I just can’t stay away…
Monday, December 15th, 2008This is the problem with the internet— there’s always someone who’s wrong.
Ray Comfort is an evangelical creationist who is almost always wrong, often willfully so, but I think he thinks that everything he does is for the best. But then I read other things he writes and I’m not sure, and I think maybe he’s just a douche who enjoys attention and selling books. I just don’t know.
His latest post is about the consolation of Christianity, which is generally considered a given, and generally I wouldn’t argue against (because whether or not something is comforting is entirely beside the point of whether it is true), but he is just so annoyingly smug in his unassailable belief system that I feel like disagreeing with him on even this small point.
Is it really so comforting to believe that your family died horribly as part of God’s plan? I can’t imagine so. If I believed in God such an event would probably make me despair at what reason God may have had to allow this to happen. And then I might have a crisis of faith over how everyone can have free will and yet somehow all of our actions fit perfectly into God’s plan. And then I might hate God for taking my family— He could have made a different plan couldn’t He? And then I might hate myself for hating God. And then I might try to remember how I felt about my lost family before I wasted years of my life trying to understand the purpose of their deaths. And then, hopefully, I would realize that there was no higher purpose, no cosmic significance to this awful event, apart from the fact that tragedy can occur at any time, and that we should hold life precious and take nothing for granted.
The only way I can see that belief in God would be comforting is as a way of indefinitely deferring dealing with such a loss, by telling myself that it’s not over and my loved ones are still there in some vague kind of way and lalalalala it’s all too hard and I don’t want to think about this anymore.
Then there’s the whole idea of believing something because it brings comfort rather than because it’s true. I’m with every fifth Star Trek episode on this one, in that given the choice between being told a comfortable lie and the awful truth, I will ask for the truth (even while knowing that I may have been happier with the former). I’m not a child, and would prefer not to be treated as one— but perhaps the devout feel differently, what with their fixation on innocence and credulity and the institutionalized suspicion of knowledge and discovery.
Would it be better to tell someone whose loved one has been killed that in fact they were called away on a secret government mission and can never return? If it were true I would be more comforted by the latter, but I certainly hate the idea of being told such a lie simply to protect my fragile human psyche.
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UPDATE: In case you don’t know just how douchey Comfort (and his buddy-in-Christ Kirk Cameron) can be, you need to see this fabulous clip, The Atheist’s Nightmare!– It’s funny until you realize they’re actually serious.
December 16th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Is this bloke’s name seriously Comfort? Honestly Mark, how can you read this guy’s stuff when it infuriates you so? Its like me reading Miranda Devine’s column just so I can scream at the newspaper. We hate these people but can’t turn away.
December 16th, 2008 at 7:41 am
The reason I don’t read Devine’s column is because I know she is just an evil spiteful shit-stirrer who needs the attention to keep her job. Comfort represents something else, something eerily self-assured and at the same time horribly ignorant. And Comfort is the sort of person who will continue to push his anti-science bullshit and contribute to the moronification of science curricula.
+ it’s always nice to have someone to bitch about.
December 16th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Comfort? And he’s going on about the “comforts” of his religion?
Delusions of grandeur, among the other delusions, surely!
I refuse to read his twaddle (I’m happy to take your word that it is) but it seems like an especially rich vein for taking the piss.
December 17th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
here’s a comment I left in response to someone thanking Ray and mentioning how hard it was for Christians to see what the atheists said about God (I post here because a lot of these don’t get posted, so don’t want to waste the keystrokes entirely)
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We atheists are such big meanies aren’t we. How dare we not show respect for something in which we do not believe (and for which there is no evidence, and which the majority of the planet also do not believe in, especially those who have not been forced to read the Bible).
Does it even occur to you Christians that rational minded people might be offended at that stuff Ray posts? Not because he disagrees with science & reality, but because he is willfully ignorant of stuff he claims to know, and creates horrible caricatures of atheists and their beliefs which are incredibly mean-spirited.
Most atheists don’t claim to know what’s going on inside a Christian’s head, or why you believe; they only argue with the conclusions you draw and your irrational basis for them. Ray likes to pretend he knows how atheists think, and what they think, and why they think it, and he really doesn’t know Jack. It’s presumptuous and it’s insulting.
He drags *us* through the mud, every time he tries to argue that we don’t care about justice, or music, or that we have nightmares about a stupid banana. He could simply admit that he is too dim to understand how we can have morals without God to explain them to us, but he would rather skip that part and imply that we are without true morals.
So please, save a little of that vaunted Christian compassion for the atheists’ feelings will you?
December 17th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Ray sez: Christians know God, Atheists don’t
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You mean “proper” Christians here I assume, ie your exact preferred definition of a proper saved Christian, which happens to fit you.
I would expect anyone who truly believed in a supreme being to be too humble to claim to know this being. Maybe you have the breadcrumbs He left for you in the gospels, but can you really know Him?
The reason you know God is because you define him Ray.
He is imaginary.
You talk a lot about proof of God like it is important to be able to prove He exists… surely this leads to horrible crisis somewhere deep inside your long lost intellect? After all, there’s no evidence beyond your sloppy sophistry about paintings and bananas (what comes below sophistry? I need a less impressive sounding word) and there’s loads of evidence that the creation of the world had nothing to do with what your Good Book says.
Doesn’t it keep you awake sometimes, wondering how we can be watching a supernovae that happened a million years ago when the stars weren’t even created until after the plants? If not then I think your belief system has utterly annihilated your sense of curiosity, and with it your ability to truly appreciate the world.
December 18th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
March Hare said (attempting to use Occam’s razor as an argument for creationism)…
OK, a simple explanation is that God exists and created the universe vs. a complex theory that must constantly change because new discoveries are being made, dependent ideas and theories change, etc.
The Bible offers no explanation for the common descent observable in both the fossil record and the genetic one (and note that the genetic record *confirms* the fossil/morphological one, even though Darwin predated genetics by at least a century). The only reason your theory is “simpler” is because it doesn’t actually explain or predict anything, which means your theory is also useless.
You could as well argue that it is “simpler” to credit God with choosing the orbits of the planets rather than observe that they are determined by mass, the gravitational constant and the inverse square law, but again that would be stupid because it would be a theory without any explanatory or predictive value.
The thing about Occam’s razor is that it only applies to theories that have equal explanatory power, and of that the Bible has virtually none (and the Creation story is such a fantasy that if anything it has negative value in helping us understand the natural world).
It’s no great coup to have a theory that doesn’t change when it serves no value and explains nothing in the first place. It’s just SAD.
Newton gave us the laws of motion, and it turned out they were almost exactly right, except for large masses and high velocity, in which case relativity must be factored in. The fact that Newton didn’t have the complete picture hardly takes away from the incredible work he did (which is still used useful today, despite the fact that it is not a “complete” picture).
December 18th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Mark Morrison sez…
Jason you do not accept the existence of yourself as evidence? If that is the case then please tell me which theory that you believe. Did you crawl off the backs of rocks or were you seeded by aliens?
Gosh, when you put it like that you do make evolution sound far fetched. And you also make yourself sound like an idiot.
How far-fetched is it to look around and observe that all living things seem to be born of other living things? Biologically. It seems pretty obvious to me. Also note the similarities between the living things, and the fact that they look similar but not the same to living things that appeared to exist a long time ago. And look in the DNA, we see sequences that appear to show an enormous family tree encompassing ALL life on this planet.
The biggest mystery is the root of that incredible tree… where we look for abiogenesis, the beginning of life, and I wonder why Creationists don’t just go occupy that little niche, since at least you wouldn’t have to deal with any evidence that contradicts your mythology. I think most Christians are probably happy with that position, why must you waste your brains twisting the facts to fit a STORY in a VERY OLD BOOK.
Oh right, because then there would be no original sin, and nothing for you to agonize about. As you were…
December 18th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
March Hare said…
Actually, I would disagree that atheists are consistent.
Atheists do not believe in God or gods… that’s it. If you ask an atheist what defines them as an atheist that’s pretty much the deal. If you ask them why they don’t believe, they will tell you that they see no evidence for such a being.
That seems pretty consistent to me.
How they feel about evolutionary science is another matter, but an interest in the biological sciences is not a prerequisite to be in our club.
What, you thought atheists all care about evolution? Do you think evolution was invented specifically to undermine the minority literalist Christian viewpoint?
The theory of evolution certainly helps to undermine your mythology, but that’s not why it exists. It’s there simply because it explains so much about the natural world, and I’m sure you are aware that most self-identifying Christians have no problem recognizing evolution as a valid and useful theory.
PS: If I was to write a book of stories that I wanted people to believe, I would probably write a few passages in there like “some will tell you that this is not true, and that is how you will know they are lying” — It seems really effective :)
December 19th, 2008 at 12:34 am
I forgot all about the banana video. Shouldn’t that qualify Ray for at least an honourable mention in the world’s biggest moron contest?
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:36 am
Did anyone else find it amusing that during Ray’s scientific analysis of the banana, he mentioned how the banana’s shape is perfect for “ease of entry” and curved toward the mouth? And that it doesn’t squirt in your face when you open it?
Or am I just a sick, depraved human being?