debate concerning whether the Biblical god is moral or not.  In Comfort's analogy, he hides and distorts the information, and that's why you reach an incorrect conclusion.  But he, presumably, claims that the Bible does not hide or distort the information.  So if the evidence of the Bible shows that Comfort's god is indeed a tyrant, then so be it, and Comfort cannot weasel his way out of that conclusion by claiming that information is still hidden.

So does the Bible describe a tyrant, or a loving father?  Comfort is obviously uncomfortable (nyuk nyuk) with the question itself - he says, "If I have a question about the character of God, I have the good sense to hold my hand upon my mouth until I am in heaven, and there God may see fit to answer it."  So I'll have to speculate without him.

Simply put, read the above passages from the Bible again, very carefully.  Now consider that if I posted, here, on this blog, one such Bible story that horribly offends my moral conscience each day, I could go for months . . . or years.

Comfort's other arguments are similarly flawed.  For example:  God gave us life.  But in his analogy, a father can work hard to provide for his family while not commanding some of their violent deaths.  The analogy would be more accurate if the father left the family for long periods of time (although to work to provide for them), beat them (although to spank them as a moral correction), and kill an animal (if only to put it out of it's agony), and torture some of his children for disobeying arbitrary rules.

In the same way, the argument that 'God can't be all that bad because he offers us salvation' is moot, as well.  God is (supposedly) only offering us salvation from the torment that he himself inflicted.  It truly boggles the mind . . . Comfort says that God sentences mankind to hell for any minor transgression, no matter how victimless (such as lust, as we saw in the previous chapter).  To grant someone a reprieve from horrible torture (that you yourself have proclaimed) as long as they agree to serve as your slave is not justice.

All you rational and fair-minded readers out there, I can hear you asking . . .  "C'mon, Flimsy, Comfort can't possibly mean that God has personally pronounced such torment for humanity, right?"

If the skeptic still wants to complain that God killed women and children in the Old Testament, he should realize that He did more than that.  He proclaimed the death sentence on the entire human race - every man, woman, and child.  We will all die because we have sinned against God.  So if you are a skeptic, stop whining, get right with Him through the Savior, and escape the damnation of hell, while you still have time.

Comfort, pay very close attention here - I left your religion precisely because of my moral outrage, it was exactly a crisis of conscience like you belittle and dismiss here.  Please - I sincerely mean this - you cannot convince me to completely abandon the entirety of my morality with threats of torment in the afterlife.  I simply have no reason to believe in your god, your heaven, or your hell.  And yes, if I did, I would still never follow your God.  In a very real sense, if there is anything of which I am certain enough to stake my life on, it is that the deity described in the Christian Bible will never have my worship, my adoration, or even any small degree of my least respect.

Ray a Day - 2:5

Let's wrap up this silly chapter on the human conscience, shall we?

Here is a typical rant from this chapter, and it sums up Comfort's theology of morality pretty well.

Your sins are heinous in the sight of a holy God.  The Bible says that they stir His just wrath (see John 3:36).  What will you say?  What would you think of a man who said, "Judge, I raped and murdered that woman, but I picked up a sick bird and didn't kill it.  You should therefore let me go"?  In doing so, he somehow thinks that he balances the scales of justice.  He offers kindness to a sick bird as payment for raping and murdering a woman.  What sort of twisted individual would he be to say that?

This chapter is nothing more than Comfort repeatedly claiming that if you ever looked at a woman's breasts, even once (unless they were your wife's), that you are guilty of rape and murder.  Ray Comfort, you do not do your god any justice.

Firstly, obviously, it makes no sense to claim that all wrongdoing is equal, and that a moral code that is perfect will equate lust or telling a minor lie, regardless of intent or consequences, with the crimes of rape and murder.  If Comfort, or any other fundamentalist, believes that this is how a genuine moral law functions, then I'm inclined to ask if they would have a government's law punish lawbreakers the same way.  No more fines for jaywalking or double-parking, it's now the death penalty for your horrible crimes.  If this sounds absurd, it's because it is.  Why is it perfectly logical for God's justice to work this way?

Secondly, Comfort doesn't even try to explain why lust, or any similar victimless sin, is immoral.  He literally does take it at face value that the Bible calls these actions immoral, and there's no further need to justify it.  However, he simply must accept that a non-religious person obviously will not take the Bible's word as their morality.  He has an entire chapter about morality here, and he never once even tries to explain how or why a victimless sin is immoral.  He simply states that since everyone is guilty of lust, we are all as good as thieves, rapists, and murderers.


Another skeptic points out that if Comfort (or almost any other Christian) had been born in an overwhelmingly Islamic nation like Saudi Arabia, he would be a Muslim.  Comfort simply reiterates that we all deserve to suffer horrifying fates in Hell, and so we cannot complain if God and Jesus decline to save anyone.  Comfort says that God and Jesus will save whomever they feel like/whomever begs them to do so . . . and so we should all beg them to save us.  He doesn't even address the question of why so many people who believe in a specific god are found in the nations where (drumroll please . . .) the parents and culture of those nations teach children to believe in that God.

Elsewhere, Comfort says, "Human nature trivializes lying and theft.  God, however, doesn't.  Because they are so counter to His perfectly holy nature, they are extremely serious in His sight."  One, human nature does not trivialize lying and theft.  There are a great many people who do, in fact, strive to be as honest as possible (and many of those manage to be honest people without fear of Comfort's god), and theft is a very serious crime in virtually every human society in our species' entire history.  Two, Comfort's god certainly does trivialize lying and theft, at least more than human society.  If a person commits fraud or theft in a way that does materially infringe upon the rights of others, then our justice system punishes them, sometimes very severely, depending on how much harm they did or intended to do.  Comfort's god, in contrast, equates them with any other minor, victimless "sin" one might commit, and a person who commits any sin at all, no matter how horrifying, pays no penalty at all (as long as they agree to be God's slaves).

Another skeptic asks why God would give us such incredibly powerful sexual desire while also making lust a sin, thus setting us up to fail.  Comfort says:

So God isn't the one to blame for "setting us up to fail."  To believe that would be like a criminal saying to a judge, "Judge, I raped that woman, but is really isn't my fault.  God made me with sexual desire so it's His fault."  If that won't hold water in a court of law, it's not going to be a valid defense on Judgment Day. 

Bear with me here; I could easily rant for an entire post about just how hard this analogy fails, but I'll try to be brief.

1.  This defense doesn't hold water in a court of law because God doesn't fucking exist.  Less flippantly:  A court of law makes no allowances for such things because justice would never be achieved.  One cannot justify their wrongdoing by claiming that God, the devil, angels, demons, or pink dragons were actually the ones that committed the crime because these forms of defense cannot be refuted by any evidence.  An assertion that cannot ever be supported or disproven by evidence is not a strong assertion, it is a meaningless assertion (we smarty-pants call that an unfalsifiable hypothesis).  The principles that our justice system was founded on are not perfect, but they are sound enough to prevent this kind of childish defense.

2.  Again, Ray, lust is not equivalent to actually committing rape (for fuck's sake, is this concept really that complicated?).  A civilized justice system does not punish lustful feelings exactly because human beings cannot help having lustful feelings.  We evolved that way.  That's just the way it is, and lustful feelings (in and of themselves) do not infringe upon the rights of others in any way, so genuine justice doesn't punish such feelings.  If lust is the motivation for an actual crime like rape, then the law enters the picture, to punish the actual crime, not sexual desire itself.  Hunger isn't a crime either; mugging someone to buy a burger is.  It is staggering to me that Comfort can't grasp such extraordinarily simple logic.

3.  Let's try to fix that analogy.  It also fails because the judge is the one who is going to decide between punishment or mercy, but is not the one who cause the "evil" thoughts.  Comfort claims that God is both the creator of these evil thoughts and the one who will judge them to be evil.  If lustful thoughts themselves were a crime, and, as Comfort says, the 'judge' in this analogy were the one who created us to have those thoughts in the first place, then yes, the judge would be guilty of entrapment on a mind-boggling scale.  Let me get this straight . . .

A)  "Lust" is a nearly universal reaction to an attractive person of the sex(s) one is attracted to; to all intents and purposes, such thoughts are about as close to involuntary reactions as we get.
B)  God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and incapable of making mistakes.
C)  God put these thoughts there.
D)  Lustful thoughts are evil.  They are so evil that they are equivalent to rape and seemingly justify a horrible torment in Hell.

To any Christian readers of a more fundamentalist bent - please reread the above statements of mainstream Christian theology.  Kindly continue to do so until it sinks in that by this theology, God is responsible for staggering evil; so much so that he deserves hell far more than any single mortal that he gave such thoughts to.  Comfort does not seem to realize that such a judge absolutely does not have any business judging people whom he created to possess the exact attributes that he condemns.

Calling all rational writers: Ray a Day guest post week

Hey!

How would you like to be a guest blogger here?

In a few weeks, just for fun, I am going to farm out Ray a Day posts to guest bloggers!

I don't care if you're a theist or an atheist, if you think you can write a response to one of Ray's questions/answers like Flimsy and I can in a thorough and thoughtful manner, I want you.

No, we're not going on vacation. I've noticed a recent influx of great commenters to my site and I am loving all of the content it is generating in the comments section.

If you'd like to write a Ray a Day drop me a line - Ziztur at Ziztur dot com. If I pick you (I expect more than 7 people to respond), I'll send you a question and answer from Ray's book. If you've got a personal blog or web address, I'll link you in your post so the rest of the world will know how cool you are.

Ray a day: 2:4

Today we have a rather interesting quote from Mr. Comfort:

I now live an ethical life out of an appreciation for mercy. This ethical life may or may not be as ethical as that of an atheist, but that will have no bearing at all on Judgment Day

So what Comfort is saying here is that a person's ethics does not matter at all with regard to Judgment Day. Frankly, I am starting to be slightly fonder of Islam than Comfort's version of Christianity - they teach that good works and belief get you a pleasurable afterlife.

Honestly, of all of the times Comfort has proclaimed that atheism is a moral issue (except when it's not) and made comparisons of atheists to serial killers, rapists, and pedophiles, he is honestly going to say he "may or may not" have as ethical a life as an atheist? He basically says that atheism is a large part of the cause of all of the ills in society because doing good does not matter to them, but that according to his religion, good works do not matter to Jesus/God, either. I am starting to think that Comfort's belief in God and Jesus is the real "moral issue" here.

Comfort proclaims repeatedly that atheists "pretend there is no god" in order to be moral free agents. But according to this brand of theology, people are moral free agents anyway - morality and ethics don't matter at all, what matters is belief. So what's the difference, exactly? People who believe in this type of theology are free to do what they see fit, knowing that their ultimate reward will be attained in the afterlife only if they believe. This life is the only life that matters to me, I'm not screwing off waiting for it to end.

This type of morality and ethical outlook is despicable - and any god who only cares that you believe and doesn't particularly care what you do (since we're all sinners, and all sin is equal, god doesn't care of you merely blasphemed or if you murdered a three-year-old, all sin gets the same punishment, according to Ray) is an immoral god. The whole idea does not make any sense and flies in the face of ethics and reason.

I know there are people out there who might say, "Yes, but when someone gives their life to God/Jesus, they automatically do good things, just because they really want to please the lord". This does not follow from Comfort's theology, and doing what pleases the lord is a scary concept - a lot of strange and immoral things please him.

The next questioner mentions Comfort's "Good Person Test" and says that Jesus and the god of the old testament doesn't even pass the good person test. Here's the good person test:

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.
   (Have you always loved God above all else?)
   
2. You shall not make yourself an idol.
   (Have you made a god in your mind that you’re more comfortable with, a god to suit yourself?)
   
3. You shall not take God’s name in vain.
   (Have you ever used God’s holy Name as a cuss word?)
   
4. Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.
   
5. Honor your father and mother.
   
6. You shall not murder.
   (God considers hatred to be as murder.)
   
7. You shall not commit adultery.
   (“Whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart”; this also includes sex before marriage).
   
8. You shall not steal.
   (Have you ever stolen anything? — the value of the item is irrelevant.)
   
9. You shall not lie.
   (Have you lied even once? Including answering these questions.)
   
10. You shall not covet.
    (Have you ever jealously desired what belongs to others?)

Instead of actually addressing the question, Comfort simply says - how dare you point your finger at Jesus, Jesus is perfect and has never sinned.

This is a common tactic among believers. They say God/Jesus is incapable of doing X, and when you point out that these entities, according to the Bible, did do X, they simply say that X does not count because God/Jesus are perfect. This does not address the issue at all. It takes an apparent contradiction and removes it by saying that the entity in question is simply incapable of contradiction, and so any apparent contradiction just...isn't. So basically, God and Jesus get a moral and ethical get-out-of-jail card, as whatever they do, no matter how immoral it we think it is, is actually moral simply because of the entities performing the act in question (which, by the way, is moral relativism) This is like believing that your cell phone battery will never die and cause your cell phone to turn off, and when your cell phone battery dies and your cell phone turns off, you insist that your cell phone battery is not really dead and your phone isn't really off, because your phone battery is incapable of dying. What?! Why do I have to explain that this doesn't make any sense and relies on unstated premises and circular reasoning?

The version of christianity that Comfort creates in his books, street preaching and prolific websites and dvds makes the Christian worldview look patently absurd and immoral. I like to believe that most Christians are much more reasonable than this. I hope so anyway, otherwise I have reason to be afraid.

Ray a Day - 2:3

Here's more of Ray Comfort's second chapter.  I'd like to take this moment to point out that Comfort states that the point of this chapter is to show that the human moral conscience proves the existence of God, just as he tried to show in the first chapter that creation proves a creator.  Yet virtually every question in this chapter results in Comfort ranting about all human beings being worthless, evil creatures.  He literally claims, over and over again, that it is impossible for any human being to be "good."  Does it even need to be said that the vast, overwhelming majority of people (theist and atheist alike) do not possess a sense of morality that even remotely resembles these bizarre assertions?

Next up, we've got another person who claims that someone can be a good person without being a born again Christian.  Comfort takes lots of cookie-cutter questions almost exactly like this in rapid succession, and these following couple quotes pretty much sums up his ranting for most of this chapter:

The dictionary has fifty-eight definitions for the word (good), but the principle meaning is to be "morally excellent."  In other words, to be good means to be morally perfect in thought, word, and deed.

No, Ray, no it doesn't.  See, what you did there was blatantly exchange the word "excellent" for the word "perfect."  They are not synonyms, and your entire argument crumbles.

In the above objection, the person implies that you don't have to be a Christian to live a good life.  That's true.  Anyone can do the things that Christians do.  They can start hospitals, schools, feed the poor, build houses, etc.  But that won't get anyone to heaven, nor will it save anyone from hell.  This is because salvation has nothing to do with our "good" works.  How could it?

Yes, here, Comfort literally states (pay attention here, let it sink in, there will be a test), "So stop pretending to be good, and realize that doing good will do you no good on Judgment Day."

1.  This brand of fundamentalist theology is truly horrifying.  It should be apparent by now that Comfort has no evidence that there is a heaven, hell, or any need to save ourselves from either of them, yet this is the one, singular point of consideration in Comfort's worldview.  It is childishly irresponsible and amoral to say that we shouldn't bother with doing any good in the world, instead only being concerned with our own reward in the afterlife.

2.  If  (and granted, this is a big if) the state of the human moral conscience says anything at all about the existence of a god or gods as Comfort claims, then by the measure of my own moral consciousness and that of every other half-way intelligent human being I know, Comfort has just conclusively proved that his god does not exist.

3.  This is such a ridiculously distorted, narrow doctrine that Comfort seems to almost be trying to make Christianity look bad.  It goes without saying that even a considerable majority of Christians are more intelligent and reasonable than this.  Statements such as this are so extreme, even by Christian fundamentalist standards, that they will probably literally cause at least a few Christians to (at least) begin to doubt their faith.

Central to Comfort's arguments in this chapter is his assertion that even though we can be decent people by our own standards, by God's standards, we are all literally liars, theives, serial killers, and as far as God is concerned we all probably have sex with goats, too.  Every part of this chapter rests entirely on his idea that according to God (whose opinion on morality is the only one that matters, and for no other reason than that he is the one we must please to escape the horrors of eternal hell), there is either moral perfection, or there is complete, unadulterated evil (with all of humanity falling into that latter category).  Expect to see a post or two dealing with this absurdity in detail.

Ray a Day: 2:2

In yet another installment of our Ray a Day series, a questioner tells Ray that his conscience is perfectly functional, but is silent on matters of atheism. Ray says this in response:

The reason your conscience has nothing to say about your atheism is that atheism is not a moral issue. It's an intellectual issue. If I were to lie or steal, my conscience would scream at me. But if I said something that was intellectually stupid, like one and one make five, my conscience would remain silent. The same applies with the foolishness of atheism.

It’s interesting how people can be internally inconsistent in such a blatant way in the same book, within a few pages. For example on page 5, Ray says:

He has to deny common reason and logic ... it seems worth it to some because they think you then become a moral free agent.

On Page 8 we find:

Your stumbling block isn’t as intellectual as you maintain … it’s moral. … It’s not intellectual. His or her reason [for denying god] is moral.

And page 32:

That is why atheists hate Him so vehemently. Atheists want to be free from all moral or spiritual responsibilities …

I find it pretty funny that Ray is so inconsistent, and people come to him in droves proclaiming that he is a wonderful apologist who explains everything using undeniable logic and reason. Are you kidding me? I guess atheism is an intellectual issue when it suits Ray that it be an intellectual issue, and a moral issue when it suits him that it be a moral issue.

The next questioner says that he (or she) thinks that people who don’t believe in God can be good, normal people, just not perfect. Ray responds by saying that it “deeply concerns me when I hear a professing Christian tell an atheist that an atheist can be a good person”. He “explains” that Jesus said there is no one good but God, so “Anyone who says that human beings are good is calling Jesus a liar. My concern isn’t just that the atheist is being confirmed in his deception, but it makes me doubt the genuine nature of the Christian’s salvation, because it seems that he has no knowledge of sin himself”

We’ve already been over this liar business in this post. Comfort says that no one is good, even himself. The reason that no one is good is because Jesus says that God is the only good thing. This is a complete perversion of the word “good” to the point at which it becomes totally meaningless except as an arbitrary word used to describe his god’s unfathomable greatness.

So what Comfort is saying is that compared to God’s infinite goodness, we have zero goodness. But this same standard should apply to any other quality god possesses. Compared to God’s infinite perfection, the world has zero perfection. Compared to God’s infinite wisdom, the universe has zero wisdom.

Honestly, we’re just paying word-games here, and eliminating our ability to call pieces of Comfort’s God’s creation good, wise, perfect, moral, or any other quality he uses to describe his god by redefining those words as being qualities only god possesses. While he plays games, he also discourages Christians from seeing atheists as people who are good. I realize that he is, at the very least, condemning himself as well as everyone else, but it seems like he is saying, “Atheists are terrible people, and if Christians think atheists are not terrible, they aren’t true Christians. I’m not perfect either.” It’s a cheap way to pretend to be humble.

P.S. I skipped a few questions because they were repetitive and brought up issues already previously answered.

Ray a Day - 2:1

Well, we have finally reached the second chapter of "You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics".

As Chapter 1 was all about evolution (actually, it had very little to do with actual science, never mind evolution itself, but we tried our damnedest to keep some science in the discussion), Chapter 2 is all about the human consciousness and how it's existence proves the existence of God just as thoroughly as 'Creation proves a Creator.'  First thing's first; let's look at the introduction.

Comfort tells a story about a spectacular painting; a true masterpiece.  As a group of experts are admiring the extraordinary skill of this peerless artist, one of them notices the painter's signature in the bottom corner.  He leans in close to see who this amazing painter was, and discovers to his horror that the artist is black!  Informing his colleagues that the painter is "the 'n' word," they produce a knife, and proceed to scrape the artist's name off of the painting.  You can probably guess what this analogy is supposed to mean.

No, Ray, the analogy fails.  The art experts in your story did not deny that there was a painter, they only harbored a bigoted attitude towards the artist.  Again, no matter how much Comfort wants this to be the case, atheists do not deny the existence of God because they don't like him.

In any event, Comfort goes on to say that the nature of the Creator is revealed by the wonderful beauty of creation.  He goes on to list very lovely imagery, and claims that if evolution were true, it would leave us sitting on bare rock with only the bare essentials or our survival.  Even after we've completed the chapter on evolution, Comfort still has to insert some scientific ignorance at random points.  Obviously, evolution doesn't just affect change within the human species, but will drive the adaptation of every single other form of life as well.  How on earth does Comfort come to the conclusion that evolution will somehow cause human beings to survive, but will not function on any other animal or plant species?  Is he just refusing to think even slightly outside of his mental framework of 'everything in the world is designed for humans?'  One simply cannot properly comprehend evolution if one approaches it from such an egocentric creationist state of mind.

All that follows is just some more insults, like the apparent 'fact' that "Atheists want to be free from all moral or spiritual responsibilities."  He also touches on the immortal problem of evil.  His stance is the usual 'everything good came from God, and everything bad came from human sin."  You could probably guess that he makes no attempt to explain why or how he knows this to be the case.  He mentions murder and pollution specifically as evil created by the sin of human beings, yet ignores the existence of disease, natural disasters, and death itself, which human beings are not responsible for.  He also ignores the obvious fact that, by his own theology, his God is supposedly the one who created we lowly human beings with the capacity for sin, and did so with full knowledge that we would in fact sin, and, at times, commit gross injustices.

The first question is just a comment on the mechanism of polygraph tests; remarking that they don't detect a lie, they detect patterns in body responses that often correlate with a lie, and nothing more.  Comfort replies that polygraphs are not lie detectors, they are actually conscience detectors (which is completely wrong).  He goes on to say that the human conscience is a dilemma for the believer in evolution, and that even the experts don't know why it exists.

This is completely ridiculous.  I am far from an "expert," and I can see that humanity evolved as an extremely social creature, and that the degrees of altruism and kinship cooperation present in humanity aided our species survival.  See here, here, and here for some basics on the evolution of human morality.  As cliche as it is for an atheist to point out Richard Dawkins, I am inclined to mention his extensive body of writing on the subject.  For example, he details how certain species of birds that organize into flocks will compete for the 'alpha' position via altruistic behavior - they will literally achieve status in the flock by giving their "inferiors" food, or taking dangerous look-out spots on the very highest branches to warn the others of airborne predators.  They will even go so far as to violently rebuke another bird that is 'lower' on the ladder of status for offering them, the 'alpha,' food.

This should be a very interesting chapter, folks.  Some of you may know, I myself had no knowledge of science at all when I first became an atheist.  I gave up my religion by reading the Bible, and violently shrugged off my religious beliefs specifically because Christianity offended by moral conscience.  Stay tuned.

Ray a day: 28 - end of chapter 1

Holy cow! We've published 28 posts, one per day, and we've finally gotten through the first chapter of Ray Comfort's "You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics". 

Today's "angry skeptic" says that it doesn't seem very intelligent for a creator to put nipples on men, since they will never breastfeed. Comfort's response:

I could say that male nipples are God's thumbtacks to keep the chest in place, but I'm sure one or two atheists would take me seriously. Still, it sounds better than the theory that they are the evolutionary beginnings of making men capable of nursing.

First of all, that thumbtack thing is actually pretty funny, never mind the jab at the ability of atheists to understand sarcasm (It's kind of funny that people talk about how kind and nice Ray is...), so it's official. Ray, you have earned one [1] point. Lucky for you, points can only be earned and never taken away.

It's pretty clear that Comfort is just making things up now, because I have never heard of anyone claim that male nipples are the evolutionary beginnings of making men capable of suckling. Once again, Ray provides no reference to the aforementioned theory, so we have no idea where it came from, aside from his own head. Evolution does not work in this way - it does not build up adaptations with some sort of goal in mind. The idea that the human species is growing nipples in order to eventually suckle infants smacks of intelligent design!

Ray, please cite your source of this theory. I'm waiting.

Natural selection is a blind process. It is going in a direction, but it does not have some goal in mind. It did not hop in the car to drive to Las Vegas, it hopped in the car and is driving along the path of least resistance, wherever it may lead. The goal of the rainstorm is not to knock your house down - it has no goal.

So anyway, why no men have nipples? Let's ask a biologist, rather than a creationist. How about Andrew M. Simons, a professor of biology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario?

A human baby inherits one copy of every gene from his or her father and one copy of every gene from his or her mother. Inherited traits of a boy should thus be a combination of traits from both his parents. Thus, from a genetic perspective, the question should be turned around: How can males and females ever diverge if genes from both parents are inherited? We know that consistent differences between males and females (so-called sexual dimorphisms) are common--examples include bird plumage coloration and size dimorphism in insects. The only way such differences can evolve is if the same trait (color, for example) in males and females has become "uncoupled" at the genetic level. This happens if a trait is influenced by different genes in males and females, if it is under control of genes located on sex chromosomes, or if gene expression has evolved to be dependent on context (whether genes find themselves within a male or a female genome). The idea of the shared genetic basis of two traits (in this case in males and females) is known as a genetic correlation, and it is a quantity routinely measured by evolutionary geneticists. The evolutionary default is for males and females to share characters through genetic correlations.
The uncoupling of male and female traits occurs if there is selection for it: if the trait is important to the reproductive success of both males and females but the best or "optimal" trait is different for a male and a female. We would not expect such an uncoupling if the attribute is important in both sexes and the "optimal" value is similar in both sexes, nor would we expect uncoupling to evolve if the attribute is important to one sex but unimportant in the other. The latter is the case for nipples. Their advantage in females, in terms of reproductive success, is clear. But because the genetic "default" is for males and females to share characters, the presence of nipples in males is probably best explained as a genetic correlation that persists through lack of selection against them, rather than selection for them. Interestingly, though, it could be argued that the occurrence of problems associated with the male nipple, such as carcinoma, constitutes contemporary selection against them. In a sense, male nipples are analogous to vestigial structures such as the remnants of useless pelvic bones in whales: if they did much harm, they would have disappeared.
In a now-famous paper, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin emphasize that we should not immediately assume that every trait has an adaptive explanation. Just as the spandrels of St. Mark's domed cathedral in Venice are simply an architectural consequence of the meeting of a vaulted ceiling with its supporting pillars, the presence of nipples in male mammals is a genetic architectural by-product of nipples in females. So, why do men have nipples? Because females do. 

It is interesting to note that male lactation in mammals has never developed as anything other than anomaly - males can lactate if stimulated by estrogen, however. Human babies can also be calmed by sucking on daddy's nipple, even if he isn't lactating.

Here's a break:
















We're back!

In this same question/answer, Comfort changes directions and goes on to make fun of a website, book and show The Future is Wild. The whole idea of these is to imagine what the future might be like in millions of years. The idea is to have some fun and predict how species might change over time. Of course, he points to this as evidence that evolution is all about imagination, and claims that this makes a mockery out of science. He also says he doesn't understand how different this is from when he and Kirk Cameron presented a picture of the "Crockoduck" as an example of what they imagined would be a transitional form.

I shouldn't have to point out that making predictions about the future of the animal kingdom millions of years into the future for a kid's TV show and stipulating in a book for adults that changes will occur is about injecting imagination into the framework of evolution, but this does not mean that the framework of evolution is also imaginary. 

That's it for Chapter one, folks! I'm going to stick all of these blog posts together in one webpage and will add it to the "science" section of my blog. I'll let you know when it's up.

Ray a Day: 27

Today's questioner from Ray Comfort's new book asks why God created marijuana. Ray responds by saying that hemp is useful, and "Marijuana is often called 'weed' and weeds came about as a direct result of the curse of God, following Adam's sin." He says that if the questioner is really asking why we shouldn't smoke marijuana if God created it, he has an answer. His answers is that his god also created sand.

He goes on to say that man has chosen to "kill his brain cells" by burning marijuana, and that breathing in the burning fumes of anything is harmful, and, "Another word for marijuana is 'dope'. I wonder why?"

Actually, I have a better question. Why would God create marijuana, and then specifically create cannabinoid receptors in the brain? Why would God create us to grow THC (the psychoactive compound in pot) in our brains?

There is a specific receptor for THC in the human brain (and in what appears to be all mammalian vertebrates and even some non-mammalian vertebrates). They are

one of the most abundant G-protein coupled receptors in the brain. It has its highest densities in the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus, cerebellum, basal ganglia, brain stem, spinal cord and amygdala. This distribution explains marijuana's diverse effects. Its psychoactive power comes from its action in the cerebral cortex. Memory impairment is rooted in the hippocampus, a structure essential for memory formation. The drug causes motor dysfunction by acting on movement control centers of the brain. In the brain stem and spinal cord, it brings about the reduction of pain; the brain stem also controls the vomiting reflex. The hypothalamus is involved in appetite, the amygdala in emotional responses. Marijuana clearly does so much because it acts everywhere.

 So, it's really not just a matter of god creating marijuana and humans "misusing" it. It's a lot more complicated then that.

I don't think I have to mention that smoking is not the only way to gain mind-altering effects from marijuana. It's active ingredients can be imparted into a carrier oil which is ingested, it can be baked into brownies, or folded into milk chocolate bars, thus eliminating all of the negative effects on your lungs from smoking it.

There is absolutely zero evidence that marijuana "kills brain cells". Of all groups of people, even the government agrees.
 
Finally, here's why a slang word for marijuana is "dope".  "Dope" has been used as slang for Marijuana, heroin, meth, and cocaine.

Cocaine is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor (and a serotonin and nerepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) which is addictive because it affects the mesolimbic reward pathway - which is the pathway in the brain that is involved in behavioral responses to stimuli that activates feelings or reward and reinforcement. Meth also affects dopamine, as does heroin. It was originally thought that marijuana also had an effect on dopamine, hence the slang "dope". Research, however, has shown that it does not have an effect on dopamine.

The sand analogy doesn't work - sand is not pleasurable to eat, does not have any health benefits when you eat it, and we don't have specific sand-receptors in our brain. We don't grow sand in our heads.

As far as the "theory" that weeds came about as a direct result of Adam's sin...

1. Whether a plant is considered a "weed" or not is entirely based on human subjectivity -a weed is a plant in an undesired place. Dandelions are weeds on your perfectly trimmed Kentucky Bluegrass lawn, but are cultivated elsewhere.

2. All "weeds", even if they are in a place a human doesn't want them - still have their place in the ecosystem.

3. Is Comfort really saying that before the fall, no plants grew in "unwanted" places? I normally try not to be insulting, but if I roll my eyes back any further than they are currently rolled, I'm going to pass out. Comfort is always going on and on about how "unscientific" evolution is. Up until this point I have forgotten to mention how "unscientific" most of Comfort's third-grade theories are. How scientific is it exactly, that all plants grew in only the places Adam wanted them to grow, and once he sinned, they no longer bowed to his every wish and grew only where he wanted them?

Ray a Day: 26

"You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics".
 
More of the same.  Just a quick one today.

Today's angry skeptic calls Comfort a liar, and points out a couple strong indications of terrible "design" in certain biological organisms.  This skeptic mentions fish that live in caves yet have non-functional eyes, he mentions the fact that there is only one coronary artery, that has no back-up route, which can be easily clogged.

Comfort, as is par for the course, doesn't attempt to answer the actual thrust of the question.  He says that it seems obvious to him that if the fish live in dark caves, then they don't need functional eyes.  He doesn't even try to reply to the obvious question of why they produce eyes at all, as this is a wasteful use of biological resources; a highly inefficient bodily design for an organism that doesn't need eyes at all, especially when they eyes that are grown don't work.

He actually gives what could be a half-way decent point about the coronary artery, that one can vastly decrease the chances of the artery clogging with a healthy lifestyle; eating healthily and exercising regularly.  Of course, this still doesn't address the fact that a back-up artery or two would be a much, much more "intelligent" design.  However, entertainingly, he then shoots himself in the foot, reminding us that we also have only a single esophagus (and doesn't try to defend the "intelligent design" of a single, easily blocked esophagus).  His own example is even more damaging, because the esophagus can be blocked regardless of how healthy you are, obviously causing severe injury or death.

Comfort asks the evolutionist a few more questions:

"Which came first - the blood or the heart that pumps the blood?"

"How did the body survive when the heart hadn't yet evolved?  Or was the body alive without a heart?  How did that work?"

"Did skin exist before the blood formed?  How did the skin stay alive without blood?"

Etc.  Of course, there are organisms alive today that have structures like muscles (which the heart obviously is) yet have no blood.  An organism can have structures like a heart without blood or skin and survive perfectly well, as there are countless such organisms alive today.  To ask whether the heart, blood, or skin came first, as if an organism cannot survive without all of these biological features, betrays a staggering ignorance of the natural world, considering the countless plants and microorganisms that thrive without any of these features.

Ray a Day: 25

Today's Ray a Day is incredible. Honestly, I am surprised people can get away with publishing this stuff, here it is:

Ray's "angry skeptic" says:

MacArthur says, "The most damaging ideologies of the nineteeth and twentieth centuries were all rooted in Darwinism." So what he is saying is that we would be better off if scientific advancements never happened. That's totally bogus.

Comfort answer by saying:

Genuine scientific advancement is wonderful. ... Darwinism is not scientific. It is a brainless and unproven theory that comes from the imaginations of sinful men. ... The truth is that any evolutionary believer (especially an atheist) speaking on behalf of science is like Jeffery Dahmer speaking on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America.

 Let's repeat that last line and think about it for a minute:

The truth is that any evolutionary believer (especially an atheist) speaking on behalf of science is like Jeffery Dahmer speaking on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America.

 ...

...


Now please. If anyone wants to defend Comfort for writing this, and defend his publisher, WND books. (You should really go there and see what kind of other books they publish), you'll have to do better than, "Well he didn't really mean it that way" or something like that.

I've really tried to refrain from slipping into angry diatribes but this is perfect example of a damaging ideology - the ideology that your group of people has a stronghold on morality, and equating people who believe differently than you to an individual who was a serial killer - who brutally and gruesomely raped and murdered mostly Asian or African boys, dismembered his victims, and engaged in necrophilia, cannibalism, and torture.

It is absolutely unacceptable that a publisher would allow this kind of putrid hateful bigotry to spew forth from the pages of a book found in bookstores across the country. WND books - you should hang your head in shame that you let someone like Comfort, who has built himself up as a public figure of apologetics and Christianity (though a lot of Christians would contend that this is not a good thing), publish something that only serves to reinforce people's prejudice and hatred toward people different from themselves. This is a terrible thing to do.

First of all, many scientists are also atheists, so the analogy does not even work. Even if Comfort thinks evolution is not sound science, a better analogy might be "an evolutionist speaking for science is like an alchemist speaking for science" or maybe even, "an evolutionist speaking for science is like a holocaust denier speaking for holocaust survivors" or something.

But no. He does not make a good analogy. He does not even attempt to make a good analogy. I can take a guess at his motives...

It's pretty obvious that this analogy is meant solely to be a horrifying jab at the moral character of people who don't believe in god.

Then there is the idea that dangerous ideologies were rooted in Darwinism. I've already shown (in this post) that Darwinism actually served to start to wear away at the dangerous theologically-based ideologies - namely that different races of people were different "species" and that non-whites were inferior and got their skin color as punishment from god, etc.I've shown (in this post) that evolution is descriptive and saying that evolution causes evils or dangerous ideologies is like saying that germ theory is the cause of dangerous ideologies because germs cause people to get sick by piggybacking on other organisms and therefore swings open the door for "pathogenicists" (I just made that word up) to take advantage of other people in any way they can.

Any morals derived from evolution would naturally have to recognize that we are social animals and have evolved as such, and so cooperation and altruism lead to better fitness of the species.

The dangerous ideologies MacArthur (and the original angry skeptic) were referring to were probably Social Darwinism and Eugenics, which are based on misunderstandings of evolution (Comfort also obviously misunderstands evolution... Need I say more?). Eugenics and Social Darwinism both fail because they do not take into account the genetic variation is one of the things that makes a population stronger, not weaker. The only connection between Social Darwinism and Darwin is the name, as Social Darwinism was based on Lamerkism and the writings of Herbert Spencer, and Protestant nonconformism. Lastly, both are tied more closely to the science of genetics than the science of evolution. If Comfort knew his history, he'd be going on about how genetics is a fairy-tale for the gullible and sinful.

Speaking of sinful - I know Comfort believes that all people are sinners, and so it's interesting that he chooses to describe evolution as an "unproven theory from the imaginations of sinful men". Since all people are sinful, then all of the people who say they "know" his god, know his god as "sinful men" too. All of the people who believe in creation, believe it as "sinful men". So I'm not sure what his point is other than to make another petty jab.

Ray a Day: 24

That's right, we're continuing to review Ray comfort's book,   "You can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions From Angry Skeptics".

Back for more, eh?

Two quick questions today; this first one is fucking hilarious.  This skeptic says that "Cosmological evolution is not the same as Darwin's theory of organic evolution.  How many times would you say you've been corrected about that? . . .  And still you repeat it!"

Comfort replies, "The evolutionist says, 'Let's have a debate about the validity of Darwinian evolution,' and when he finds himself in a corner with no species-to-species transitional forms in the fossil record, he changes the subject of the debate.  Suddenly, it's not Darwinian evolution, but 'cosmological' evolution.  But I'm staying with the subject."

He then goes on to say, "You have faith in an unscientific theory (Darwinian evolution) that is in great error . . . You have no explanation as to the origin of Creation (how it began), why it began, or where the materials came from for the beginning."

Yes, you read that correctly.  First and foremost, as has been pointed out so many times before, there are a multitude of transitional forms in the fossil record.  Seriously, if a person really insists that there are no transitional forms, they should be made to provide a definition of what they would accept as a transitional form.  They usually refuse to do so, because once they do, two things could happen:  A.  Such an organism or fossil would be found or pointed out to them, and they would be forced to admit that they were completely wrong, or  B.  They would be revealed to have a completely ridiculous strawman definition of evolution (as in the case of Comfort's infamously ignorant 'Crocoduck'; he wasn't quite clever enough to bluff his way out of this challenge).

Besides which, um . . . this is probably painfully obvious to everyone else in the world except for Ray Comfort . . .


1.  A skeptic points out (for the millionth time) that evolution and cosmology are practically as unrelated as two scientific disciplines can possibly be.

2.  Comfort, in effect, claims that this is a strawman distortion, and that it is actually the evolutionist that deliberately pulls a bait-and-switch from biological evolution to cosmology.

3.  Comfort then does exactly what he insists that he doesn't do, committing the exact same glaring bait-and-switch failure of logic that he had just insisted is committed by those who accept the theory of evolution.

Leaving this absurdness behind, the next skeptic remarks that gravity (which Comfort often says 'evolved,' fortunately, right when lifeforms needed it to keep from flying off of the face of the planet) can be found in the 'physics' section, while the theory of evolution is found in the 'biology' section.

Comfort's reply is to simply reassert that gravity's existence is extremely fortunate, saying that, "If (as is commonly accepted) the natural phenomenon of evolution had no end in mind when it created all living things, it is incredibly intelligent, but it forgot that they would go spinning into space without the law of gravity."  He goes on to say that "chance" or "accident" are leaps of faith too large for him to accept.

Ziztur and I have discussed this before. Comfort's trick is to work an unstated, hidden premise into his argument - that gravity is an extremely unlikely phenomenon.  How does Comfort qualify exactly how likely a phenomenon like gravity is to occur?  How do people usually come up with a statistical chance of something happening?  Comparison.  To even have a tiny, remote chance of coming up with a figure of statistical likelihood that might have some actual meaning, relevance, or predictive usefulness, we would have to compare the number of universes that have gravity with the number of universes that don't.  Does this sufficiently illustrate how absurd it is to claim that something is unlikely to occur, when the phenomenon in question occurs in every single possible situation that we can possibly observe?  Nobody, not Comfort or anybody else, can make an argument that something that, as far as we can tell, is completely universal is in fact highly unlikely to occur.

Far be it from me to suggest that there is something that science cannot seek to explain.  What chance is there for the existence of a universe that naturally lacks gravity?  There may yet be a physicist so brilliant that he can actually devise a method, using all the knowledge of the universe that mankind has ever amassed, to determine this.

Ray Comfort is NOT.  THIS.  MAN.

Ray a Day: 23

Today's skeptic asks Comfort what he would say to Michael Shermer if he were his parents the day Michael came home to tell his parents he had been taught in biology class that the world's living things weren't created all at once.

Comfort responds by saying that Shermer's parents should have taught him the Ten Commandments rather than just to give his heart to Jesus, because this is a recipe for "false conversion" (whatever that means). He then goes on to say that when people repent and trust his savior, they'll come to "know" his god (we've blogged about this "knowing God" thing here and also here, so there's no sense in repeating myself).

He then goes on to tell his readers that since this theory contradicts his god's word, people should ask questions about, it, ask for proof, be a skeptic, ask why there are no species-to-species transitional forms, ask for specific evidence, and to keep pressing the issue. "They will talk about variation between species. That's not Darwinian Evolution. It's a rabbit trail" he says.  He continues:

You will have the choice between two beliefs of the origin of mankind. ... You can either rest in the evidence of the God you know personally, or toy can turn your back on Him ... and blindly have faith in an unscientific theory. And why would an intelligent person Do that?

 First, even though in this particular scenario "Michael" is presented with two theories of the origin of mankind - either God did it or natural forces did it - these are the only two theories, this is still a false dichotomy. It's not really, "evolution or God" It could be evolution, god, fairies, aliens, evolution and god combined, maybe we all created ourselves by observing ourselves, maybe we're all brains in a jar. the trick is to tease out which of these theories fit the evidence and observations we have about the world - the rest are unsubstantiated.

We would not expect to observe large changes (such as speciation) directly, except in populations moving through rapid change. The field of recorded science simply has not been around long enough. Evolution is small changes in populations over long periods of time - in fact, if we were to observe quick speciation (such as a reptilian species changing into a bird species over a few generations) this would be great evidence against evolution. The evidence for evolution does not depend on us observing "macroevolution" directly. Regardless of the fact that we don't need to have observed speciation for "macroevolution" to be true, we have observed speciation.  There is no known barrier to large change. Creationists, I am waiting for your theory as to the mechanism that blocks speciation from occurring. We can expect small changes over time to accumulate into large changes. Imagine going out to a spot in a huge warehouse and dropping a grain of sand on the floor. You add a grain of sand daily. You die, and your descendants continue your mission, adding grains of sand. What creationists are saying is that this sand will never become a small hill, and that there is some sort of barrier to these grands of sand piling up until they make a hill.

Apparently Comfort thinks that if someone claims to believe in God, or even is a pastor for decades, but eventually becomes an atheist, that they are a "false convert". What he appears to mean is that anyone who changes their mind about Christianity was "not a True Christian" and instead is a "false convert" - our ever-present no true Scotsman fallacy.  He is making the claim that it is literally impossible for a "True Christian" to stop being one. Black and white world of bigoted absolutism, Comfort hearts you.

I might also add that I agree with Comfort that one should demand evidence for evolution - you absolutely should! Just like you should demand evidence for creation. "Creation proves there is a creator" does not cut it, and nor does any other evidence for creation.