On the matters of faiths, beliefs, sciences and worldviews.

Let’s take a little detour from our usual route through Banana-land, shall we? Let’s talk homeopathy.

I know people who’ve tried it. I even know people who believe in it. Why? Well, who knows. I couldn’t possibly do a better job of explaining why homeopathy is so pathetically ridiculous than this comic, so I suggest you just click the link and read it yourself.

If that doesn’t convince you, maybe another “comic” will:

In one of Ray’s latest posts, he discusses morality. Yes, again. He still holds the opinion that without God, people are completely free to redefine morality however they want, so that war is peace, murder is life and hate is love. Of course, anyone with a speck of intelligence knows this just isn’t true, that society can’t just make anything “moral”. However, the examples that Ray chooses to give tell us something about him. Let’s look at one…

If the government (society) says homosexuals marrying each other is good, it moves from one generation believing it is evil and it becomes good and acceptable.

…and then another.

If the government says it’s okay to kill blacks, Jews and homosexuals because only the fit should survive, what is morally evil changes to that which is morally good in their eyes.

In the first example, homosexuality is portrayed as something bad, something that one generation “believes” is actually evil. What Ray sees as a decline in moral integrity is the fact that homosexuality is more and more tolerated (and, as we all know, tolerance has no place in Christianity!). In the second example, he describes a government that sees black, Jewish and homosexual people as “unfit”, taking care not to insinuate too obviously that he could think the same. I suspect that the only reason homosexuals are even in the list of people that it currently is immoral to kill, is that not even Ray has the balls to wish those who disgust him dead publicly.

In essence, Ray has no problem calling homosexuals downright evil, but he draws the line at actually killing them for that reason alone. How noble of him.

Now, let’s discuss his premise of good and evil, shall we? Ray is under the impression that society or governments are free to define anything they wish as moral or immoral, on opinion alone. This is far from reality, as with most of Ray’s rabid rantings. His first example of something that is today “bad”, but in tomorrow’s Godless society would be “good”, is abortion. Abortion (or “killing babies”, as Ray so colorfully describes it) is never a “good” thing, and I don’t know anyone who’s ever made the claim that it is. It is, and always will be, an “evil” in the traditional sense. However, modern, intelligent people are able to realize that sometimes it is a necessary evil, a negative act that can sometimes lead to good and positive results. A young girl, impregnated against her will, can be allowed to live instead of being sentenced to a horribly cruel and painful death. It will likely never be a “good” thing to take a life, in any way, shape or form, but it might often be necessary.

Equal rights for homosexuals is one of those hot-button examples that everyone uses just to get attention. However, being gay or lesbian has nothing to do with morality. One has to wonder why homosexuality is so prevalent in society today, but among those who think it’s disgusting or immoral, not a single person identifies as gay themselves. Statistics alone almost conclusively proves that it’s more about self-hatred and fear, than actual Christian values or morality.

Lastly, the killing. Not the killing of blacks, Jews or homosexuals specifically, but killing altogether. Has anyone ever claimed that murdering another person was “good” or “moral”. Even Hitler? Again, I maintain that killing another human being (or even another animal, for that matter) is always a bad thing – evil, but sometimes nonetheless necessary. Not in the sense that it’s necessary to ethnically cleanse human populations, but in the sense that we often allow killing in self-defense and as capital punishment, and we allow the killing of animals for sustenance.

So in conclusion, this is another straw man non-issue, a made-up argument from Ray Comfort to refute something that doesn’t exist. Secular nations have no problems with morality, and in fact, the numbers rather show a correlation between secularism and increased tolerance and decrease in violence. Apparently, being good doesn’t mean anything to Ray unless you’re also Christian, which I suspect is really the heart of the problem: It’s not morality and goodness that is on the decline, it’s religion. It’s Christianity. It’s his particular faith that is losing in numbers, and that’s what scares him.

Oh, and those damn gays, of course. Mustn’t forget them gays…

Doctor Eugenie C. Scott writes the following, in a debate with Ray Comfort:

I close with another quote. Todd C. Wood is a young-earth creationist—indeed, the director of the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College, founded in honor of the creationist hero William Jennings Bryan—who rejects evolution for biblical reasons, just like Comfort. Wood insists, “The Bible reveals true information about the history of the earth that is fundamentally incompatible with evolution.”

But unlike Comfort, Wood is a trained scientist. And as such, he recognizes that the scientific basis of evolution is strong:

Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.

Anyone who honestly examines the data supporting evolution—even a young-earth creationist—concludes that the science is strong. If you reject evolution, you are doing it for religious reasons. You’re entitled to your religious opinions—but not to your own scientific facts.

I think this might actually be it. I think Ray Comfort is now so embarrassed of his own arguments, that he has created a “guest blogger” only mysteriously known as DJC, to take the blame for the clueless tripe he’s peddling. It’s a short post, so I’ll quote all of it here.

Look around the room you are in. Name anything that wasn’t made or designed. Unless you’re in the kitchen you’d be hard-pressed to argue that everything in the room wasn’t made or designed by someone (and even then only an atheist could put fruit or veggies on the list).

Yet atheists believe the whole world and everything in it, fell into place through random chance and was created by nobody. Yet we’re not just struggling life forms on a planet that barely has the necessities for life to exist. We have an abundance of natural resources, water, oxygen, countless varieties of food, happiness, love, the ability to continue our race through procreation. And that was just a short list. Our life is good, if not great, compared to what it could have evolved into. And it is believed that all this, evolved before (or as) we had a need for it.

So why didn’t the things in the room you are in (chairs, desks, pens, TV and even planes and cars) evolve too? After all, these items are used by nearly even human on the planet and some would say they are a necessity in life. They are certainly less complex than the items mentioned in the first list above. Is it not a fair question to ask of evolution and Mother Nature as to why we had to give up waiting and create them ourselves? DJC

Yes, this is actually what “DJC” wrote. He’s apparently serious.

A grown man (maybe that’s too much of an assumption) that actually argues that evolution is false because microwave ovens don’t evolve.

You know what? I’m not even going to bother commenting on this any further. The stupidity speaks for itself. This “guest blogger” couldn’t think himself out of a sandbox, not to mention grasp the general outline of the theory of evolution. I pity him, and I pity those who actually think this is a good argument.

There’s a game that’s often played by skeptics. They create hypothetical scenarios so that they can (in their own minds) justify rejection of the gospel.

So begins another one of Ray’s famous analogies. In this particular case, he is responding to the argument that, according to the religious doctrine of Christianity, even Hitler could get into heaven by simply believing. Ray, having no clue how to respond to such a problem in a direct, honest way, goes off on a tangent regarding atheists(!), and not his own religion, which was what it was all about to begin with.

A drug addict is dying because of a disease that is related to his addiction. But when a faithful doctor takes the time to point out the evident symptoms that are all over the addict’s flesh, he responds by saying that the hideous spots are normal, and that all his friends have them.

The doctor pleads with him to listen, and says that a large drug company has developed a cure for the fatal disease. To which the addict says, “What if an elephant fell from the sky and swallowed it before I could get to it? Huh doc. Huh! What about that? You and your stupid pill! I don’t believe the drug company even exists. You idiot. Rather than talk about this so-called disease and your brainless drug company, I want to talk about the age of this medical building.”

What does any of this have to do with the obvious problems of the “gift of salvation”? How is it the atheist’s fault that Hitler could get a clean slate without doing anything in return? How does this even address the question!?

Regardless, this post is about the analogy itself, so let’s address that:

The germ theory of disease (remember, kids, it’s only a theory) is accepted as fact, by both atheists and (most, just to be safe) creationists. Therefor, it is not really valid to claim that a drug addict would absolutely deny even the possibility that his addiction had gotten him infected with a disease. In fact, I think most addicts are well aware of the risks, and choose rather to ignore it. Further, Ray is nothing like a medical doctor. A medical doctor can show evidence that the disease he claims the addict is infected with, actually exists. There isn’t just one, single book which vaguely mentions it, there are entire encyclopedias, libraries even, filled with information and scientific data relating to it. Oh, and an actually sick person would notice his symptoms himself, not having to rely on the doctor to point them out to him.

Ray isn’t offering a pill. If Ray were a doctor, his remedy would be to just go home and hope the disease goes away by itself. The very act of merely showing up at the doctor is what Ray believes can heal people. It doesn’t work that way in real life, and you and I both know that.

Atheists don’t deny the existence of the “medical companies” representing Christianity. We are painfully aware of your religion. We just don’t agree that you have the only, unique cure to a disease no one but you even knows exists.

The “age of this medical building” is obviously a reference to the numerous attempts to have Ray clarify whether he is a Young-Earth or an Old-Earth creationist. While I agree that it is not technically important to the discussion, it would greatly serve to clarify whether he ignores all scientific methods and conclusions, or just the ones that most directly conflicts with his beliefs. Then again, we’re all more than reasonably sure that if Ray were ever to be infected with a disease, he wouldn’t stay home and pray, but get himself to the nearest doctor, and ask to be given a pill.

Nothing like a hypocrite to present an analogy that makes more fun of himself than anyone else.