Oh Comfort! How I long for the days when you posted videos about crocoduck and made highly innocent videos about bananas. But instead you try and mock Penn Jillette.
So according to Mr. Jillette, atheism has stopped him from being closed-minded – like a person who believes the sun exists is closed-minded to the thought that it doesn’t exist.
But Penn Jillette goes farther than the average atheist, beyond being just a solipsistic skeptic. He has chosen to believe there is no God.
Ray Comfort keeps saying that the evidence for Jesus being divine and Jehovah being real is as much as the Sun.
Yet I am pretty sure he has never ever really pointed out what the evidence is beyond “bible bible bible”.
It is true that you can’t prove a negative. However, the existence of God is provable in the same way a building is positive proof that there was a builder.
That’s the Watchmaker Analogy and there are flaws with that. It also isn’t proof that JEHOVAH is the god who built the universe because it could have been Brahma for all the proof Ray has of this argument. And ANY natural model is more likely to be true due to the fact everything ELSE functions through natural process.
But the atheist is quick to respond that “the building therefore a builder” analogy doesn’t work, because a building is inanimate. It doesn’t have life, therefore it needed a builder. Nature – animals, insects, plants, fish, human beings, etc., are organic. They have life, can reproduce, and therefore they don’t necessitate a Creator.
Not really, we point out that the mechanism of evolution and our genetics indicate the lack of necessity for the constant interruption of a divine gardener.
There is a small problem with that belief.
You have to forget about mountains, the oceans, the clouds, the sun, the stars and the entire non-organic planet on which we and all those animals live. What do atheists think those things are made of? All of them are non-organic.
Are…
Is…
Is this the best argument you could make? Because this is frankly embarrassing. This is the argument of stupidity.
The Mountains are formed by plate tectonics which incidentally disprove your “6000 year old world” fantasy.
Water is one of the most common molecules in the galaxy even outside our planet.
The Sun is a Star. Repeat after me, the Sun is big because it is closer than the “stars”. It’s why the moon is BIGGER than the stars. It’s perspective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25N-4zrk390
The elephant of which Jillette spoke isn’t inside the trunk. It’s sitting on his knee, and he doesn’t see him because of a solipsistic worldview, subtly disguised as open-mindedness.
It’s also eating a banana which is perfectly designed for ease of entry.
I think the best lack of evidence for a creationism is that Ray Comfort’s foot isn’t banana shaped for all the times he inserts it into his mouth.
With due respect, atheism is not easy in the slightest. It takes a huge amount of faith to be an atheist.
It takes a little faith to be an atheist. However you have to make more initial assumptions and bigger ones to believe in a god.
And then from there he builds his entire life’s philosophy: “Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it’s everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery, and I get joy every day.”
And it’s a pretty decent thing to believe in. I may not agree with Penn’s politics because libertarianism only works for him because he is a millionaire. But there is more to this world than to the entire fantasy that all religion concocts with the after life.
Hindus believe that over our eyes there is the curtain of maya (illusion and magic) that hides the reality of the world and that by understanding god you can reach enlightenment where this curtain is ripped off. I believe it’s an equally apt analogy to be applied to religion. Your understanding of the world increases and the reality becomes clearer if you tear away the curtain covering your eyes.
This is why atheism is difficult. He believes that the entire universe – with its vast planets with their own orbits, suns and moons, the earth, spinning through space, with its oceans and daily tides, the yearly seasons, all the succulent fruits, the amazing animals – with male and female, the beautiful flowers, the marvels of the fearfully and wonderfully made human body, also with male and female, reproducing after its own kind, as well as millions of other marvels of nature all happened because nothing created it. Such a belief takes huge faith. It denies all logic, reason and common sense.
Which is why the wonderfully made human body requires a mechanic.
A mechanic who’s plan for the day is to work at an eye clinic helping with all the divine eye failure. A divine eye failure that occurs to all humans if they live long enough (Cataract).
It would be far easier to believe that there was nothing, and that that nothing for no reason exploded into a fully loaded and flying jumbo jet, with passengers, pilots and crew. If I could believe that for a moment, I would be a “fool.” That’s the word the Bible uses to describe the atheist (see Psalm 14:1), and it says, “Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words” (Proverbs 23:9).
Except we never exploded into the form that we are now. Well, I suppose if you believe that the world is 6000 years old then you probably think Geology, Cosmology and Biology work the same way.
21 comments
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Dalillama, Schmott Guy
February 6, 2013 at 11:20 AM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
I have not seen any actual indication that Jillette cares any more about evidence than Comfort does. He just has a different selection of it that he ignores because doing so allows him to maintain his sense of smug superiority.
wholething
February 6, 2013 at 11:32 AM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Comfort believes the sun exists because Genesis says God created it.
oolon
February 6, 2013 at 4:52 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Does it? You can be an agnostic atheist which is basically saying you do not know if a god exists or not but do not believe in one since there is no evidence for any of them. This can be applied to fairies, unicorns etc… I don’t see how that requires any faith.
Being a gnostic atheist does require a little faith because you know there definitely are no god(s), but I’d agree even in that case its only a little faith required given the total lack of evidence for one. Personally I cannot make the jump but 6.999 recurring on the Dawkins scale seems about right.
Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
February 6, 2013 at 6:09 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Ray Comfort has been told over and over again the answers to his questions. He’s been told what evolution is and is not. He STILL lies and misrepresents it. He is a liar.
bradleybetts
February 6, 2013 at 6:36 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Bloody hell… That’s The Divine Watchmaker, Ultimate Boeing 747, Argument from Ignorance and “Science is hard, ngh” all in one spiel! Impressive, in a way.
wholething
February 6, 2013 at 7:11 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
A rational person accepts things in accordance with the strength of the evidence. Nothing much beyond “cogito ergo sum” is accepted with 100% certainty and nothing would be absolutely rejected except the logically impossible. Faith has no role in this system. I adopted this from Lord Carl Sagan.
Since a tri-omni being is impossible when there is suffering, it is disbelieved.
doublereed
February 6, 2013 at 9:11 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
I’m so confused. Organic creatures are the best example why “Design implies Designer” doesn’t work. Because children are created by parents who do not design them (by any normal definition of the word ‘design).
And I guess he decides to somehow conflate that with the “Creation implies Creator” argument. But once again, natural phenomenon are the best example against the idea of Creation implies Creator. Unless he’s really suggesting this kind of pagan mentality of Zeus being angry and therefore creating thunderstorms. It raises the question of what he actually believes vs what he says he does.
glodson
February 6, 2013 at 9:37 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Did somebody say bananas?
Ray Comfort does have a place in my heart. His arguments were so bad that I had to try and seek out a better reason to stay christian. I hope he keeps talking, that insane lying liar.
Gretchen
February 6, 2013 at 10:35 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Which atheist? I have never in my life heard an atheist say that the reason the natural world doesn’t need a “builder” is because it’s inanimate.
The reason atheists say the natural world doesn’t need a builder is because we have seen, time and time again, the natural world building itself, whereas every time we’ve seen a building built, somebody had to build it. We know of no instance in which a building sprang into existence without being built, whereas we have observed the mechanisms by which things like mountains, rivers, plants, and animals come into existence, and there is no sign of agency in the process. And until somebody can show us a builder, we simply maintain that it sure looks like one is not present, and not needed.
a miasma of incandescent plasma
February 7, 2013 at 1:25 AM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Whoa dude, like siriously Ray-man, no way homie…
So if I use your, like, logic or whatever it is you call what you just tried to do, then a god as complicated and powerful and awe-inspiring as you claim exists, so like, if that god exists, then it had to have a designer!! So uh d00d, like who totally made god?! Another god?! And then, um, whoa I just had a crazy thought – who then made god’s god?! Another god?!?!
I bet this could go on for like a good 4 or 5 gods down…
glodson
February 7, 2013 at 1:46 AM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Very clever, very clever, but it is gods all the way down!
billdaniels
February 7, 2013 at 3:18 AM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
I would just love to see Comfort and Jilette in a live debate. Of course, Comfort would edit the video to make him out as the winner, but Jilette would surely wipe the stage with him.
wholething
February 7, 2013 at 4:07 AM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Take that 4 or 5 gods meme over to the Four or Five Gods blog. Here it’s A Million Gods or nothing.
But seriously. OK, not really seriously, but if gods cloned themselves, each iteration up would have a tiny chance of having been spontaneously generated, so given enough cloner gods, the probability of one of them naturally occurring by chance approaches 100%.
Each cloner would conceal its existence from its clone because the created will start asking for things. When you ignore the requests, they start pleading fervently. Who wants that noise?
It’s more likely that a naturally occurring god whose nature is to clone itself would not stop cloning. A god with a limit switch is more complex, and therefore less likely, than one without.
Each clone would be aware that their sense of omnipotence and omniscience is an illusion. When they use their powers to sense their creator and the creator’s other clones, they would detect nothing but, knowing they could give that same negative feedback to its clones, neither the naturally occurring one nor the clones can distinguish their actual nature.
If the nature of the original and its resulting clones is to also create universes, we’re most likely in one as created universes would be extremely more common than naturally occurring ones.
So it’s possible to prove that omniscience and omnipotence are impossible. Can we prove that magic beings with just enough powers are impossible?
Johnny Au Gratin
February 7, 2013 at 7:06 AM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Some claim Comfort is a fool. Some claim he is a liar. The two are not mutually exclusive. He may (in this limited sense) be a more balanced person than he appears.
timberwoof
February 7, 2013 at 7:57 AM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Comfort was done when he issued the brilliant quip that saying the sun exists closes one’s mind to the idea that it doesn’t exist. The conclusion is that no one can make any statement about anything because doing so indicates a mind closed to the opposite statement. By declaring that someone is closed-minded, Comfort declares debate victory!
But Ray Comfort’s mind is closed to the idea that God doesn’t exist… Therefore Comfort is closed minded and thus I win.
Can I have a cookie?
mutt50
February 7, 2013 at 6:15 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Jillette is a “libertarian”, which means he has a different religion.,
thisisaturingtest
February 7, 2013 at 8:37 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
The problem I have with the “Watchmaker Analogy” (and most variants) is this- if you see a watch lying in the desert, you know it’s an artifact, a created thing, because of the contrast between it and it’s natural surroundings. But, with a sample size of exactly and only one universe (including the life within it), what do you contrast that with in order to conclude that it’s an obviously created artifact? You can’t deduce “creation” by comparison when there’s nothing else to compare it to.
Caveat Imperator
February 8, 2013 at 1:50 AM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
Furthermore, if you walk further along the beach and found a nuclear reactor, is there any reason to assume the watchmaker built it?
When monotheists engage in teleological arguments of any kind, not only are they making the assumption that their god is exempt from the “complexity requires intelligent intervention” argument, but that complexity implies monotheism. All we have to do is look at the great scientific and engineering breakthroughs of the last century, as well as several from even farther back, to show how wrong this is.
If someone managed to find strong evidence of intelligent design or a “created” universe, I would assume polytheism first. I mean, have you seen the platypus? That thing MUST have been made by a committee!
wholething
February 8, 2013 at 3:12 AM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
CI makes a good point. If I find a watch on a beach and then an Automated Watch Making Machine, should I think the AWMM came from the AAWMMM?
If I observe bees making hexagonal honeycombs then discover rocks in the Arctic arranged in hexagonal patterns, should I expect the rocks were arranged by bees or ants? Rocks can form that pattern by the forces of the freeze-thaw effects.
So maybe tha AAWMMM came from natural processes. That’s the problem with substituting thinking by analogy for research.
Oakley Frogskins Sunglasses
March 21, 2013 at 1:41 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
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oakley radar
March 24, 2013 at 7:07 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
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