About two weeks ago I presented and criticized Ray Comfort’s latest piece of tripe film, “Evolution vs. God,” in which he accosts various students and biologists and tries to flummox them by making them produce the only evidence for evolution he’ll accept. And that happens to be showing one “kind” of animal transforming into another kind in real time. That is, you need to show Comfort a reptile evolving into a bird before your eyes.
The movie, of course, is being touted by creationists as a deliberate tour de force. I don’t want to summarize all that palaver, but reader Chris called my attention to one blurb for the movie that he characterized as “low-hanging fruit.” It’s on the WND Faith site, and is called “Watch evolutionists stumble over theory’s ‘proof’“.
Yeah, that’s some “proof” Comfort’s asking for. It’s like asking him to “prove” the tenets of his faith by showing us Jesus coming back to life after crucifixion in real time. Where’s the damn movie of that?
I won’t go on except to highlight the low-hanging fruit. The WND blurb begins this way:
Imagine having a worldview that permits rape, murder, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, blasphemy and adultery.
Now imagine this worldview being taught to generation after generation and how it would eventually destroy the foundations of any nation.
And imagine if it was taught as legitimate science.
Such is Darwinian evolution, according to the maker of a new DVD, who contends the theory helped form the ideological foundation for Hitler’s Holocaust and the effort to rid America of God and any moral accountability.
Really? Evolutionary biologists have no problem with rape, murder, or adultery? As for homosexuality, abortion, or even non-abusive pornography, I don’t have problems with them. But yes, I am in favor of blasphemy, but that’s because I’m an atheist, not an evolutionist. Comfort and his minions, in insisting that evolution sanctions gross immorality, are lying, and know that they’re lying. In fact, we’re more moral than Comfort, because when we have evidence, we don’t lie to avoid confronting it.
The site also has a short video clip with more lies, taking a bit of an anti-Comfort YouTube video by Jaclyn Glenn and turning it into their propaganda. They simply excerpt her real video (below) and then slap their own “there’s-no-evidence-for-evolution” mantra over it.
These people need to read my book, but of course they won’t accept that as evidence, either. I need to show them a dog evolving into a cat.
Anyway, courtesy of Hemant Mehta, here’s Glenn’s full-length video rebuttal of Comfort’s film. It’s good.
jaclyn glenn knows her stuff…thanks jerry for posting …
Sh may know her stuff but she’s not a respectable spokesperson for our side. Too bubbly and bimboy. Too Ray Comforty.
“Know stuff” and “Ray Comfort” do not belong in the same paragraph.
As for style, meh. It takes all styles. She’s a fine spokesman, just not for you.
‘Their side’, like ‘our side’, come from all walks of life and all age groups. Jaclyn Glenn certainly does know her stuff and is probably far more likely to make some headway with wilful young idiots like this: http://goo.gl/G7xa , than do, say, Jerry or Bill Nye. With all due respect to Jerry and Bill Nye, of course.
Uh….. that video is satire. (Although true creationist verbiage. But read as satire.)
As the description says “All text taken directly from online Christian fundamentalist forums.”
Right. (I’m just saying that the two guys aren’t willful young idiots. There’re non-believers like you and me.)
“wilful young idiots *like* this”. I guess I should have phrased it differently. 🙂
Loved that video. Couldn’t have done better myself! Satire rules!
Anyone who makes a cogent argument against Ray Comfort like that is my ally. She may not be what you expect to see, but she is smart and put together a clever analysis.
Do not underestimate the persuasive powers of a high I.Q. and a low cut dress.
(With acknowledgements to Woody Allen)
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Imagine believing in an all-powerful deity “that permits rape, murder, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, blasphemy and adultery.”
Now imagine this worldview being taught to generation after generation and how it would eventually destroy the foundations of any rational argument.
1. Comfort lies. He says he wants to save our souls. Actually he doesn’t care about us but he wants, instead, to be right.
2. He says science is based on first hand observation. If true, then not until satellites could we prove by observation that the earth circles the sun.
Great video. Great speaker. Great review.
I disagree. More than anything Ray Comfort wants the tax free $$$ he gets from selling his videos.
I can’t see the satellites, so as far as I’m concerned the sun still passes from West to East on a large underground river.
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“tries to flummox them by making them produce the only evidence for evolution he’ll accept.”
That’s exactly right. It reminds me of a Futurama episode where the Professor shows the long chain of human evolution, and it’s still not enough to persuade the skeptics, who demand more evidence.
And it’s also humorous to me the Comfort (called Banana Man by Dawkins) demands evidence while trumpeting a belief built on little to no evidence: to pick one example — show me how god made man out of the dust of the ground, breathing into his nostrils.
“tries to flummox them by making them produce the only evidence for evolution he’ll accept.”
Which, ironically, would disprove ACTUAL evolutionary theory…
If I were asked to be interviewed by Ray Comfort, I’d agree to do so only if he agreed to meet my conditions: if he tried to get me to agree to something that was not what evolution is or when asked for evidence, he just said “because god”, I get to poke him in both his eyes Three Stooges Style. 🙂
Given the same circumstances, I think that I’d prefer to do a Foghorn Leghorn, and paint his tongue green. That would at least keep him quiet for a while. 🙂
Show me how a theory did the same
I seriously wonder why you even bother w/ this gang of morons and those who are so gullible as to join their ranks.
These people are severely, mentally challenged. I doubt that there’s any hope that they’ll ever read a book – other then a “holy book” – that can make a profound effect on their lives. The only thing that makes perfect sense to these dolts is one containing simplistic, mumbo-jombo that can only be interpreted for them by the like of Ted Haggard and David Coresh.
I’m very familiar w/ the mindset of these idiots. I have several relatives and blood connections that remind me on a daily basis how hopeless their mental condition is.
It’s worse than you can even imagine.
“I seriously wonder why you even bother…”
Probably wouldn’t be worth bothering about if these folk weren’t electing their co-morons to public office.
No one who argues for any position other than a simplistic, god-is-behind-it-all worldview is going to change their vote or perspective on anything, particularly not anything espoused by an enlightened and highly educated biologist.
These people have rocks for brains. You simply cannot reason w/ a rock. Shouldn’t even try.
You don’t do it for their sakes. You do it for the bystanders who might be influenced not to replace their grey matter with rocks.
Which is why I agree with you if it is a private situation. There is, in that case, very little reason to waste your time one-to-one with these guys.
Jaclyn’s matter/antimatter segment is wrong [Torbjörn where are you?], but otherwise a good video
Her most recent video carries on where the above video left off:- Ray Comfort vs. Logic v. good
Gives Comfort a right good kicking
One thing she didn’t address was Ray Comfort’s paternalistic tone — calling her “young lady”. Puhleees!
I have so little energy to deal with the Ray Comforts of the world.
But I thought she did in the vid I just linked…. ?
[haven’t time to recheck ~ but I seem to remember she did]
She mentioned how he addressed her but she didn’t call him out as paternalistic just condescending. I think it was a special kind of condescension.
That was the wrong answer Diana. You should have replied to me with:-
“Don’t worry your pretty, little, bobble head about it Mikey buns” or similar 🙂
Yeah but I only respond that way to paternalistic people. My common response is “don’t worry your pretty little head”.
[Oh, eh, thanks! I was busy checking what happens when you put matter and antimatter together. Need a new test site now…]
It *is* a good video, but I don’t care much for the high speed delivery. After untangling what Jaclyn said, and mind that I haven’t yet read Krauss’s book, I think she presented the simplest model possible in a reasonably correct manner.
When matter and antimatter combine you get energy of course, in the form of photons, and from that perspective it is incorrect to describe it as “nothing”.
But the universe undergoes a lot of internal thermodynamic transitions where the amount of free energy doesn’t matter [sic!]. E.g. the inflation era, the radiation dominated era, et cetera.
The universe happens to come out as near enough flat in the CMB “fossil” radiation, meaning that while we ordinarily doesn’t care about a system’s total energy to understand its working, in this case we happen to know it – it is nearly zero energy.
Another complication is that while matter-antimatter pair production happens in the quantum vacuum of particle fields, the universe pair production happens in the quantum void which is devoid of fields. (Yes, the model I’ve seen so far insists that universes must fluctuate into existence in pairs for much the same reason particles must.) Here the difference in free energy is more or less explicit.
Electron-positron pair production needs a specific energy to materialize the particles, at least twice the massenergy of the electron. The quantum fields has states of energy (various amounts of particles).
The quantum void is (in the case I read about) simply a quantization of the action principle, the transformation that keeps symmetries in Noether’s theorems. Or in other words it is simply a statement that causality exists and laws are possible.
I don’t think the void has an explicit energy in the model. But neither has the universes in any model I know of or if they have it is (near) zero.
In this case it is confusing to describe the energy involved (don’t you think =D), so I would tend to go with Jaclyn’s description. On the other hand her description is confusing if you happen to know or checks out pair production, and personally I had to think it over. She did refer to Krauss book though.
On the one hand Jaclyn did an outstanding job of responding and keeping the responses correct even in the perspective of the fuzziness on this point. On the other hand we have the old adage of not going into points you don’t know much about. Personally I break that all the time, as here. 😉
The comments on that WND site are depressing. It baffles me how people can celebrate ignorance to such a degree.
Yeah, I had a quick look but my bullshit-o-meter went haywire and I had to leave.
No point in loosing faith in humanity this close to bedtime. 🙂
Yes, I looked at them a while back (can’t remember when) & I didn’t have the endurance to persevere over there for very long.
Maybe we should make a new movie with this premise and see if a selection of Comfort’s crowd can perform this feat.
http://pictoraltheology.blogspot.com/2013/08/back-at-ya-ray.html
Only seems fair.
Jaclyn Glenn is very good, I subscribed to her channel a couple of weeks ago.
On another note, my worldview does permit homosexuality, pornography and abortion. However, blasphemy is not something to be permitted. It is to be demanded as a moral imperative.
Rape and murder, on the other hand, are not permitted outside of monotheistic religions. See the bible for some wonderful examples of this. Adultery is a non issue at the societal level.
“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no god.’ The wise man has said it out loud.”
If you watch Jaclyn Glenn’s early videos you will find she was actually a Christian in the earliest days of her Youtube channel. She says in her recent videos that interacting with the Youtube atheist community made her become an atheist.
She’s clearly learned her stuff and there’s nothing quite like the fury of a newly minted atheist.
Ray doesn’t care about being right, or the truth.
He’s been called out and proven wrong to his face over and over.
Ray cares about money, and milking the religious right for as much as he can get.
…and we have a winner!
Bingo!
“Imagine having a worldview that permits rape, murder, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, blasphemy and adultery…Such is Darwinian evolution”
I love this quote! It really illustrates how the god-botherers apparently think opinions and facts are synonymous. But why stop at evolution?
Imagine having a worldview that permits the moon to hang in the sky without a crystal sphere to hold it up.
Imagine having a worldview that permits little creatures too tiny to be seen to cause disease rather than demons.
Imagine having a worldview that permits a consecrated wafer to be digested in the body as if it was an ordinary cracker.
Imagine having a worldview that permits a black-skinned person to be just as intelligent and capable as a white-skinned person.
Imagine having a worldview that permits a woman to be as qualified to be President of the USA as a man.
Just for the record, in all of his speeches and writings, Hitler never once mentions evolution the scientific theory. However, over and over again, he cites his religion as justification for his policies, ambitions and world view.
I may remember this incorrectly, but I got the impression Hitler was against evolution in his writings. Probably because it interfered with his creationist beliefs in differently created races and their superior vs inferior traits.
combatting faith just puts more energy into that debate. i think you would make more converts by helping re climate change, green power, biodiversity, health, all the useful things that we need science for.
On 28 August 2013 04:01, Why Evolution Is True
A core concept of evolutionary theory is that change happens gradually. So the fact that change is a little too gradual to actually see is proof against evolution.
On the other hand, in Matthew 24:34 Jesus tells his followers that he will return within their generation. He didn’t. This conclusively proves the literal truth of the Bible.
A high school biology student ought to be able to dispense with Ray Comfort.*
*If proper high school biology is taught with the basics of evolution.
Imagine having a worldview that permits rape, murder, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, blasphemy and adultery.
I can think of two responses, both a bit on the snarky side (I love the smell of snark in the morning!).
1) “Wow, he’s right! None of those things existed in human society until Nov. 24, 1859.”
2) Imagine having a worldview that condones genocide, slavery, misogyny, ignorance, known falsehoods, and the absolute necessity of believing what you are told without checking to see (or even being allowed to ask) if it’s true. Imagine that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the supposed perpetrator of such an immoral system actually exists. Now imagine this worldview being taught to generation after generation and how it would eventually destroy the foundations of any society.
And imagine if it was taught as legitimate science.
Such is Abrahamic theism.
I’d show him a butterfly catterpiller and tell him to sit down and wait a bit …
Two of the biggest issues facing the growing population on this planet are poverty and ignorance. Individuals like this moron practice their trade( and make themselves incredibly wealthy in the process)thru preying on the gullible who are found amongst these numbers.
Having friends and family who hold various degrees of “belief” but certainly not lacking in intelligence, I can only come up with one conclusion for their continued “faith” and that is the inability to accept that death is final, so religion offers them “life eternal” if they follow the precepts of their “faith”, regardless….
Don’t suppose I’ve said anything new here, but I needed to release some frustration with a rant!
I’m a little disappointed in the scientists interviewed. When asked for a real time example of one creature turning into another, I would have recalled my happy childhood watching tadpoles turn into frogs….
I doubt that much of what was said made the final cut.
You mean watching baby frogs turn in adult frogs
Here’s Ray talking the film with pseudo historian David Barton who lauds him for his selective editing and sophistry. Pure silliness
http://www.wallbuilderslive.com/listen.asp?cs=high&mf=mp3&fileName=WBLive2013-08-14
I had never heard of Jaclyn Glenn, so I did a quick google and on a youtube wiki I found this:
“She has recently admitted to being an atheist and skeptic, but does not have an abrasive personality like many other atheist vloggers on the site.”
Seriously? Who writes this stuff?
Jaclyn, thank you for this video. We will be posting it on out site, atheismblog.com tomorrow. We will also post a link back here and to your you tube video. If you are interested in having more of your video’s on the site, please contact us! You should have my email attached to this comment. Thanks for everything!
Kevin