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- Ray has no degree in any scientific field, or even in theology or religion. Ray is the only one here who believes everything came from nothing, not atheists, so the only one here that is excluded from commenting on science is Ray Comfort.
- First thing to point out this is an god of the gaps fallacy in which if we do not have the answer then Ray gets to conclude his God is responsible. What is important to note is that some animals and organisms are alive without blood, such as the jellyfish and plants. Some animals have blood but no heart. But keep this in mind, blood has to change too. Not all blood has ever been the same as human blood. How did the blood transfer through the body? Every organism has some muscle-like functions to spread things inside the body, such as digestion. The first veins may not be as veins as we picture them, but as some form of muscle that would assist in blood flow. After many generations when the species grow in size, it makes sense that a device that would help move the flow of blood would be very advantageous than those without it.
- The difference between the above analogy and the gospels is that investigation shows that none of the four authors were eye-witnesses. We do not know who wrote the gospels, but we can verify that Luke and Matthew often copied verbatim from Mark. Mark may have been written as a fiction.http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm#2 The gospels contradict each other in fundamental ways that there is no way to rationally "harmonize" them. Read for instance Jesus' bad weekend before he died here. We also know the four accounts have been meddled with, interpolated, and forged. We do not know if anyone in the 2nd century did any investigation to validate the claims made in any of the gospels. Any decent investigator would first account the problems with the accounts and little certainty can be drawn from their claims. External evidence is also lacking, such as we do not have any artifacts made by Jesus, no letters written by him, or anything. Read the historicity of Jesus to see the lack of historical evidence to support Jesus of Nazareth.
- Maybe it is atheist are interested in learning new things, or perhaps they just want to smell what Comfort is spewing.
- Ray did not fully address or answer the question. Lusting is indeed involuntary, and that is know to anyone familiar with psychiatry. There are pathways inn our brains that stimulate pleasure from things that are required for our survival, such as eating. We must eat to survive, so our mind evolved to seek pleasure in eating. Same with lust an sex, since we must reproduce to survive, our minds have been programed to seek and desire sex.
- The truth is the "missing link" is not missing. It hasn’t been for a long time now. There was a missing link in 1859 when there were only two species of humans yet known in the fossil record, and no intermediate fossils to link them with any of the other apes we knew of at that time. Since then, we’ve found the fossils of thousands of individuals of dozens of hominid species, many of which provide a definite link to the other apes. But there were two particular pieces predicted to complete the puzzle: First, it was never supposed that we evolved from any ape species still alive today. Instead the theory held that chimpanzees and humans were sibling species, daughters of the same mother. So the first link we needed to find was an ancient ape apparently basal to either of us –to prove there was a potential progenitor of both groups. We had already found that link in Europe five years before Darwin went public. So we already had an evident “chain” of transitional species from which only one more “link” was needed. The theory then required that another extinct hominid be found in strata chronologically between the Miocene Dryopithecus fontana and the earliest known human species, which from 1891 to 1961, was Homo erectus. We’ve found lots of candidates, as many as fifty species of apes which are now all extinct. But more than that, the theory also demanded that we find one “half-way” between humans and other apes in terms of morphology. We found exactly that too way back in 1974. Australopithecus afarensis proved to be a fully bi-pedal ape who’s hands, feet, teeth, pelvis, skull, and other physical details were exactly what creationists challenged us to find, yet they’re still pretending we never found it.
- Yes, it did. It existed on Earth probably as soon as the atmosphere contained enough oxygen to support combustion. He notes that fire needs fuel to burn. He then jumps into the "justice" of the Bible, noting that just because one cannot observe something does not mean it does not exist. By this logic, a invisible gnome could be floating behind your back at all times, does that mean therefor they exist? No. The ones making the positive claim that such a thing does exist thus has the burden of proof. Ray has failed to meet that burden of proof.
- Why just the gospel? Ray excludes all the other holy texts known to man because of his biased personal beliefs. The fact that many people die everyday shows that death is very common and can be prevented to a degree. Christianity plays a role in the death of thousands of people everyday, such as witch hunts and genocide.http://www.christianaggression.org/tactics_violence.php
This affirms Rays continual use of the god of the gaps fallacy. Just because he provides quotes from nonexperts in the field, Ray thinks he can conclude that his narrow version of God is responsible. Ray never actually seeks to get a scientific explanation from an actual expert, or when he does he rudely does not let them finish or share the whole thing <a href="http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Evolution_%28Way_of_the_Master%29#A_real_expert.">http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Evolution_%28Way_of_the_Master%29#A_real_expert.</a> Comfort admits that God did create the circulation system through magic . The part including Abraham Lincoln is completely irrelevant to the question about the circulation system. Comfort only uses it to learn about the person himself, but that says nothing about the evolution of blood or the heart. He uses this as an attempt to imply that reading the gospel can give you an emotional insight to the character of Jesus, but this is not evidence. People can feel an emotional attachment to the characters in Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, but that does not mean the characters in the stories actually exist. In summary, Ray Comfort appeals to emotion to push his faith upon people.
- However, evolution and gravity will remain. We observe both in nature right now and will always be a part of nature. As more evidence accumulates, scientific findings become more and more certain. Theories that have withstood several decades of study may undergo more refinement of details, but it is almost inconceivable that they would be overturned completely.
- Ray is known to deliberately quote mine, and frequently says Newton was a smart man who believed in god, not evolution. The problem with this, of course, Newton died many years before the Origin of Species was published.
- However, is it reasonably justified? "I am your Lord thy God, thou shall not have any other Gods before me.” Notice it says ‘before me’ does that imply that other gods do indeed exist? What about any gods after him? This was spoken by Elohim , who is the “Lord” of the Israelites. This is the equivalent of establishing the nation of Israel, not the United States of America. It can be taken as either monotheistic or henotheistic , and in any case is contrary to the American constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and against an establishment of religion. In the United States, we are free to worship many gods, one god or no gods at all. Elohim does not appear in any of the growing documents on which our country was founded.
- Unfortunately, they do not "believe" in this sense. Genetic and fossil evidence shows the eye can evolve naturally. Such developments take time, but so does the development of stars and such. Ray's creationist beliefs holds that God created everything as they are instantly, which is why Ray ridicules any natural model that requires time. But as Nilsson and Pelzer showed us, it does not take that much time. The main difference between evolution of the eye and Ray's personal beliefs is that scientific evidence supports the evolution of the eye.
- The problem with using 2 Timothy as a reference or as evidence is that the vast majority of critical scholars agree that 2 Timothy is a forger, it was never written by Paul. Therefore, the Bible contains books of a deceiver.
According to Ray, sin was the result of capital punishment for humanity , but we can only be saved by repenting to Christ. He says God gave the saved a "light" and those who do not believe walk in darkness . It is easy and not surprising that a book which was obviously written with an agenda would label nonbelievers as people who "walk in darkness." However, with no valid proof for its extraordinary claims, it is irrational to accept a religion such as Christianity.
- Overall, Ray does not address or answer the question. He just says be patient with God and do not think of him as evil.
- While Knolls is correct that many explanations exist and each provide evidence to support them, we are not sure which one is entirely responsible for the origin of life or if multiple, or all, of the explanations were responsible.
- This is another old straw-man, evolution has nothing to do with the Big Bang or abiogenesis. Ray concludes the cause for material must be immaterial. In summary, he concludes the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters in Genesis 1:2. Why must the cause be immaterial? Did God have a cause? If not, then why not save a step and say matter had no cause. Note, at the quantum level, the laws of cause and effect disappear, meaning that a cause was not necessary for the universe to come about through the Big Bang. How can God exists as a "spirit" moving upon the waters before the earth was formed? Say God is a spirit does not add up, because it violates proper ontology, lacks empirical evidence and violates the very nature of existence. Saying God is a spirit is the same as saying a bed is made of sleep, you cannot exist or be made of a character trait.
- How can this be? Comfort points out that men who are certain they are correct when claiming that no one can be right seems absolutely sure of himself. He argues fallen politicians draw the line of right and wrong on a relative line, but Ray argues that right and wrong is written on stone. Time, according to Ray, has shown that violators of God's law meet justice. Ray summarizes that the fallen politician can only be tried by civil law, and the same will happen to us all on Judgment day since we are all criminals in God's eyes and must be saved.
How does the theory of relativity have any impact on morality? Very commonly, Ray blames evolution and lack of faith on the ills of society, now the theory of relativity is also to blame?
So morality is absolute? Then why does Ray not keep slaves, castrate himself, or drink poison as instructed in his own Bible? Comfort cherry-picks those verses that he is morally comfortable with and ignores those that are morally repulsive. So Ray is living proof morality is not absolute. As far as we can gather, morality comes within humanity, and thus it is dangerous to talk about cosmic moral absolutes. This sort of thinking, such as God hates heathens, has lead to the mass murder of countless people. Morality is flexible. We believe it is wrong to lie, but we can lie for a good purpose such as lying to a Nazi during the Third Reich that you were hiding a Jew in your basement. We believe theft is wrong, but don't we consider Robin Hood a hero? Christianity says Pride is a sin, but anyone who wears more garments or jewelry that is not necessary to keep him/her warm displays pride.
- This is faulty and fallacious logic. A Muslim could argue Ray and everyone knows Allah exists with no further prof required. If Ray doe not bother wasting time and energy tying to prove God exists, then why publish over 60 books? Why go to debates to prove God exists?
- How can Comfort just turn from the issue so fast and come to a conclusion before examining the evidence? Life forming in the ocean is not a problem at all for the origin of life. Life can even form below the earth bed, under all the pressures of the oceans and atmosphere. Life can form naturally under very harsh conditions. Conventional wisdom has held that nothing smaller than 150 nanometers - 150 millionths of a meter - can survive independently as an autonomous life form, because that is the minimum size needed to contain the necessary genetic and other life support material. That is until nanobes discovered by Dr Uwins, however, were only 20-150nm in diameter - remarkable considering that the size of a single ribosome is roughly the same as the smallest nanobes. Equally as amazing, the nanobes most likely came from a sandstone rock sample retrieved from 3-5km below the ocean bed, where the pressure is around 2,000 atmospheres and the temperature ranges from 115-170°C.
- It is clear that whoever Ray was interviewing was not the person to be addressing the evidence for evolution, if he did interview them at all . If you want an expert opinion on evolutionary theory, then talk to an expert. Start with a university professor, a evolutionary scientist, and such. As for the fossil record, it does not provide any proof of creation. The fossil record shows a gradual change in taxa and arise of new species. Many transitional fossils exist. We’ve found millions of evolutionary intermediaries in the fossil record, much more than Darwin said he could reasonably hope for. There are three different types of transitional forms and we have ample examples of each. But creationists still insist that we’ve never found a single one, because what they usually ask us to present are impossible parodies which evolution would neither produce nor permit, such as Kirk Cameron and his Crocoduck. A decade ago, Kathleen Hunt, a zoologist with the University of Washington, produced a list of a few hundred of the more dramatic transitional species known so far, all of which definitely fit every criteria required of the most restrictive definition. Myriad transitional species have been, and still are being, discovered; so many in fact that lots of biologists and paleontologists now consider that list “innumerable” especially since the tally of definite transitionals keeps growing so fast! Several lineages are now virtually complete, including our own.
- Seems like good cop out for very violent criminals. As soon as your about to be charged and found guilty, a unknown person pays your fee and you are cleared.
The above message is the message of Christianity: we all violated God's law and Christ can save us. Unfortunately, the "Law" do not prove God anymore than the 5 Pillars of Islam prove Allah. Comfort plays with people's emotions and sense of morality by setting up a scenario were no one is innocent and only his particular narrow version of God can save you without proving beforehand that his God really exists. Ray keep hammering that we will be accounted for on "Judgment Day" but fails to provide any evidence of such a day. In fact, history has shown that they are all wrong.http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/appendix3.html
- And we belong in one of them.
- Of course Ray would be thankful for fear, he is well known to play with people's fear to support his agenda. Fear by itself does not prevent you from walking off a cliff or handling poisonous animals, human experience presented knowledge of harmful activity that we should avoid. Fear is not always connected to common sense, some people have particular fears and phobias but that does not mean they rely on common sense. For instance, if a person is afraid of balloons, do they rely on common sense?
Common sense tells you to evaluate certain claims that fly in the face of logic and science. The Moral Law presented by Comfort do not prove God anymore than the 5 Pillars of Islam prove Allah or the Code of Hammurabi proves the god of the Sumerians.
- Answers in Genesis has a biased view and dismisses any evidence in all fields that contradicts scripture,they make that very clear on their web page. Archeopteryx is indeed an intermediate, it has many avian features but has more dinosaurian traits than bird traits, such as: teeth on premaxilla and maxilla bones, neck attached to skull from the rear, claws on three unfused digits, and over 100 other differences from birds Archeopteryx.
- Both the public and evolutionist are right, we are apes and we share a common ancestor with other apes. Because the problem with bridging the gap between humans and apes is that there is no gap because humans ARE apes –definitely and definitively. The word, “ape” doesn’t refer to a species, but to a parent category of collective species, and we’re included. This is no arbitrary classification like the creationists use. It was first determined via meticulous physical analysis by Christian scientists a century before Darwin, and has been confirmed in recent years with new revelations in genetics. Furthermore, it is impossible to define all the characters exclusively indicative of every known member of the family of apes without describing our own genera as one among them. Consequently, we can and have proven that humans are apes in exactly the same way that lions are cats, and iguanas are lizards, and whales are mammals. So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now!
- That is rich Ray, unlike you who admits that mockery is legitimate in a debate, and also prey on people's fears and emotions. Not to mention your deliberate misrepresentations of science and outright lying to deceive your audience.
- Unfortunately Ray, the Bible does not help you here. The Bible tries to make it appear humans are special. Of course our flesh is different from scales and such, but we are still mammals, vertebrates, and such which are all categories of animal.
- Ray chooses not to quote from a scientific definition. Has Ray ever seen an Aardwolf? It looks like a fox, but it is more related to cats.
- None of the above is accurate at all. Evolution is presented in schools because it is the only explanation for life's diversity and the facts do exist. Whoever this anonymous Christian asked for evidence either was not an expert or did spell out the evidence for him, but this Christian did not know what he was seeing or choose not to accept it outright.
- Well, unfortunately for Ray evolution is true and a fact, however evolution does not refute the Bible .
- Ray demonstrates yet again his lack of understanding of evolution and science overall. Evolution, abiogenesis, the Big Bang Theory does not say that life forms came about fully formed from nothing. Actually, Ray's position of Biblical creationism says that such life forms sprung from nothing by magic. Can ray produce or test a hummingbird coming from nothing, whether through magic or prayer? Of course not, and thus he is really ridiculing himself in this section. And why must the scientists make a single male hummingbird? Here is one problem Ray has never understood and failed to understand is that evolution does not take place with the individual, but the population. But why stick with using the male? Here is something to think about, why do all mammalian males have nipples? As any biologist would tell you is that the female is the foundation of the species, not the male. This is something that Christianity and the other Abrahamic religions got very wrong.
What does Ray mean by "kind?" Creationists have identified kinds with everything from species to entire kingdoms. By the narrower definitions, variation to new kinds has occurred. By the broader definitions, we would not expect to see it in historical time.
Finally, Romans 1:20-21 says "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." Basically, everyone is without excuse for ignoring the Christian god, but this is not more valid than the Islamic Primordial Covenant where we all were in the presence of Allah, testified that he is our creator, and thus when we die we are without excuse. Quoting Bible verses does not present any valid evidence for Ray's case.
- What Ray does not share is that Darwin was not the first to categorize humans are apes. The first was Charles Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy and a creationist, placed humans as primates many years before Darwin was even born.
It is irrelevant what the above people believed, even if Ray is quoting them correctly and honestly. It is what the evidence provides. Humans indeed share a common ancestor with other primates and we are without a doubt apes now.
- Here is something Ray did not show in this article: "Very recent contributions from several fields have put these traditional problems to rest...Together these advances have produced a highly detailed and revolutionary picture: feathers originated and diversified in carnivorous, bipedal theropod dinosaurs before the origin of birds or the origin of flight." Studies have indeed shown how new structures like digits, limbs, eyes and feathers have merged. Ray tries to give the false impression no studies exist or have eve been done.
- Regarding the first part, evidence for a creation must begin by specifying what is expected from a creator. When do we expect similar forms, and when do we expect different forms? The difference is that evolution theory has made predictions, and the pattern of similarities and differences that we observe accords with what evolution predicts. Disease is not proof of a "fallen" world. Why would God create humans with immune systems if disease did not exist before the Fall?
- If nature does scream evidence for biblical creation and intelligent deign, where is it? What is it? Because each of the arguments presented for “irreducible complexity” were disproved scientifically and exposed in court. And apart from a series of frauds and falsehoods - the only arguments anti-science evangelists have ever had seem limited to nothing more than ignorant criticisms of dwindling and already irrelevant gaps in the ever-enveloping advancement of science. But vague criticisms against science still wouldn’t count as evidence for creationism even if those arguments weren’t all completely wrong. Even if there was evidence of gods, it might not be their god. Even if it was, that wouldn’t be evidence of creation either, because that still wouldn’t dismiss any of the evidence for evolution and against mythology; nor could it change the fact that humans are still apes. Creation relies on a false dichotomy –rejecting all other options and insisting that there can only be two alternatives; So they can imagine that criticizing the one will vindicate the other by default.
- Here, Ray only further shows his incredibly misunderstanding of evolution. Evolution does not say chicken evolved not fish, fish far predate the time of chickens, and horses and cows are not in the same family. If you go back int the history of cat and dogs, the fossil record has shown that t family of cats, dogs, bears, and weasels once shared a common ancestor, that possibly looked like raccoons.http://webh01.ua.ac.be/funmorph/raoul/fylsyst/Flynn2005.pdf
- Ray does not mention that Newton also practiced alchemy or any of his other beliefs, but nevertheless his personal thoughts about theology and such were irrelevant to his scientific discoveries.
- What he does not share, willfully ignorant or not, many hypotheses have been proposed for the evolutionary advantage of sex . There is good experimental support for some of these, including resistance to deleterious mutation load and more rapid adaptation in a rapidly changing environment, especially to acquire resistance to parasites .
- However, the universe is made of energy and matter, and the laws of physics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, thus making it eternal. So it is possible to comprehend something eternal, and this was brought up in the debate with the Rational Response Squad, who also used Occam's Razor to prove that God is likely not to exist. Neither Ray or Kirk have anything to say or respond to this, except for when the moderator asked if they had anything else to say, Kirk in a low voice say "I think the people can figure it out."
- The bottom of the ocean contains many volcanic, hydrothermal vents. These provide a remarkable ecologic niche. The gas from the vents contains carbon dioxide and methane and can serve as a hot reducing environment for the synthesis of prebiotic compounds.
These vents have been proposed as sites for the evolution of life itself. The high temperatures characteristic of these volcanic vents are especially suitable for the evolution of heat-loving, or thermophilic, Archaea.
- Not revealing the rest of Donahue's objections , Ray goes on to say that the diversity of the Vatican is encouraging atheism. Perhaps the diversity of Christianity alone is driving people away from religion, since none can agree how to interpret the Bible correctly and often commit acts of violence against each other.
- Tree's are our cousins? Interesting choice of words. You share more traits in common with your siblings than you do with your cousins due to the recent ancestors you share with them, your parents. Deeper down, you share more in common with those in your extended family than you do with neighbors and classmates, etc., people you don’t recognize as part of your biological family. But you must realize that on some level you’re still related. Deeper down, one could likely recognize subtle indications of cultural demes which most people will still agree all descend from one common ancestral lineage –despite their current apparent diversity and unfamiliar ways. Deeper down, we've seen that new breeds of barnyard birds, domestic pets, livestock, corn, even bananas have to some degree been engineered by human intervention via artificial selection, and new sub-species have occurred in the wild via natural selection. In both cases, these stem from common ancestry, be that hundreds of breeds of dogs coming from one strain of wolves, or dozens of commercial bovines being derived from the now-extinct European Aurochs. Overall, we are all related, we are all part of and products of the Earth. We are all genetically linked, but Ray would have you believe that we are separate and only humans are special. This sort of thinking has led religious zealots to accept that different races within humanity is a deliberate act from God, but as a biologist would tell you that "race" does not exist.
- If the idea that everything came from nothing is absurd, and Ray seems to agree, then he has proven creationism is indeed comical and false. Atheism does not say anything about how everything came to be, it simply the lack of belief in God.
- Kenneth Miller is correct that the eye could not evolve in a single moment, and that evidence shows that the eye can evolve over time. In fact, a study by Nilsson and Pelzer[Proc Biol Sci. 256:53-58, 1994. Available online in JSTOR archives] were able to perform a computer simulation of the evolution of the eye using tiny, non-overlapping steps. Despite using very conservative parameters, they found the modern eye could evolve in less than 400,000 generations - a blink of the eye in geological time.
- Ray barely scratches the surface of the evils committed by God. Ignoring that God murdered all the lives of humans, plants, and animals in the great flood, slaying the first-born of Egypt , and many others. Here is a short example: In I Samuel 6, the ark of the Lord was being transported across country. Five farmers of Bethshemesh “rejoiced to see it.” They opened the box and made a burnt offering to the Lord, and for this terrible sin God “smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the Lord had smitten many of the people with great slaughter.” Is it moral to kill 50,000 people for a petty offense? He slew them all for the crimes of five other men? And exactly what was the crime? These men were trying to worship this very god, in their own way. Wouldn’t a God of mercy understand their innocent mistake? What if one of your children gave you a birthday card with the words “Daddy/Mommy, I luv you” and you punish them for spelling the word wrong? There are many many other stories that reveal God's evils.
- The theory of evolution is based on evidence that has been observed, and there is a great amount of evidence for this. Faith is believing in things not seen. Going though Darwin's chapter of the eye, his arguments does not get weaker, in fact they become firmer. Darwin continues with three more pages describing a sequence of plausible intermediate stages between eyelessness and human eyes, giving examples from existing organisms to show that the intermediates are viable.
- However, this does not make Ray's problem go away. We are dealing with a snake, a creature with no linguistic or vocal tools, and yet can speak perfectly with a woman. The problem is actual evidence. If someone you trusted told you they saw a cat speak Spanish to someone, you would demand proof. How about in the Gospel of Peter where a piece of wood actually speaks? "When therefore those soldiers saw it, they awakened the centurion and the elders; for they too were hard by keeping guard. And, as they declared what things they had seen, again they see three men come forth from the tomb, and two of them supporting one, and a cross following them: and of the two the head reached unto the heaven, but the head of him that was led by them overpassed the heavens. And they heard a voice from the heavens, saying, Thou hast preached to them that sleep. And a response was heard from the cross, Yea."
How would Ray try to respond to that? Possibly that the gospel of Peter is not included in the Bible, written much later than the other gospels, or it was not written by Peter himself. True it is not included in the modern Bible. The Council of Carthage met in 397 C.E. to determine what early Christian writings would make up the canon of the New Testament. They voted to exclude the Gospel of Peter. Some scholars argue that the Gospel of Peter predates other Gospel accounts, perhaps having been written as early as 45 AD. And was it written by peter himself, who knows? But then again, we do not know who wrote the canonical gospels and we know many of the epistles are in fact forgeries.
- The problem with this is that biology says nothing about cosmology or physics, so he is asking the wrong people. And once biologists cannot say, because it is not in their field of expertise, Ray jumps onto this saying "see, the scientists don't know." But do physicists provide an answer for such questions? Physicist Victor J. Stenger in his book God: The Failed Hypothesis, Chapter 4: Cosmic Evidence explains where the laws of physics came from. His conclusion, based on the evidence, is that the laws were not created and appear as we would expect if the universe formed under natural forces.
- Although this is very promising, it is already clear that Ray has no intention of changing his mind. As shown in a debate with the Rational Response Squad, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron already failed to prove the existence of God scientifically, and they knew that they had no case going in. So already, the bet is over Mr. Comfort. The bet is over long before Comfort wrote this book. Comfort failed then, and is not more likely to have a better case here since Comfort has a bad habit of just repeating himself over and over in different books and episodes. Give up going to heaven Ray. Of course, Comfort may not read this article or ignore it when presented to him from another source. Even from a critique from a third party, Comfort will never admit that he has failed to prove God. Regardless, this book will be reviewed and show why Ray Comfort has failed to make his case.
Only in Ray's narrow definition and version of Hell is depicted as a fiery place of torment. Some Christians do not believe in a literal hell, some believe it is a place separated from God. As of yet, there is absolutely no proof of God, heaven, or hell. Hypothetically, perhaps there is some form of heaven, but it is only a realm for atheists and those brave enough to question or doubt God, whereas everyone else goes south. If there is a God, he does not believe in a higher power, making him an atheist as well.
As comedian Jim Jeffries pointed out in one of his stand up comedies <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZJ-_OTvsqo,">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZJ-_OTvsqo,</a> as far as we know about hell being a fiery place of eternal torment, that is what is in the Bible. As far as we know, we have not heard the other side of the story. The devil has not written a book. We have God writing all these bad things about the devil, and it seems the devil is being the bigger man and not responding to god's negativity. God says he sends drunks, thieves, and pricks to hell. Even if there is a hell, why would the devil punish you? You are one of his boys. He is going to dig you.
- This is a fallacious argument. Just because we are not sure what happened in this one small period of history does not mean we throw out everything we know that happened in the past. Unlike the JFK incident, scientists have multiple ways of testing what happened in the past.
- The law is perfect? The law says nothing about rape, child molestation, torture, etc. How is that perfect? What is perfect?
P1) A perfect being is not subject to change.
P2) A perfect being knows everything.
P3) A being that knows everything always knows what time it is.
P4) A being that always knows what time it is, is subject to change.
P5) A perfect being is subject to change.
P6) A perfect being is not perfect being; Finally therefore;
C) There is no perfect being.
- Here Ray tries to weasel out of admitting that God is an unfalsifiable being. Each of the following" prayer, the Bible, miracles, etc. are all used to prove God exists, but when each are proven to be wrong Ray dances around it and say that does not mean God does not exist. By this logic, any infinite number of Gods can theoretically exist. In a debate with the Rational Response Squad, Ray argued that the existence of God can be proven scientifically without invoking the Bible or faith. Spoiler, he failed and constantly used the Bible and faith to support his claims. Ray could not prove the existence of God, and he constantly tried with using the Bible. So how can he use the Bible to prove God, but when the Bible is shown to be incorrect he says that does not matter because God still exists. He provided three "irrefutable" evidence for a creator, but each was refuted at the debate. One of Ray's proofs was creation. Although there are many flaws in Ray's argument, Jainism has made great argument against creationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism_and_non-creationism#Jain_opposition_to_Creationism. The second was conscience, but evolutionary theory already explains in detail how conscience could come about. Finally, the last evidence for a creator was conversion through Christ, but if it can be demonstrated that conversion can produce spiritual experience that can be triggered by stimulating parts of the brain, does Ray dodge this and say this "irrefutable" evidence for a creator somehow does not disprove a creator?
Even without refuting miracles, the Bible, visions and such, many atheists, philosophers, and scientists have created models that show God cannot exist .
- When properly put forward, replace "atheism" with "creationism" is folly and makes a flat-earther look like a genius. Atheism does not comment at all about origins, meaning Ray lied from the start.
- What Ray does not mentions is that sin AND obedience to god's law both create bad behavior. Following God's word often leads to more suffering than sin, history and modern times testify to this. Even Ray, who firmly believes in the absolute rule of never lying, constantly breaks this rule when he attacks evolution. It seems lying is okay, if you are doing it for Jesus, but if this makes lying okay then would it also justify murder?
- Ray does not provide the entire lecture this quote is taken from. In the article it provides steps to how the eye evolved and such stages exist in nature. Even in the quote, the person does not hint that the evidence of the evolution of he eye is lacking. Rather, Fernald explains the gradual evolution of a system that does not work well, but well enough, and over time new modifications make a better eye. Evidence for natural selection and evolution can be see in organism that lost their eyes due to dwelling in dark environments.
- If this argument was valid, then the mind of God not being a random jumble of synapses would require a higher intelligent creator. Evolution does explain human intelligence. Intelligence has obvious advantages that can help with survival, so it is consistent with evolutionary theory.
- This is not a confirmed fact. If it was, where is the evidence?
- Unfortunately, very little truth, or any at all can be found in this book. Ray has yet to make a convincing rational case.
- However, when put in context, Dawkins was putting for a hypothetical scenario of how intelligent design might be plausible, but he never said to believe in aliens. While it may appear far-fetched to most people, the alien scenario can be testable and is more likely then we are the products of a invisible magic man.
- Einstein said "science without religion is lame" not "science without God is lame." Again, Ray is the one who is disqualified from commenting on science, not just for having no degree in science, that his creationist beliefs hods that Go magically created everything from nothing. So he goes beyond "everything from nothing" he invokes magic in the equation .
- Not really good parenting. They should at least teach their girl how to think critically. And why would you let the child decide? You are foregoing your intellect in favor of fanaticism and things that are not supported by any shred of evidence, and you are not just raising a nation that is utterly ignorant about science, but why would you let the children decide? Do you let your children decide on when to go to bed? Do you let your kids decide on when to drink beer? No, you are the adult, you are supposed to be educated enough to think and to use reason and make a fair judgment that is not based on fanaticism or anything like that. You owe it to the kids to not teach them that and to decide for them what I reasonable and what is not. To teach them creationism and things like that, you are utterly failing them.
- But how does the 2nd law of thermodynamics prevent the formation of suns? The law says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or, equivalently, that total entropy in a closed system will not decrease. Entropy is not the same as disorder. Sometimes the two correspond, but sometimes order increases as entropy increases. Entropy can even be used to produce order, such as in the sorting of molecules by size . Even in a closed system, pockets of lower entropy can form if they are offset by increased entropy elsewhere in the system. In short, order from disorder happens on earth all the time, but where did the materials for the sun come from? The molecules required to form a sun are heavy elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. Scientists have already established and observed how these elements form stars. <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/how-do-stars-form-and-evolve/">http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/how-do-stars-form-and-evolve/</a> Ray would ask where did these molecules come from, and of course Ray says theists have the answer and when someone offers and answer or is honest and says they don't know, Ray concludes his personal beliefs is confirmed by reality. Comfort offers no testing in this section, this book, or any of his materials. However, this belief is refuted by two things: Occam's Razor and the first law of thermodynamics .
- Of course Ray interpretation of the scientific consensus is far from what they actually say.origin of the Universe by Lawrence Krauss Dr. Sten Odenwald for NASA, Education and Public Outreach program, 2001 spelled out what scientists mean when they say "nothing:"
How can 'nothing' do anything at all, let alone create an entire universe? When physicists say 'nothing' they are being playful with the english language, because we often think of the vacuum as being 'empty' or 'nothing' when in fact physicists know full well that the vacuum is far from empty. The primordial 'state' at the Big Bang was far from being the kind of 'nothingness' you might have in mind. We don't have a full mathematical theory for describing this 'state' yet, but it was probably 'multi- dimensional', it was probably a superposition of many different 'fields', and these fields, or whatever they were, were undergoing 'quantum fluctuations'. Space and time were not the things we know them to be today because our world is a lot colder than the way it started out. Nothingness was not nothing, but it was not anything like the kinds of 'somethings' we know about today. We have no words to describe it, and the ones we borrow are based on the wrong physical insight.
The irony is that the ones who claim that the universe was created from nothing is exactly what Ray and his fellow creationists argue for. According to the book of Genesis, God spoke things into being and they were good. Basically an incantation brought everything into being. Ray says we have never seen matter create itself. You know what we have never seen? We’ve never seen anything “created”. No one has ever seen a complex life-form magically pop out of thin air. But that’s what creationists are arguing for!
- "Made" - not a good choice of words Ray, this shows us that you yourself did not put aside anything for this experiment. While humans have two hands, according to Ray, primates have four. This is false, primates only have two hands. Ray tries to compare the limbs of humans and primates to make it appear that they are fundamentally different and could not be the result of evolution. Ray then tries to equate evolution as a form of religion by saying we should get down and praise our hands and limbs.
- The verse says "The greater light [the sun] to rule the day, and the lesser light [the moon] to rule the night." But the moon is not a light; it only reflects light from the sun. And why, if God made the moon to "rule the night", does it spend half of its time moving through the daytime sky?
- ”Nothing created everything” does not mean quite the same thing as, “Everything exists without a creator”. Clearly nothing can have absolutely no effects. According to believers, “Nothing created god/the gods" makes sense while “Nothing created the physical universe” is unreasonable. There is no logical reason for this distinction.
- Well, Ray how about when you insult atheists by saying "all I need are eyes to see and a brain that works" or when you insult fellow believers that your particular narrow view of God is correct and theirs is a form of idolatry. Ray admits in this book that mockery is a legitimate form of debate. Ray says he constantly mocks the theory of evolution , but he only mocks it in the most dishonest way possible because he would rather believe in an fantasy that accept a testable and verifiable reality. It is also clear he never accepted evolution, because he falsely compares it with cosmology and social ills. It is also clear that, due to his religious beliefs, Ray is also intolerant of homosexuals.
- It is a mystery how Ray seemed to miss another transitional mentioned in the article: Tiktaalik. Archeopteryx is not a full bird. It has many Dinosaurian traits include the following:
* no bill
* teeth on premaxilla and maxilla bones
* nasal opening far forward, separated from the eye by a large preorbital fenestra
* neck attached to skull from the rear
* center of cervical vertebrae that have simple concave articular facets
* long bony tail; no pygostyle
* ribs slender, without joints or uncinate processes, and not articulated with the sternum
* sacrum that occupies six vertebrae
* small thoracic girdle
* metacarpals free , wrist hand joint flexible
* claws on three unfused digits
* pelvic girdle and femur joint shaped like those of archosaurs in many details
* bones of pelvis unfused
...and over 100 other differences from birds . The missing link is no longer mising, and it hasn't for a very long time. A decade ago, Kathleen Hunt, a zoologist with the University of Washington, produced a list of a few hundred of the more dramatic transitional species known so farhttp://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html, all of which definitely fit every criteria required of the most restrictive definition. Myriad transitional species have been, and still are being, discovered; so many in fact that lots of biologists and paleontologists now consider that list “innumerable” especially since the tally of definite transitionals keeps growing so fast! Several lineages are now virtually complete, including our own. Now the problem for evolution is that there are too many contenders, while a compounding problem for creationists is that not even one of them should exist if their story was true. And yet they do –by the bushelful! Despite their complaints to the contrary, the intermediate gradations in the human evolutionary line are now so fine that paleoanthropologists can’t agree whether they’re all different species or merely mildly modified varieties of the same ones, such that there are no more links needed for human evolution anymore.
But creationists still say we’ve never found anything that was “half-ape and half-human”. Adhering always to black or white absolutes, and being thus unwilling to admit any degree of variance other than 100% or zero, they make sure to divide every find into one of two boxes even when they can’t make up their minds which side of that imaginary partition each one belongs to.
Demanding an “ape-man” is actually just as silly as asking to see a mammal-man, or a half-human, half-vertebrate. How about a half dachshund, half dog? It’s the same thing. One may as well insist on seeing a town half way between Los Angeles and California. Because the problem with bridging the gap between humans and apes is that there is no gap because humans ARE apes –definitely and definitively. The word, “ape” doesn’t refer to a species, but to a parent category of collective species, and we’re included. This is no arbitrary classification like the creationists use. It was first determined via meticulous physical analysis by Christian scientists a century before Darwin, and has been confirmed in recent years with new revelations in genetics. Furthermore, it is impossible to define all the characters exclusively indicative of every known member of the family of apes without describing our own genera as one among them. Consequently, we can and have proven that humans are apes in exactly the same way that lions are cats, and iguanas are lizards, and whales are mammals. So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now!
- Ray does not stop to think and blame the spread of STDs due to religion and its dogma to teach kids abstinence, a failed system that it appears to be no accident that states with the highest levels of religiosity teach abstinence only, but also have the highest rates of STDs, teen pregnancies, and abortions.
- It is not simply a matter of being sexual or asexual. There are many intermediate stages. A gradual origin, with each step favored by natural selection, is possible . The earliest steps involve single-celled organisms exchanging genetic information; they need not be distinct sexes. Males and females most emphatically would not evolve independently. Sex, by definition, depends on both male and female acting together. As sex evolved, there would have been some incompatibilities causing sterility , but these would affect individuals, not whole populations, and the genes that cause such incompatibility would rapidly be selected against.
- This is Ray's Parachute Analogy, which is a reversion of the flawed argument known as Pascal's Wager.
- A more appropriate question is how can any sane person not accept the eye evolved. To do so is to ignore and deny the evidence that supports the evolution of the eye.
- Notice the blogger, Jim, says "minus the vast scientific knowledge part." Someone unaware of neuroscience and such both before and after can fall for explaining away such terrific feelings with the supernatural. Both sides make claims about certain evidences, but only the scientific side tests them to verify their accuracy. Where is the proof that the Christian God is the same God of your Christian neighbor? There are over 30,000 different denominations in Christianity that have different views of God and the Bible. How does Jim know that the God who convinced him was real is not a trickster pretending to be God? Jim only accepts that God exists though blind faith.
- However, Ray only labels this as common sense as a veil to hide all the problems behind this line of reasoning. When Comfort says creation requires a creator, this is an example of begging the question, as the point which he's attempting to prove is contained in his premise. Anything created must have a creator, but he hasn't demonstrated that what he means by "creation" is actually a creation. The appearance of design, purpose or complexity alone is not sufficient to posit an intelligent creator. When he asks questions like, "When you see a building, how do you know there was a builder?", his answer is "The building is absolute proof of the builder." This avoids the important question about how we recognize design. He's relying on common sense and a lack of critical thinking, to support the idea that this is a natural, obvious and reliable assumption.
In truth, we recognize that the building is designed because we have an abundance of evidence that supports that conclusion and no evidence to support the idea that buildings are naturally occurring. We possess, or can attain by research, empirical evidence about the history of a given building; who designed it, who built it, what methods they used, etc. We can also learn about the general history of buildings and other structures, throughout recorded history. All of this evidence, and more, in conjunction with a lack of evidence supporting the idea that buildings occur naturally, lead us to the reliably supported conclusion that a given building had a builder. We're not always consciously aware of this process, as we've come to trust our intuition without constantly analyzing why this trust is deserved. Additionally, when humans create things, they use pre-existing material. To compare the creation of the universe by a god to the creation of objects by humans is to imply that this god used pre-existing matter to do it. This, of course, still leads one to ask, "where did this matter come from?"
- The problem with this Ray, it turned you into a uneducated lying hypocrite.
- This is fairly accurate, since science is based on testing and empirical evidence, God cannot be used in the scientific method.
- This leaves out a lot of details, but a more accurate description of evolution is: Evolution is a change in the gene pool of a population over time. A gene is a hereditary unit that can be passed on unaltered for many generations. The gene pool is the set of all genes in a species or population.http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
- Evolution makes no comment on the origin of life, evolution only matters once life forms and begins to diverge or at least self-replicating molecules develop. Nor does evolution say anything about the origin of earth or the solar system.
- Does it? There are over 30,000 denominations in Christianity. Then why can't genuine Christians agree what god thinks or wants?
- The "tail like a cedar," which creationists think indicates a large dinosaur, is not even a real tail. "Tail" was used as a euphemism in the King James version. A more likely translation for the phrase is, "His penis stiffens like a cedar" . The behemoth was probably a bull, and the cedar comparison referred to its virility.
- What first needs to be pointed out is that it says the sun and moon are "two great lights" created to "light" the earth, "for signs and seasons" on earth, to "rule the day and night" on earth. The Bible says only one moon was created, but Mars has two moons . Neptune has four moons, Uranus has eleven, Jupiter has sixteen, and Saturn has at least eighteen moons. The earth only gets one moon, which does not "rule the night" since 3 nights out of every 28 it abdicates its "rule," and doesn't "light" the earth at all.
Also, there is a difference from being a source of light and a source of reflection. The Bible says the moon generates its own light, which is not accurate at all. Moonlight does exist regardless, in the context of being a reflection. The Dictionary may define it, but it does not say "light produced by the moon."
- Darwin never proposed that man is an animal, biology in general does. Man is a category of mammal, vertebrate, and such. This knowledge has been known for thousands of years.
- We know that Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese all evolved from Latin, a vernacular which is now extinct. Each of these newer tongues emerged via a slow accumulation of their own unique slang lingo –thus diverging into new dialects, and eventually distinct forms of gibberish such that the new Romans could no longer communicate with either Parisians or Spaniards. Similarly, if we took an original Latin speaking population and divided them sequestered in complete isolation over several centuries, they might still be able to understand each other, or their jargon may have become unintelligible to foreigners. But they won’t start speaking Italian or Romanian because identical vocabularies aren’t going to occur twice. It works the same way in biology. Mutations are degrees of variation which are usually quite subtle but cumulative, normally harmless, and occasionally advantageous. Any change in information is different information, not already present, and therefore can only be considered “new”. But of the many types of mutations known to occur, there are additions and duplications as well as deletions and the rest. So yes, genetic material can be added or taken away. But as to whether “information” has been added as opposed to lost, we can’t really tell because creationists won’t tell us what they think “information” is or how to measure it. They’ll readily state that it takes more "information" to make a bird than it does a dinosaur, but if you ask 'em how much more, they’ll shut right up. And if you demand to see the data that justifies how they could even make that claim in the first place, they’ll to change the subject.
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