I went to Ray Comfort’s website today, the one where he is trying to “pull the plug” on atheism. I was shocked by his arrogance and total lack of knowledge about the subject he thinks he knows most about, namely evolution. He essentially has two arguments, in fact they’re not really his arguments, they’re just recycled guff that he polishes up and pushes on unsuspecting members of the public. The arguments are as follows: (1) “Something can’t come from nothing”. This old chestnut has got to be the worst argument used by creationists. What has this got to do with evolution? Evolution makes absolutely no claim whatsoever about the origins of universe, or even the origins of life, it simply explains how one species changes in to another over time. Comfort, and his fellow creationists, seem to think that the Big Bang and Evolution are the same theory. They are not! Why is this such a hard thing for creationists to grasp? But this isn’t what makes the argument laughable, it’s that they think it somehow helps their cause. “God must have created the universe because something can’t come from nothing”, OK, but what about god, where did he come from? As they are so willing to point out “something can’t come from nothing” but they’re not so willing to apply this logic to god. All this argument does is simply replace one mystery (the birth of the universe) with an infinitely bigger one (the birth of god). And if god can come from nothing, then so can the universe. (2) “A painting has a painter, a house has a builder, a watch a watchmaker. Therefore man has a god”. This is of course a regurgitation of William Palley’s watchmaker argument which has long been refuted. The fact that Comfort uses the argument in this form shows that he hasn’t even got a rudimentary understanding of evolutionary theory. It amazes me how Comfort talks with such confidence about a subject he so very clearly knows nothing about. There is a good reason why a painting, a house and a watch cannot be compared to living things in this way. They don’t have babies! Evolution requires three things; variation, competition (a struggle for existence) and reproduction with inheritance. All three of these things need to be present for evolution to work. Now, unless there is something I’m not aware of, watches do not have baby watches that are similar, but not identical, to themselves. No reproduction with inheritance, no evolution, its that simple! (Some readers might argue that there is a way in which watches may be said to evolve, but that’s a whole other discussion which I want to talk about in another post about a totally unrelated topic).
Having realized just how naive Ray Comforts arguments were, I was over joyed to find that he wants to debate Richard Dawkins on the subject. In fact, so badly does he want this debate, he is willing to pay $10,000 for it. Most people wouldn’t pay a penny to be publicly humiliated, but not Ray, he’s totally up for it! But as much as I would like to see creationism ridiculed on stage, Richard Dawkins holds a policy to not debate crazy creationists because it makes it look like there’s a real controversy surrounding the evolution/creationism debate when of course there is no such thing. But Dawkins apparently has made a proposal to Comfort, if Comfort (or someone on Comforts behalf) donates $100,000 to the RDF (Richard Dawkins Foundation) and agrees to the debate being filmed by the RDF team then the debate will go ahead. I would gladly donate to this cause, the debate would be the most hilarious show. Ray Comfort vs science. It would be like the Lenox Lewis vs Mike Tyson fight, but perhaps more painful to watch.
