Defender's Guide for Life's Toughest Questions

Defender's Guide for Life's Toughest Questions is a book authored by Ray Comfort. The book was published in 2011.

This article provides a side-by-side review of the book, pointing out every instance where Ray Comfort presents incorrect or fallacious arguments.

Content

Ray Comfort constructed this book in response to certain objections from non-Christians, skeptics, atheists, secular humanists, and such. Comfort claims that young Christians are leaving their faith because they are unprepared for the science of evolution. Comfort provides his readers with his own brand of illogical apologetic material. The Product Description of this book on Amazon.com reads:

The Internet has given the average skeptic the ability to cut and paste the cream of anti-Christian atheistic arguments, and become an instant Richard Dawkins clone, who can eloquently stump the average believer with seemingly tough questions. However, even the toughest of questions has an answer. This book will place that answer in your hands and confirm to you that the foundation of the Christian faith is as solid as a rock.

As this review will show, the "tough questions" Ray Comfort tries to respond to are not the toughest, but Comfort tries his best regardless. Many times, he does not fully address the whole question, present the full argument, or even provide a valid argument for faith.

Preface

Comfort's Defender's Guide

RationalWiki Responses

Comfort begins by sharing a common poster used by atheists that lists several important historical figures as atheists. The list includes Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Carl Sagan, and Ernest Hemingway. Comfort tries to quote each person to show that they were not in fact atheists but instead theists; but he has a history of deliberately and willfully quote-mining. The only person on the list he concludes was an atheist is Ernest Hemingway, but tries to paint him as a depressed alcoholic who committed suicide. Comfort then claims outright that atheists are "unthinking" men, then providing a quote from Sir Isaac Newton addressing atheism. In summary, he says atheists are closed, put their faith in erroneous information and harden themselves from God and Christianity while using the Bible to support this claim.

Comfort only addresses the people in the poster, but does not mention other prominent figures from the past and present who are atheist.

Did the above men believe in God? Here are the quotes Comfort provides for each person: Thomas Jefferson - "I have thought religion a concern purely between God and our consciences, for which we are accountable to him, and not to the priests." The truth is Jefferson was not an atheist, he was a Deist. He did however, despise religion, "Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites." -Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson was a diest, who eventually created his own Bible (called the Jefferson Bible). Jefferson stripped the Bible of all its miracles and every instance when and where Jesus claimed to be divine. If Ray remained consistent with himself, Ray would label Jefferson a "idolater" - that is making a "god in his own image." Ray accused Hitler of doing the same exact thing, and claimed that was Hitler's greatest crimes, because in so doing, Hilter's version of god permitted the genocide of millions.

Albert Einstein (whom Comfort claims was angry that atheists had lied about his religious position) is quoted as saying "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views."

Comfort conveniently leaves out the following quotes from Einstein: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being." -Albert Einstein "Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment - an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections." -Albert Einstein "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." -Albert Einstein

Mark Twain (whom Comfort claims despised religion, but was not an atheist), "None of us can be as great as God, but any of us can be as good."

It is difficult to pinpoint Twain's views, since he often shows hints of theism and atheism at times.

Benjamin Franklin (whom Comfort claims loved God for giving him life), "It is that particular wise and good God, who is the author and owner of our system, that I propose the object of my praise and adoration." In one of his youthful essays he professes a sort of polytheistic belief as shown by the following extracts: "I conceive, then, that the Infinite has created many beings or gods vastly superior to man...It may be these created gods are immortals; or it may be that after many ages, they are changed, and others supply their places." Franklin was not an Atheist; he did not deny the existence of a God; he believed in a God; but his God was the humane conception of Deism and not the God of Christianity. His biographer, Parton, says: "He escaped the theology of terror, and became forever incapable of worshiping a jealous, revengeful, and vindictive God" (Life of Franklin, Vol. i., p. 71).

Comfort says that Charles Darwin was disillusioned with Christianity, but was far from being an atheist. "When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist." -Charles Darwin

The above quote comes from Darwin in his early life in the 1840's, until 1879 he responded that he had never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God, and that generally "an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind."

President Abraham Lincoln (whom Comfort claims revered God), "While we are grateful to all the brave men and officers for the past few days, we should, above all, be very grateful to Almighty God, who gave us victory."

John T. Stuart, Lincoln's first law partner: "He was an avowed and open infidel, and sometimes bordered on Atheism...He went further against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than any man I ever heard." If Infidelity and Atheism were synonymous terms it would be difficult to maintain that Lincoln, during the last years of his life at least, was an Infidel. But Infidelity and Atheism are not synonymous terms. An Atheist is an Infidel, but an Infidel is not necessarily an Atheist. A Presbyterian is a Christian, but all Christians are not Presbyterians. Christians themselves coined the word Infidel, and they have used it to denote a disbeliever in Christianity.

Finally, Carl Sagan (whom Comfort says "met his Maker" after dying of cancer), "An agnostic is somebody who does not believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic." Ray says he died an agnostic.

Chapter 1: Humanity: Rights and Suffering

Comfort's Defender's Guide

RationalWiki Responses

Comfort accuses Darwin of racism while ignoring the racism and slavery found in the Bible

Comfort admits that the Bible does condone slavery and encourages it, but Comfort tries to soften the issue by claiming that usage of the word "slave" in the Bible is not the same as we picture slaves in the American south. "Slave" in the Bible, according to Comfort, means "servant", and the Old testament condemns "man-stealing" (Exodus 21:16). Comfort also admits that the Bible was used to justify slavery, as well as many other atrocities (such as Hitler, genocide, etc.), but points out that this does not shake the message of the Bible.

Let's first address Darwin and his alleged racism. While the views of Darwin are irrelevant to the subject of evolution, it is important to know virtually all Englishmen in Darwin's time viewed blacks as culturally and intellectually inferior to Europeans. Some men of that time (such as Louis Agassiz, a staunch creationist) went so far as to say that they were a different species. Charles Darwin was a product of his time and no doubt viewed non-Europeans as inferior in some aspects, but he was far more liberal than most: He vehemently opposed slavery (Darwin 1913, especially chap. 21), and he contributed to missionary work to better the condition of the native Tierra del Fuegans. He treated people of all races with compassion. Now, does Comfort's view of the Bible and slavery agree with what the Bible actually says? Many translations of the Bible use the word "servant", "bondservant", or "manservant" instead of "slave" to make the Bible seem less immoral than it really is. While many slaves may have worked as household servants, that doesn't mean that they were not slaves who were bought, sold, and treated worse than livestock. According to Leviticus, you can purchase and treat slaves like property: However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46) Remember, Jesus never said a word about abolishing slavery. If Jesus is the perfect moral guide as many Christians proclaim he is, how can he miss something as important as slavery? Instead, Jesus says that disobedient slaves will be punished (Luke 12:47-48). Other parts of the Bible also condone slavery and punishment of slaves. Paul had every opportunity to write in one of his Epistles that human slavery -- the owning of one person as a piece of property by another -- is profoundly evil. His letter to Philemon would have been an ideal opportunity to vilify slavery, but he wrote not one word of criticism. Comfort mentions Exodus 21:26, but the very next verse says "And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death." The reality is the verse 21:26 does not say "do not steal another person", instead it is more like "do not steal a slave that does not belong to you." This same chapter goes into detail about how to beat your slaves, and it forgives those who beat and kill their slaves. If you read the beginning, it allows you to buy one slave, but you must set him free on the seventh year. If you have "given" him a wife and she bears children, then you get to keep the wife and kids. If he refuses to leave his family when his seven years are up, then bore a hole though his ear and keep him forever.

Anymous person uncomfortable with their own mortality and the mortality of their family, friends and "species"

Comfort jumps into this, saying that some people think they will live for a long time, and take refuge in drugs and alcohol. He goes on to say he plans to live a long and healthy life. At the end, Comfort claims that the universe was not an accident and that our conscience tells us that we have sinned against God's "perfect" law. Comfort also calls Hell a reality, but not once even attempts to provide any proof of such a place.

This is not as much of an objection as the other comments. The person sees that their days are numbered, but it does not go any deeper than this. Many would argue that a mortal life is what give us purpose and meaning. It drives us to live life to the fullest. What would be the point of living if you would live for an eternity?

Comfort, stop using your criminal justice analogy, because it is flawed and that this has been pointed out to Comfort numerous times

Comfort claims that this is the first time someone has told him this, and whoever said this made this claim too rashly and without thinking about it. He says there is nothing wrong with a father paying his son's speeding ticket. According to Comfort, this is what God did when he came to earth as a man and sacrificed himself to save us.

Why not just forgive? God sacrifices himself unto himself to appease himself for the creation he made for the punishment he demanded. Makes perfect sense to Christians but not to infidels! If this is the first time Comfort has heard criticism of his criminal justice analogy, then it seems he tries to remain closed. However, now he cannot claim ignorance of not hearing it, but what he does not provide in the comment is any type of rebuttal to Ray's analogy. Is it moral or just to pay for someone else's crimes? Try walking into a court room and convincing a judge to throw you in prison instead of a deadly terrorist.

Do you believe the Holocaust was God's punishment for the Jews?

Comfort says he never claimed God used Hitler to commit genocide. Comfort calls himself a Jew and is as guilty as any other Gentile violating God's law. Comfort recalls the history of the Jews' struggle with God. God removed his hand of protection when they sinned, but returned through mercy. Comfort says God brought the Jews their nation in 1948, but they are still surrounded by enemies who wish to eliminate them. Comfort says that the Nazis believed they were eliminating the "weaker races", which was promoted by Darwin in his book Descent of Man.

Darwin never proposed the elimination of any race or specie, nor did the Nazis get any of their ideas from Darwin. The Nazi Party in general rejected Darwinism and supported Christianity. In 1935, Die Bücherei, the official Nazi journal for lending libraries, published a list of guidelines of works to reject, including: Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel). (Die Bücherei 1935, 279) Incidentally God, according to atheism did not use the holocaust as a punishment because God does not exist. Christians and Jews have the difficult question, why God allowed the holocaust.

God has the power to stop all the suffering and evil in the world, but chooses not to

Comfort points to Genesis 3 and Romans 5, saying that we all have sinned and that it is our fault the world acts like this. We have not all sinned, children below the age of about seven are innocent but quite often suffer, sometimes severely. Comfort half-answers the problem of God stopping rapists and murderers, because God sees blasphemers, fornicators, and such as extremely evil and that they can only be stopped through conversion. Comfort says that the commenter is not sincere about stopping evil because the commenter will not start with himself.

This "rebuttal" still ignores the fact that God does not prevent evil and suffering. If God is omniscient, then he presumably already knew beforehand that such evil would exist before Creation, and if God is omnipotent and has free will, then he can prevent a murder from taking place, but chooses not to. If conversion is the only way to stop such evil, Comfort does not even start with himself. He is a liar and hypocrite, and yet pretends to be a better person by being converted. As pointed out to Ray in a debate with the Rational Response Squad, if all a murderer has to do in order to get into Heaven is to accept Jesus, that provides every evil person with a "get out of Jail Free Card." Hitler accepted Jesus, as did many Popes, the KKK, rapists, liars, racists, and many others. But according to Ray, they are saved as long as they accept Jesus.

Could anyone address the Bible's low opinion of women

In the questioner's view, the Bible is more damaging to society than porn. Comfort says that this person does not know their Bible, or at the least gets their information from atheist websites. He tells them to read the book of Ruth and the Book of Esther, both books value women who are obedient handmaidens to men. Comfort also suggests that they read the parts in the New Testament about a sinful woman washing Jesus' feet and Jesus saving an adulteress from being stoned to death by an angry crowd. Next, he encourages them to read the Epistles that tell women to love their husbands. He encourages them to read the Bible and goes on to Stereotype all atheists and claim that in an atheist worldview, women are just sex tools.

Okay, let's read the books of Ruth and Esther. For the record, books containing a title of a female name does not mean it is less sexist. In Ruth 1:14, Ruth loved Naomi as Adam loved Eve (Gigitty-giggitty). In Ruth 3, it shares a story of Ruth being instructed on how to seduce Boaz by hiding in his bedroom, possibly getting him drunk and sleeping with him asking him to marry her, which she does. After all that nice seduction marriage proposal, Ruth tells Boaz that modestly she is his handmaiden. Later on in Ruth 4:10 "Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife" Boaz purchases Ruth to be his wife. In Esther, King Ahasuerus throws a party and encourages his guests to drink to excess. Then, when they are all drunk, he orders Queen Vashti to show her stuff before him and his guests. She refuses and thus stripped of her royalty as queen. Because of Vashti's disobedience, the king decrees that "all the wives shall give to their husbands honor, both the great and the small" and "that every man should bear rule over his own house." He then demands that all the women in the land come forth to please him and the winner would be queen. The winner is Esther, who later accuses several men and they are quickly hung. She then convinces the king to slaughter all Jew-haters and their families from Egypt to Ethiopia. When all the killing is done, the Jews go off to party (this is the origin of the holiday Purim). Moving on to the New Testament. The story of Jesus saving an adulterer from being stoned does not appear at all in the original gospel. In fact, it does not appear until several hundred years later, inserted by an unknown author who never met Jesus and thus made up this story. What did Paul have to say about women? "Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate as the law also says (Genesis 3:16)" "claim that in an atheist worldview, women are just sex tools." In an atheist worldview? Atheism is not a world view. This has been made clear to Ray, but he refuses to acknowledge this fact just to excuse himself to bash atheism. If atheists viewed women as sex objects, then why do atheists have fewer divorces than Christians?

We do not receive morals from God, who committed many atrocities (such as killing everything in the global flood and murdering his own son) and is thankful that God does not exist

Comfort's first response is to accuse the person of not understanding the Bible. Comfort claims that not all animals were killed; sea-life still lived, the animals on the Ark, and Noah and his family lived. He then addresses God's sacrifice of his own son. Comfort says that Christ was actually God, citing John 1:1 and 1 Timothy 3:16. Next, Comfort addresses God's drowning of the Pharaoh's army. Comfort mentions that God warned the Pharaoh ten times, but Comfort does not mention that God hardened the Pharaoh's heart to say no, so God knew and purposely made Pharaoh say no ten times. Finally, Comfort agrees with the commenter, and that God did indeed send fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah because he did not like their behavior.

There is a whole list of atrocities committed by God. Such as 1 Samuel 6 (God kills 5 farmers just for a petty offense of worshiping him wrong, then he smites 50,000 of the other inhabitants who had no involvement) and 1 Samuel 25 (God murders Nabal just for being morally obligated to his workers), see Examples of God personally killing people. The commenter is correct that God has performed many horrible things, and it is good thing that we do not receive morals from the Bible. Here is something Ray does not share about the verses he provided. 1 Timothy is considered by the vast vast majority of critical scholars not to have been written by Paul (along with 2 Timothy and Titus). The description of Jesus in John 1:1 conflicts with the worldview of the earlier gospel authors. As already confirmed by science, the global flood never happened. The Ark is just a fictional myth. It is impossible to fit every animal onto the Ark, let alone build an Ark to sustain itself against a global flood. All models proposed by creationists have no evidence and have been deeply criticized as vague, no predictive value, and conflicts with physics. Could the aquatic creatures survive the Flood? No. Even the slightest pollution can cause many freshwater invertebrate species to disappear from streams. Also, aquatic organisms would have more than salinity to worry about, such as the following: Heat, acid, substrate, and pressure.

What is the big deal with using "foul language"

Ray's first response is, "if you are an atheist, you can't say anything is morally "wrong". Basically, an atheist's perspective and stance on morality is based on what society deems moral and immoral.

This is absurd. Atheists can achieve moral goodness based on empathy, knowledge, and such which makes secular morality not only possible but also practical. An atheist is perfectly capable of saying a certain act is morally "wrong." On the flip side, what is the Christian perspective of morals? In Ray's case, it is known as the Divine command theory, basically if God said tomorrow genocide and eating your own children was good and justifiable (this coming from a "perfectly good being") then Christians much accept it regardless of their feelings. Just as Abraham did not like the idea of sacrificing his son, he was willing to go through with it because God "said so."

Ray says that the morality Christians stand on is immovable, like the Ten Commandments written in stone. Comfort says the Commandments talk about murder, envy, pride, fornication, lust, greed, and adultery.

Ray Comfort got all of these wrong. The only Commandments in the Old Testament that were written in stone were the ones in Exodus 34, and none of them include or address any of the above. If the Christian morality is immovable, how does Ray explain the thousands of years of Christian cruelty? If it was "moral" to stone certain people to death, then by Ray's logic it is still logical to do so today.

Ray says foul language violates God law in Colossians 3:8 "But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth".

The same chapter says coveting is evil. By this standard, the economy is evil. Further on, Colossians 3:18 says "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord". 3:20 commands "Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord". This verse has been often used by abusive parents.

Ray includes a study of volunteers who placed their hands in cold water and repeatably cursed. Ray says with no doubt the swearing included blasphemy, but provides no reference at all.

Of course the natural reaction of pain is followed by expression of disgust. The response to such a event are many, for instance a masochist could cry "make it colder!" or a person immune to pain could just stand there expressionless.

Why won't God heal amputees?

Ray's response is rather dodgy. He asks how does this person know if this has ever happened since Creation or "somewhere else other than his very limited world?"

Is Ray suggesting that God heals amputees on other planets? The question is still unanswered, "Why won't God heal amputees here?"

Ray focuses that the person is limited in knowledge, and to make such a claim requires omniscience. Next, he asks the reader to look at their arm and "see" God's creation.

Looking at our arms or legs fails to answer why amputated limbs are never restored.

Ray hammers the point you are not an animal, since you have the ability to reason.

Unfortunately for Ray we are animals. More specifically, humans are a species of primate, which is a category of mammal, which is a category of vertebrate, which is a category of animal. This was known more than 2000 years ago. The real challenge to this question, which Ray does not address in full, is why God won't heal amputees when asked. Jesus promised: If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. [Matthew 21:21] If you ask anything in my name, I will do it. [John 14:14] Ask, and it will be given you. [Matthew 7:7] Nothing will be impossible to you. [Matthew 17:20] Believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. [Mark 11:24] The question, therefore, is simple: Are Jesus' statements in the Bible true or false? By looking at amputees, we can see that something is wrong. Jesus is not telling the truth. God never answers prayers to spontaneously restore lost limbs, despite Jesus' statements in the Bible.

Last Comment

Finally, near the end of this chapter, Ray quickly addresses evolution. He uses an article from TalkOrigins that addresses the definition of evolution. It points out several definitions that do not completely work, since they leave out some of the details. Ray Comfort latches onto this and says that since there is not a clear definition of evolution, it is open for anyone's views and therefore cannot be falsified.

What Ray purposely does not show is the same article does include a definition proposed by a scientist is the universal accepted definition of evolution by the scientific community. Ray does briefly mention it, but Ray says the definition is what the particular science believes it to be.

Chapter 2: The Bible: Biblical ad Theological Issues

Comfort's Defender's Guide

RationalWiki Responses

Clear this up: are the 6 million Jews murdered by Hitler in Hell?

Comfort tip-toes across this question (talking about Jesus being a Jew and the first Christians being Jewish and how Christ is the ONLY way to salvation) but in summary the answer is YES. The Jews who died in the Holocaust did not repent to Christ, therefore missing the one way ticket to salvation and therefore end up in the wrong place.

Chapter 3: Science: Scientific Thought and Evolution

Comfort's Defender's Guide

RationalWiki Responses

Ray Comfort starts off by informing us that he read Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species, but claims if Darwin was alive today he would be ranked with the top of Disney's imaginative crew, making big bucks writing science fiction in Hollywood.

Unfortunately, not only is this just despicable ad hominem originating from Comfort's world of ignorance and religious fantasy, it is very falsely demeaning to one of the greatest minds of the time. Charles Darwin was not "imagining" evidence or observable reality. In fact, his ideas were sprouting all across the academia. Around Darwin's time, the British empire and sea trade expanded globally, and many scientists went on voyages to observe and document nature. The same observations made by Charles Darwin was also seen by many other scientists, most notably Alfred Wallace. The father of biogeography, Alfred Wallace was coming up with his own ideas for the obvious fact of speciation, fossils, biological diversity, and such at the same time as Darwin. His ideas, as well as numerous other scientists, were practically parallel to Darwin's views, notably Wallace also discovered Natural selection but did not use Darwin's term. Darwin is given the credit for being the one to not just document it, but came up with the term natural selection and fabulously presented its case to the whole academia.

Next, Ray Comfort addresses Darwin's "racism" from the book On the Descent of Man.

Darwin was a product of his time, virtually all Englishmen held racist views, but Darwin was among the least racist of them all. He was against slavery and did not see "colored" people below white Europeans. Plus, Darwins' personal views have no bearing of the evidence for evolution. It would not matter if Newton or Einstein were both racists or such, their views do not matter toward their scientific models. Also, if Ray wants to play this card, lets not forget the volumes of racism found in the Bible - all coming from a "perfectly good eternal being" which Ray believes his laws and views are eternal and never change. So by Ray's logic, God remains and always will remain a racist, but also as a speciesist (that is, God only expects 1 of the billions of species on Earth to be morally responsible).

Ray says that Darwin believed that bears who swam for long periods of time with their mouth open (digesting insects from the water) would eventually turn into whales. Ray also says that Darwin believed that giraffes neck grew so long because they needed to "swish away flies" (no reference given). Finally, Ray says Darwin "wondered" about the baldness of a vulture, and perhaps it was because their rubbed their heads on rotten meat.

What Ray is keen on accomplishing is ignoring the vast number of predictions for the theory of evolution that have proven to be absolutely true. A few instances Darwin was off, to which Darwin admitted he was wrong. Just two years after penning his bear-to-whale tale, Darwin lamented to a friend (letter to James Lamont, February 25, 1861), “It is laughable how often I have been attacked and misrepresented about this bear.” However, Darwin's bear-to-whale fable turns out not to be far off, in the sense that science has revealed that whales did indeed evolved from land animals. As the famous biologist, Stephen J. Gould revealed in an article and paleontologist Kevin Padian proved in the famous Kitzmiller v. Dover case

Ray says anyone who reads the Origin of Species can read Darwin's "own explanation as to why there is no empirical evidence for his model." That is, no immediate varieties. Ray Comfort compares the fossils to the Mormon Golden Plates, and the only difference is that the Mormons say the plates went missing whereas Darwin say that there should be millions of fossils, but to this day they all remain missing.

Ray Comfort does not give a single reference as to when and where Darwin said there should be "millions" of fossils and that not a single fossil has been found. When Charles Darwin published his landmark observations in 1859, he lamented that the fossil record was still quite poor at that time. It was only in the last century or so earlier that anyone had even proposed the possibility that a single species could completely die out, and the first dinosaur wasn’t discovered until Darwin was a boy. Fossils were known by previous generations of course, but extinct and therefore unfamiliar varieties were often mistaken for the fanciful monsters of mythology –if they were recognized at all –which usually requires a well-trained perception of both geology and animal morphology. That’s especially rare when you’re talking about an organism no one has ever seen alive. When something dies, it is usually disassembled, digested, and decomposed. Only rarely is anything ever fossilized, and even fewer things are very well-preserved. Because the conditions required for that process are so particular, the fossil record can only represent a tiny fraction of everything that has ever lived. Darwin provided many environmental dynamics explaining why no single quarry could ever provide a continuous record of biological events, and why it would be impossible to find all the fossilized ancestors of every lineage. But despite this, he predicted that future generations, -having the benefit of better understanding- would discover a substantial number of fossil species which he called “intermediate” or “transitional” between what we see alive today and their taxonomic ancestors at successive levels in paleontological history. In fact, in the century-and-a-half since then, 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, like Kirk Cameron's Crocoduck. In fact, Darwin explained in detail why we should NOT find anything like this. We’re not looking for a blend of two species that both currently exist. Such a thing would actually go against evolution. Instead, he said, that if his theory were true, then what we should find would be a basal form potentially ancestral to both current species. And in this one case alone, we’ve found dozens of them in a near continuous lineage dating beyond the dawn of the Mesozoic era. 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.

Ray points out that God is nowhere mentioned in Darwin's books. That is God was never involved in shaping animals as they are. Ray finally says that Tolkien, Arthur C. Clark, and J.K. Rowling do not hold a candle to Charles Darwin, but then goes on to address several "objections and statements" from anonymous supporters of evolution.

Science makes no comment on the supernatural. Excluding God does not make a scientific model "anti-god." Example, Pierre Simon Laplace, Napoleon’s scientific advisor, was a determinist and claimed that using Newton’s laws one could predict the future with the same precision that one knows the past. When he presented a copy of his masterwork, Celestial Mechanics, to Napoleon, the emperor was reputed to have to say, “You have written this huge work on the heavens, without once mentioning God.” Laplace replied, “Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.” While Laplace was correct that God was unnecessary, his conclusion regarding determinism turned out to be completely incorrect.

There are mountains of evidence to support evolution, even though it is not perfect it is better than believing in magic

The anonymous person asks if Ray is afraid to look at the evidence, and welcomes Ray to visit his blog (which is not provided in this book). Ray says a "simple-minded man" once believed Pinocchio was true, and said he had evidence to support it. His evidence: a doll described as that in the story and a photo of a child who looked just like the doll, from that he concluded that the doll came to life. This man (Ray never names him) said that his theory was scientific and anyone who disagreed was being unscientific. Ray links this to atheists - a person who does not believe in God, but accepts life came from non-life and the wild speculation of evolution. Ray says many people are gullible, as evident due to his experience as a magician and tricking people. People believe a whale had legs because of some bump in its side or "some amino-acids means that chickens were once dinosaurs."

Any middle-schooler who passed general science can tell why Ray's Pinocchio argument is fallacious. First of all, Ray does not name who this person was, nor their credentials, backgrounds, etc. Second, simply comparing pictures and drawing up links without any empirical proof is not that different than when Ray looks at the earth and claims that an invisible creator did it. When Ray says "atheist think..." right there he is already lying. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in god(s), it has nothing to do with views of origins. So why do many people believe life can come from non-life? Perhaps it is because of the evidence supporting abiogenesis.

Ray Comfort claims to have looked at the evidence for evolution and is not afraid to look at the "starter information" because the finish does not exist. Ray concludes the argument is over when God reveals himself to you.

What Ray should have said is that he is not afraid to look at poor sources and dismiss them out of hand. He dares not go and address professional biologists, neither for his books or his program Way of the Master. If anyone here is gullible, it is those who are fall prey to magic tricks like Ray Comfort: magic man in the sky done all of it. As for why people believe whales have legs, Ray seriously lacks the anatomical education, but we can see today that certain whales are born with legs. These lost traits are called atavisms - another proof for evolution.

The appendix has some uses

The next anonymous person from the Duke University Medical Center talks about the appendix and that new material has shown that it is useful for storing bacteria. William Parker said it was time to "correct the textbooks" and from this Ray declares that this was an honest move of declaration the theory of evolution is wrong. Ray says for years the appendix was used as evidence for the theory, now it has been shown to serve a critical function and (like a child) Ray suddenly bursts into saying things like: There's no admittance of wrong. They discovered that God made it for a reason...Of course, believers will parrot that there is no need for an apology because science is never "wrong." Ray says that he is not bothered what people believe, so long that it does not conflict with the "truth of Christianity" and "causes them to reject the gospel."

Nowhere in this study does it say that the appendix is not a vestigial, nor that vestigial means useless. It only means it lost its original function, and this study seems to show that it has formed a new function. This is certainly not a declaration that the theory of evolution is wrong, nor would the entire theory rest on one appendix when compared to the vast amounts of evidence from many fields of science. What Ray is very worried about is not whether something is true or can be clearly demonstrated to be true, it does not matter to Ray. Ray only holds dearly to he presupposition that the Bible is literally true and nothing can conflict with its contents. Ray is not worried about discovering the truth, only as long as it is his truth. Unfortunately for Ray, the evidence overwhelmingly sides with reality: evolution is a fact. Ray will never accept this, because it conflicts with a literal translation of the Bible, which means his faith binds him to live in a world of ignorance.

Christian Comment and an Atheist Replies

The next piece deals with an atheist responding to a Christian. The Christian instructs people to put a frog in a blender, blend it, pour the remains on a table, and see if life "hops" out since all the ingredients for life are present. (Is Ray seriously suggesting that people carry out this cruelty?) The atheist responds that it is dead, and the frog took billions of years to appear on earth, and then the atheist speculates (very clearly speculates) that if the remains were brought to an alien planet, perhaps something would happen. Ray says the atheist "obviously doesn't know what atheistic evolution believes." Ray describes it as in the beginning there were no remain and no "conditions" for life. There was no water, no sunlight, no air, no DNA, NOTHING. Ray says that atheists believe everything came from nothing, but they respond with "who made God?" Ray does not answer, instead he rather calls them "an unthinking mind" and rationalizes itself because they refuse to accept the eternity of God.

Obviously, Ray does not have the slightest clue what evolution is all about. First of all, evolution is not atheistic. There are hundreds of theistic evolutionist scientists, and the theory of evolution as a whole does not rule out God. It only rules out a literal interpretation of two chapters of the Genesis account. This is the only problem Ray has with evolution, and he will label it whatever he can to deceive others. So according to Ray, there were no life-forming conditions and elements at the beginning of the earth. Unfortunately, science easily refutes this. The conditions for life have remained constant. Cell theory requires that all living organisms are made of cells, and to have cells you need certain elements. These existed for millions of years on earth before life came to be on this planet. Ray simply made up or deliberately lied that there were no elements on earth. As for the "unthinking mind" person here, it heavily seems to be Ray Comfort.

Comfort is ignorant regarding the evolution of sex. There exist hermaphrodites and asexuals

The fourth anonymous person calls out Ray who is ignorant in the field and not willing to so much as go to Wikipedia. Ray responds by re-asking the question when did sex evolve, and wonders why he is called names when he does not accept the explanation provided. Ray goes to their "source" and reports it is just verbal sleight-of-hand. The quote is taken straight from Wikipedia, In most multicellular sexual species, the population consists of two sexes, only one of which is capable of bearing young (with the exception of simultaneous hermaphrodites). In an asexual species, each member of the population is capable of bearing young. This implies that an asexual population has an intrinsic capacity to grow more rapidly each generation. The cost was first described in mathematical terms by John Maynard Smith. He imagined an asexual mutant arising in a sexual population, half of which comprises males that cannot themselves produce offspring. With female-only offspring, the asexual lineage doubles its representation in the population each generation, all else being equal. Ray responds with this, My Answer: Wait a minute! Isn't his imaging, he has just pulled a big rabbit out of the hat. He is talking about asexuality and suddenly makes a reference to "males" and "female-only offspring." But there's no explanation as to where he and she came from, or how he and she came, or how long it took for him or her to evolve. Where did she and he come from, and, just a minor point to the evolutionist, why did he and she appear in the 1.4 million of the earth's species? Ray stops there and does not look any further and declares "There you have it. There is actually no explanation at all, just a supposition that 'evolution did it.' Magic. Male and female suddenly appeared."

So here we have Ray only visiting Wikipedia (a VERY poor source to begin with) and only reading half of a chapter, and then stopping. Without going further, he adds in his own two cents, then draws a conclusion based on his own two cents that his opinions were correct. He repeats his old questions, but again seems to have deliberately skipped the whole article and did not bother to do a two-minute research on Google. It is obvious and not surprising: Ray Comfort is willfully ignorant. As for the evolution of sex, already there are numerous valid explanations for its origin.

Comfort's falsely claims that atheists believe that everything came from nothing while at the same time believe nothing created something

Ray does not comment on his beliefs of how everything came to be, rather he sticks to bashing the "atheist beliefs" and quoting Scripture to call them fools. Next, he quotes Richard Dawkins from his book Ancestors Tales where Dawkins admitted that life "evolved literally from nothing -- it is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to its justice." Ray says that he would be mad, but if the atheists want to stay in the "intellectual" arena they must justify it. Ray does not provide a single explanation, but rather that they all speak in the "language of speculation" (words like probably, perhaps, etc) and ends it by quoting Romans 1:21-22.

Ray clearly demonstrates his one-sided-ness. He seems to have no intent or thought of critically examining himself and his own beliefs. Rather, he seems to have a strong mind that if he makes his opposition look bad, then his position wins by default. Unfortunately, that's not how things work. Ray does indeed believe something can come from nothing via magic - he admits it himself by claiming that God DID speak things into being (an incantation). As for what an atheist believes, as already noted, atheism is simply the lack of belief in god(s) and has no say on origins. Any atheist can have any thought of how the universe came to be, so Ray creates a straw man here and claims victory when he knocks it down.

What would Ray accept to reconsider his views of evolution?

Ray calls evolution the most unscientific, faith-based, fundamentally brainless idea brought forth by man and the pages of the Origin of Species seem to be written by a man who believed the sun was square, came out at night, and was made of ice. Ray says the only honest thing mentioned was when a friend of Darwin came to him and told him he surrendered his life to a fantasy (no reference provided). While Richard Dawkins mocks Ray Comfort for his banana fallacy, Dawkins believes that bananas are his cousins.

Ray's rather closed, immature, intellectually-free rant here reveals much of his character and shallow skin. It is an excellent example of projection; slapping all the obvious wrong things regarding his Bible onto a observable and undeniable fact as evolution that contradicts his flawed sacred book. Ray cannot name a single instance when or where Darwin ever even hinted that the sun was square and such. Darwin's theory of evolution barely mentioned the sun at all. What does the bible say about the sun? It says the sun is just as old as the stars, younger than the earth, can sing, moves while the earth remains motionless, and was made by magic. As for bananas and humans, the main thing we have in common is that we are both eukaryote - that is, we are made of cells enclosed within membranes. All plant and animal life are as well, which fits perfectly into the evolutionary model. At the dawn of life, it is expected that the earliest forms of life would share similar characteristics. However, over the course of adaption and natural selection throughout the ages, changes would occur to the point life became vastly diverse.

In the end, Ray just puts any word out there to make evolution seem foolish, and there is absolutely no chance whatsoever to convince him that evolution is true and God is not real.

It seems Ray is proud of his ignorance and his lack of ability to comprehend and understand how science works. Hypocritically and ironically, it is Ray Comfort who often asks his readers and viewers to "keep an open mind."

Possible deist examines Ray Comfort's tactics

The next person (not clearly an atheist, perhaps deist) addresses Ray's letters-to-words analogy and why it fails, while also confessing that the person could not figure out why God did things the way he did. Ray does not attempt to defend his analogy, rather he attacks the person for not believing in Genesis 1 and 2 and not accepting that we live in a fallen world - which Ray says is why the person is not sure why God did things in such a way. Next, Ray changes the argument to argue the anonymous person does not exist is just as absurd as saying God does not exist.

What the person thinks about God and why he did what he did (if he did it at all) is not important. What is more important is if anyone can show that God DID do these certain things. Ray Comfort, nor any creationist, has ever shown or provided a model that points to the Christian god as being the creator of anything. Finally, Ray's last argument is a straw man. Science already has given us a clear understanding how the universe could have arisen without the need of a God. Based on that, plus the lack of evidence for Ray's God, there is nothing wrong with concluding there is no god.

Why did God create the appendix?

Ray says that for a long time that evolutionists accepted vestigial evidences such as the appendix.

Ray describes them as "anatomy left over through the course of evolution" but does not hint that evolution states that vestigial organs are completely useless. Their function may have diminished or disappeared.

Why did God create the human tailbone and third molers?

Ray says that it is not a "tail" but the end of your backbone, and without it you could not sit to go to the bathroom. As for the teeth, Ray says that the claim that the third moler causes damage crowding has not been met under scrutiny and they were given by God to enjoy your food.

What evidence does Ray have that God gave us molers to enjoy our food? None.

Atheists do not accept the universe was a "creation" and thus could not be "created" as Ray often argues, but rather it is the result of natural processes

Ray ignores this, and points out that the person is "careful" not to say the universe is eternal, because the person knows it is a scientific impossibility because "all that heat would have been used up." Ray says that atheists believed that everything "formed" itself. Ray hypothetically writes an atheist Old Testament to say that the atheist believes "in the beginning there was nothing, and nothing formed itself into everything" but notes that the person said he/she believed the universe was formed by natural laws. So Ray asks what caused nature?

Careful not to say the universe is eternal? What heat? Ray is implying the second law of thermodynamics, but in reality it does not say that an eternal universe is impossible. Ray Comfort is more than happy to claim that his God is eternal, but why not save a step and say the universe is eternal? Ray does not provide any argument why the claim an eternal universe is a "scientific impossibility." When Ray said that atheists "believe..." he immediately shot himself in the foot. Claiming what atheists "believe" is nonsense, and making an atheist "Old testament" is just as ridiculous. The one thing that connects all atheists together is the lack of belief in a god(s). However they view how the universe came to be is up to them. Also, Ray's terminology is deliberately misleading. Saying that the "universes formed itself" implies that some planning or thought of action was in place. This is not the case. Ray asked what caused nature? This only implies that the "cause and event" is always relevant. In quantum mechanics, the cause and effect does not apply (as do several other physical laws). Therefore, Ray is asking the wrong question, and if he continues to ask this question he will only be met with disappointment. Unfortunately, it is likely when this is properly answered to Ray, he will take this "disappointment" to portray that the question remains unanswered, and therefore he claims his position that everything was made by magic wins by default. This is how Ray operates to boost his position while demeaning any alternative (and often more logical) views.

Is Ray is honestly arguing all the ingredients for life were not present on earth?

Ray says absolutely not.

But he seems to contradict himself, because when addressing the third person above, he states that there was no air or water. Rather, Ray says here that dirt is dirt - it has no life in it at all.

Ray goes on to quote Scripture to support that God created life and souls, and uses the Bible to preach what happens to your soul after death. Ray also notes that there are several elements in the soil that is also in the human body, therefore when God made the human body from the soil it makes sense that they would share certain elements.

And the only evidence Ray provides is just a few Bible verses and speculation based on no evidence. This is why Ray fails to convince people.

Twelfth Person

Regarding pleas from www.liveScience.com beneath an article titles the "Top 10 Missing Links." A person stress is not religious or a creationist, but wants to see evidence for human evolution via missing links. Wherever the author asks for evidence, it is always biased. Another person explains there are no missing links in the sense he is talking about. Everything is linked, and there is evidence to support it (while providing book references) and there are no "missing" evidences. The only comment from Ray is "What did this person get? 'There are no missing links. Go read a book and study bacteria, plants and insects.'" Ray then concludes "The dilemma is that there are no undisputed species-to-species transitional forms."

Actually, the response to the doubter was very good. The only thing is that Ray flat-out denies that transitional fossils exist, and he does it through his gritted teeth. 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.

"I don't believe in evolution. I simply have confidence in science"

Ray talks about the discovery of the fossil Ardi and the scientists dating the soil. Ray says this is like if his gets buried in a sediment 2.6 million years old, and then later discovered, would that make Ray 2.6 million years old? Ray ends it with this "honest atheist" that basically he trusts the word of the geologist and taking his word for it - basically showing the faith the atheist have in scientists.

While people generally do not take their words for it, and through modern technology we can read, evaluate, and analyze the works of scientists. Some of us can make the same observations or do some tests. However, this is material coming from men in certain fields they have trained for many years, but they are always open to scrutiny. In science, scientists are like vultures to their peers, constantly trying to refute their ideas and data. Not once in 150 years has anyone refuted evolution, but more to the point, scientists are not always right. However, even men like Ray Comfort assume their work is correct without ever verifying it or taking a peek at their work before he goes to a hospital and ask for medicine. As for Ardi, they did date his remains. Dating the soil around him and compared to the data results from the fossil confirms they belong in the same era. So even if Ray was buried in a sediment several million years old, both his remains and surrounding can be tested, and it can clearly show that he does not belong there.

Angry rant at Ray and his idiocy regarding science and "home-school" textbooks

Ray basically defends home schooled kids and homeschooling for two pages.

Conservative evangelical Christians dominate the home-schooling movement in America. Creationism is often taught, alongside the parents religious views.

Atheists do not believe everything came from nothing, it is just Ray simply does not care about being honest

When Ray says that God always existed, people can say the same about the universe. When Ray calls them ridiculous, he is basically ridiculing the same logic used by non-Christians. Ray's first response: "And in doing so, you reveal you don't understand the basics of science. The second law of thermodynamics shows that the universe cannot be eternal because it would have crumbled into dust (in time)."

Ray does not address his own beliefs and why he does not call himself ridiculous, rather he bashes the person -calling them a fool as it says in the Bible- and that science is repeatable and the Big Bang is not. "And in doing so, you reveal you don't understand the basics of science." The ULTIMATE projection. The second law of thermodynamics does not say such a thing, it just says that heat will always move to cold areas. Energy (potential and kinetic) create heat within the universe. If this is only Ray's objection to an eternal universe, he already lost. Ray again reveals here he has no intentions of critically examining and critiquing his own beliefs. This is what separates Ray from honest people - when they are wrong or mistaken, they will admit it. Ray here criticizes people who use the same logic he does, but is blind to see the obvious.

Chapter 4: Philosophy: Beliefs and Worldviews

Comfort's Defender's Guide

RationalWiki Responses

You may not need proof to believe in your god or any god, but if all those fantastic stories were true there would have to be some sort of proof right?

Comfort starts off by telling this person that they may be able to believe without proof, such as the theory of evolution, but in Comforts case he does depend on proof, otherwise he would not dedicate his life to his conviction. He says there is proof of God, which he knew about before he became a Christian. His proof: creation requires a creator. He says atheists say there never was a "creation" so they get rid of the word "made" because it speaks of a maker. Comfort names shows and cars that all were made by someone, which prove there was a maker. Comfort says there is a lot of proof for the stories in the Bible, but the reader will not be willing to look because of their presupposition stance. Comfort challenges the reader to go to www.needGod.com and then read John 14:21 several times. "It is either true or it isn't."

The site www.needGod.com is an extension of Ray Comfort's website Living Waters, which is basically a short walk through of the are you a good person tactic.

Charles Darwin was a good, humble man whereas the Bible is full of dangerous myths

Comfort states "I once believed that Charles Darwin wasn't a racist (as some suggested), and that even if he was, his personal morality was irrelevant when it came to the theory of evolution. But after studying him closely, I changed my mind. Lets look at his own words:" “”At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla. Comfort says that this shows Darwin thought civilized races will replace savage races, the gap between the races will become wider just as wide as the white man and the gorilla. Comfort says that Darwin believed blacks were closely related to gorillas, and yet admires of Darwin try to find pieces of Darwin speaking kindly of their intelligence and despising slavery in England. Comfort compares this to how one may speak nicely of dogs (being well mannered and intelligent).

According to talk.origins, this is a common creationist quote mine. When Darwin referred to "race" he meant "varieties," not human races. (For example, in Chapter 1 of On the Origin of Species, Darwin writes "the several races, for instance, of the cabbage".) In the passage "there is nothing in Darwin's words to support (and much in his life to contradict) any claim that Darwin wanted the "lower" or "savage races" to be exterminated. He was merely noting what appeared to him to be factual, based in no small part on the evidence of a European binge of imperialism and colonial conquest during his lifetime." Darwin's passage, in full context, reads: “”The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

Chapter 5: Religion: God and Atheism

Comfort's Defender's Guide

RationalWiki Responses

If there is a God, why didn't He kill Hitler before he killed millions of people?

Ray answers, while also including Himmler, "it would make sense that if God were to have stopped Hitler by killing him, he should also have killed each one of those evil men because they were also potentially mass murderers." Right after that, Ray says no more about Hitler and switches straight to Stalin, and says that God should have killed him. Ray says God should have also killed the guilty in Rwanda, Pol Pot, the Armenian genocide, and such. Ray goes on and on, listing the horrible people and we expect God to do the "right" thing and kill them. But then, Ray says should God kill drunk drivers who kill innocent people? What about suicide bombers? Mafia bosses? Bomb builders? And then Ray includes the kidnappers, rapists, and torturers. Ray argues that if God killed people before the committed evil, this would include ALL of us. ray reassures the person and his readers that the evil people will get what is coming to them in the afterlife. How are we all in trouble? Ray says God sees lusting as adultery and hatred as murder, any sin we commit is just as bad committing murder. Ray then mentions several instances in the Bible when he DID kill people on the spot for idolatry, homosexuality, lying, and committing sexual sins.

There is a big difference between a drunk driver and Hitler. One is aware of his deliberate intentions of trying to wipe a certain group off the face of the earth, while the other finds themselves in a tragic accident under the influence of alcohol.

America is a secular country and God is not needed in the 21st century

Ray begins by saying that once upon a time, prayer was allowed in schools (which Ray believes was an unalienable right) until one atheist parent convinced the Supreme Court (8 to 1) that prayer in schools was unconstitutional. This was accomplished with the creation of the "wall of separation of church and state" (which Ray says is not found in the Constitution). Ray provides what is written in the First Amendment (Ray says all ten of the amendments are "God-given liberties").

How Ray can just quote the First Amendment and miss the essence of the separation of church and state. While the words "separation of church and state" are not there, it clearly states the government will not and must not endorse one religion over any other. One of the cores of the constitutional law is to protect the rights of the minority. Ray, along with many conservative Christians, may wish too see prayer in schools, but laws are not made by popular vote. Many people did not wish to see colored students go to school with white students, but all it took was a brave few to push the country to protect their constitutional rights.

If I become a Christian, would I have to give up sex?

Ray says that "it may come as a shock to the average atheist, but sex did not evolve. It wasn't an accident." Ray says sex was created by God to give humans the gift of procreate.

Indeed sex was not an accident, but it indeed DID evolve.

I want to see actual proof that if there is a God, how can it be known that said God is the Christian God rather than Allah, the God of Islam?

Ray answers that Christianity is "unique" and what makes it unique is the Cross. Comfort then goes on a rant talking about man is sinful and Jesus is the way out.

This does not answer the question at all. The question was asking for empirical proof that if there is a God, how can it be determined that God is a particular God, not what makes a certain religion (which is man made) unique.

An atheist said, "So what should we believe in....(God) just 'poofed' everything into existence?"

Ray says what about the following 'poof' but no proof: Poof! Explosive dust cloud to planetary systems and galaxies! Poof! Bacteria from primordial soup! Poof! Cambrian Explosion! Poof! Invertebrates to vertebrates! Poof! Fish to land animals! Poof! Dinosaurs to birds! Poof! Reptiles to mammals! Poof! Apes to man! Ray says "Lots of poof but no proof." Ray quotes John 1:3 that God made everything. Ray says either God is the authority or man is, and it is up to us to decide. Ray asks who should we believe? "A perfect, all-knowing God who has always been there or fallible, sinful human beings who weren't there?

Dodging the question, particularly missing and ignoring the part that creationism has no proof, except for Ray's belief in a "perfect, all-knowing God who has always been there." This is all the proof Ray requires for his dogmatic faith. Ray falsely portrays that the natural scientific explanations (which he straw mans) have zero proof, when in fact they actually do have proof. Bear in mind, none of these are "poof" instances, in the sense they happen instantaneously and spontaneously. If Ray is referring the the Big Bang Theory, he is way off. Rather, more likely, he is referring to the formation of the solar system. No scientist worth his salt said that these things just "poofed" from dust. The formation of planets and especially galaxies takes a long and complicated process, all possible without the aid of any god or magic. Abiogenesis is the study of how life formed naturally on earth. There are many plausible scenarios that have evidence to support them. Ray is giving the false impression that a fully-formed bacteria cells appeared from a mixture of elements. The first living cells were much simpler than the cells of the present. Biochemistry is not run by chance, but rather it produces many complex products. The Cambrian Explosion is not a "poof" instance. The Cambrian "Explosion" was a several million years process, while ignoring the vast amounts of life that existed (and fossilized) BEFORE the Cambrian. There are Cambrian fossils transitional between vertebrate and invertebrate, as well as living invertebrate chordates and living basal near-vertebrates that show plausible intermediate forms. Dinosaurs did not "poof" into birds, birds are still dinosaurs today. No animal can escape its heritage. Just as humans are mammals by definition, birds are still dinosaurs. The change in morphology between dinosaurs and modern birds is also revealed through the fossil recorded. While Ray may deny it, legitimate intermediate fossils do exist (as well as genetics) and have proven this transition beyond a shadow of a doubt. The transition from reptile to mammal has an excellent record. Apes never "poofed" into man, because apes are still man and man are still apes. Similarly how a duck is a bird and a tiger is a cat. A duck never "poofed" into a bird, because a duck is a bird by definition.

Hypothetically, if I had the omnipotence of God, I would stop a rapist from harming a little girl while ignoring the concept of free-will (the person reasons not taking any action for the safety of the child is simply evil)

Ray responds by walking the person through several instances if they would kill a rapist or murderer. But Ray goes further, asking if the person would kill blasphemers, fornicators, greed, adulterers, rebellion, and such. Ray concludes out of hand that the person would only stop at rape and murder because the person does not see blasphemy and such just as evil as murder and rape. Ray says all of these are equal in God eyes, who apparently has a "standard of righteousness infinitely higher than ours." Ray says if the person wishes God to strike down all those who commit evil, it would include the entire human race. Ray reassures the person that evil people will be punished in the afterlife.

Comfort continues to purposefully misunderstand the 2nd law of thermodynamics

Coming from a person who claims to have already corrected Ray's misunderstanding and misuse of the second law of thermodynamics and the claim "nothing created everything." The person notes that Ray continues to repeat the statements that was just refuted, and thus the person asks Ray to do the honest thing and stop repeating the lies. Ray replies with the following: "I am happy to acknowledge that answers have been given to explain the "nothing created everything" dilemma, but those answers are wrong. There is nothing to refute." Ray does not explain why this is so. Rather, Ray says that he has known atheists "admit" they are not atheists when they admit that something had to have create everything ("popping the bubble of atheism"). Ray says that if atheists don't like him saying such things, they are free to go, otherwise his blog would not be called "Atheist Central." Ray figures atheists get tired of just talking to those who "profess to be atheists" and thus come to his blog. Ray then asks what do you believe: Creator or no creator? If the answer is that there is no "creation" Ray says that is "absurd" (no reasoning given). Ray says if the answer is "I don't know" then the person is not an atheist, but an agnostic. Ray says trying to define nothing as something is "ridiculous." Ray says an atheist once said that atheists accept whatever made everything was not "intelligent" because cosmology, abiogenesis, and evolution have shown that everything can come to be without any aid from an intelligent agent. Ray calls this "crazy talk." Ray concludes that atheists are left with a dilemma. finally, Ray provides another answer from an atheist: the atheist believes that something not nothing created everything, just that something was not God but a natural force. Therefore, he is indeed an atheist. Ray's immediate response is only the following: "So he does believe in a Creator as the cause of the universe. He's not an atheist." That's it.

Not once did Ray provide a single line of reasoning why the counter-arguments were wrong. He did not even name them or provide any reference to them. Rather, all he has seemed to have done is simply flat out ignored them, ran off with his hands in his ears, crying "I can't hear you!" Simply labeling your criticisms as "crazy" or such is not a valid argument. You have to explain and demonstrate why and how the arguments are wrong. Now lest go through Ray's points. He does not explain why the claim that "we do not live in a creation" is absurd. The reasoning behind the claim we don;t live in a creation is sound. There is no empirical data or facts to show that our universe or earth was specially designed via magic. Claiming "I don't know" implies knowledge, not belief. If a person does not know if there is a god, this is associated with agnosticism. Most atheists are weak atheists (or agnostic atheists) - in the sense they do not know if there is a God, they just do not accept the theists beliefs that there is a god. Gnostics claim that God can be known, but agnostics disagree. Theists believe there is a god, atheists don't buy it. In the end, atheists are still atheists for the simple fact that they lack a belief in God, whether they claim to know or not know. There is no evidence for Intelligent design, and science has done a excellent job of explaining the origins of many things - all of which can be shown and proven to come about naturally without the aid of the supernatural. Further evidence that the supernatural was not involved can be seen by the severe lack of design and the argument of poor design. This is not "crazy talk" rather the only crazy talk is that a magic man in the sky created everything magically from nothing. Finally, the last comment is actually accurate. As already stated, an atheist is a person who lacks a belief in a god(s), and an individual atheists personal opinion of the origin of the universe is up to him or her. If this particular atheist accepts the unknown variable need to explain how the universe came to be by answering it with a natural force (physical laws or forces) rather than a supernatural deity, then indeed he/she is an atheist. A natural law is not a "Creator" as Ray states, because the word "Creator" implies a personification of an entity. Physical laws do not have minds, sentience, or thoughts, and thus cannot be labeled "creators." So Ray, again, is wrong; he is still an atheist. It is strange, this book is called "Defenders Guide," but if all Ray has to defend his beliefs is by labeling his criticisms as "crazy" then he does not have any case at all.

Ray trumps his atheist enemies by admitting there is a Supreme Being which Ray admits is not a loving God is a reverse double bluff

Ray responds by claiming he wishes he would be friends with all atheists. Ray claims to understand why many cannot accept God as a "loving" god while committing many horrible acts. Ray says the answer to why God does such things is because God is "just" and "holy". Ray then asks the readers to think "objectively" about their sins. Ray then walks the reader through the old are you a good person tactic and states you are guilty and therefore must be saved now.

If Ray wished us to think "objectively" about "our sins" he must first prove that sins exist in the first place. If a Buddhist asked Ray to think "objectively" about his crimes for breaking one of the Eightfold Paths, Ray would dismiss it because 1) he does not believe in Buddhism and 2) has not been convinced the Eightfold Paths have any relevance to his existence.

It is hypocritical to believe "nothing created everything" which is as absurd when Ray states that "nothing created God who created everything"

Ray responds that time demands a beginning. Since God is eternal and created time, he exists in a realm that is not limited to time.

Nice try Ray, but unfortunately Ray's argument holds no water. If God created time, that means he would have to exist before time itself. Now, God has a mind that makes decisions that is turned into actions. When God created the universe, he said "Let there be..." So, in order for God to create time, he first had to thought about the concept of time, and then transmit that thought into performing the action of creating. That being said, time is required for a idea to become an action, therefor God could not have created time. Also, does time need a beginning? People can look forward and cannot see an end, but those who look back like Ray Comfort speculates there must be a beginning. The Big Bang Theory does not say time itself started at the Big Bang, but that time we can measure began. Some say how can there be an infinite amount of time before now, the moment you finished reading this sentence? If you think about it, it takes you an infinite amount of time to take a step forward. For your foot to hit the ground, it has to pass a mid-way point. after it reaches that, it has a second half-way point to pass. And so on and so on. Mathematically, you foot never reaches the ground. And yet, from simple observation and experience, we know that our foot touched the ground. In the same manner, it takes an infinite amount of numbers in between the number 1 and 2. Likewise, there is an infinite amount of time between one second and two seconds. Philosophically, Achilles and the Tortoise proved this point: If Achilles (the mighty Greek hero) gave the slow tortoise a head start in a race, no matter how far the tortoise gets (even if it is one foot past the starting line) or how fast Achilles can run, Achilles will NEVER catch the Tortoise. Why? Because Achilles would have to pass an infinite amount of half-way points before he reached the tortoise.

Who designed the designer?

The person points out in Richard Dawkins book the God Delusion, a major argument is "who designed the designer?" Ray says that a brilliant response has been given by William Lane Craig. Here is Craig's argument; "This rejoinder is flawed on at least two accounts. First, in order to recognize an as explanation as the best, one must needn't have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point concerning inference to the best explanation as practiced in the philosophy of science. If archaeologists digging in the earth were to discover things looking like arrowheads and hatchet heads and pottery shards, they would be justified in inferring that these artifacts are not the chance result of sedimentation and metamorphosis, but products of some unknown group of people, even though they had no explanation of who these people were or where they came from. Similarly, if astronauts were to come upon a pile of machinery on the back side of the moon, they would be justified in inferring that it was the product of intelligent extra-terrestrial agents, even if they had no idea whatsoever who these extra-terrestrial agents were or how they got there. In order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't be able to explain the explanation. In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed. So in the case at hand, in order to recognize that intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe, one needn't be able to explain the designer."

Basically, what Ray and Craig are attempting to answer the question "who designed the designer" by basically saying: asking that question is unnecessary and forbidden. Unfortunately, Craig's argument is both nonsensical and ridiculous for several reasons. We all have parents, but according too Craig's logic, we cannot ask if we have grandparents. Also, we see in nature patterns and things that appear "designed" but in reality they are the result of natural forces: snowflakes, clouds, mountain bridges, crystals, etc. Finally, the argument for design is not consistent with itself. If there was an "intelligent" designer/agent, this entity's mind would not be a bunch of random synapses, in fact it would have to be just as complex or even more complex than the design. But if "design requires a designer" then therefore, the designer's mind must have a higher designer. In summary: there is no designer at all. Not bothering with the "infinite regress" the problem is that it has not been established or proven that there is "design" in the universe that could not have come about via naturally. Thus, invoking a supernatural "intelligent designer" is unnecessary and unreasonable.

I will stop the myth of creationism!

The person, speaking for himself, says he is there to take a stand for reason and attempting to stop the spread of the myth of creationism. Ray Comfort claims "this is censorship at its best. those who are anti-knowledge see themselves as the intellectual saviors of poor dumb college students, who don't have the ability to think for themselves. These are the book burners, who do what they do for the good of society. Their society. And they do do what they do in the name of "reason" and "science," when their atheistic belief is completely unreasonable and absolutely unscientific. The atheist has no basis to say reason exists. What is mass logic? It has none. It is immaterial. Oh, no! Atheists say there is no immaterial because God may be there. We can use logic because we are made in the image of God." Ray then goes on asking the reader if they think "nothing created everything" and that the smartest human cannot create a grain of sand from nothing. Ray then lists several scientists who did believe in God.

Censorship!? Ray must be joking. Apparently, once a movement such as creationism/intelligent design (their both the same thing) is proven in court to violate constitutional law (the supposed God-given liberties) and proven in the Kitzmiller v. Dover court case that intelligent design was follwoing; "ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science." "ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research." [ID is] "fringe science" [ID proponents have] "not proposed a scientific means of testing its claims." "It is notable that defense experts' own mission, which mirrors that of the IDM itself, is to change the ground rules of science to allow supernatural causation of the natural world, which the Supreme Court in Edwards and the court in McLean correctly recognized as an inherently religious concept." Even Phillip Johnson, the founder of the D movement admitted there is no scientific support for intelligent design. He said the following (emphasis added), “I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it may contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…No product is ready for competition in the educational world.” Phillip Johnson, quoted in Berkeley Science Review, Spring 2006. As you can see, intelligent design is clearly NOT science, and therefore has no basis to be taught in a science class. Excluding ID from science classes is not censorship. The goal of schools is to teach students actual science, not pseudoscience. This is why we do not teach exorcisms and faith healing in our medical schools, or teach our engineers to use prayer or magic wands rather than their hands to build structures. When people, such as the anonymous person in the section, fight to defend science, they are not "book-burning" or refraining the students from anything, rather they are serving the students to learn what science actually reveals rather than nonsense. By allowing creationism to slide into the science rooms, we are not just failing to teach our children, we are teaching them the wrong thing, and that is a major problem.

Atheists don't make absolute statements because nothing can be known absolutely

The person says that an atheist was not arrogant in making absolute statements. The atheist said that all elevators and planes are safe, but there is the probability and possibility that they could falter and thus cause harm. The atheist claimed that anyone who made an absolute claim is lying. Ray responds that this atheist made a hypocritical statement. Ray says that when the atheists uses the term "all" he makes the absolute claim that he is familiar that every plane and elevator built by man is indeed faulty and not perfect. Ray says the atheist requires omniscience to make such a claim, as well as to state the "all" knowledge is probably requires absolute knowledge. Ray ends this section by defining an atheist: A ("without") theist ("God"), therefore atheist means "without God."

Actually, the word theist means "belief in God" and thus, atheist means "without belief in God." This basically undermines many (perhaps all) of Ray's misguided arguments in this book and all his material regarding atheism and what atheists think, believe, or know.

I am an ex-christian, now atheist, who knew the Lord but lost my faith because of rational thought and skepticism

Ray responds if the person is skeptical of his/her rationalism? Ray then says he has a dilemma for those who claim there were Christians. Either 1) the thought they knew God or 2) they did know God, thus making their atheism a fallacy.

By Ray's logic, there is not a single Christian on earth and never was, nor ever will. Same thing for everyone of every faith. George Harrison, the guitarist for the Beatles was a Bhaki Hindu, believed in a personal god, and he said that if one chants the mantras with devotion, Lord Krishna would visibly appear and speak to him in an audible voice. Many pagans are similarly convinced of having met their deities too. For example, a cat fancier in Texas insists he began worshiping Bast only after the Egyptian goddess dramatically appeared physically manifest, having personally chosen him to become her disciple. The Chinese religion is a mixture of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, polytheism and ancestor worship. Devotees of this blend of traditions are capable of remarkable feats of faith, and many of them claim direct communication with their gods and spirits as well. All of these different believers, and some Buddhists too, talk about their spiritual rebirth once they accept whichever deity into their lives. Every religion boasts their own miracles and prophecies proving theirs is the truest faith. So its no surprise that Christians say the same things about their versions of God too. No religion is significantly different from any other in this respect. But whatever else may be going on, when men claim revelation from God, it usually means is that they’ve decided to promote their own biased and unsubstantiated opinions as if they were divinely inspired.

Appendix 1

Comfort's Defender's Guide

RationalWiki Responses

Comfort shares that in 2010, Stephen Hawking announced God did not create the universe, instead the universe came from nothing. Comfort quotes Hawking from his book The Grand Design, “”Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will cause itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist Comfort says it is "embarrassingly unscientific to speak of anything creating itself from nothing. Common sense says that if something possessed the ability to create itself from nothing, then that something wasn't nothing, it was something - a very intelligent creative power of some sort."

Comfort goes on to say that Hawking "violated the unspoken rules of atheism. He wasn't supposed to use words like "create" or "made." They necessitate a Creator and a Maker. Neither are you supposed to let out that the essence of atheism is to believe that nothing created everything, because its unthinking." Comfort mentions this confirms the title of his book You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Think. Comfort also mentions that an atheist should not speak of gravity as a law, because a law implies that there is a law-giver because "laws don't happen by themselves."

Quotes From Famous Atheists Who Went to Meet Their Maker

"I have encountered a few creationists and because they were usually nice, intelligent people, I have been unable to decide whether they were _really_ mad, or only pretending to be mad. If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created that whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading mankind?" Arthur C. Clarke

"No god ever gave any man anything, nor ever answered any prayer at any time - nor ever will.....The purpose of human life is not to prepare yourself for death. The purpose of human life is to live, free of fears, guilt, anxieties, and feelings of personal inadequacy." Madalyn Murray O'Hair

"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!" George Carlin

Lets quote more of George Carlin: "Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!"

"My philosophy is as simple as ever - smoking, drinking,... reading and writing (not arithmetic). I have a selfish absorption in the well-being and achievement of Noel Coward...In spite of my unregenerate spiritual attitude, I am jolly kind to everybody and still attentive and devoted to my dear old Mother." Noel Coward

Interesting, Ray Comfort left out the whole quote: "My philosophy is as simple as ever - smoking, drinking, moderate sexual intercourse on a diminishing scale, reading and writing (not arithmetic). I have a selfish absorption in the well-being and achievement of Noel Coward."

"One must choose between God and Man, and all "radicals" and "progressives," from the mildest Liberal to the most extreme Anarchist, have in effect chosen Man." George Orwell

"If someone is really sick, I don't pray to God. I look for the best doctor in town." Richard Rogers

External Links

• DGTLTQ book sample
• DGTLTQ page 26, 27
• DGTLTQ page 28, 29

See also

• Atheism
• Ray Comfort
• Way of the Master
• List of Ray Comfort publications