Do Christians get the funny drilled out of them? I ask because I recently got this ad from Ray Comfort:
Don’t try to analyze it. It’s about as funny as a fart, which means you have to be in a certain state of mind to be amused, and even then, it’s not going to be a clever joke, let alone one of the “world’s funniest one-liners”. It’s just part of the Living Waters grift — you can buy the booklet for $10, which is probably almost entirely profit for Ray, especially since buying it would immediately put you on his mailing list of gullible people.
Oh, also, he gives the content away for free! The ordering info includes the complete text, which is nice. There isn’t much that’s funny in there, though.
101 of the World’s Funniest One Liners
1. Ninety-nine percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
2. Borrow money from a pessimist — they don’t expect it back.
3. Time is what keeps things from happening all at once.
4. Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
5. I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.
6. Never answer an anonymous letter.
7. It’s lonely at the top; but you do eat better.
8. I don’t suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.
9. Always go to other people’s funerals, or they won’t go to yours.
10. Few women admit their age; few men act it.
11. If we aren’t supposed to eat animals, why are they made with meat?
12. No one is listening until you make a mistake.
13. Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
14. We have enough youth. How about a fountain of “Smart”?
15. He who laughs last thinks slowest.
16. Campers: Nature’s way of feeding mosquitoes.
17. Always remember that you are unique; just like everyone else.
18. Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.
19. There are three kinds of people: Those who can count and those who can’t.
20. Why is “abbreviation” such a long word?
21. Nuke the Whales.
22. I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.
23. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
24. Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.
25. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
26. As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public schools.
27. Laugh alone and the world thinks you’re an idiot.
28. Sometimes I wake up grumpy; other times I let her sleep.
29. The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the ability to reach it.
30. You can’t have everything; where would you put it?
31. I took an IQ test and the results were negative.
32. Okay, who stopped the payment on my reality check?Editorial: Probably the most thought-provoking one-liner is “Eat right. Stay fit. Die anyway.” It’s sad but true — no matter what you do, you will die. This is because you have sinned against God. Let’s see if that’s true: Have you ever lied (even once)? Ever stolen (anything)? Jesus said, “Whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her, has committed adultery already with her in his heart.” Ever looked with lust? If you have said “Yes” to these three questions, by your own admission, you are a lying, thieving, adulterer at heart; and we’ve only looked at three of the Ten Commandments. How will you do on Judgment Day? Will you be innocent or guilty? You know that you will be guilty, and end up in Hell. That’s not God’s will. He provided a way for you to be forgiven. He sent His Son to take your punishment: “God commended His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus then rose from the dead and defeated death. God promises everlasting life to all those who confess and forsake their sins, and trust in Jesus Christ. Please do that today . . . you may not have tomorrow. See John 14:21 for a wonderful promise. Then read the Bible daily and obey what you read. God will never let you down.
33. We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.
34. 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
35. Be nice to your kids. They’ll choose your nursing home.
36. If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
37. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges.
38. Eat right. Stay fit. Die anyway.
39. My mind is like a steel trap, rusty and illegal in 37 states.
40. Nothing is fool proof to a sufficiently talented fool.
41. On the other hand, you have different fingers.
42. I’ve only been wrong once, and that’s when I thought I was wrong.
43. God made mankind. Sin made him evil.
44. I don’t find it hard to meet expenses. They’re everywhere.
45. I just let my mind wander, and it didn’t come back.
46. Don’t steal. The government hates competition.
47. Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
48. National Atheist’s Day April 1st.
49. All generalizations are false.
50. The more people I meet, the more I like my dog.
51. Work is for people who don’t know how to fish.
52. If you don’t like the news, go out and make some.
53. For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.
54. IRS: We’ve got what it takes to take what you have got.
55. I’m out of bed and dressed. What more do you want?
56. I used to think I was indecisive, but now I’m not too sure.
57. I can handle pain until it hurts.
58. No matter where you go, you’re there.
59. If everything is coming your way, then you’re in the wrong lane.
60. It’s been Monday all week.
61. Gravity always gets me down.
62. This statement is false.
63. Eschew obfuscation.
64. They told me I was gullible…and I believed them.
65. It’s bad luck to be superstitious.
66. According to my best recollection, I don’t remember.
67. The word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary.
68. Honk if you like peace and quiet.
69. The Big Bang Theory: God Spoke and BANG! it happened.
70. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
71. Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how it remains so popular?
72. Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
73. A day without sunshine is like, night.
74. The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
75. Corduroy pillows: They’re making headlines!
76. Gravity: It’s not just a good idea, it’s the LAW!
77. Life is too complicated in the morning.
78. We are all part of the ultimate statistic — ten out of ten die.
79. Nobody’s perfect. I’m a nobody.
80. Ask me about my vow of silence.
81. The hardness of butter is directly proportional to the softness of the bread.
82. The last thing on earth you want to do will be the last thing you do.
83. Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else get your way.
84. If ignorance is bliss, then tourists are in a constant state of euphoria.
85. If at first you don’t succeed, don’t try skydiving.
86. If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
87. Stop repeat offenders. Don’t re-elect them!
88. I intend to live forever. So far so good.
89. Who is “General Failure” and why is he reading my hard disk?
90. What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
91. I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.
92. Energizer Bunny arrested; charged with battery.
93. I didn’t use to finish sentences, but now I
94. I’ve had amnesia as long as I can remember.
95. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
96. Vacation begins when Dad says, “I know a short cut.”
97. Evolution: True science fiction.
98. What’s another word for “thesaurus”?
99. Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
100. A flashlight is a case for holding dead batteries.
101. I went to the fights, and a hockey game broke out.
. . . Don’t forget to read the editorial!
Right. The editorial is the whole point, that and the $10 and getting on his mailing list.
He doesn’t even include his very best joke!
Man, Christians can be scary people. How does he know what God says? If you snuck into his house and wired his bed with hidden speakers that whispered unspeakable suggestions to him all night, you could get him to do some very scary shit. I also hope he never gets schizophrenia.
Oh, come on. 2 wasn’t that bad. Although I’m not sure why he’s ripping off the famously atheist George Carlin at 38. Okay, Carlin was heading straight into Alt-Right territory in his last few years but stealing from the guy who said “When it comes to bullshit…big-time, major league bullshit…you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims…religion”.
So if his God keeps commanding him to perform clearly immoral acts (rape, murder, etc), is he so blind by faith and desperation for God to be real that it’s not even a THOUGHT to this loon that maybe Satan is tricking him? (christian POV of course). He would just assume that yup, God wants me to kill my children, no questions asked at all! No verification of the messenger? Just a voice that says kill them”, and he goes smiling to sharpen the ax?
Preemptively lock this man up, he just admitted to gleefully willing to commit a horrible crime without repentance at all.
According to RationalWiki, that “I would kill a thousand children” post is a hoax.
Ray Comfort has said some pretty stupid stuff over the years, so I’d rather we didn’t go around making up more.
No.1 was stolen from Beavis and Butt-Head; “If meat is bad for you, how come it is food?!”
That is supposed to be funny?
#31 not a joke, I bet he really did take an IQ test and it came back negative.
These are from someone who would not hesitate to use Pascal’s wager.
#19 a rip off of the actual joke: [there are 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don’t]
I’ve always kinda liked “this statement is false” and similar.
And I’m fine with National Atheist Day falling on my birthday, intended insult or not.
The joy of faith? Ray seems like one of the most joyless jackasses to inhabit this planet.
@3 The fact that it’s so plausible should be an indicator of how far gone the right has become.
I’ve gotten several of those emails people keep forwarding to me with every one of those sayings. Not funny then, not funny now. So, Ray Comfort is also a plagiarist?
Reginald Selkirk #5:
From dim recollections of my yoof, I seem to recall it was a punk anti-hippy thing. A sarcastic remix of “Save the whales” and “No more nukes.” Some things from the nineteen-seventies are, frankly, best left in the nineteen-seventies.
I heard almost all of those before I graduated high school in 1973.
Some of them were sort of funny then.
Statistically speaking these are indeed 101 of the world’s funniest one-liners, provided “world’s funniest” extends down very far indeed on the objective funniness scale.
If we aren’t supposed to eat people, why are they made of meat?
What chigau said. Except I think I was a little older. Some of them are the sort of thing you could find on the calligraphic buttons Nancy Lebovitz sold at science fiction cons. (I had a “Nuke the baby seals for Jesus” button that I don’t think is funny anymore, but it seemed so at the time.) Puns, self-referential humor, sarcasm. Hahahahaha. Well, some of it is a little bit funny the first 20 or so times. I sure wouldn’t pay for a book of it.
Anti-lawyer jokes really do get on my nerves though. A lawyer provides just as vital a service as a plumber. If you eliminated laws and the people who go to the trouble to understand them, it wouldn’t make your life simpler or more free. Most likely, it would leave you at the mercy of those with more power and more connections. The law, while imperfect, is an equalizer.
@17. True. The Shakespeare character that said “kill the lawyers” was the bad guy.
RE: The OP – It is kind of funny, in a meta-sorta way, that Comfort would hightlight this particular “joke” on his cover page. I imagine this means he’s never heard of Flanders & Swann, and therefore missed their track “The Reluctant Cannibal”, which contains the same sentiment taken to its natural conclusion:
RE: aresnb #3. Yes, I thought that it looked just too on the nose to be true; while I think Ray Comfort may be stupid enough to think such things, I doubt he’d be stupid enough to express them publicly. (I admit I could be wrong though, he is pretty dense…)
And I agree with your sentiment, it only gives comfort (haha) to the enemy to propagate falsehoods about them. People like him say plenty of vile things in reality, no need to throw a perfume on the lily … or in his case, rotting meat on the carrion flower.
Oy, cross-posted with Lyle X: I’m too slow.
Also, “highlight”.
Susan Montgomery @11:
It’s plausible to ideologues who will believe anything bad about their perceived enemies without verification. It’s an indicator that atheists (like the one who started the meme) can be malicious douchebags too. But we already knew that.
I had stopped watching his “debates” with science literates years ago . Too many facepalms hurt after awhile . As far as that killing children idea , I’ve heard other toxic Christians express those same ideas . And they’d kill and /or enslave gays , non virgin women and non believers in their version of toxic beliefs .
Christians == Soylent Green
So, Follow the Editorial…
Begins with
“Eat right. Stay fit. Die anyway.”
ends with:
“God will never let you down”
Right, thanks, cheered me right up.
He’s ruined every “Dad joke” I know.
Ray Comfort is made of meat. We should eat him.
Notice the Biblical story doesn’t even mention raping one’s own children, but Ray throws that in just for fun. Kirk Cameron might want to start keeping his distance.
As #16 and #19 noted, Comfort is giving the argument for cannibalism. Isn’t this inherent in (at least Catholic) Christianity, where believers eat the Lord’s flesh and drink his blood as a communion? So cover “joke” #1 being about eating human flesh is symbolically required of all Christians. It’s like waking up and realizing that America has always been 90% zombie, and if you laugh at the zombie jokes, then they invite you to become one.
What Chigau (14) and PaulBC (17) said. These rank right up there with ta-kill-ya (tequila). They’re funny enough the first time you hear them. And when you’re young, you may be naïve enough to think the person saying them was clever enough to think them up in the first place. Then you realize they’ve been floating around for decades. Especially now with older relatives posting on Facebook, you can’t help but see these jokes over and over and over again.
“The fact that it’s so plausible should be an indicator of how far gone the right has become.”
I get almost the exact same response from a right-wing colleague whenever I send him fact checks to the latest conspiracy theory about the left.
I’m not a vegetarian, but I find it interesting that many meat-eaters use “humor” and sometimes attempt to use “logic” to persuade vegetarians that it meat-eating is a more worthy practice. It just gets extremely annoying.
I’m morally lazy and animal proteins are widely available. That’s why I’m an omnivore. But I think these animals are sentient (possibly not lobsters, but certainly cattle and pigs) and I wouldn’t kill one of them myself. I rarely have any actual craving for meat. It’s more about spices, preparation, and salt and fat (though I admit I like dairy products and would have trouble substituting).
What’s my point here? Hmm… not sure just that I will probably continue to eat meat but I don’t find the existence of vegetarians and vegans to be threatening. I suspect that people who make “jokes” like the first one really do see vegetarians as some kind of a threat or condemnation. It’s unsurprising the this meshes well with fundie humor.
Jeff L @29:
Siggy has a new post which is germane.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/atrivialknot/2021/03/04/poes-law-is-and-always-was-bad/
@PaulBC, #30: I think that’s a good point. There are those who ardently wish that everyone else was exactly like them, and if other people are in the slightest bit different, they find it threatening and even scary. Next thing is to strike out at those scary people, I guess.
My reaction to people who don’t eat the same way I do is to be happy for them. It’s pretty awesome that there so much food available, in such variety, that people can choose not to eat some of it.
@19: Yay for a mention of Flanders and Swann, who were remarkably brilliant and funny in 1956 and whose recordings have successfully outlived the artists. Who were also pacifists and campaigners against nuclear weapons, notably in a song I actually heard sung at a demo by someone who didn’t know its origin, which begins (and shows its age):
I have seen it estimated
Somewhere between death and birth
There are now three thousand million
People living on this earth
And the stock-piled mass destruction
Of the nuclear powers that be
Equals for each man or woman
Twenty tons of TNT.
Mr. Comfort (or whoever came up with this list) apparently spends a lot of time reading bumper stickers. Although they left out the classic “Is your eschatology apocalyptic?” one. I did have to grin at the corduroy pillows/headlines one; as a dad I can’t wait to try on my daughter the next time i want to see her eyes roll.
I would look at the fake Comfort quote and conclude that whatever he thinks, he just wouldn’t phrase it that way because it makes him look bad. (Occasionally I’m wrong and people really do come out and say incredibly nutty things. Pretty much any time a male Republican politician opens his mouth about “women’s health” for one, but I digress.)
A few years ago, I finally caught up on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all seven seasons, and it gave me a real insight. A lot of these “religious” people would be up there performing rituals to bring on a “demon apocalypse” if they weren’t already counting on their own apocalypse, and they view anyone not in on the game as a pawn. For instance, why do evangelicals love Israel so much? It’s mostly for the apocalypse-fodder. There are sacrifices to be made (passive voice, naturally) and then the “worthy” will ascend to their rightful place. They would just as soon be following a master vampire or a snake demon as “Jesus.” It’s all about siding with the biggest authoritarian leader they can come up with.
But will they say it? Usually not. That’s self-defeating.
Many if not most of these aren’t original. I heard some of them decades ago. So he collects 101 one-liners that other people came up with, and then charges you $10 for a printed copy? Wow. I have maintained for many years that I could be a very rich man if got into the religion business while losing my sense of ethics. The latter seems like a requirement for the former these days.
I’d be shocked if even one of these originated with Comfort. In fact, he’s not claiming they were. It wouldn’t surprise me if the entire list in order, verbatim, was cribbed from a facebook page and his only “contribution” is the editorial comment.
Bingo: Posted by: MagicMattMan (Jun 6, 2007 07:25PM) I am not sure if there’s an older source but this is the same list.
Come on, PZ, be charitable for once. “If we aren’t supposed to eat meat ….” is “one of the “world’s funniest one-liners” the Banana Man ever produced.
Here’s the same list on an obscure forum from July 20, 2005 You have to scan down a little.
I guess “thou shalt not plagiarize” never made the cut. Man is Ray Comfort a lazy bum in addition to everything else.
All that cribbing and yet he didn’t crib Margritte? “This is not a joke.”
As for killing his children, I wonder if he knows there are some scholars who see textual evidence in the “Binding of Isaac” story that when Abraham comes down from the mountain he’s alone, and the bit about the lamb in the bushes is an interpolation. Meh, probably not.
And raping his children is just too creepy.
But would he offer his “sire services” in return for a mandrake? (Genesis 30:15) There’s one with clear biblical precedent. And OK I guess. Rachel might’ve asked Jacob what he thought first (or maybe it’s not a tough one to guess).
How much do mandrakes go for these days anyway?
50 isn’t a joke. That’s the literal truth.
So “even cancer is a gift from god”? In that case, I hope god is very, very generous to Mr. Comfort.
cubist@44 Was he talking about Rush Limbaugh?
robro @41: Like all fables, fairy tales, folk tales and the like, they can be read many ways by diverse audiences. The version where Isaac is dead was popular among Jews at times of severe persecutions because they identified with the dead Isaac (the story continues with Isaac’s ashes becoming a source of protection for future generations; I haven’t seen who the claimed paternal ancestor of said later generations was, with Isaac being dead).
Other versions say that Isaac’s blindness in old age was caused by tears of angels that fell into his eyes while he was lying bound on the altar.
The binding of Isaac got more modern interpretations. You can see some here.
Not terribly impressed. He missed a couple of my favorites…
Asking if computers can think is like asking if submarines can swim.
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.
OK I am late to the party….
This is advice to avoid tepid, regurgitated humor.
If you want actual humor and is not worried if it will be tasteful or not, just watch a random episode of Family Guy.
Or a random “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal” webcomic.
Or some of the anime parodies created by Team Four Star. They are fucking brilliant. They have helped me through some miserable times.
brigerjohansson @48: If you want actual humor, watch something that isn’t Family Guy. Seriously, Family Guy is lazy insults and pretending to be edgy by making fun of rape.
@49: Hit the post button a little too early. That last line should have been “and pretending to be edgy by acting like rape is funny.”
birgerjohansson@48 Agreed. About the last thing I need is a list of “jokes” called from the vasty deep of the Internet (that were around long before that).
As for needing a laugh, it’s like Dudley Moore said as Arthur (1981) “I sometimes just think funny things.” I mean, they don’t even have to be funny to anyone else. I don’t burst into laughter spontaneously anymore, but it was a serious hazard through my teens at least.
Competent, professional comedy is also welcome, though I like The Simpsons better than Family Guy if the comparison is meaningful.
I often think that people like Ray Comfort don’t even have a sense of humor, but a form of pattern matching: I have observed that when this thing called a “joke” is told, people do this thing called “laughing” and it puts them at ease. I must acquire a list of these so-called “jokes” and apply them in my “ministry.”
I prefer Rick and Morty. Rick Sanchez might be as much a sociopath as Peter Griffin, but he’s not a dumbass.
@21 It’s plausible to think the worst of people who believe that the election was stolen and that vaccines are the work of Illuminati lizard people.
@48 To each their own of course, but I like my edgy humor from The Thick of It. McFarlane’s Star Trek TNG homage is actually good for a few laughs but Family Guy…?
Susan Montgomery@53
Maybe, but when they seem to be saying something that harms their own cause, it’s worth a small amount of due diligence to find out if they really said it. I still think the worst of Ray Comfort, but I was skeptical he would have said what is quoted above. I’ve been tricked before, not too often, but if I get caught at a distracted moment by a facebook post from someone I trust, I might forget to check. I am increasingly careful and have to be. There are many fakes out there from both sides.
I had a roommate who had an MS going for a PhD in education. My roommate always had a pile of lottery tickets on the table. I said “Isn’t the lottery wonderful? A tax on ignorance to pay for education.” Never saw a lottery ticket again. Probably kept them in a hollowed-out book after that.
@53:
It’s plausible to you that such a person could rape and kill their children without a second thought? You just said a lot more about yourself than about Comfort.
@54 Seriously? How many things have they said in the last 4 years alone that we thought would “hurt their cause” were ignored or actually helped them? I’d double-check it too just to be safe, but after all they’ve turned blind eyes to in recent years, I’m prepared to believe the worst about them.
@56 And what, pray tell, did I say about myself? I’m so interested in your thoughts.
@57: Pretty much what you regularly demonstrate. You’re an ignorant, malicious clown.
I remember laughing at those one-liners a good twenty years ago in high school, and I’m reasonably certain they’ve been floating around since the dawn of the internet. It’s not original material, but, uh, you know, Christians, with the stealing, and the plagiarizing, and the lying? Stealing old jokes is probably the least harmful thing they’re doing, there.
This is just getting frustrating. Here is an even older copy of the same list, and we’re back to a Christian blog of some sort. https://rcmolmisa.blogspot.com/2005/04/101-best-one-liners.html The lists aren’t identical. #39 is “DARE to keep cops off donuts” in this one and another from 2005, but different in others (maybe changed by someone who didn’t like a joke making fun of police).
I thought for sure I would find a smoking gun in rec.humor archives. In fact, nearly all these “jokes” show up but not this list in this order… and oh boy there are a lot of lists too.
I suppose it could have originated somewhere that is no longer extant and searchable. This list in this order could be as old as some 80s BBS system, or who knows, maybe xeroxed and passed around by office workers even earlier than that.
I just did a quick search on amazon for “joke book” I got 20,000 I only looked on the first page but they started under 10 bucks and they did not come with christian propaganda
I am sure they would be at least as good as this meager collection
if you want funny try and find “crime scene cleaner” on videa dead pan wicked humor
uncle frogy
on video a it is a 30 minute program
This isn’t work for me. It’s fun! (Yeah, keep telling yourself that.) But comparing two common versions of this list, I only found non-punctuation differences between lines 34-42 and I suspect it was an attempt to remove potentially offensive lines about police and dyslexia (though both forms appear on “Christian” web pages). Here are the diffs I found, which wasn’t as easy as you’d think with unicode quote marks and such:
But what explains differences like the ones below? It doesn’t look like unicode conversion or any automatic munging. Could this be evidence that someone retyped this from a printed copy?
Eh, probably not. Maybe the same person producing the expurgated copy also felt they could fix the punctation.
On like 64, three dots in the first become a unicode … in the second. That might be the result of editing it in Word or similar.
I doubt very much it originated with the April 2005 blog, but that’s the earliest I have so far.
@58 Ah, you’ve seen my entry in Who’s Who ;)
Why did he put his silly editorial comment after #32 instead of after #38, which it directly quotes?
Take my punishment? For lusting in my heart, my punishment is eternity burning in Hell, but when God has his son take the rap (for that plus everybody else’s sins too), it’s 3 lousy days? Doesn’t quite seem like an equivalent exchange. As always, the rules are different when you know people in high places.
Microraptor @49
I agree that some of the jokes in family guy are awful.
But some of the early stuff is very good, I assume this is a common path to take for comedy series, likewise some early South Park episodes are very good.
On the topic of cartoons for grown-ups, see “the Critic” and “Duckman”.
.
The American late night show hosts Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers* Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah are brilliant -yes I know they have a team writing stuff for them but delivery is important.
And they are not afraid of bringing up hot political and social issues, taking up some of the slack of the lazy official news
* Seth Meyers have some really talented female stand-uppers with him, I recommend “Amber says WHAT!?”
.
Written jokes…that reminds me of “Reader’s Digest”, it just put me to sleep.
Ridana, as you suggest, the whole religion is a joke.
Cultist: “You must embrace God to be saved!”
Person: “Saved from what?”
Cultist: “From God’s wrath!”
Person: “…”
That’s why, in olden days, people spoke of “god-fearing folk”.
I would not be doing a proper job if I did not mention some satire you can find at Youtube.
Many of you will be familiar with “The Scathing Atheist” and “God Awful Movies”.
“Fun” online film reviews are a mixed bag with much boring stuff, for some real talent check the Canadian Brandon Tenold and his “Brandon’s Cult Movie Reviews”
OK, here is some proper stuff, from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/self-driving-cars
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/funny
@17 “it would leave you at the mercy of those with more power and more connections.”
Except, due to how the US legal system works, starting with the facts that most states do not have anti-slapp laws, and everyone has to pay their own lawyer fees, so its cheaper to falsely admit guilt in some cases, or drop a case, than actually get justice if you are not stinking rich, to the fact that there are no “limits” on how many lawyers someone with more power and more connections can field against you, even if you are right….
Yeah, This is more a, “Having any court at all is better than having none, since sometimes you might get justice, where if they didn’t exist you would never get any.”, but to claim that it “works” in any practical sense they way it exists in the US…. There is a reason why we have a higher percentage of the total population than even third world dictatorships in jail, and its not just because we pass bad laws in the US designed to fill “for profit” jails.
..And after some searching I found jokes NOT likely to be picked up by Gospeltracts.
Yes, I am evil.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/law-2
Real news that is funny. “People Can’t Believe Rudy Giuliani’s Warning About Misinformation Isn’t A Comedy Bit “
Some of these jokes are so old Hosea was writing the first draft of the Tanach.
Ridana@65
This doesn’t make much sense as an explanation, but the same gap after appears on 2007 copy of the list. The lines are also identical except for some changes to unicode characters.
While that’s not the earliest list, it is the first one I was able to find, and may be the first that comes up for most people.
Maybe Comfort felt the gap was the right place to put his editorial (lacking sufficient imagination to consider if there might be a better place) or maybe his text editing skills are so minimal that he literally could not produce a gap between lines without starting at an existing one (this is a stretch, but I’ll believe nearly anything).
I think there is a connection, though, because no other copies online have any gaps except this one where it occurs after line 32.
Or here’s another one. Maybe he printed out the list to read. He’s not a young guy so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he did. He made some kind of notes in the gap on paper because it’s where it fit. Then when writing his longer “editorial” it never even occurred to him that he could put it anywhere else in the document. While this is purely speculative, I like to think it happened that way. It is just the right combination of age, rigidity, and tunnel vision.
Re: John Morales @ #67…
“You’re going to Hell!”
What’s in Hell?
“People like you!”
What’s in Heaven?
“People like me!”
You need to work on your threats.
According to the link below, the Ray Comfort meme is a fake and from a quick google search it’s seems to be questionable whether he said this.I tend to be a bit more skeptical these days before posting stuff that may be untrue. I don’t know if he did say this but it does seem at best unproved.
In these days of the right screaming fake news while promoting the most insane conspiracy theories I just think we need to be better than that and if we do post something that’s been pointed out as being of dubious origin I think we have a responsibility to check it out and to correct it if it’s wrong. After all, there’s plenty of true stuff with which to attack the idiotic Banana Man.
https://atheistforum.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/that-ray-comfort-meme/
@58 I don’t know who either of you are, but I have to agree that there has been a bloody lot said, some of it treasonous (if it where ever actually committed, instead of merely babbled in public to their “base”), which should have damaged some of these people beyond repair in a sane world. I would have to say that for all the effort we demand of ourselves to give some of these people the benefit of doubt they spend just as much using doubt as a weapon to create fear and madness. I pity the people that fall for this, and form the “army” of fools that spread like the burning hay off that truck, in a video that has been going around some sites, but I have nothing but contempt for the people that create it in the first place.
Now I get what this is actually trying to say, but…
They’re admitting their god is evil.
Kagehi@77 Sorry, it’s probably a losing battle to discuss further, but something about that quote screams fake to me and it’s not because I think Ray Comfort could not in theory sink to those depths, nor because I think he would never say something stupid and shoot himself in the foot.
If I can’t pin down exactly why I’m suspicious, no matter. I can just try to find out where it came from. The burden of proof is on the extraordinary claim.
People do say atrocious things that you might imagine to be damaging. Mick Mulvaney effectively went on record saying that diabetics who can’t afford insulin should just shut up and die because it’s their own fault, and later admitted that Trump held back aid to Ukraine for political purposes. In neither case did it make much of a difference. Also, Mulvaney himself was more careful in his phrasing than I suggest here. You still have to read between the lines a little.
The problem isn’t that Ray Comfort is too nice to actually be a supervillain cackling “Bwhahahahaha. You will all die to serve my master.” The problem is that he’s not dumb enough to say it out loud. Or if he is, that’s big news, and big news needs to be fact-checked before propagating.
I really have seen people I agree with in most things sending obvious satire around as if it’s real. It’s embarrassing, and occasionally I have to catch myself. I have definitely commented on facebook posts as if they are real quotes before realizing I was a a sucker. You just have to be careful. Yes, some of these people are monsters, but they can’t sound like it or they lose the millions of people they’re trying to hoodwink.
RobGrigjanis@56
Sorry for the delayed reply, but it on rereading, I would like to point out that there are documented cases of cult leaders (Christian or otherwise) raping children, as well as leading their own followers to suicide.
To imagine that one of them might be capable of raping and killing their own children is not such a big stretch. In fact, it’s no stretch at all to imagine them discussing the issue hypothetically, usually concluding with some reassuring “But I have faith that my loving God would never demand such a thing from me.”
And for that matter, you don’t have to go far at all to find people killing their own own children for violating religious strictures (“honor killing”). Among American evangelicals, there are many abusers, sometimes with fatal outcomes. There are many child rapists as well.
So what does it say about Susan Montgomery or about me? Just that we’re aware of the depravity of the human condition and not inclined to rule anything out.
However, as I said a couple of times already. It is highly unlikely that Ray Comfort, a man who has to hold onto an audience of people who don’t believe themselves to be monsters, is probably not going to make that point in those words, so it does raise some clear red flags and should not be accepted uncritically.
PaulBC @80:
Gosh, who knew? There are also documented cases of atheists committing the most depraved acts.
I suggest you read Siggy’s latest post, about Poe’s law.
Saying “there are people horrible enough to do this” is no excuse. It’s lazy, sleazy, and ends up damaging your own credibility. We’re supposed to be the rational ones, remember?
RG@81 I never said some atheists aren’t horrible people. What even led you do this interpretation?
You made an indefensible statement that it says something awful about Susan Montgomery (and I’ll accept that for myself) to entertain the possibility that Ray Comfort actually said that. Maybe I’m an awful person, but I would not rule out that he said that before checking, though my guess is he did not.
To avoid the game of putting words in your mouth, RG@56
All right, I took it as a rhetorical question, but I’ll answer (ignoring that you had your own answer in @58).
Speaking only for myself, it just says I don’t set a priori limits to human depravity. I don’t know Ray Comfort from Adam. Who the hell knows what he’s capable of doing? That’s why my next step if I care enough is to fact check.
You seem to have read in a lot of anti-religious or anti-evangelical sentiment in my point. I agree that a lot of secular-minded leftwingers believe Christians to be meaner and stupider than they usually are. However, that does not mean I might not find it “plausible” that someone could be that mean. I am only less inclined to believe they are stupid enough to say it out loud.
And yes, I am well aware of people mistaking Landover Baptist for a real church. I grew up in a religious family (Catholic) and actually spent time in closer contact with another Christian church for a few years when my wife insisted our kids join a choir. Neither of us are religious. It was fine though, and run by nice people. I was only annoyed at myself for not being able to say what I really believe, but it was the kind of welcome-to-all milquetoast service where it didn’t matter so much. (And more alien to me as a Catholic than as an atheist.) I figured it was win-win. They get their crack at bringing me back into the fold and my kids do some singing. It did occur to me how joyful it is to get kids to sing together. It’d be better if most of the opportunities weren’t run by churches. (My kids are approaching college age, so no need for advice now.)
PaulBC: It’s fucking hilarious that you think I wrote something indefensible.
PZ “quotes” Comfort saying something outrageous.
A bunch of folk in the thread accept it at face value.
Other folk say “OK, but it’s plausible he could have said it”, basically excusing acceptance of the “quote”.
It doesn’t just say that. It says you’ll entertain the most disgusting accusations, as long as they’re directed at the right people. If a Christian “quoted” PZ saying something equally foul, would your response be the same?
You can carry on your stream-of-consciousness typing if you like, but I’m done with this bullshit.
Rob Grigjanis@85
I’ll fact check anything presented to appear like a real quote or just leave it indeterminate. I don’t care who said it. If this specific quote was attribute to, say, Noam Chomsky, I would find it incongruous and indeed implausible, but I’m sure I could be fooled by a fake Chomsky* quote too even if it made him look very bad.
My guess was that this one was fake. But according to your logic, I am a bad person for not ruling it out completely.
Really, are you the Pope speaking ex cathedra? It is a fairly mild accusation, and you did not even provide a defense when you elaborated on exactly what it says about Susan Montgomery. You merely reasserted it.
*Or more to the point, I have read and liked some articles by Jeffrey Toobin. If you had told me that he “was the kind of person to masturbate publicly in a Zoom” I would have said that was a scurrilous attack. But wait, no, Toobin actually did masturbate publicly in a Zoom session. Granted, that’s also not as bad as raping and murdering your own kids, but I don’t don’t set limits on how low anyone can go. I have no idea and neither do you.
It would be funnier if it was a photo of Hanibal Lecter saying “If we’re not supposed to eat Evangelicals why are they made of meat?”