It’s a conspiracy!


Ray Comfort is sure that his new book is selling poorly because of a conspiracy among atheists to give it bad reviews on Amazon.

But he said he’s sure his book sales have been affected because of the negative reviews, “because people purchase upon other people’s opinions.”

Has he considered that the book might just be awful? No, apparently not.

Still, he said, the book can’t be too bad.

Comfort said the strong opposition easily is explained.

“I simply expose atheistic evolution for the unscientific fairy tale that it is, and I do it with common logic. I ask questions about where the female came from for each species. Every male dog, cat, horse, elephant, giraffe, fish and bird had to have coincidentally evolved with a female alongside it (over billions of years) with fully evolved compatible reproductive parts and a desire to mate, otherwise the species couldn’t keep going. Evolution has no explanation for the female for every species in creation,” he said.

I know Ray is rather stupid, but who knew he could be that stupid. This has been explained to him multiple times: evolution does explain this stuff trivially. Populations evolve, not individuals, and male and female elephants evolved from populations of pre-elephants that contained males and females. Species do not arise from single new mutant males that then have to find a corresponding mutant female — they arise by the diffusion of variation through a whole population, male and female.

Rather than a conspiracy of atheists falsely downrating his book, there is a simpler explanation for his lousy sales: it’s a piece of crap written by an incompetent and idiot, and his complaint just confirms that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Comments

  1. Tulse says

    Note the not-so-subtle sexism of “Evolution has no explanation for the female for every species” — as if males were the default.

  2. Rieux says

    All of that is well and good–I’m sure the book is as terrible as Comfort’s illogic–but I would be surprised if the huge numbers of horrible online reviews didn’t have some impact on the book’s Amazon sales numbers.

    Which is one of the nice perks of posting horrible online reviews of bad books, isn’t it?

  3. Matt says

    How is it that Comfort is so certain that males would be first? Especially since if anything, asexual organisms more closely resemble females and maleness is what evolved to allow for sexual reproduction. It never ceases to amaze me the limitless nature of creationist stupidity.

  4. says

    It embarrasses even creationists, apparently.

    Which is a considerable achievement.

    While slightly less embarrassing, I think Expelled suffered for many of the same reasons, in that it was already embarrassing even before the creationists saw it.

    Glen D
    http://tinyurl.com/6mb592

  5. says

    I couldn’t help notice that this article is from World Net Daily, the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News of the far, far, far, far right. Some of their writers on there make the late Ruhollah Khomeini look like a bleeding heart liberal.

    Does anyone else remember their little gem which blamed the suicide of a very disturbed teenager with a whole lot of problems sadly ignored by his family on Richard Dawkins and his “atheist” professors, claiming that a small college in rural New York was some sort of atheist nexus?

    http://worldofweirdthings.com/2008/11/25/blame-it-on-dawkins/

    Yeah, the same guys are writing this conspiracy theory as well…

  6. Kevpod says

    You’ve cited some preposterous assertions in the past, but this one takes it to new depths of absurdity.

    This stuff is formulated for and marketed to rubes with no standards. It’s resistant to rational argumentation because it has no basis in reality.

  7. Marc says

    Banana man is not happy, first the offer to debate Dawkins and then this?

    No doubt, it really is a conspiracy.

  8. brotherZacharias says

    …erm, actually, no. … Sorry folks.

    In fact, there is a conspiracy. We, the Illuminati, in cahoots with a super-secret MIT Kabbalistic knitting collective have been dissing Comfort’s books and surreptitiously redirecting his mail.

    I’m not sure how he found us out, though his angelic super-powers may have had something to do with it. In any case, now that he’s on to us, we may have to resort to plan B.

    [play dramatic sound here]

    I’m now off to check on the shrieking eels!

  9. David Harper says

    I’m puzzled by the Amazon page for this book. Right at the top, beneath the title and author’s name, it says

    ***** 1 customer review

    but further down the page, under the heading “Product details”, it says

    104 Reviews
    5 star: (42)
    4 star: (2)
    3 star: (3)
    2 star: (0)
    1 star: (57)
    2.7 out of 5 stars

    and when I follow the link to the reviews, there’s only one, giving it five stars with the comment

    Materialist believe nothing turns into everything there is. 0x0=infinity. This book will receive hate-filled reviews, but the points will not be refuted.

    Something fishy appears to be going on here.

  10. jbjr12 says

    Interesting that when you check the Amazon page only one (ironically positive) review shows up. I wonder what could have happened to the other 106 reviews. Hmmm.

  11. Johnny says

    Also, please correct me if I’m wrong, it’s been a long time since I studied developmental biology but is the female not the default sex in mammals? All embryos start off female and it’s not until the Y chromosome kicks in that the foetus starts developing male features.

  12. Guy G says

    From that site:

    “The atheist who wrote the foreword backslid,” Comfort said. “I sent him a copy, and a week later he wrote to me and said that he was no longer an atheist.”

    I wonder what he was. A gibbering mess, no doubt

    I’m sure that many atheists are negatively reviewing a book that they haven’t read. Of course “haven’t read” is a rather misleading statement, given the repetitiveness of Mr Comfort’s arguments.
    In a way it seems like a bad thing – I wouldn’t personally go and review anything until I’d read it – but I do find it impossible to muster any sympathy for such an unashamed moron.

    Guy

    P.S. Does anyone have any recommendations (preferably online and nothing too heavy) for how sexual reproduction is thought to have evolved?

  13. says

    Tulse

    Isn’t it a case that females are a “default” and males are simply due to an extra gene? [trying to remember biology courses from 10 years ago…]

  14. Bob says

    So far, still only one review.

    Come one people, we have to work together here! Lets prove Ray right and create a conspiracy of atheists to give him bad reviews!

  15. Max says

    Who knew? Come on, this is the guy who thought the cultivated banana was proof of God (which I am given to understand is still in his book). This is the guy whose compatriot brought us the “crocoduck.”

    That being said I find your rebuttal rather weak. Yes, Ray is wrong about about the level at which evolution is measured. But the protest is the inability to grasp how sex itself could have evolved. Being only aware of the complicated plumbing we have developed for the purpose of procreation, it is natural for lay persons to wonder (and rubes like Ray to ponder slack-jawed) at how this differentiation from asexual reproduction could have occurred.

  16. Jere says

    Comfort reminds me of the moon hoax conspiracy theorists who can’t figure out why Apollo photos contain no stars so they assume it must be a hoax instead of asking someone who might know.

  17. says

    Ok, I have read only half a page of the free preview and the stupid is already burning me. He marvels about how “miraculous” it is that the composition of the atmosphere happens to be the precisely the one we need to breathe. Why am I doing this to myself?

  18. says

    Isn’t it a case that females are a “default” and males are simply due to an extra gene?

    Actually if you take a look at the Y chromosome and compare it to the normal X chromosome, it looks like a tiny and shriveled version of the X and packs less genetic data. So the current theory is that females were the default and somewhere along the line, males evolved from a mutation in the X chromosome that turned it into a Y.

    Of course they’re also newer additions as there were no sex chromosomes in the first animals. That we know of. Oh and they reproduced asexually or were hermaphrodites. I wonder if Banana Man has heard of either of these methods of reproduction…

  19. says

    Here I am, just an uneducated Systems Analyst, and I can find things like “Aromatase Inhibitors Block Natural Sex Change and Induce Male Function in the Protandrous Black Porgy, Acanthopagrus schlegeli Bleeker: Possible Mechanism of Natural Sex Change” (http://www.biolreprod.org/cgi/content/full/66/6/1749) and, um, hundreds of articles like this, that show that sex is a rather fluid property.

    Ray can simply not be this stupid. He’s just a simple liar.

    Regards,

    David

  20. says

    and has argued against atheism at Yale University

    Wait. Are we sure he actually debated at Yale University as in, in an official event? Or did he just street preacher soap box “debate” in the commons on campus?

    I can find plenty of place pointing to the “fact” he spoke at Yale but nothing about in what capacity.

    Anyone have a link for this?

  21. says

    I’m quite delighted an the notion that reviewing books on Amazon actually makes a difference.

    Similarly, all those people who submit comments to newspaper editorials online when the writers are creationists might after all really have some impact on confused readers? Here is a good example of that.

  22. says

    From Comfort’s book, page 2:

    It was also an amazing coincidence that gravity existed at the time of their evolution. Without it, the first man and his first mate would have spun off into the infinitude of space. But for some reason it evolved and matured at just the right time to keep their feet firmly planted on the earth, which also evolved.

    Ok, I quit. I need my head and I need my desk.

  23. Sniper says

    Okay, my science education stopped in high school, but isn’t he just assuming that male organisms are the default and that nothing short of divine intervention would have created (gasp) two genders? And aren’t there a number of creatures who reproduce in less complicated ways, hinting that reproduction is a developmental process?

    Ah, what do I know? I majored in literature.

  24. Klokwurk says

    My guess is that he convinced Amazon to remove all reviews that were made on accounts that didn’t buy his book. Which would suggest that only one person who bought the book actually reviewed it.

  25. Tulse says

    Actually, XY for males is only true in mammals and some insects — there are a variety of other ways that sex is determined in other organisms (see, for example, this simple summary). Notably, alligators and some lizards and turtles have their sex determined purely by the temperature at which they were incubated — in other words, as I understand it, there are no sex-specific chromosomes in these animals (I’m sure some experts here can elaborate on this).

  26. Scote says

    “When PZ announced this book last month, there were hundreds of reviews on the site, what has happened? Surely Amazon aren’t in the habit of bowing to pressure from authors to delete non-complimentary reviews? Something stinks here.”

    And yet that seems to be exactly what happened. They seem to have agreed to wipe the slate clean. They tried to do that with the video Game “spore,” but had to reinstate the reviews after a public outcry. Amazon never did admit they deliberately wiped the Spore reviews.

    However, the tags like “Bananaman” and “Cognative Dissonance” remain :-)

  27. Johnny says

    Scote @35
    However, the tags like “Bananaman” and “Cognative Dissonance” remain :-)

    I especially like breathtaking inanity and idealogical (sic) diarrhoea. ;)

  28. Cruithne says

    What I find amazing is that everyone’s legs are exactly the right length to reach the ground.

  29. George says

    While it is often clear that activist creationists are lying with full knowledge of their lies. More so, they have even crafted their lies carefully to muster the greatest confusion in less informed people.

    However, I cannot help but think that Ray is simply as stupid as he comes across and he actually believes what he says – bananas and all.

    Of course, then I realize that this may well be just a matter of acting. And he did team up with that actor from a goofy sitcom that no one can remember.

    Stupidity: real or conjured – that is the question.

  30. says

    Oh I’m pretty sure that you can have negative reviews removed if you complain to Amazon that they aren’t actually reviews by people that read the book.

    I know George Schollenberger did it with his book a while back, though it seems there is a new batch of reviews up there.

  31. Whateverman says

    Though I’m not above such fallibility myself, I’m consistently amazed by people who claim to have great faith in the validity of their religion, while also having great faith in their own perception. It’s as if “faith” is the thing being worshiped, rather than God…

  32. Silver Fox says

    “The human brain evolved because the apes developed better spit”

    What does that mean?

  33. George says

    On a complete aside, is it all interesting that he places the mystery on the females – where did they come from. I think he has this all wrong.

    It is the females the likely had the initial variations, and the less varied males that were more than willing to mate. This is just so obvious since males, even today, are always willing to mate…

    And the evidence supports this, the mother of all modern humans existed about 200,000 years ago, but the father came along only about 50,000 years ago. See females first is clearly correct.

    okay enough silliness.

  34. shyster says

    Thank FSM that the oceans evolved in time to support all of the fish.
    If they had not the fish would have squirmed in the sand, died with useless gills and, rotting in the sun, they would have stunk up the whole planet.
    Since coincidence on that scale is not possible, FSM will take full credit for making it happen and will touch and molest you with his noodly all-creating arms (or are they legs? Whatever.)

  35. gman says

    It’s not a conspiracy; it’s just bad marketing.

    If I were Comfort, I’d include a free banana with every copy.

  36. Steve_C says

    That’s how Ray makes his money. Lying to the sheep. He could also be really dumb and delusional. We’ve seen plenty of functional people come on here and reason and logic are completely over their heads. I don’t know how they survive but the disconnect to reality does seem to have little effect on their everyday lives.

    But I’m betting he’s just a con man. Much like Jesus was if he actually existed.

  37. Ktesibios says

    osted by: Jere | March 5, 2009 12:10 PM
    Comfort reminds me of the moon hoax conspiracy theorists who can’t figure out why Apollo photos contain no stars so they assume it must be a hoax instead of asking someone who might know.

    Actually, this and all the other “anomalies” that HB twinkies like to claim as their “smoking guns” have been explained countless times by people who really do know what they’re talking about- to such an extent that even a semi-interested layman like myself can understand them and explain them to others. The HBers just blithely ignore this and repeat the same discredited claims over and over again.

    This behavior is common to pretty much all paranoid conspiracy theorists, who in turn share a set of mental failings with cretinists. No matter how many times a specious claim is refuted, demolished, destroyed, disembowelled, crushed, smashed, disintegrated and vaporized, you can count on its repeated reappearance in conspiracist discourse.

    It’s like a Dracula movie. No matter how thoroughly the Count was dustified in the last flick, there’s always someone stupid enough to come along and pull the stake out just in time for the next picture.

    What incentive do people who, like Comfort or, say, Alex Jones, who make a business of peddling falsehoods, have to abandon or correct claims that are proven to be unjustified or just plain false? After all, there’s sure to be a fresh crop of rubes who, in the immortal words of Honest John Barlow, “won’t know enough to do any smart checking”.

  38. Sven DiMilo says

    Sexual reproduction is ancestal for animals, and its origin lies far, far back in the phylogeny of eukaryotic organisms. As usual, ‘kipedia is as good a starting place as any.

    Yes, it’s true that in all crocodilians, almost all turtles, and many lizards sex is determined by incubation temperature, and that a number of fishes can change sex (sometimes back and forth). In birds, there are sex chromosomes but two identical ones make males, whereas two different ones make females (the opposite system to mammals). Invertebrates have just about any system you can think of, and many you can’t. Sex determination is surprisingly plastic evolutionarily.

  39. says

    Um…

    It’s a Cthonic sort of stupid. It’s the great Island of R’lyeh of stupid, with great hulking cyclopean stones of idiocy arranged in angles that can’t exist in mere 3D space. Your eyes slide off of it, you can focus on it, corridors have multiple vanishing points of intellect. Waves of ignorant smug lap up against its fractal shores, but never erode the beach.

    Truly, it is foolishness man was not meant to know, and it only reinforces the horrifying fact that there exist forces in the universe stupider than any mere human comprehension.

  40. Tim says

    Mr. Comfort should realize that biology, while far from 100%, is too well known to hide a fairy story in. The origins of rough sphere of spacetime we call the universe are far enough away, and a civilization/being with access to a ludicrous amount of energy could start a new universe, which would then evolve naturally.

  41. H-Bob says

    George (#38): I am always amused watching children just learning to walk and the way they tentatively stretch out their legs, as though they’re not sure their foot will reach the ground !

    The creationists’ arguments (similar to those of the climate change/global warming deniers) are akin to saying that Shaq dunking a basketball disproves gravity !

  42. pifflePrattle says

    Comfort is just a lying toerag. He might not even believe the shit he spews. It works. Even if the sales for this book tank, and according to the same news? source on the 26th of February, his screed had knocked the God Delusion from the number one spot on Amazon, he is still making plenty from his propaganda ministry. Remember his shtick is for the fundietards. If they buy it he is happy.

    If there is a conspiracy anywhere it is that of the presuppositionalists. In times of hardship with perhaps 20% of the US population primed to receive their message, merely being right is not enough to win. They will say anything that wins them the support of that 20%, and they are ruthless.

  43. Telefonista! says

    I just called Amazon to ask about the deleted reviews. (You might considering doing the same thing.) They claimed that the reviews were deleted due to technical difficulties and will be back online in several hours.

    Yah, right.

  44. DaveL says

    I assume Mr. Comfort sees no character of conspiracy in the fact his only two “editorial” reviews come from Ken Ham and R.C. Sproul?

  45. Jeff F says

    #3: it’s Christian thinking. A male would obviously need a sky fairy to make a female from his rib.

  46. Richard Wolford says

    So then, Ray is arguing from the anthropic principle? Would somebody please tell Ray that the rest of the Universe doesn’t give a flying fuck about him or any of us? How does one go about coining a new term? I’d like to coin “Wolford’s Law”, which states that the first person in a debate to resort to the anthropic principle is assumed to have lost the debate. Maybe “law” isn’t such a good word.

    Ray’s not even wrong.

  47. Feynmaniac says

    I ask questions about where the female came from for each species. Every male dog, cat, horse, elephant, giraffe, fish and bird had to have coincidentally evolved with a female alongside it (over billions of years) with fully evolved compatible reproductive parts and a desire to mate, otherwise the species couldn’t keep going.

    I am reading this at the library and am fighting the urge to roll on the ground laughing. Comfort is completely clueless. He is the village idiot of the internet.

    I’ll give him credit for one thing though. He allows critical comments on his blog, something almost unheard of for religious sites. His rules however still seem arbitrary:

    Cuss words (mild or abbrev.), blasphemy, URL’s, incivility, or failure to give the name ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’ capitals, will be deleted.

  48. Arnold Facepalmer says

    I think this has been touched upon by other commenters but I remember lloking at the Amazon weeks a few weeks ago and there were many more than 4 reviews at that time (mostly 1-star), yet Ray calls Conspiracy. Something smells here.

  49. says

    Ray Comfort is a proven bullshit artist: How do I know? Take a look at the links I posted in the current post of his blog. I don’t know if it’ll be published, so I’ll just copy and paste the whole thing here. In his little brainless blog post, Ray replies to a commentator:

    Nate…enlighten me then. Explain why and when females evolved alongside every species.

    My reply:
    —–
    Sexual evolution has already been explained to you. Yet you’re the one who wrote a book with a title that says that you can lead an atheist to evidence but you can’t make him think?

    Try doing some reading, starting with the comments posted to your own blog.

    Maybe you’d better read what this commentator has to say:

    Time and time again, you make these stupid pronouncements that show you have no understanding of what evolution actually is or what it predicts. Every time you do, you get schooled by dozens of people. Yet, you continue to repeat the behaviour over and over again.

    The inescapable conclusion is either you are a total ignoramus or that you are a professional troll. I’m undecided as to which is more probable.

    And you’ve just done it again.

  50. ArchangelChuck says

    #30: I wonder what kind of predators gravity has to contend with… Eep! Giant space lion!

  51. jay says

    the Weekly World News of the far, far, far, far right.

    The Weekly World News (alas, gone from us now) was most assuredly brilliant tongue-in-cheek even though they marketed it as a tabloid.

    Ex. Atlantic ocean was drained for service one weekend (by a pool service contractor) and other nations were really pissed that US did not tell them in advance. An article on GWB that claimed his personal library consisted of the Bible and ‘My Pet Goat’ etc etc.

  52. bunnycatch3r says

    Somebody (in an earlier pharyngula) used Comfort’s line of reasoning by postulating how miraculous it is that our legs are just the right length to reach the ground. That couldn’t have happened by mere chance!

  53. says

    Ray Comfort (as quoted by PZ):

    Evolution has no explanation for the female for every species in creation…

    Actually Ray’s banana is a good example of why sex probably evolved:

    http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2009/03/pretending-to-think-like-ray-comfort.html

    The common banana Ray used in his old video was cultivated and made seedless. His banana example cannot sexually reproduce. It’s a clone. Those bananas are grown from offshoots of the parent plant rather than through the process of sex and fertilization that might otherwise take place.

    One result of that is that the banana’s genetic information hasn’t changed as much as it could have if it were mixing its genes up sexually and evolving that way. The problem is that the world of plant diseases has evolved and changed and our commercial bananas were in danger because they haven’t kept up. However, genetic engineering may come to the rescue…

  54. ice9 says

    Actually (insert “stopped clock” cliche here) Ray is correct. There was a conspiracy. Jesus’ General wrote a fawning fake review–really a hilarious satirical eye-poke–and Amazon ran it for quite a while as the “pro” review. Lots of our folk clocked in and punched it up so it would stay there. (needless to say, lots of stump-dumb pro-comfort people bought it and thumbs-upped it too). Several posts urged readers of the blogs to keep it going. That seems like a conspiracy to me. A conspiracy to be awesome, sure, but still a conspiracy. That may also be why the reviews were deleted.

    hmmm…I may have to revisit the banana assertion. Maybe Ray has a point after all! A vast conspiracy! I like it!

    ice

  55. Sastra says

    Comfort’s view that the sexes must have evolved along different paths is consistent with the Christian view of God as a male.

    A male? How and why is God a male? It does not reproduce sexually, and would have no need to be able to reproduce sexually. It has no body. It has no sex organs. It has no hormones. It has no chromosomes. There is no ‘female’ counterpart. And yet theists have no problem agreeing with all of this, and then calling God a “He.”

    Ask them if it is a metaphor — one which could be replaced with “She” — and they usually say no. God is male. But not male quite in the regular way.

    No kidding. They model God on human images, treat God exactly like they would a human Father, and then throw in a bunch of transcendent characteristics on top of the anthropomorphisms, pretending this doesn’t cause any conflict or problem because it all mysteriously works out somehow. So that’s how they think evolution would work, too.

    Comfort should welcome the negative reviews — and probably does. He’s crying persecution in order to whip up his potential customers. If the negative reviews had not been there, my guess is that he would have put them in himself:

    “One star — as an atheist, I hate everything this book represents, because it violates my worldview which lets me do whatever I want with no consequences.”(Review by ‘Not Comfort’)

  56. says

    “Note the not-so-subtle sexism of “Evolution has no explanation for the female for every species” — as if males were the default.”

    Well, didn’t they come afterward, from man’s rib?

    Yes, Comfort understands human sexuality the only way he knows how – through the lens of his infantile fairy tale.

  57. fairyhedgehog says

    I didn’t think anything could get stupider than his comments about males as the default setting until I read Andres Diplotti’s comment #30 about gravity. This is beyond stupid.

    You can’t actually parody this kind of thing, can you?

  58. Bone Oboe says

    Something about the words “unscientific fairy tale” regarding evolution, coming from Ray Comfort chafes the brains…like beach sand in the nether-places.
    I can’t compose my thoughts on the rest of the brief exerpt up there.

  59. Allen N says

    Oh my!!! I just looked at the 2nd page on Amazon and There is so much wrong in three paragraphs that I think I could build a good weekend symposium on “Why Ray Has His Head Up His Ass.”

    I admit I didn’t really believe Andres @ 30. I was wrong. Comfort is really that fucked up. God created gravity so so Adam and Eve would not fly off into space? That has to be about the stupidest thing I’ve seen in print since the book “Hollow Earth”. (that’s where the flying saucers come from)

    I also noted there are few comments – I suspect amazon is giving in to Ray’s whine.

  60. llewelly says

    Ray Comfort:

    I ask questions about where the female came from for each species. Every male dog, cat, horse, elephant, giraffe, fish and bird had to have coincidentally evolved with a female alongside it (over billions of years) with fully evolved compatible reproductive parts and a desire to mate, otherwise the species couldn’t keep going.

    Does Ray Comfort know that sexual reproduction combines genes from a male and a female?

  61. rudi says

    I was about to type “How strange it must be for Ray to live in a world where everyone is cleverer than he is” but then realised that if he’d be too stupid to notice.

  62. says

    @Sastra(#67): YHWH, the Christian god, does have a female counterpart: Ashera. She was his bride, and they ruled together for a time. As Ashera worship caught on among non-Hebrew peoples, while their Yahwistic cult didn’t, YHWH more or less divorced her and the Hebrew Yahwistic cult abandoned the pantheon entirely, aside from maintaining a tradition of “Household Gods” for a time- guardian spirits over families.

  63. bybelknap says

    @ 37: Mine aren’t. They only go half way to the ground, then half way more, then half way more…

  64. Allen N says

    Warning!! If you have made purchases from Amazon and you look up this book, subsequent visits will result in a long list of more of this drivel for you to consider.

  65. says

    Let’s not forget Parthenogenesis, whereby females produce cloned (genetically identical) offspring without males (found in the animal kingdom among reptiles, amphibians, fish & birds).

    Or maybe they are actually radical lesbian feminist atheist animals with an anti-religious agenda?

  66. Jason R says

    I thought Ray Comfort’s book was a comedy. Its probably not selling well because its misclassified as a serious book.

  67. says

    So Comfort’s assumption is: males come first, females not at all?

    (/Must… resist… obvious… Austim… Powers… reference…)

  68. Allen N says

    Jaycubed:

    Don’t forget the virgin birth by a reef shark in Virginia (seems appropriate, eh?) DNA checks show it was not a case of sperm storage – the mother – Mary – and the offspring – Jesus have the same DNA. The second Coming??

  69. Bone Oboe says

    Oh man! I didn’t see the quote block at #30. Gravity eh? “First man and his first mate”…

    The mate was a mighty sailing man,
    The skipper brave and sure.
    Five passengers set sail that day
    For a three hour tour, a three hour tour.

    The weather started getting rough,
    The tiny ship was tossed,
    If not for the courage of the fearless crew
    The minnow would be lost, the minnow would be lost.
    Hell yeah, lost in the “infinitude” of space. Which brings to mind another old TV show, but I digress.

    Like “Hefalumps” and “Woozles” Ray Comfort is very
    “Confuse-al”
    And as far as “Croco-duck” is concerned, all I can say is “Croco-Stimpy”.
    Now it’s coffee time.

  70. Shane says

    “What I find amazing is that everyone’s legs are exactly the right length to reach the ground.”

    And our arms are just long enough for us to comfortably reach our genitals. Looks like God/Jesus does love us after all.

  71. Peter Hardman says

    1) I picked this book up in a bookshop and put it down after 5 mins…utter drivel
    2) I looked at Amazon last week and there was more than 50 review..mostly negative.
    3) There is something fishy going on…
    4) Don’t forget the loony godsqadders always demand and expect special treatment..hence amazon giving in and deleting all the negative HONEST feedback

  72. says

    What I find amazing is that everyone’s legs are exactly the right length to reach the ground.

    The amazing thing is the ground is exactly far enough away so you don’t have to stretch or bend or float away or climb out of a hole. Isn’t it miraculous how the planet adjusts itself to be just the right distance away?

  73. Silver Fox says

    Chimp @46

    “Evolutionary research — like the research that claimed that the human brain evolved because apes got better spit — is a real “shovel ready” project, in the sense that a lot of folks would like to take a shovel to it.”

    This is from the Egnor letter cited in the top of the thread. What RESEARCH is he talking about?

  74. says

    Ray Comfort believes that males come first because of the sexist ideology that is his starting point. Whether he draws this from society at large, or the Bible in particular, the idea that the ‘male’ represents the species is pervasive in his writings.

    The obvious hilarity of his ‘alternate’ explanation of the origin of the human female eludes him. Maybe we should just tell him that they evolve from male ribs?

  75. hje says

    Rays is just peeved because truthiness impacts his bottom line. He’s been making a major push to get on the airwaves and in press of late. Apparently he wants to be the Rush Limbaugh of the religious wingnuts.

  76. Steve LaBonne says

    Ray doesn’t know the half of what the atheist conspiracy has been up to. Wait till he finds out we’ve been jamming his brainwaves AND contaminating his precious bodily fluids!

  77. says

    I had the most helpful negative review, which got deleted. But I saved a copy and just posted it again. I think that other people who have read the book should do the same.

  78. says

    The first time I heards of Comfort was when someone showed me a copy of one of his previous works that had been pressed into his hands by some jeezus-nut. Seeing that the back-cover blurb was by Kent Hovind told me all I needed to know about the book and its author. The Banana Sketch is just icing on the cake ;-).

  79. says

    OMG, is it too funny that I didn’t understand just how stupid Comfort’s arguement was until you explained it. I mean, I read it twice and didn’t get what his point was. That is so basic a mis-understanding it is blinding!

  80. Nick says

    Dr. Myers, you certainly have a way of drumming up sensationalistic wishful thinking and getting your lemmings to follow along. As the article said, people were clearly planning on how to give bad reviews while making them SEEM genuine even though they were not. I quote:

    ***

    “Mithridates” also commented, “Pro-tip for people reviewing the book: giving it one or five stars makes it painfully obvious that you’re just giving it that number because you feel the author to be on or against your side. To actually make it look like a real review you’re going to want to go with two or four stars.”

    ***

    Is critical reading really that difficult for you all?

  81. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    Nicky my boy, what about the godbots slamming books on evolution without reading them. Either have them stop doing that first, or shut the fuck up.

  82. David says

    The funniest part of the article is that Comfort does not seem to see the blatantly obvious sarcasm in the ***** reviews.

  83. says

    Posted by: Nick | March 5, 2009 1:41 PM

    This is one of those posts about which it is impossible to determine whether the commentor is, indeed, a raving looney, or an adequate parodist.

    Just one thought, should you be serious in objecting to the manipulation of the reviews: it’s called “rat-fucking,” and it is an ancient and honorable profession. In fact, the only reason hat we do is called “blogging” at all is that there is still a strange reluctance in culture to call it “rat-fucking.”

    But rat-fucking it is. The biggest, smartest, orneriest rat-fucking collective EVAR!

  84. Ouchimoo says

    I ask questions about where the female came from for each species.

    Um, according to him and his retard logic, shouldn’t females be coming from ribs?

  85. says

    Yeah, it looks like Ray-O pulled some strings and got all the reviews deleted for his book. Anyone that reviewed it may want to re-submit it. Save a copy to your hard drives in case it “accidentally” happens again.

  86. Mike in Ontario, NY says

    Sorry Atheists, but I KNOW there is a God and we were intelligently designed.
    Long before we invented eyeglasses, look where HE put our ears! Stolen from Benny Hill, incidentally.

  87. Allen N says

    Nick:

    Reading page 2 was about all the critical reading I could handle at one sitting. There is so much wrong with his statements about atmosphere, gravity and the rest, there really is not a lot than can be said that is positive about the book. Do you buy the stuff about god inventing gravity so A & E didn’t become the first star voyagers? Did you read it critically?

  88. Olowkow says

    Anyone know who the author of the forward to his book was? Supposedly an atheist who converted to Comfortism shortly after reading the book.

  89. Andrew says

    Why was I not informed of this conspiracy? I would of loved to get on the Ray Comfort book bashing atheist conspiracy! I guess I should read that weekly Atheist Conspiracy newsletter you automatically get when you become an atheist.

  90. Sven DiMilo says

    Long before we invented eyeglasses, look where HE put our ears! Stolen from Benny Hill, incidentally.

    I’m pretty sure Benny got it from Voltaire.

  91. says

    “Comfortism”! Nice, I like it. It does really sum up a certain ignorant/arrogant creationist way of thinking. And he does seem to have a cult-like group of followers. I’ll have to start spreading the term around.

  92. Just PPlain Cliff says

    @104

    Like the rest of Ray’s book, that too, is apparently fiction.

  93. Tom (UK) says

    This Comfort guy just has to be a Poe. He’s found out how to make good money from Poe-ing and he can keep a stright face better than Edward Current. I have stopped believing he is serious.

  94. Guy Incognito says

    And our arms are just long enough for us to comfortably reach our genitals. Looks like God/Jesus does love us after all.

    If he truly loved us, our necks would…

    Oh never mind.

  95. Elwood Herring says

    Late to the party again!

    I have always assumed that stupidity was like temperature – in that there must be an absolute zero of stupidity beyond which it was impossible to go. After reading this blog for the last few years and coming across such brazen brain-melting bollocks such as

    Every male dog, cat, horse, elephant, giraffe, fish and bird had to have coincidentally evolved with a female alongside it (over billions of years) with fully evolved compatible reproductive parts and a desire to mate, otherwise the species couldn’t keep going. Evolution has no explanation for the female for every species in creation

    simply leaves me gasping for air. There is no absolute zero of stupidity – it really does go to minus infinity, and Comfort is out of sight down that path!

    Next he’ll be saying that trees wrote Shakespeare’s plays and the colour purple is plotting to overthrow his sock drawer. Wow – I just can’t compete, what is he smoking?

  96. Guy Incognito says

    @104: I wouldn’t be surprised if Kirk Cameron wrote the foreword. His wiki page says he used to be an atheist. He also wrote the foreword to one of Comfort’s other books.

  97. says

    Hmmm- I could go for a banana right now… a non-modified banana… and break my teeth on them- cuz god made it for ME. And the monkeys.

  98. Olowkow says

    @112 Doesn’t seem to fit though with his claim that:

    “The atheist who wrote the foreword backslid,” Comfort said. “I sent him a copy, and a week later he wrote to me and said that he was no longer an atheist.”

    I can’t make the “look inside this book” work on Amazon to find out who wrote the foreword.

  99. says

    The problem on Amazon can not be related to “only people who have purchased this book can comment on it”. I was not able to comment on the book as I hadn’t purchased from Amazon (I bought “You Can Lead an Atheist..” at a local bookstore that had to special order it in) so I purchased a second copy – through Amazon.

    If the negative reviews don’t re-appear, Amazon has some serious explaining to do.

    In all fairness to Ray, people aren’t being honest when they select “1 star” for their rating of the book. People aren’t, however, intentionally “lying” by giving it 1 star – Amazon doesn’t give the opportunity to choose no stars.

    I can appreciate it when people try to make arguments for dog but when people (clearly and intentionally) lie to make their case, the book deserves to fail.

  100. says

    If you carve away all the stupid, there’s at least an interesting question vaguely associated with his ramble: why are sexes differentiated in most complex organisms? I can understand the gene-swapping benefit associated with exchange of gametes, but the development of two different sexes seems an unnecessary complication. Is there some idea of the evolutionary pathway along which this development occurred? Since sexual differentiation is almost universal, I’d presume it’s an early development, from eras and in organisms of which we’ve got incomplete fossil records, but do we have any good hypotheses as to how different sexes developed?

  101. says

    t3knomanser #50

    Waves of ignorant smug lap up against its fractal shores, but never erode the beach.

    THAT’s what I was trying to say!

    t3knomanser, you must be a poet.

    Elwood

  102. says

    Looks like my comment got in after all.

    I’m kind of surprised, really.

    Of course, one of the theists over there has to whine about this blog:

    A lot of these phony reviewers are coming from professor PZ Myers’ blog Pharyngula. I won’t link to the blog, though, because it’s incredibly vulgar. Vulgar atheists? Gosh, imagine that…

    And he claims that christians don’t do such a thing.

    Didn’t Jinx get banned from this blog once?

  103. Olowkow says

    @ 118 Thanks. I could not read that through the “copyrighted material” on the cover.

  104. Bad Albert says

    It looks to me as if Comfort’s strategy is to out-stupid all the other creationist morons. He’s up against some pretty stiff competition but seems to be ahead.

  105. BlueIndependent says

    “…I can appreciate it when people try to make arguments for dog but when people (clearly and intentionally) lie to make their case, the book deserves to fail.”

    And I of course agree with that. Problem is though, the right wing publishes so much chum with such abandon that their books inevitably sell well, regardless of how pathetically illogical and contemptuously vitriolic their crap is. Sure some of their books have been found to have had the numbers inflated by selling large quantities of the books to themselves or highly sympathetic organizations who pass them out to their Stepford supporters, but some have certainly sold without such antics.

  106. BlueIndependent says

    “Who’s angry now, Banana Man?”

    This should be the title to a very tauntful song some atheists should put together, post on YouTube, and then seed his websites with the URL. Digg it just for good measure.

  107. Raiko says

    QUITE interesting that Ray Comfort things the female must have evolved after the male and that this is the problem. But I guess anyone who follows the misogynistic crap that is the bible must automatically think in male-first terms and probably doesn’t even notice he’s forgetting any other possibilities.

    “because people purchase upon other people’s opinions.”

    Oh, really, Ray? You wouldn’t believe it, but that IS how books get sales: Those who read it announce their opinions, and if it is good or they enjoyed it, they’ll recommend it. If not, they’ll tell their peers and column-readers to not bother wasting their money and time on it. Reviews don’t only happen on amazon.de and in newspapers – they happen in day-to-day conversation. Nonsensical books apparently don’t get recommended much, unless they can be considered comedy.

  108. Jonathan says

    He would praise god if there were good sales, and he blames atheists for bad sales. Apparently we are on the same level as gods.

  109. says

    Why are the reviews missing? Possible explanation:
    Amazon does not like 1-star reviews. The more 1-star reviews they have, the less people buy the product, and the less money Amazon makes.

  110. says

    There was a contest on Ray’s blog to pick an atheist who’d get his or her entry to be picked as the forward for the book,for which the winner would get a copy of Ray’s book.

    Among the comments about how odd it is to ask someone to write a forward for a book that they’ve never yet seen (the book wasn’t published yet), the winner was picked

  111. tony says

    my wife and I both have legs that reach all the way to the ground, yet my arms reach higher than hers! Does that make me more holy, or something?

  112. Bob L says

    Not surprising Ray thinks this way since whole populations springing from two animals is the only way that stupid flood story makes sense.

  113. says

    That it’s mentioned on wingnut is pretty good evidence that it’s pitched at morons – quotes suggest it may be below average even for wingnut!

  114. Priest says

    In fairness to Ray, there are some negative reviews of his book on Amazon.com from people that openly admit that they have not read his book. It’s fully understood that Ray does not break any new ground, but it’s not entirely right to give the book a bad review without reading it just because we know him to be an ignoramus. There’s other places and forums for that to be done. To say that it’s a conspiracy is absolute lunacy and a result of the persecution complex that fundies have unsurprisingly gotten to and whip out like a loaded Desert Eagle. The reviewers that did not read the book at least openly admitted to not doing so, but the ones that did read the book lambasted it heavily for the horseshit it was.

  115. Brain Hertz says

    I think there may be something to the “atheist conspiracy” thing. Ray Comfort is obviously a plant by atheists designed to make creationists look like total frackin’ morons. Can there be any other explanantion?

    Further reinforced by the fact that “Ray Comfort” is an anagram of “Ram Foot, Cry”

  116. says

    He set up that website where he made many ridiculous claims, he deserves to be mocked in whatever platform others can get.

  117. Ian says

    What I find amazing is that everyone’s legs are exactly the right length to reach the ground.

    OK, that’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a while.

    Thanks.

  118. says

    Of course males came first. It’s in the Bible! Checkmate, atheists!

    But… if men came from dust, then… why is there still dust?

  119. says

    Evolution has no explanation for the female for every species in creation,” he said.

    Nice, Ray. Great example of how the right wing considers the man to be the norm from which the female “deviates.” Wonderful example of downright fucking sexism, Ray.

  120. Christopher says

    WorldNutDaily just proved they’re not journalistic.

    They wrote about a book and its reviews on Amazon. They interviewed the author about it. And in the entire article, nowhere did they mention that the publisher of the book…

    Is WND Books!

    Talk about conflict of interest.

  121. Tristanm says

    I am writing a Amazon review that goes and refutes everything Ray Comfort says in the Amazon book preview paragraph by paragraph. It is incredibly painful, but once it’s done I’ll post the review and then post it here. If my brain doesn’t melt down from the stupid, I hope to get it done soon.

  122. Kemist says

    Actually if you take a look at the Y chromosome and compare it to the normal X chromosome, it looks like a tiny and shriveled version of the X and packs less genetic data. So the current theory is that females were the default and somewhere along the line, males evolved from a mutation in the X chromosome that turned it into a Y.

    Actually, most mammals, except for monotremes (eg., the platypus) and some rodents have the XY/XX system while other species have other sex-determination systems.

    Sexual reproduction evolved as a genetic material exchange system, and as such, its oldest ancestor is the bacterial plasmid. Because it considerably accelerates the rate of adaptation in a species (you’ll see if you allow recombination/crossover in any evolutionary algorithm), it is very much favored by natural selection.

    There is only one known example of species which lost sexual reproduction in the course of its evolution. I don’t remember its name, but I know it’s something marine, and the hypothesis is that the species started when a female of the species somehow duplicated by parthenogenesis, producing a long line of slowly mutating clones.

    In many species, sexual reproduction is much more blurred than in mammals, and is sometimes optional rather than necessary like in our case.

    If you really take a hard long look at what’s out there in the natural world, it’s not very difficult to find intermediates to our complex sophisticated reproduction system and to imagine what how it evolved.

  123. Stephen Sackett says

    A straw man argument peppered with ridicule; really professor can’t you do better than that? Tell me which of your theories depend on there being no God and why attack people who are different than you? It appears that you doubt your position to the point that you are unable to tolerate another. If belief in God is such an inane quality why does it unsettle you? Are you so noble that you want to save people from themselves or are you just preaching to the choir?

  124. George says

    But Kemist,

    That is not from belief in god. That is belief in a false god, of course.

  125. CJO says

    Tell me which of your theories depend on there being no God

    The entire practice of rigorous, empirical study of the natural world depends on there not being the kind of incompetent tinker god that dumbfuck Comfort and his kind pretend to believe in. Are you a Deist?

    and why attack people who are different than you?

    Creationism is an attack on science. Authoritarian scumbags carrying bibles and wrapped in the flag are attacking our civil liberties constantly. If “people who are different” were content to suck up to Sky Fairy in the comfort of their own homes and churches, I highly doubt there would be an issue.

    It appears that you doubt your position to the point that you are unable to tolerate another.

    Uh huh. Strong, vocal, rationally argued opposition to your beliefs means they must be right. Cover your ears, close your eyes, and repeat. It’s still stupid.

    If belief in God is such an inane quality why does it unsettle you?

    It’s utterly inane. But see above regarding who’s attacking who. If nobody were compelled to act on their inane beliefs, I doubt there would be an issue.

    Are you so noble that you want to save people from themselves

    The ranks of the unbelievers are growing, and vocal advocacy is one reason why. We’re tired of knuckling under to you scumbags.

    or are you just preaching to the choir?

    You’re here, aren’t you?

  126. horrabin says

    If belief in God is such an inane quality why does it unsettle you?

    Because widespread, fervent inanity is unsettling? Just a thought.

  127. Kemist says

    But Kemist,

    That is not from belief in god. That is belief in a false god, of course.

    Mmmmm…

    Let’s look a little closer : what about the thread just above this one ?

  128. Sven DiMilo says

    There is only one known example of species which lost sexual reproduction in the course of its evolution.

    You’re probably thinking of the bdelloid rotifers, not a species but a whole class. They’re very cool.

  129. Kemist says

    @Sven : That they are ! I didn’t know they could do that. Hee hee… just when you think humans have done outraging (to some) things that are not “natural” like gene splicing, you find something in nature that’s been doing it regularly it for millions of years.

    Thanks for that link.

  130. says

    Well, the male is indeed the default in all cartoons. Maybe that’s where he did his research.
    As a female, I must say that after forty-plus years of this @#$%, it’s really starting to make me mad.

  131. says

    I don’t know what Comfort is complaining about. A friend of mine, who is pastor of a fundamentalist church, recently wrote a novel and asked me to review it. He wanted my “honest opinion, even if you hated it”. Which I did, and offered not to post the review on my blog. He said to go ahead, which I will be doing soon.

    All the reviews on his website and on Amazon so far say that it’s a great book, they couldn’t put it down, etc. Possibly he realizes that a negative review from an atheist will help his sales.

  132. Brain Hertz says

    A straw man argument peppered with ridicule; really professor can’t you do better than that?

    Really? Can you specify what straw man argument you’re talking about?

    Ray Comfort does, in fact, have a new book out attacking both atheism and science based on the most jaw droppingly inane arguments. There is also an article at WND in which he claims that it’s poor sales are a result of a conspiracy by atheists to give his book bad reviews.

    This all seems pretty straightforward to me.

    Tell me which of your theories depend on there being no God and why attack people who are different than you?

    Actually, it’s Comfort that thinks that the Bible trumps science. Doesn’t that answer your question?

  133. debaser says

    #137 – You may be on to something. Think about it — Ray Comfort is friends with Kirk Cameron, actor in the movie adaptations of LaHaye and Jenkins Left Behind series, which is a good contender for the Worst Books Ever Written. Entire bookshelves worth of dreck (religious fiction, lol) might be products of a huge atheist misinformation campaign the size of which none of us has yet to grasp fully. How large has the atheist shadow-op movement gotten? Rick Warren, triple agent?

    It may well be that Ray Comfort’s book-reviewing conspiracy, is merely a part of a much, much bigger atheist conspiracy. Godless speed operative Deep Comfort! Deep Banana?

    I would like to point out also that the lack of evidence for this, and especially the evidence against, simply proves the existence of the conspiracy. Checkmate, sheeple!

    Also I like how pharyngula is a “vulgar” blog. It makes perfect sense from the kind of people who post in places where not capitalizing the G in god or the J in jesus (burn) is grounds for immediate post deletion. I don’t really see much in the way of actual vulgar thoughts, but if you include their “spiritual” vulgarity/baggage, this place is like a demon pit. Of course, so are most other places that resemble anything close to a free exchange of ideas. Imagine PZ putting a conditional like “any comments failing to capitalize the B in biology or denying the value of zebrafish research will be deleted no exceptions”

  134. Insightful Ape says

    Hey Stephen, god is a false dogma, but I don’t particularly care about that. What bothers me is that many of those who harbor such delusions try to force them on others. The other reason is that science is under threat from religion like never before since the time of Galileo, case in point: Ray Comfort and the rest of anti-science gang. Tell me, when evolution deniers write books they only make fools of themselves and show they have no clue about the subject, is that the best your camp can do? Or troll the internet, like you personally?

  135. Hank Bones says

    Allen @ #76

    If you want to browse the stupidity of this book without Amazon making recommendations based on it, just delete it from your Amazon Browser history page (somewhere on the right-hand side of the page).

    If you look at this and don’t reset your browser history, you’ll get recommendations for movies staring Kirk Cameron. This is, categorically, a Bad Thing.

  136. Discombobulated says

    Comfort said the strong opposition easily is explained:

    This is along the lines of another hilarious diversionary tactic that I found in WP yesterday:

    In 1956, Samuel Shenton took over the Universal Zetetic Society and founded the Flat Earth Society. The organization took a hit when satellite images taken from outer space showed the Earth as a sphere rather than flat, but they were not fazed. Shenton remarked: “It’s easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye”.

    Go Ray!

  137. says

    There is only one known example of species which lost sexual reproduction in the course of its evolution.

    There are quite a few species that have lost sexual reproduction- is been seen in several lizards. The Bdelloid rotifers (as mentioned) are the only example of a whole group that abandoned sex and went on to be successful. It usually crops up in isolated species (often on islands), and tends not to last very long.

    Plenty of insects and other invertebrates save sex for special occasions- aphids spend most of their time pumping out cloned daughters with a bout of sex at the end of the season.

    I strongly recommend Olivia Judson’s “Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice To All Creation”. If you can find it the musical series they made from it was pretty good too.

  138. Sven DiMilo says

    There are quite a few species that have lost sexual reproduction- is been seen in several lizards.

    At least in the best understood cases, whiptail lizards that used to be Cnemidophorus (but I think are now called something else I’m too lazy to look up but starts with ‘A’), the unisexual parthenogenetic “species” arose by hybridization, so strictly speaking they do not illustrate “a species losing sexual reproduction.”
    However, there are also parthenogenetic geckoes that I don’t know much about.

  139. says

    Good. Lord. I recall when I was a youngster in the Jehovah’s Witnesses cult, one of the “elders” when proselytizing carried a Creationist tract around with the same sludge. It wasn’t an official JW-approved text, I don’t think, but apparently was one of the few products of enemy Christendom worth borrowing.

    I can only recall two points in its list of “proofs” that evolution is impossible: 1) “the chances of evolution producing a horse are four gajillion to one” and 2) “Now, what are the chances that Mrs Horse also came along at the same time?”

    Apparently, such lackwits believe (or wants the gullible to believe) that evolution says, “Poof! One day a solitary horse appeared!” Which they deride as impossible, and on that point they’re CORRECT – but the claim that comes immediately after is, “One day the Magic Man waved his hand, and poof! A solitary horse appeared!” Oy vey…

    The stupid is mind-searing and heart-rending. No matter how many times such drivel is explained away using simple words and bright primary colors, the genuinely retarded kids like Comfort will jump right back at it.

    Gotta also note the theist obsession with “men first”. Why not claim that the mare came first, and the stud later? Ah, because the theist God made man first, and woman as an afterthought. Got it.

    And this, from the linked page: “…evolution opens the door to a whole lot of sinful delicacies such as pornography, fornication, lying, theft…”

    Hey, Ray! You forgot “Naziism”!

  140. articulett says

    *tee-hee*

    Ray’s god planned out the detailed sex lives of fruit flies, praying mantises, flowers, iguanas,duck rapists, hag fish, etc. Funny. A bit cruel

    Ray prays to a very funny cruel god… with very prurient interests, I must say. It almost makes me want to buy the book just for teh lulz.

  141. Insightful Ape says

    It would be nice if Ray Comfort saw the bug’s phallic picture we were treated to by PZ a few days ago. Now it is Ray’s god making a medieval torture device for a sexual act. Methinks sadomasochists do nothing other than act on their “god given” desires…if Ray Comfort is to have any credibility.

  142. says

    Ray Comfort is the Fredo Corleone of Creationism:

    “I’m not dumb, like everybody says. I’M SMART, and I want respect!”

  143. Sherry says

    Comfort is dumber than a rock. The x chromosome is so much stronger than the y that a human female can survive with 45 chromosomes. The x can stand alone, the y can not.

  144. says

    Kristine wrote:

    Great example of how the right wing considers the man to be the norm from which the female “deviates.” Wonderful example of downright fucking sexism, Ray.

    It’s not just Ray. Here’s a quote from Thomas Aquinas:

    As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power.
    — Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

  145. Asherot says

    Posted by: Tommykey | March 5, 2009 9:00 PM

    Ray Comfort is the Fredo Corleone of Creationism:

    You’re not wrong Tom. The “Michael Corleone” of Creationism (whomever that may be) may want to think about whacking him sometime soon…

    “I know it you Fredo… I know it was you and it breaks my heart.”

  146. Asherot says

    Posted by: Tommykey | March 5, 2009 9:00 PM

    Ray Comfort is the Fredo Corleone of Creationism:

    You’re not wrong Tom. The “Michael Corleone” of Creationism (whomever that may be) may want to think about whacking him sometime soon…

    “I know it was you Fredo… I know it was you and it breaks my heart.”

  147. Vestrati says

    This reminds me of the campaign to attack atheist videos on youtube (even though he is imagining this)… though, I’m sure his book is a load of crap and is probably just earning the majority of those poor reviews.

    (OMG, 78 people said his book is bad, its a worldwide atheist conspiracy. I think the fact that his book is currently ranked as high as 1284 in books is the biggest travesty involving his book. If you want to see a real ‘conspiracy’ to alter ratings, check out Spore http://www.amazon.com/Spore-Pc/dp/B000FKBCX4/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1236313016&sr=8-1 which was attacked for its use of DRM)

  148. says

    There are species of rotifers in which a male has never been seen. It’s obviously the male that needs to be added later, and a few rotifers got swept under God’s rug.

  149. OctoberMermaid says

    Ray, Ray, Ray. If your book is not selling well, you know what to do: Blame yourself or God.

  150. says

    It looks like most or all of the original reviews are back.

    Over on Comfort’s blog, a commenter there is asserting that he was reporting reviews from people who appear to have not read the book and got a few taken down.

  151. Tycho the Dog says

    Re #165 Mr Horse and Mrs Horse,

    When God created all the animals, he presumably made males and females of each (didn’t he?) so they could go forth and multiply, but no female counterpart for Adam. So if Adam had a dick, but nowhere to stick it, was God aiming for some deity-on-man action? – a bit like Dr Frank N.Furter and Rocky Horror. That might explain the wrath thing – when Adam decided he wanted to hump someone of the opposite sex, just like all the other animals.

  152. Christiaan says

    If Ray does scrape together $100.000 to debate with Richard Dawkins, I feel sorry for Dawkins already.

    I can understand the banana-argument being meant as a joke, but this is just sad.

  153. EB says

    I agree that Comfort is an idiot, and that by posing questions about evolution does not prove “god done it”. But as to his question (how did sexes emerge), I find the answer that it’s just a gradual shift through a population somewhat incomplete and unsatisfying. Even a gradual shift needs to start somewhere. Do biologists have any hypotheses as to precise mechanisms which led to the sexes?

  154. says

    Poor New Zealand. So often it has to claim ownership of vitriolic idiots. Ray Comfort is surely one of the most prolific, which is all the more embarrasing.

  155. says

    It’s just really a shame that we even have to waste breath and blog space on an idiot like this. Even his Christian allies ought to be ashamed of what an idiot he is. Ray Comfort could give nothing but a bad name to anything and everything he’s involved in.

  156. says

    It’s just really a shame that we even have to waste breath and blog space on an idiot like this. Even his Christian allies ought to be ashamed of what an idiot he is. Ray Comfort could give nothing but a bad name to anything and everything he’s involved in.

  157. Elyse Hart says

    His feeble ranting demonstrates the inherent misogyny of organized religion (it’s ultimate and final purpose for existence):

    males come first.

  158. dp says

    Unfortunately, I think FW is correct. While I do believe (in what PZ would call the imaginary sky wizard), I don’t believe in pushing my beliefs on people, and I think that is why I receive a good reception here. I would point out, though, that arguments like Comfort’s seem to resonate with the crowd, given that they are not detailed and fall right into line with the crowd’s predetermined beliefs. You cannot get past the 10 second sound bite. I wish I knew the answer to opening people’s minds, but. . .

  159. A Cracker says

    Just wondering if you could direct me to physical evidence of transitional fossils for “populations of pre-elephants.” I’d love to see them.

  160. says

    Mr. Comfort’s Noah’s Ark conception of evolution may indeed be stupid but the good prof’s rebuttal hardly ranks as a brilliant precis of Darwinian theory. “Species do not arise from single new mutant males that then have to find a corresponding mutant female — they arise by the diffusion of variation through a whole population, male and female.” Ultimately, however, a species can still owe its origin to that single mutant, male or female. A grazer produces a sport (male or female) with a uniquely long neck which enables it to access foliage that is beyond the reach of its siblings, in consequence to which it thrives and survives and produces a disproportionate number of offspring with similarly long necks. More realistically the evolution results from the slight advantage which even small variations in neck length endow certain individuals across eons of time. Eventually the adversities of environment “select” long-necked grazers over short necked and the long-necked types eventually become so differentiated as to form a new species. Enter the giraffe. Where’s the problem, Ray?

  161. Greg M. D. Wesson says

    Ray is right! when you reject the Bible as the source for truth, you end up in fairytale land. You atheist “believers” have the same problem that “false Christians” & all other false religions have. You lean on your own understanding rather than seeking the Truth from God (found in the Bible). Pray & ask “if there is a God, please show me the truth”. Then read a little bit of the Bible each day. God will reveal who He is & who you are through the scriptures.

  162. says

    Ray is right! when you reject the Bible as the source for truth, you end up in fairytale land. You atheist “believers” have the same problem that “false Christians” & all other false religions have. You lean on your own understanding rather than seeking the Truth from God (found in the Bible). Pray & ask “if there is a God, please show me the truth”. Then read a little bit of the Bible each day. God will reveal who He is & who you are through the scriptures.

    We reject the bible as the source of truth because the more you read it and compare it to what we know about the world around us, the more you realize it has no purchase in reason or reality.

  163. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    Greg, a lot of atheists have read the bible (myself twice). Reading the bible causes one to realize the Yahweh is one sick bastard, who condones wholesale rape against virgins and slaughter of babies. If you want to follow such a sick god, you can do so. Also, all the morals seem to contradict one another, which means instead of a book inspired by god, you have a book where all the author’s put in their concepts. In other words, likely a book of fiction. So when you stories of why people became atheists, one of the major things you hear is “I read the bible cover to cover”. Maybe you should really read your bible cover to cover.

  164. says

    I don’t think Ray is the “idiot” or “stupid” there’s plenty of scientists who for scientific reasons reject atheistic evolution… http://answers.net.nz/Evolution/Gre.Sci..htm

    And good reasons for God’s existence…
    http://answers.net.nz/Other/atheis1.htm

    If anyone’s a fool, it’s he that says ‘there is no God’.

    Its Meyer fits that bill and he’s known around the world for his rudeness & foul language. His idea, “populations evolve, not individuals” is an oxymoron. :) That’s like Dawkins saying, ‘evolution happens, but we don’t see it’.

    Disagree let me know – Mark mpp@xtra.co.nz

  165. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    Yawn, and ignorant godbot. Your god doesn’t exist because no physical evidence is there to show it exists. So all deists are deluded fools. The atheists are on the ones with the clear vision. Oh yes, Comfort is a fool. That is well documented.

  166. Patricia, OM says

    PZ is not known around the world for being a rude foul mouth. He’s a lovable fuzz ball.

    I’m the rude foul mouth. Also vulgar, mean, obscene and gruesome. Want some?

  167. says

    I don’t think Ray is the “idiot” or “stupid” there’s plenty of scientists who for scientific reasons reject atheistic evolution…

    Evolution as a science is no more atheistic than the theory of gravity. Ray Comfort is an ignorant fool because he has repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn’t have the slightest clue how evolution works. If he actually understood the theory and talked on scientific terms why it’s wrong, then people would have a different opinion of him. Instead he constructs elaborate straw-men arguments. If his opinion of evolution is that males and females evolved independently and just happened to match up, then of course evolution is going to sound stupid. But evolution does not work that way, and even a glance at a book on the subject will show him why he is wrong.

    Comfort is a fool, and has shown repeatedly that he is a fool. Do you think his internet infamy is just the big bad atheists beating up on the quacky kiwi? Or could it be that his idiocy makes even the most feeble-minded theists look intelligent by comparison?

  168. 'Tis Himself says

    Mark Purchase: you misunderstand the term ‘oxymoron’.

    Purchase is an ox and a moron.

  169. says

    I don’t think Ray is the “idiot” or “stupid” there’s plenty of scientists who for scientific reasons reject atheistic evolution… http://answers.net.nz/Evolution/Gre.Sci..htm

    And good reasons for God’s existence…
    http://answers.net.nz/Other/atheis1.htm

    If anyone’s a fool, it’s he that says ‘there is no God’.

    Its Meyer fits that bill and he’s known around the world for his rudeness & foul language. His idea, “populations evolve, not individuals” is an oxymoron. :) That’s like Dawkins saying, ‘evolution happens, but we don’t see it’.

    Disagree let me know – Mark mpp@xtra.co.nz

    mark I see by the inclusion of your email (stupidly I might add, spambots feast on those things in comments) you probably aren’t returning. However, I just spent 2 hours out in the marsh trying to get a particular photo only have have it ruined by a a couple of dumb ass fishermen, so…

    Ray is both an idiot and stupid. He may have some business acumen as he’s been using his blog to collect atheists quotes to fill up the substance of his books but he is 100% both an idiot and stupid among other things.

    Only an idiot would say the things he does and then defend them no matter how many times he has been shown to be wrong. He has been shown how exactly wrong he is in his straw-man description of various scientific facts but he revels in his willful ignorance. He’s proud of how much he just does not know. As a matter of fact the less he knows in actuality, the more he thinks he knows. He just makes things up to fit his stunningly dumb version of many things.

    He’s not only stupid and an idiot but he is also a liar. A liar that claims to be working for Jesus. He misquotes people frequently, twists the meanings and quote mines. He is a liar. Period.

    Now you come here defending him and appealing to false authority pointing to a link of a list of scientists (many of whom are not even in the field of biology) who reject evolution. Well that’s a pretty small list considering there are hundreds of thousands of scientists who accept evolution as the best explanation for the biodiversity on earth. Perhaps you should look up Project Steve. Never mind, I’ll do it for you. That is 1000 scientists named Steve who accept evolution. That’s just some of the ones named Steve.

    And your little list of “good reasons” are a circular wankfest. One I’m sure you enjoy participating in.

    by coming here in support of that waste of a human mind that is Ray Comfort you yourself are showing that all that gray matter up there is wasting away. Put your mind to use man. Educate yourself. Stop remaining willfully ignorant about the reality of our existence and the things around us.

    Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched.
    Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion.
    Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
    because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. – Thomas Jefferson

  170. tresmal says

    Mark Purchase: Two words about that list of great scientists who were creationists. It’s stupid. Most of the scientists on that list were dead, before The Origin of Species was published, or they lived when evolution was still a matter for scientific debate (a period that ended, to be generous, by 1900.)Furthermore, precious few of living or recently living scientists on that list are/were biologists. Being smart about electronics doesn’t mean one knows shit about evolution.
    ( I also noticed that they left “war criminal” off of Von Braun’s list of titles and accomplishments.)

  171. Knockgoats says

    Its Meyer fits that bill Mark Moron Purchase

    How do expect to be taken seriously when you can’t even get the name of the person you’re insulting right? Go and swap your head for a lump of concrete – if you can find anyone stupid enough to make the trade.

  172. Patricia, OM says

    I got two mouse clicks down on the proof of gawd page. It’s so stoopid the banana actually looks good. Gawd is spirit outside human consciousness and if gawd didn’t exist law enforcement would collapse….gag.

    There’s more if you have a strong stomach.

  173. David Marjanović, OM says

    asexual organisms more closely resemble females and maleness is what evolved to allow for sexual reproduction.

    I disagree. Have a look at yeast.

    Or at plants, where isospory comes before heterospory…

    “The human brain evolved because the apes developed better spit”

    What does that mean?

    Unlike chimps, we express an amylase* gene in our salivary glands (as opposed to just in the pancreas). This allows us to eat starchy food (like tubers) more efficiently, and glucose is what the brain needs, so some biologists smell a connection. They may well be right that this was a prerequisite for the further bloating of our brain.

    * The enzyme that hacks starch into maltose. Then maltase, an enzyme expressed in the gut, comes along and turns the maltose into glucose.

    You can’t actually parody this kind of thing, can you?

    The Onion should plagiarize a random chapter and see if Comfort sues. If he does, laugh. If he doesn’t, admit the plagiarism and laugh.

    And our arms are just long enough for us to comfortably reach our genitals.

    With considerable individual variation. Mine, for example, are a good deal longer.

    (Ermp. The arms, I mean.)

    Why are the reviews missing? Possible explanation:
    Amazon does not like 1-star reviews. The more 1-star reviews they have, the less people buy the product, and the less money Amazon makes.

    I think we have a winner.

    But… if men came from dust, then… why is there still dust?

    With the thin walls here, I wonder if the neighbors have heard me laugh…

    The x chromosome is so much stronger than the y that a human female can survive with 45 chromosomes.

    In 3 % of the cases. 97 % lead to death before birth.

    Ray is right! when you reject the Bible as the source for truth, you end up in fairytale land.

    And when you don’t reject the Bible, you stay in doublethink fairytale land — the two creation stories contradict each other (everything else first, then man & woman last and at the same time, vs man first, then everything else, and then woman, for example), and most books of the New Testament contradict each other and often even themselves on the necessary and the sufficient conditions for salvation (faith, works, words, being a male virgin, and so on…).

    You atheist “believers”

    Atheist, or believers? Which is it?

    Pray & ask “if there is a God, please show me the truth”.

    Been there, done that, got not even a T-shirt.

  174. Patricia, OM says

    Pray and ask if there is a gawd, please show me the truth.

    Did that. Can’t you think of anything new?

  175. Menyambal says

    Pray & ask “if there is a God, please show me the truth”.

    Let me always seek the truth.
    Let me not depend on others to show me the truth.
    Let me search for truth myself.
    I will I grow as I search.
    I will know what I know.
    I will know why I know what I know.
    Let me compare my work with other’s work.
    Let us see if we agree.
    Let me learn from other’s work.
    Let me share my work with others.
    Let us seek truth together.
    If there is truly a God, I will find Him.
    If there is no God, I will be truly human.

  176. Malcolm says

    Perhaps you should look up Project Steve. Never mind, I’ll do it for you. That is 1000 scientists named Steve who accept evolution. That’s just some of the ones named Steve.

    Just a small correction Rev: That isn’t just 1000 scientists, that is 1000 working biologists named Steve who accept evolution.

  177. Chris says

    I fail to understand how his whole banana and coke bottle argument is any different from the watch and world argument presented in the 19th century.

    Same premise and conclusion, different objects. Recycling a false argument and changing the words doesn’t stop it being false.

  178. I Just Work Here says

    “What I find amazing is that everyone’s legs are exactly the right length to reach the ground.”

    “And our arms are just long enough for us to comfortably reach our genitals. Looks like God/Jesus does love us after all.”

    And, as a poster on Unreasonable Faith pointed out, bananas can fit other orifices! What is God’s Master Plan for Ray Comfort?