Should we take Ray Comfort Serious? If no, what not?

If you believed, you did so on your own merit.
If you were forced to believe, you didn’t believe.
Or you believed what you were being told.
Either way, that’s not theism.

 

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Why do you have to be so hateful?
You don’t even know me.

 

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Well put Alex!! It's so predictable that the stupid creationists, will always love to catagorize those that prefer to "think"rather then accept the biblical account....a book/fairy tale, written in an obscure age, by obscure men, with obvious obscure meanings in its text.

 

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You’re an atheist if you don’t believe in God.
You don’t get to choose.
Some people think they are theists, but they’re not. Because they don’t believe in God. Some people think they are atheist, but they’re not, because they believe in God.
You can hate God, and still be a theist.
It’s not as simple, or cut and dried as you think it is.

 

I couldn’t avoid science even if I wanted to.

 

double post

 

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ray_Comfort

Raymond "Ray" Comfort (1949–), also known as Banana Man,[3] is an amazing mustache attached to a Protestant Christian author, video producer, street preacher, and liar for Jesus.

Comfort is a young Earth creationist and opposes evolution. His arguments for a young Earth are entirely unfounded in science, demonstrate basic misunderstandings of both evolution and science in general, and often aren't even based on reality. For example, he is well known for his banana argument, which claims that the banana is so perfect that it must have been intelligently designed in nature, despite the fact that the banana is a product of human artificial selection. He also really likes linking Hitler and evolution.

Comfort frequently attacks atheism, humanism, and the lack of God-worship as the sources of modern sins, such as homosexuality and school shootings. He frequently discusses supposedly iron-clad proofs of God (which generally rely on "common sense" and Pascal's Wager) and methods of evangelism (which generally rely on spamming out a list of pre-written loaded questions).

He has written dozens of books and Gospel tracts on these subjects through his Way of the Master McDojo ministry, operated as a part of his Living Waters Publications.

extract:

This shows that Comfort has no intention of having an open and honest discussion with scientists regarding the evidence for evolution. All Comfort is concerned with trying to convince the lay person that special creation is the only answer, and he will sell them any lie he can to convince them.

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Richard Dawkins looking bewildered at Comfort's 2009 remastering of The Origin of Species.
See the main article on this topic: List of fallacious quotes by creationists
“”Every substantive discussion I have had with Ray has been either "lost" or ended up on the cutting room floor.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/science...creationism-evolution-bill-nye-ken-ham-debate

22 answers for creationists from someone who understands evolution
At the recent Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate, Buzzfeed asked creationists in attendance to write a question or message for ‘the other side’. Here are some answers


What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. A disappointing public debate between popular US science telly presenter Bill Nye, and creationist zealot Ken Ham took place this week about whether creationism was a valid scientific position. Howls of anguish, cheers of victory and stifled yawns from supporters of both sides echoed round the internet. Hope for enlightenment was dashed though, as Ham trotted out the same old zombie canards, and Nye did his futile best to best them.

Alas there is nothing new under the sun. And nothing was gained from this exercise in vanity except for giving the cretinism of creationism a big stage. One commentator noted that Bill Nye lost the debate by agreeing to do it. If you wrestle with a pig, the pig likes it, and you get dirty. Or, as Richard Dawkins has said when asked to share a stage with various creationist brainwrongs, it looks better on your CV than mine. Or "never argue with an idiot: the best possible outcome is that you win an argument with an idiot."

In the dull afterglow of this less-than edifying evolutionary showdown, there’s been lots of grumbly analysis. But Matt Stopera at Buzzfeed won by asking 22 creationists to grin like monkeys and pose what they presumably thought was a zinger of a challenge to science. They’re amusing, baffling and pitiable in equal measure, and here are my answers.
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A small sample of the questions and answers:

14. If evolution is a theory (like creationism or the bible) why then is evolution taught as fact?
Do all you guys have beards? Evolution is a fact: species change over time. Even Ken Ham acknowledges this. Evolution by Natural Selection is a theory in the scientific sense, meaning a set of testable, predictive structures and ideas that explain the observed facts. It’s not the same usage as in my theory that all you guys have beards because you’re hiding something you’re ashamed of.

15. Because science by definition is a “theory” – not testable, observable, nor repeatable, why do you object to creationism or intelligent design being taught in school?
Wait, what? Science isn’t a theory. Who said that? Science is a way of knowing stuff. You’re not even trying.

17. What purpose do you think you are here for if you do not believe in salvation?
To have a good time. All the time.

19. Can you believe in “the big bang” without “faith”?
I don’t have to believe in the Big Bang, my reassuringly bearded friend. The evidence for it is overwhelming. Scientists have to keep trying to find ways to show it’s wrong. And no one has yet.

20. How can you look at the world and not believe someone created/thought of it? It’s amazing!!!
It is amazing! And even more so when discovering how it works and how it came to be, rather than simply repeating a modern misreading of a 2,000-year-old book written by Palestinian goatherds.
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Were you possibly in that audience Jan?

 

Liars for Jesus will not only claim to be authorities of God and the mind of God, but they will claim they are the authorities of people and whether or not those people are theists or atheists.

 

Thanks mate.

I can't call them stupid in so far as I realise ...to generalise...they are raised that way, to reject their belief is in effect seeing their parents as liars, that is a big hurdle for anyone...their great difficulty of course is to consider anything they perceive as a threat...It does not take much to study history to understand where religion came from and why it is what we see today.
That is why religion fears education..education causes religion to be little more than a mist. Education to religion is what the rising Sun is to fog.

Anyone can research and find that JC was a knock off from various human gods from a multitude of cultures ... And the basis for all these human gods was astrology...but believers simply can not read such history...tricked with Santa they won't be crushed again...and so they avoid the, for them, painful exercise of researching anything that will bring bad similar pain to losing Santa.

Add the fear of hell and the promise of a second existence sees them wishing very hard that their truth needs no knowledge or education.

I understand.

To say they are stupid is perhaps too harsh...they just don't have enough information to reject and be stupid...they are in the dark with a torch with no batteries.

It is a puzzle to me why folk look to unknown ancient people.

I joke that they did not know where the Sun went at night but that is true..they had no idea....and yet folk think these ancient folk could know the answers to questions that one hundred years of science is still working upon and needless to say the folk working on cosmology today actually know where the Sun goes at night.

They ,theists, present their claim that scripture was inspired by their god yet ignore the mistakes and horrible morality ..heck if any book today contains just one mistake or a call to murder folk it would be rejected or banned.


Still atheism is an an un necessary position as these folk are allowing theists to qualify their absence of belief seeking to make their myth somehow real by giving it more than a casual thought.

That's why I have given up being an atheist as there is no point to take a position where all that exists is a usupported claims...it's a non event..

Science is the only option, no need to taken a position on truth just enjoy the tested models and how they help us understand reality...

Taking a position with a theist somehow gives their fantasy a level of existence that is simply not necessary.

That's why I am no longer an atheist.

Alex

 

Yet I have.

But it is..that's the beauty of my approach it is just so simple...I am unable to lend anything to you that fails to recognise my position.

Science is all there is...no need to consider anything that has no model or adopt a position..so neat, so tidy, so liberating.
Alex

 

Not sure if I related the story to you before, but being raised as a Catholic, I was an Altar Boy until I got the sack along with another when the Parish priest caught us drinking the Altar wine behind the Altar at St Francis Paddington! I was even forced to go to confession!
Which reminds me of an Irish joke.
Paddy was walking hope one night from a night on the Guiness, when he walked into a church and then into the confessional cubical....After Paddy had sat silent for 10 minutes or so, the Priest grew impatient and banged on the partition wall. Paddy yelled out "No use knocking, there's no paper this side either"!

 

You're the one who's making theists look bad.

And you don't know me - so how can you claim I was never a theist?

 

I could say the same about you.

And since you've demonstrated in this thread that you don't know the meaning of a lot of words, why should we believe that you even know what a theist is?

 

Yet you do.
I can see why Ray appeals to you.
He is a nice guy but I can see why some folk resort to calling him a con man.
But he has books to sell and I guess the idea of any publicity is good publicity must work for him...

Alex

 

I think we could stop and think about that.
Alex

 

Since it's how you are currently identifying people as "atheist" in the first place, you are safe in posting that today. On alternate Wednesdays, when you insist that no one is truly atheistic, you would be less safe.

Meanwhile, the question surrounding your posting then becomes how you recognize insult.

Your record, in the past, is one of seeing personal insult in all accurate description of your posting. As I at least have noted before, that speaks better of you than one would assume from experience with those similar to you in affect - taking personal insult from accurate description of your posting here implies at least a residue of moral or ethical capability, a part of you not wholly corrupted. You are capable of recognizing your posting - even in other people's descriptions - as both yours and bad, for example: something you have done that reflects poorly on your person.

So you are not wholly lost to honesty at least in perception, though incapable of applying it to yourself directly, and classifying you with the entirely self-deluded witchburners and Inquisitors of the past can be only uncertain and provisional. You might even agree with Montaigne, for example, that it is rating one's opinions very highly to burn people alive for them. And that would provide solid footing for you.

 

There are a half dozen or more theories of evolution. The most important so far has been the Darwinian, since it explains and informs almost all of biological evolution - the most immediately important of the evolutionary processes structuring the world we live in - and has proved widely applicable in disparate circumstances where cause/effect or other mechanistic approaches have been exhausted, proved barren, made exorbitant demands on intellectual ability, misled their employers, or otherwise failed to be of use.

Among the others, Lamarckian evolution stands out not only as a frequently proposed alternative to Darwinian in certain specialized biological circumstances, or as an increasingly useful theoretical guide in matters of social and cultural change, but as a source of insight and influence in technological innovation - it can save considerable time and effort otherwise consumed by the randomization involved in Darwinian processes, and it is far less counterintuitive due to its partial incorporation of cause/effect (thereby putting less demand on intelligence and comprehension).

In all cases, those two and all others, not belief but understanding - comprehension of a particular theory and its possibilities - has been key. Belief is involved only as it forestalls too rapid demoralization or abets focused attention and creative thought - important considerations in real time applications, perhaps, but completely irrelevant in any formal sense. No one needs to "believe in" Darwinian theory to use it, any more than they need to "believe in" Newtonian theory to use that (almost certainly the great majority of competent users of Newtonian theory do not "believe in" it, as its fundamentally erroneous nature has been part of their education from early on).

But they do need to understand it - and that's where the religious and especially theistic fundies, like Jan, get left behind.