Ray Comfort has a blog, and one of his entries claims that the Bible is a science text, and that it is better than science. His style of argument is to first list a “fact” from the Bible (usually something that is completely open to interpretation, and he chooses to interpret it as being in conformity with modern science); then he mentions a corresponding fact derived from modern science, that always agrees with the Bible; then he lists something from “science then,” which is dead wrong.
It’s so clueless it hurts to read it.
First fundamental error: science isn’t a loose collection of facts, but a process for finding errors and testing new ideas. If you find places where science has changed our ideas about the world, that is a case of science working as it should — it is not a reason to reject it.
Second fundamental error: what the heck is “science then”? When? Where are the references to “science”? What we now think of as the formal process of science didn’t really get rolling until the 17th century, you couldn’t really call anyone a professional practitioner of science until probably the 18th, the term “scientist” wasn’t even coined until the 19th, and there never has been nor will there ever be a central authority of science that one can cite as the formal source of specific pronouncements.
Third fundamental error: he’s cherry-picking like a madman. He cites a mere dozen entries where he thinks the Bible can be confirmed as correct (pathetic as that is), and he ignores bits like biblical genetics. He cites the Bible as being the source of information on medical hygiene; if that’s the case, why were the good Christian doctors prior to the 19th century so surprised at the idea of sterile technique and using soap and carbolic acid?
Here’s a brief sample of the lunacy of Comfort — I’m not going to go through the whole silly thing.
1. THE BIBLE: The earth is a sphere (Isaiah 40:22). SCIENCE NOW: The earth is a sphere. SCIENCE THEN: The earth was a flat disk.
Really? I would first ask where the Bible plainly says the earth is a sphere. The verse cited looks like this (don’t be dismayed by the intense level of technical detail):
It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
A circle is not a sphere, although translation issues do raise their ugly heads here. There are also references in Numbers, Ezekiel, and Isaiah to the “corners” of the earth — which would mean Comfort would be crowing if satellites had gone up and shown the earth to be a big cube.
Now show me a scientific reference claiming that the earth is a flat disk. The ancient Greeks figured out that the earth was a sphere, long before the Bible was compiled; a bunch of smart, disciplined philosophers is as close as you’re going to get to a “science then”, and they weren’t saying what Comfort claims at all.
2. THE BIBLE: Incalculable number of stars (Jeremiah 33:22). SCIENCE NOW: Incalculable number of stars. SCIENCE THEN: Only 1,100 stars.
Wait: a passage in the Bible that says “I can’t count that high” is now considered a scientific datum? Here’s Jeremiah:
As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me.
Uh, “host of heaven” refers to the angels, not the stars. This is metaphor and poetry; this is god saying that David will have lots of kids, as many as there are angels in heaven. If Comfort wants to pretend this is an assessment of the number of stars in the sky, then fine: David had fewer than 1100 children, so the Bible is wrong. Even if you count all of David’s descendants, that has an upper bound of a few billion, and so is still wrong.
The number 1100 comes from Ptolemy, who cataloged the visible stars, at a time before telescopes. I think I prefer the estimate of a guy who sat down and actually tried to count what he could see over that of some priestly writer trying to flatter the fecundity of his king with an excessive metaphor.
Besides, Comfort’s claim for “science now” is also wrong. We have calculated the number of stars: 1022-1024 stars. Now if God had said, “David, you’re going to have as many kids as there are stars in the universe, which I happen to know is 110338764987014250551004,” then maybe he’d have a case. Although then we could probably charge god with lying to David.
I leave the rest as an exercise for the reader. I’m sorry, but they don’t get any smarter than those first two.
It’s also VERY scientific to claim that the stars (also known as distant suns) can fall on the Earth …
I don’t even think this guy is worth debating…prompted by this blog, I went over there.
I don’t think I’ve read much else that is this misguided and so illogically slanted towards woo.
Naturally I put in in my bookmarks for a bit of light relief on mondays… ;)
There isn’t a single mention of bananas in the Bible. Comfort has in the past cited them as evidence for the existence of God. However, since they’re not mentioned anywhere in his “science text,” they either a) don’t exist or b) are the work of Satan.
In either case, he is at least guilty of heresy and likely of blasphemy for his “Atheist’s Worst Nightmare” video and the like.
Science, on the other hand, has no problem accounting for bananas. I’ll bet we could even explain why Alex Comfort is bananas if it were important enough to do so.
I like what Bing McGhandi had to say about this:
And, later:
And having gotten tired of scientists, the evangelicals go after the historians…
http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0115-05.htm
H. Res. 888, “Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history….” specifically proposes an “American Religious History Week” to be taught in public schools each May”
Hmm…wonder if they’ll teach the Jefferson Bible, or the Treaty of Tripoli. Arguably, the way it is phrased, it requires the teaching of “American Religion” which to me would be the many beliefs of Native Americans, Mormonism, and Scientology. The others are mid-eastern and European-clearly not uniquely ‘American’.
Can science account for my Bananas? ‘cos I can’t…
They seem to have an irritating habit of disapppearing after I put them on the log near the tyre swing for safe keeping…I think it’s that damned bunch of Chimp yahoos…
splitters!
It’s Tuesday morning, papers to write, insects to identify, but the earth is an oblate spheroid, the bible is still wrong and his argument is circular). :)
I wish I could say something pithy about this, but all I can do is cry.
I need to make a YouTube video in which I plead with Ray to LEAVE SCIENCE ALONE!
You’re letting yourself get upset by a grown man who thinks that bananas, allegedly, are an atheist’s worst nightmare?
Jason, it’s not worth smearing your mascara over. If he can’t leave bananas alone, what makes you think he can be reasoned into leaving Science alone?
I’d also like to point out what one commenter said:
“I had an atheist recently tell me that those verses could mean anything.”
You think?
Just once I’d like to see these fuzzy-thinking fundies actually make a specific scientific prediction before science discovers it, as opposed to retrodicting certain vague verses from the bible to fit scientific discoveries. When trying to be holy and righteous, there is apparently nothing like stealing someone else’s work and claiming it as your own.
A quick perusal of the second half of the comments on that page show Ray getting taken to task for his extremely loose interpretations of the bible’s verses. I’d so love to sign up and just say, “RAY YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT AND YOU’RE MAKING MY HOMEBOY KIRK LOOK BAD” but I don’t even wanna get started on him.
David W. Irish does a nice job of debunking the whole list in the comments.
Ray Comfort has a couple of replies… in which he completely deflects and ignores the substance of the criticisms, of course.
I considered God’s Promise to Abraham in some detail, particularly the founding Promise of the Abrahamic religions that Abraham would have as many descendents as there are stars in the sky and grains of sand on the sea shore. These are not small numbers.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=31529065&blogID=94136885
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=31529065&blogID=94228406
As I point out in these blogs, anyone who thinks the Apocalypse will happen before God has fulfilled His Promise to Abraham is calling God a liar.
The miracle of the loaves and fishes will pale in comparison to the miracle of 10^18 flushes (the required miraculous daily intervention in sewage disposal necessary to fulfill God’s Promise to Abraham in 1,000 years or less).
If bananas were in the bible, they would only be mentioned to scold women for thinking that, and for listing the clean and unclean uses to which bananas may be put.
Jer 33:22, emphasis added:
Compare this text that is just a few hundred years younger:
— Archimedes: The Sand Reckoner, sometime between 287 and 212 BC
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sand_Reckoner and references therein.
Jer 33:22, emphasis added:
Compare this text that is just a few hundred years younger:
— Archimedes: The Sand Reckoner, sometime between 287 and 212 BC
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sand_Reckoner and references therein.
Issac Asimov wrote an article many years ago analyzing what the Bible said about the shape of the Earth. He cited a number of verses saying or supporting the idea that the Earth is disk-shaped. Asimov was rather uniquely qualified to comment on the Bible and science.
The Greek stand-up philosopher Anaximander gave it a lot of thought and decided that the Earth is a cylinder, in about 500 BC. Fifty years later Philolaus gave it some more thought and decided that it’s a sphere. Currently, NASA scientists are under pressure from the Bush administration to present both the sphere and disk theories equally.
Gadzooks, man! Ray seems too stupid to fully appreciate his own stupidity. It’s like someone dumped a bucket of ball bearings on the floor.
My personal favorite bit comes in one of Ray’s comments:
Egads! The stupid burns like a misplaced simile.
Gee, and why is there no mention of the Americas, or Australia, or the North and South Pole, the tallest mountain (Mt Everest), the largest ocean (Pacific), the longest river (Nile), …
And it’s nice to quote the circle in Isaih 40:22 when in Isaiah 40:28 (only a few verses later), God says he created the extrimities of the earth, which clearly indicates a Disk, and not a Sphere (extrimities of a Sphere ?).
Well anyway, I think we’re overestimating Ray Comfort;
“a Circle, a Disk, a Sphere, errr, it’s all kind of the same, errr, its all kind of ROUND”.
Anyway, it’s not even a Sphere, but let’s not get into that level of precision, because he probably doesn’t even understand what the word precision means.
I can vouch for the Biblical disk theory being a common interpretation. When I was a kid, I took religious education with a Hasidic rabbi and was told that, according to Genesis, the earth is indeed a disk. “The firmament,” according to the rabbi, was essentially a dome that met the disk along its edged. He even drew a diagram for me.
Being a rather militantly orthodox rabbi, it was his contention that anyone who produced evidence to the contrary was falsifying whatever it was they said they had. It was all an attempt to destroy Judaism in his eyes.
It probably goes without saying that this was one of many reasons I didn’t stick with the whole religion thing after my parentally-mandated religious lessons ended when I turned 13.
Here’s what Ray Comfort thinks of atheists:
From: http://www.livingwaters.com/downloads/goodtest.pdf (the last slide, point 8).
This is of the same mold as that MATERIALISM PREDICTS/THEISM PREDICTS list. I suspect that this list is going to be copy-pasted around creationist message boards and MySpace pages. In a few months, it is going to show up again somewhere. Some plagerism troll is going to paste this gem, without attribution to Comfort the Whackjob, thinking that he had confounded those materialists yet again. We will be seeing this list many times in the years ahead…its stupid enough that I doubt it will disappear.
I thought it was a Coke can that determined the fundamental parameters of the multiverse?! His blog is going to fact-checked by the esteemed editor Denyse O’Leary. That’s Den-y-se for you out there…
But wait some of the comments are even more hilarious :
Esly Carrero (seriously brain damaged) noted :
“Thanks for this awesome, very well thought out information of bible study. This got me hooked cause I ABSOLUTELY LOVE SCIENCE!”
“I had an atheist recently tell me that those verses could mean anything.
It’s incredible how decieved a person can be when the truth & the proof lies right in front of their faces!
In my flesh.. If it could be up to me.. I’d take my hand, grab their soul and shake it until it woke up! lol.”
Well Esly, it’s great to hear that you absolutely love Science, but it is not reciprocal.
i haven’t read through all the comments — but i just had to say that i was so pissed off at this post of his that i, too, started to go through the crap, point by point — what he said the bible said, what it actually said, what we knew about it now and what pre-christian societies knew (like, um, the greeks, fr’instance?).
i even found strategic carl sagan video clips. i’ve still got it in my drafts — i think i got to point 9 or 10 or something… and then i saw this ‘king me!’ cectic again:
http://cectic.com/069.html and i lost all motivation.
WTF are we doing reading ray comfort anyway? he’s just a master at his own self-comfort.
Here’s one of the comments made on that disgrace of a blog:
“As Ken Hamm says, God’s Word never changes, but you have to get updated science textbooks every couple of years.”
So these people actually think that that’s a good point for them? So if your 12 year old son showed the same knowledge of his surroundings as he did when he was 3 you wouldn’t think something was terribly wrong?
Feckin’ idiots.
Wait: a passage in the Bible that says “I can’t count that high” is now considered a scientific datum?
Why not? That’s Ray’s approach to complexity through evolution, after all.
HJ
Sigh. I’ve been joining the conversations over on that blog for almost two weeks now. Some of the comments are almost painful to read, and I rarely even get a response on any of the points that I make.
It’s like a crack addiction. It can’t be good for me, but even after a couple of the religious arguments hitting the rock bottom of insane, I keep going back there, trying to combat the rhetoric.
“Circle of the earth” most likely refers to what can be seen by looking from horizon to horizon, from a central point. From the perspective of the viewer, looking 360 degrees around would give the impression that the viewer were standing in the middle of a giant, flat, circular plain.
One day, for his insanity, Ray Comfort will be sent to Religion Hell.
While the rest of us laugh it up in Secular Heaven!
ric wrote: “Just once I’d like to see these fuzzy-thinking fundies actually make a specific scientific prediction before science discovers it…”
You know, it turns out that all my scientific publications from the past ten years contain coded messages predicting every major event that happened during those years up to today. Give me a world event, and I’ll give you a passage from my papers that alludes to it! (Don’t ask me to predict later things – I need to know the event before I can figure out the code.)
Worship me!
And he won’t address any of the arguments made with him… he just makes lame comments. Typical.
Nah, he’s wrong about a lot of things, as pointed out in the blog post.
But more importantly, these are incredibly old hackneyed fundy talking points, which are equaled only by the equally tendentious post-science reinterpretations of the Koran by Islamicists.
Somehow, these “scientific teachings” of the Bible and of the Koran never actually led any pre-science believers to the truth of the spherical earth or to any of the rest of Comfort’s, etc.’s, fallacious claims, but have only been rendered in hindsight. I would like to ask Ray how believing Xians and Jews, with both the Bible (as well as pre-Biblical manuscripts) and their “divine guidance” (Holy Spirit, etc.), were never once able to come to the same conclusions that Greeks and others using mere rationality and empirical data came to understand.
Are numbers and data points better at communicating truth to us than God’s revelation, after all?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Other fine biology facts taught in the Bible: Insects have four legs (Lev. 11:20-23); Rabbits chew their cuds (Deu. 14:7); and Satyrs, Cockatrices, and Unicorns were all real (Isa 13:21, Jer 8:17, Isa 34:7).
So, why do we bother with science textbooks again?
@20:Being a rather militantly orthodox rabbi, it was his contention that anyone who produced evidence to the contrary was falsifying whatever it was they said they had. It was all an attempt to destroy Judaism in his eyes.
I am reminded of Lewis Black’s commentary about Christians interpreting the Old Testament as if it was their own book. “It’s not their book! And they’re interpreting it wrong!” He then goes on to advise Christians to maybe ask the “owners” of that book how to interpret it, they are known as “Jews” and some may “even walk among you”.
I’m making him sound more religious than he actually sounds in the routine, he goes on to say a few “colorful” things about the God of the Old Testament. LOL
It’s strange because when going through some of the threads on that blog, and some of the comments, I found things such as :
“Atheism- an adult fairy tale which allows unhindered sinful activity while hiding behind intellectual and moral self deception.”
Makes me really pessimist about the future. What can you say to this ?
It’s like, you say X, the other one replies X.
Makes me really, really, sad.
What’s going on with human beings ?
Why does he blame all the nutty ideas on ‘Science Then’?
If anything, most of those should be ‘Religion Then’.
Oh ouch. I just checked out a few other of his posts and it’s painful. This …um… ugh
Hi Pharyngulites!
Long time reader, first time commenter.
Yes, it is pointless to debate Ray Comfort. I had to call him out twice before he even addressed my comment. I’m surprised those comments even made it through moderation.
He had two days to think up a reply, and when he does it’s “How did Democritus see atoms?” Swing and a miss, Ray. He can’t own up to even one simple mistake.
So, I’m done there. The amount of pure concentrated stupid burns my eyeballs.
I agree, that is what it means. What the believers seem unable to explain is that if Isaiah meant sphere, then why didn’t he use the word duwr? It means ball (or sphere). Instead, he used chuwg (i.e., circle or compass). Isiah, like all his contemporaries, knew the difference between a circle and sphere.
He wrote, Isa 22:18: “He will surely violently turn and toss thee [like] a ball [written as duwr] into a large country: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory [shall be] the shame of thy lord’s house.”
The reason he used circle is that is what they thought: The world was a flat, circular disk not a round ball (‘duwr’).
That just one of hundreds of examples where the bible authors got it all wrong.
RobertC (#5) said,
Interesting that you say that, I had a disagreement recently with a creationist who insisted that the study of evolution is a historical narrative, the inference being that history changes.
Are we seeing the evolution of creationist ideas, or is this an undercurrent?
I have just had the most brilliant idea.
If, as Mr Comfort so ably demonstrates, the bible can be read as a science book, then surely it must be the best possible science book. For, since it is the inerrant word of God and all that, it is impossible that anyone will ever publish any errata.
We now know that there are things which are now known to modern science which were not known to science at the time the bible was written, but which are nonetheless predicted / explained in the bible. However, since we know that modern science is incomplete, it is not unreasonable to assume that some of the remaining truths of science are similarly encoded within the bible. In fact, since the bible is a finite size, presumably there are a finite number of scientific truths awaiting discovery, because if the number of remaining truths is infinite and any finite fraction are represented in the bible, the bible would be infinitely long.
So, perhaps some of the fundamentalist community might want to have a quick look through the bible and pick out the science bits that correspond to the stuff we don’t already know. I’m sure the physics community would love it if the bible could give them some pointers as to which of their string theories was correct, for example. And a cure for cancer would be really nice. And then all of the remaining scientific discoveries will get made really quickly and then everyone can go down the pub. Everyone’s a winner!
So come on, fundies – do something useful for a change!
Oh… you need the scientists to make the discoveries first so that you can then retrospectively ‘interpret’ the bible to find references to them? Never mind, it seemed like a good idea at the time…
Twerps.
And, wow.
Sure is nice not having to wait for your comment to undergo “Is this too blasphemous to show the sheep?” moderation.
It’s so bizarre when you enter that world and down is up and up is down.
It’s completely pointless, for the most part, trying to reason with them, they truly have no idea how wrong they are, usually. Logic is beyond them.
THE BIBLE: You can get pregnant without sex. SCIENCE NOW: Mary was an adultress. SCIENCE THEN: Mary was an adultress. JOSEPH: Mary was an adultress.
ME: God was a rapist.
If you really want to beat your head against a wall, try reading some of the smug comments from Sye TenB who keeps repeatedly claiming it is impossible to know anything if the God of the Bible doesn’t exist.
Re post #34.
My favorite is the bible’s version of genetics:
So to get striped or speckled animals just put striped stakes near white animals and their offspring will be striped.
This one really made my eyes prolapse:
“9. THE BIBLE: Blood is the source of life and health (Leviticus 17:11). SCIENCE NOW: Blood is the source of life and health. SCIENCE THEN: Sick people must be bled.”
I guess Mr. Comfort has never heard of leukemia, septicemia, or a few dozen other blood disorders. SCIENCE, however, has.
We’re not being elitist again, are we?
I’ve had PET and MARI scans done on my brain, so I have much better evidence for its existence than most people…
Anyone had an EEG?
The Bible: You can see all of earth, if you get on top of a high mountain. Science Then: What? Science Now: No, you can’t.
Luke 4:5-8. “And the devil, taking him up into a high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”
Matthew 4:8-11. Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”
Neat trick, that. Showing him all the “kingdoms of the world,” from a high mountain, when the earth is a sphere. And, what’s the name of the mountain, again?
I’ve seen this argument before. A creationist named Greg Brown, whom I was debating online a few years ago, came up with a list of things science had denied for centuries, but which were presented correctly in the Bible. On his list:
Hydrologic cycle- Ecclesiastes 1:7, Isaiah 55:10
Evaporation- Psalm 135:7, Jeremiah 10:13
Principle of Isostasy- Isaiah 40:12, Psalm 104:5-9
Shape of the Earth- Isaiah 40:22, Psalm 103:12
Rotation of the Earth- Job 38:12,14
Gravitation- Job 26:7,38:6
Number of stars- Genesis 22:17, Jeremiah 33:22
Uniqueness of each star- 1 Corinthians 15:41
Circulation of atmosphere- Ecclesiastes 1:6
Fluid dynamics- Job 28:25
Blood circulation- Leviticus 17:11
Biogenesis and stability- Genesis 1:11,21,25
Chemical nature of flesh- Genesis 1:11,24-2:7; 3:19
Mass-Energy equivalence- Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3
Atomic disintegration- 2 Peter 3:10
Yes, evaporation! All those scientists running around denying evaporation really got egg on their faces when it was discovered in the 19th century to be just like the Bible had predicted all along! Mind you, there are still a few scientists who deny evaporation (scientists are known to be hidebound and refuse to update their dogma just because the facts are against them). Why, just the other day, I passed a street-scientists on the corner wearing a poster declaring, “Evaporation is a lie, but evolution is true!” Fool. If only he’d read the Bible!
My take on all of these can be found at the bottom of the page here:
http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/strange_creationism_ms.htm
If elitist in this context means refusal to believe in stupid shit, then…..yeah.
So what are you gonna believe, Troylus. Teh bible or your lyin’ eyes?
By the way, if any of you want to get your grubby godless paws on some more serious science and True Biblical Knowledge(tm), just contact Ray Comfort (or someone at Way of the Master radio or whoever affiliated) and ask him to send you one of his bibles. All you have to do is mention that you are an atheist!
Just yesterday I received my copy. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a spiffy Evidence Bible (35USD value!). I also got some free tracts! Million dollar bill, wow!
I live in Finland and they shipped (28USD value!) it to me absolutely free! Act now!
___________
Okay so there isn’t too much science in the Evidence Bible, but more of the same type of hilarity/inanity you can see at his blog.
– Henwli
Amusingly enough, the falling star thing came up last week on a Christian radio broadcast. Can stars actually fall on the earth? Why, of course! The Christian apologist said (and this is a word-for-word quote!): “We have to beware of basing what we believe on what is possible.”
[Link]
It’s easier to train a dog to ignore a steak dropped on the floor than it is to productively argue with someone who believes Ray Comfort type things. I don’t know if that makes me feel more warm & fuzzy about dogs, or more cold and creeped-out about humans.
Dropped by over there and, in a spirit of charity, posted Augustine famous stricture on christians making damn fools of themselves by commenting on matters scientific. Awaiting moderation.
I hope he does a math entry next.
Here, King Soloman is building stuff. He builds a pool:
“And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.” (1 Kings 7:24)
So its diameter is 10 cubits, and its circumference is 30 cubits. Ergo, pi is 3. Forget about the “and a bit”. This is the inerrant Bible, so no fudging the numbers and saying “Well, they were just rounding…”
Sorry Ray. A philosopher and mathematician named Eratosthenes, born in 276 Bc, measured the earths circumference. Back then it was accepted knowledge in Greece that the earth was a sphere. More than 200 years before the birth of your saviour.
I guess that should pass for “Science then”.
Ray Comfort. Alex Comfort wrote the Joy of Sex!
Mike at #20 is right, biblical cosmology presents the Earth as a snowglobe, except with the air inside and the water outside (Genesis 1:6-8, Genesis 8:2). Above the disc of the earth, there are gates on the dome that generally keep the upper waters out, but open from time to time for rain, snow, sleet, and watery genocide.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/cosmo_bibl2.htm
It’s SCIENTIFICATED!
Oops, my mistake, Ben (#61). I guess that’d qualify as a Freudian slip, eh?
Also Spaulding (#62), have you ever read the “apocryphal” Book of Enoch? It goes into mind-numbing details about those gates, although I think it has more to do with astrological influences than hydrology.
I wonder if Comfort (either Ray or Alex :) has ever read that book. As religious literature goes, parts of it are actually pretty good. It wouldn’t make a bad movie; some of it reminds me a bit of Dante’s Inferno.
Nah, he probably hasn’t read it. It was kicked out of the Bible, after all.
Next thing, you’ll be telling us the world ISN’T a tent!
“We have to beware of basing what we believe on what is possible.”
What? Huh? *turns and walks away shaking slowly head*
shaking slowly
Aigh…slowly shaking.
OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!
PZ you bastard.
Glen D #33: Somehow, these “scientific teachings” of the Bible and of the Koran never actually led any pre-science believers to the truth of the spherical earth
Medieval astronomers (both Christian and Muslim) were well aware that the earth was spherical. The idea that educted folks used to believe in a flat earth was invented by Washington Irving in his biography of Columbus. Irving needed an explanation for why Columbus had so much trouble getting his voyage to the Indies funded. The actual reason didn’t make Columbus look too good, since it was that he had estimated the circumference of the earth to be 16,000 miles while the conventional wisdom of the late 15th century suggested that it was 24,000 miles. And Irving needed a heroic, always right Columbus, to fit in with his picture of the innovator discovering/creating a new thing (the U.S.) where nothing had been (known) before. So, clearly, he couldn’t use the truth. So how to explain the fact that Columbus spent years having his project turned down? Invent the idea that the conventional wisdom of the late 15th century held that the earth was flat and that you could sail right off the side. Presto! Columbus is a visionary! Irving was a wildly popular writer, readers trusted him to give them facts, and his lie became the accepted truth.
Now, I can’t say that it was the Bible that convinced the people of the middle ages that the earth was a sphere; I rather suspect that it was astronomical observation that did it. But let’s not buy into the lie that “science then” used to teach that the earth was flat, because it never did.
Even though it isn’t a “scientific book,” the Bible does contain scientific facts.
All twelve of them. Whoop-de-doo.
I wonder if he really believes what he writes/says? Or is he just another “shepherd” fleecing his flock with his books, DVDs, courses and lectures? As recent new stories have shown, there is a lot of tax-exempt money to make in that arena.
“We have calculated the number of stars: 10^22-10^24 stars”
Ah, but only in the observable universe. God can probably observe even things outside his light-cone! That’s just how cool he is.
This article makes a compelling case that the Bible is definitely talking about a flat Earth:
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/febible.htm
Or another thought for the moron nm: Why don’t you cease and desist from trying to suggest that I wrote something that I most certainly did not? Fucktard.
I’ve known your elementary school “revelations” since I was in elementary school, drooling idiot.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
LMAO
Ray Comfort just posted this:
Rando said… So Ray, Are you going to correct your error that “science was ignorant of the subject of atoms prior to the New Testament” or are you going to continue to pass out those tracts with such a blatant error? I neglected to add in my previous post that, we got the word “atom” from Democritus.”
Rando, I have done some research and you are right. Good one. I have made the correction on the site, and have contacted our printer to have the tract changed to include the sentence: “SCIENCE THEN: Science was mostly ignorant on the subject” (I added the word “mostly.” Thanks for your input.
Well, I guess that’s more than I was expecting him to do.
The Flat-Earth Bible explains Biblical cosmology: the Earth is flat and the sky is an inverted bowl.
Predicting Modern Science: Epicurus vs. Mohammed by Richard Carrier: Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things is remarkably successful.
PZ, Would you invite Ray DisComfort to your university for an open-air debate?
Ray Comfort at University of Nevada Part 1
Ray Comfort at University of Nevada Part 2
Holy crap. That blog is a mess! And nothing screams “failed vitamin salesman” like a photo of Ray Comfort.
I think that post just about summed it up for me… I sometimes wonder what it would be like to live in a ready made fantasy land…
“But, yes.. I know I’m…a tool ”
There, even more concise.
Hey Ray, “Science then” was actually religion after the Christian mobs killed Hypatia and the library of Alexandria was burned.
I just read this aloud to my thesis supervisor. He laughed out loud, then stopped abruptly and asked: “It’s a joke, right?”
Which in turn contradicts all those places in the Old Testament that explicitly mention the four corners of the Earth. Now, it doesn’t have to be a Chinese-style square, it might be a tetrahedron, but a circle does not have four courners…
I just read this aloud to my thesis supervisor. He laughed out loud, then stopped abruptly and asked: “It’s a joke, right?”
Which in turn contradicts all those places in the Old Testament that explicitly mention the four corners of the Earth. Now, it doesn’t have to be a Chinese-style square, it might be a tetrahedron, but a circle does not have four courners…
Glen, you wrote: believing Xians and Jews, with both the Bible (as well as pre-Biblical manuscripts) and their “divine guidance” (Holy Spirit, etc.), were never once able to come to the same conclusions that Greeks and others using mere rationality and empirical data came to understand. And you referred specifically to the earth being spherical. I pointed out that Christians and Jews (oops, sorry, I see that I referred to Christians and Muslims — I should have included Jews too) even of some of the scripture-believeingest times in history, were indeed able to come to the same conclusions as the Greeks and others, because they didn’t limit themselves to Bible-belief but were perfectly happy to use rationality and empirical data as well. If you learned that in elementary school, your original post certainly doesn’t reflect it. Sorry if pointing that out makes me a moron.
#72: That was an awesome link. Thanks. I love apocryphal books.
Yes, dishonest jerk, you did point that out, suggesting that I had taken another position. You are completely unable to come up with any evidence that I did, so you’re weaseling around with what I did write to try to back up your dishonesty and fuckwit comments.
Do you think, dimwit, that I included the information I did in order to indicate the colossally stupid conclusion that you came to in your addled little brain? The entire point was that revelation didn’t give Xians and Jews any of the information that Comfort claims, and you’re prattling stupidly on about something that never came up.
I am more than a little aware of the Xian, Jewish, and Muslim knowledge about the world, and even a proto-scientific way of dealing with it, that they got from the Greeks, primarily. That is what one learns when one studies Aquinas and other medieval thinkers. That, however, was not the issue, and it is time that you learn to read properly, regardless of which side you favor.
IOW, STFU until after you know more, and can deal with what is actually written instead of what you project onto others in your abysmal lack of knowledge.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
OK, Glen. When you wrote, “believing Xians and Jews, with both the Bible (as well as pre-Biblical manuscripts) and their ‘divine guidance’ (Holy Spirit, etc.), were never once able to come to the same conclusions that Greeks and others using mere rationality and empirical data came to understand” you didn’t actually mean that Christians and Jews never came to those conclusions, you merely meant that they weren’t the very first to reach those conclusions. Fine. Let’s agree that Comfort is an idiot, and agree to disagree about whether my quoting your words is dishonest or demonstrates my abysmal lack of knowledge and about whether you need to learn to write more clearly.
I enjoyed reading Koestler’s “The Sleepwalkers”, which in the first few chapters has a terrific discussion of early celestial concepts, and the evolution of the theories of the physical relationship of the sky to the earth. I recommend it highly for those interested.
Why are Bible people so obsessed with science?
If they are so concerned with being scientific, there is something sensible they can do anytime they like (like today! right now!): REJECT THE FRIGGING BIBLE!
Christ on a cracker, when will they give up!
CalGeorge (#87) said,
I suspect you already know the answer, but I’ll state it for everyone else: Because they’re so committed to the idea that their religion is legitimate that everything else must somehow conform to it.
On a similar note, theists tend to insist their faith is rational, but when they make their case, a host of irrational assumptions come out (ex. Keith Ward), but I’d be interested if there were any honestly rational arguments.
Ultimately, though, these freaky things happen when you try to bend reality.
Ray Comfort said – “I added the word “mostly.”
Who does Ray think he is – Ford Prefect? “Mostly harmless”!
Gonna miss you over there, Rando! You and David W. Irish put up some great material that the fundies there will completely ignore.
I was thoroughly impressed with David Irish’s comment. You could hear the crickets after his post…Ray Comfort is a lie-spreading jackass.
The earth is a cube – a TIMECUBE!
Ray apparently thinks that lactation is a miracle:
http://sciencethegapfiller.blogspot.com/2008/01/god-to-ray-i-make-rocky-road.html
Wait: he blames blood-letting on “SCIENCE THEN”? After the (bubonic) Plague of Justinian in 541-542 CE, Justinian declared Greek and Roman medicine to be heresy, and the church pretty much came to dominate medicine, with the church-approved practice of bleeding being taught by monks!
This illustrates the dishonesty of ridiculing “SCIENCE THEN”: for much of the period he’s writing about, religion had the whip hand. If people believed strange and dangerous things, it certainly wasn’t because there was too much godless science!
Well, well, well, my comment didn’t lactate over there. I guess I didn’t eat enough of hyperdork Ray’s sacred banana.
Look at the comments. It’s a wonder these twits even know how to reproduce themselves.
I think Ray has finally proven evolution can be a bad thing. Lets face it, if we had not of evolved to the point where we no longer have to keep constant focus on the our surroundings, things would be much different. Anything that is as so totally clueless of the world around itself would have been somethings lunch a long time ago.
A circle is not a sphere, although translation issues do raise their ugly heads here.
Not really, Hebrew for “circle” – gh – is not the same as the word for “sphere” – rwd. In fact Isaiah uses the word for sphere in 22:18 (usually translated as “ball”) which would invalidate any contention that the word in 40:22 means anything but circle… as in “the circle of the oceans” which was a very common cosmology of the era.
How many stars? 10^22-10^24 stars? I think you missed one. What about that one, over there? The little blue one behind the red one? Look where I’m pointing!
I have seen my brain, in a cat-scan.
I scanned in some of the slices from the photo negative of it, and used to use one of them as my web avatar on various sites.
So yeah, I’ve seen my brain, and I can show it to you.
Good job to those of you who had the stomach to slog it out on Ray’s blah-g. I couldn’t do it. Perhaps I don’t have much of a sense of humour, but I don’t find this sort of wilful deceit and ignorance amusing or entertaining.
This stuff makes my blood boil. I’ve a stack of snapped pencils on my desk, and even a few moments spent on this shit makes me surly and cranky with my coworkers for hours. I fantasise about choking these people until they finally see the light (or never see any light again; either is fine with me.)
I spent my youth poring over Owl and National Geographic, The Sciences, Discover, and Scientific American. My parents, though religious and fairly ill-disposed to my theological precociousness, took me on vacations to exotic locales where we’d spent hours looking at orchids and spiders and sea urchins and eels and parrot fish. I’d go to school armed with shells and photographs and National Geographic maps, where my matronly elementary teachers were more than happy to give me fifteen minutes of class time to happily chatter away about snorkelling in Hanauma Bay and silverswords on the slopes of Haleakalā (my ‘punishment’ for missing two weeks’ classes, in a Catholic school, no less! God bless you, Mmes. Hanslik, Drinkwater, and Kaluzniak!)
I took every science class I could in high school, and in university when I wasn’t in class, I spent the vast majority of my time in the campus pub, drinking coffee and smoking, and discussing everything under the sun with friends, friends of friends, and perfect strangers, just so I could be exposed to as much stuff as possible.
And I sure as hell didn’t do all of this so that a bunch of fucking semi-literate pillars of shit could spend their miserable lives dismantling the results of the efforts of millions of thinkers over the course of history, just so they never have to ask themselves “Is what I’ve been told to believe really true?”
I used to be a reasonable person, a tolerant human-being. On most issues, I tend toward a live-and-let-live attitude, despite my rather argumentative on-line persona. But these disingenous fucks deserve no tolerance. They mock thought while grotesquely parodying it with their clever little jibes, repeated endlessly like a playground game of telephone. They carry out an all-out war on science, while getting bloated and fat on the fruits of it. And I swear, while there is still breath in my body, they will not win.
Phew. Thanks for letting me rant, everybody. I think I should go lie down now.
How can we have a ‘SCIENCE THEN’ when experimental science, i.e. science, began with Galileo? Prior was only conjecture, argument, and hearsay from unsystematic observations. (With a few awe inspiring exceptions such as Eratosthenes.)
*Gives Brownian a standing ovation*
Why would you say that Mary was an adultress? I have a far more likely hypothesis: Mary had sex with Joseph. After all Matthew states that Jesus had brothers and sisters and there is no claim that those were virgin births.
Mary was married to and living with Joseph and had lots of children according to the Bible. Thus I think it is a reasonable inference that Mary “knew” Joseph in the Biblical sense of the word.
Besides the two contradictory nativity stories are myths anyways. Of course Mary might have been sleeping around, but that hypothesis in unneeded to explain her becoming pregnant.
Brownian,
I’m going to have to frame that comment and put it on a wall.
Brownian: Mad as hell; not going to take it anymore.
That was an excellent rant! My goal for the week is to use “semi-literate pillars of shit” at least twice in conversation.
Galileo invented the microscope? Sheesh, it was some Dutch dudes. Galileo didn’t even invent the telescope (a Dutch dude again) although he made it famous.
Look, so many God bloggers are either:
a) incapable of rational thought because of their beliefs
b) con men making money by fleecing the credulous
c) mentally ill
d) lying for Jesus
In any event they cannot be swayed by factual debate. Ask them instead why they publish their tracts/blogs/pamphlets. What motivates them? Question their motivation and expose their replies (or their evasions). A person who cannot adequately explain why they are doing what they are doing or saying is automatically suspect, even by fellow travellers.
In the meantime – Go Brownian!
Galileo…microscope…1609…’nuff said. That guy drives me bonkers and yet, like a train wreck, I cannot look away. Metaphorically speaking of course.
I really think that religion can damage your mind. Of course, brain damage can be hilarious.
HJ
Brownian for a Molly… if he doesn’t have on already.
Brownian, OM | January 22, 2008 5:32 PM
*APPLAUSE* BRAVO!
That was hilarious and nauseating at the same time. I need to see if I can get a copy of that Evidence Bible! Has Ray ever considered going into comedy?
Nice rant, Brownian. Soulful, persuasive, concise, I give it a 9.6! Word!!
Keep breathing!
I notice that Ray is from New Zealand, but it wasn’t until he moved to America that he found people who would listen to his nonsense.
The Evidence Bible is a piece of work. Full of quotes out context from Einstein and Darwin and others, even the old Darwin eye quote out of context is in there. And Kent Hovind is one of his authorities. It’s fun to flip through for some laughs. But the banana is still Ray’s best bit.
A Lurker: I would say Mary was an adulteress “for the Bible tells me so”. According to the story, Mary fell pregnant before she and Joseph ever “came together”(Matthew 1:18). Couldn’t have been his child. His reaction confirms this:
In verse 19 Joseph “her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.” (In more modern versions he “did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.”)
If he was getting some, I don’t think he would’ve been so upset about his betrothed being with child.
If Jesus up in heaven has a sense of humour at all, he would’ve bought an “Out Campaign” scarlet letter t-shirt for his dear mom this past Christmas.
sinned34 said “Gonna miss you over there, Rando! You and David W. Irish put up some great material that the fundies there will completely ignore.
Thanks, sinned34. I hung in there as long as I could. Since I don’t believe in an afterlife, I’m not gonna waste the time I do have seeking out arguments with people that are that willfully ignorant(specifically Doc and Sye TenB). Especially when Ray Comfort gets to moderate.
I don’t want high blood pressure problems before I hit 30 :) Keep up the good fight for as long as you can stomach it!
Ray makes a living selling stuff of this caliber, and out of curiosity I took a gander at the tax forms of Living Waters Publications.
They are filed as a tax-exempt organization with a 990 form since 2003, when they money traffic included nothing but a ∑since
Ooops, bugger, can someone remove that one? I’m using a non-standard keyboard and posted by accident.
Ray’s organization makes a hefty load of cash out of selling this sort of quality literature/material.
As far as I gather, Living Waters Publications started in CA as a tax-free organization in 2004, with a meager 300 USD start fund. During 2005 their income reached about 2,615,000 USD, including 1,600,000 USD in grants an gifts. During that year they sold 840,000 USD worth of paraphernalia. That’s about 40,000 Evidence Bibles, or a whole lot of tracts.
I’ve never gone through 990 forms before and aren’t even American so I’m not sure if I’m reading these right… I’m not even sure why I’m doing this! Idle hands are etcetc…
Oh, you can laugh now. But did you see what Woody Allen did with bananas? Did you? My heavens! Even Howard Cosell was in on it.
PZ wrote: “Now if God had said, “David, you’re going to have as many kids as there are stars in the universe, which I happen to know is 110338764987014250551004,” then maybe he’d have a case. Although then we could probably charge god with lying to David.”
With that many kids, I would first charge god with being a total prick to David’s wife(s).
(I’ve been waiting all day to write that, but I was traveling cross-country!)
PZ, you said,
“If you find places where science has changed our ideas about the world, that is a case of science working as it should — it is not a reason to reject it.”
Go to the head of the class. Oh, you are at the head of the class.
THE BIBLE: A fetus is not a baby. SCIENCE NOW: A fetus is not a baby. SCIENCE THEN: A fetus is not a baby. RELIGIOUS BABIES NOW: Waaaah!
Brownian, Masterful post. You even used the correct diacritical on the last “a” of Haleakala. I’m impressed.
oh, man, this should be fun.
i’ve been posting in the comments there for a week or two. taking it slow, and picking points to argue carefully. trying to stick to religious rhetoric. more fun that way.
be warned, the comments are screened. it won’t let through links or curse words. though the only comment of mine that’s never gone through, oddly, was a verse from the bible. the words of jesus, even.
Admittedly, there are scientific errors (or at least really, really loose approximations, like the pi example) in the Bible, but some of these–
— are more attributable to English translation than to the biblical originals. Lev 11:20-23 and Deut 14:7 are valid examples (though one could retort that if an insect has six legs, it has four legs too, nyuk nyuk), but the translation of se‘irim as “satyrs” or “goat demons” is debatable, but the AV/KJV translation of tsif‘onim as “cockatrices” is certainly wrong (should be “adders”) as is the AV/KJV translation of re’emim as “unicorns” (should be “[wild] oxen”). The biblical writers’ understanding of science was undoubtedly primitive, and even lagged behind their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia (though those cultures, too, generally pictured the earth as a flat disc covered by a dome), but you can’t really blame the biblical writers for the wild imaginations of later translators.
craig reports that he has a picture of his brain. Lucky man. I never got the pix from mine.
Some years ago it was deemed advisable for me to get a cranial scan using NMR. Oops, I mean MRI: mustn’t use a name that includes “nuclear” if you don’t want to pay the doctor to give the patients elementary science lessons. Anyway, I got a written report headed
MR SCAN
Nice friendly name, that. Is Mr Scan something like Mr Coffee? (Not, I hope, like Mr Coffee-Nerves, who used to advertise Postum — how many here are old enough to remember that?)
Anyway, the report duly listed the completely negative findings.
So, using modern technology, I share this distinction with Dizzy Dean: They scanned my head and didn’t find anything.
Hi all,
I just wanted to say,what we do here when we comment on all those blog liars,the mentally ill religious crowd,creationists in short….is really flogging a dead horse,isnt it?
Yes,these people are obviously insane in a clinical sense,but bashing their insane utterings time and time again gets really tiring…….
Why give a guy like this Ray fellow so much attention? Lets call him batshit insane,and move on….
My 2 cents…
Chris
Christopher, you touched on something that’s baffled me ever since I came across the wierdly classical-sounding “satyrs” in the KJV. What exactly are “se’irim”?
I fear for you PZ, I really do.
I am afraid my employer might sue you for pointing an emplyoee of theirs to a website that so clearly lowers its readers IQs? I fear I must be at least a little less productive after reading that drivel.
I’ll note that sitting here either fuming or laughing or both at yet another display of fundie nonsense is all well and good, but accomplishes nothing. If anyone here really wants to help put the brakes on this alliance of inbred yahoos, con-men and psueudo-intellectual bottom-feeders, then steal from their playbook. Anyone here ever try running for their local school board? Change from the bottom up.
And I don’t mean that in any kind of accusatory or self-righteous way. I really do hope that someone here really has tried it or is willing to try.
“So, once again the theologians are sitting there. Not surprising, since they have, at one time or another, occupied every pile of rocks you might want to point to.”
Anyone here ever try running for their local school board? Change from the bottom up.
Yeah. No time for complacency.
I’ve been reading through the Alberta Education website looking at the curriculum requirements. Even the Catholic School Board requires that the students understand “adaptation and change” in Biology. I’ll do a little more digging and send some emails to find out who is responsible for curriculum decisions. I did note that parents can exempt their children from the human sexuality component of Career And Life Management (C.A.L.M.), a mandatory course for high school students that teaches how to put on condoms and balance checkbooks. Since it’s been nearly seventeen years since I’ve taken that course, I should make sure they’re not doing anything stupid like abstinence-only sex ed (which I really don’t think would fly here).
I don’t think education is under threat here (other than through poor funding), but better to stop any leaks before they start than have to call a plumber after the pipes burst.
“I did note that parents can exempt their children from the human sexuality component of Career And Life Management (C.A.L.M.), a mandatory course for high school students that teaches how to put on condoms and balance checkbooks.”
I wonder how many parents will opt their children out of the ID sections of their biology classes? Fair’s fair.
I wonder how many parents will opt their children out of the ID sections of their biology classes? Fair’s fair.
Heh. A friend of mine, an atheist who leans toward Taoist agnosticism, went to a Christian community college to finish his high school but kept getting kicked out of class for using profanity. His description was quite funny:
Darren [drops pencil]: Shit!
Instructor: Darren, language!
Darren [realises mistake]: Fuck! Sorry!
Instructor: Darren!
Darren [realises mistake, again]: Oh shit! Sorry! God damn it!
and so on.
After awhile, he realised getting kicked out was probably a good thing.
I was once talking to a “born again” friend who is also somewhat evangelical about how many descendents Abraham has to have before the Apocalypse can happen (i.e. more than there are stars in the sky (see comment 15 above) or more than 10^21). He suggested that it might be “hyperbole”, or a simple exageration.
I then asked what basis was there for thinking the infinitely more difficult “eternal life” was not an exageration? He didn’t have an answer.
Henwli: You got a free Evidence Bible? I had to get one through inter library loan. I’ll have to try that. It was a hoot. And I had read that Comfort got in trouble with the US Treasury Department about the million dollar bill tracts. But then, that would be man’s law, not God’s.
Julia asked:
Literally, “hairy ones.” Some lexicographers go from there to “goats” or “wild goats.” Others go to “goat demons,” which gets us to our too-Hellenic “satyrs.”
This phenomenon occurs in other biblical passages as well, where you can find different translations rendering the same term as “jackal” or “demon,” or a different term as “ostrich” or “night hag.” The jury’s still out, in my estimation. Good arguments can actually be made both ways on several of these debates. We may never really know what the writers had in mind when they used certain terms.
David Marjanović wrote:
There’s pointing out genuine errors, and then there’s picking at nits. I’d wager there are plenty of scientists, even astrophysicists, who refer to that process by which earth’s daily revolution on its axis brings them into a position where they can see the sun as “sunrise,” and that process by which earth’s daily revolution on its axis moves them to a point where they can no longer see the sun as “sunset.” “Four Corners of the Earth” is also the name of a restaurant in Burlington, VT; do you suppose the people who eat there think the world is a flat quadrangle?
Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not at all claiming that every biblical description of the physical world is correct. Ray Comfort notwithstanding, such a claim would prove impossible to sustain. But a kind of “reverse fundamentalism” that rides roughshod over imagery and metaphor, and treats ancient writers as if they were incapable of using picturesque expressions like “the four corners of the earth” without literally believing the earth to have four physical corner angles, doesn’t really accomplish much of value. In the Bible, “the four corners of the earth” (literally “edges” or “wings” or simply “ends,” in the relevant Old Testament passages–all four of them, which is not really an overwhelming number) is just an idiomatic phrase for “as far away as I can imagine in each of the four cardinal directions.”
The mess over at Comfort’s blog has gone on for quite a while now, and after David Irish destroyed each of the points made, Comfort has yet to reply to any of them. I was hoping to see just how convoluted Comfort could get in dancing around the very pointed fact that what he wrote is bullshit with no other purpose than to connect current thought with the hebrew bible. No such luck as of yet. And no surprise. Though, Rando, you did well!
As for my favorite fundie quote: “God’s word never changes, but you have to get a new science textbook every few years.”
And what’s with people asking “why do you guys bother debating these people?”
Really?
We vote in this country. Standing up to ignorant rhetoric is part of the job of a free citizen. If you let nutters sway millions, how do you expect to advance as a culture? Much less get elected to a school board in a country full of either fundamentalist or sympathetic religious followers? Not to mention Comfort and Cameron alone have a large following of devoted lockstep followers. Your apathy only makes sense to you because you arn’t paying attention.
You have to fight the idea at the root. What would the rest of you do, use the sword?