This is the conclusion of my book review of Ray Comfort’s Fat Chance: Why Pigs Will Fly Before America Has an Atheist President. (Start with part 1 here.)

Is Ray’s pig book an evangelistic tool aimed at convincing atheists of the rightness of the Christian position? So far it doesn’t look like it. Let’s wrap up our critique.

Rays of brilliance . . . or something

I’ll wrap up with a few more claims from the book that I can’t let stand without rebuttal. Can we call these Rays of brilliance? Or maybe Ray’s brain farts.

(I’ll put the page numbers in where I don’t give a quote. Where I do give a quote, you can look it up in the book to find the context if necessary.)

• “Even today, the president is sworn in by raising his right hand toward Heaven and placing his left hand on a Bible while taking the oath of office, typically ending ‘So help me God.’”

“Typically” is right. There is no obligation to include any Bibles or God stuff.

• “Christians . . . know that no one is good in God’s eyes.”

Wrong again—read your Bible, Ray. Job was “blameless and upright” (Job 1:1). Noah was blameless and faithful (Genesis 6:9). The New Testament says, “We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin” (1 John 5:18). Anyway, why fret about humans being imperfect? God made them that way—you should celebrate God’s perfect plan to make us imperfect.

• He compares God to a judge. If someone pays your fine, the judge lets you go. Jesus paid your fine, so God can dismiss your sins and declare you eligible for heaven (page 60).

Human judges are bound by a law they didn’t create. God as a judge can simply dismiss the charges or change the rules. (Why must the atheist explain to the Christian how omnipotence works?)

It’s true that someone else can pay your fine, but someone else can’t do your time. That’s not justice. Imagine that someone served a full term in prison and then new evidence overturned that conviction. No one thinks that since the term was served, there’s no need to find the actual perpetrator or that, once they do, that time served counts for anything.

• Sir Isaac Newton said, “Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors.”

Have Newton live today; he’d be an atheist. Consider how dramatically society has changed since then—Newton’s position at Cambridge had a faith requirement (that had to be waived since his faith was heretical). No scientist at a legitimate institution has a faith requirement today. Christian scholars are sometimes hobbled by what they must sign at Christian universities (more here and here).

• Atheists don’t understand Christianity. They think that Christians strive to be good to earn their place in heaven (page 61).

Doing good works is indeed a way to get into heaven. Read the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31–46). More here.

• “[Another] reason atheists aren’t trusted with high political office is that they (by definition) are foolish. While many deny it, because it’s an intellectual embarrassment, they believe the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything.”

It’s the Christians who are obliged to believe things, Ray. Atheists simply have no god belief; they don’t have obligatory beliefs about cosmology.

Science has no consensus of why we had our Big Bang, so don’t tell me that cosmologists all believe that nothing created everything. Furthermore, when there is a consensus, you can be sure that I won’t be getting it from you.

• “The existence of God can be proven reasonably, simply, and scientifically—to those who are reasonable.”

Another fallacy! This time, it’s No True Scotsman. Every reasonable person agrees with Ray, and if you don’t, then you’re not reasonable!

I can understand Ray’s motivation, though—it’s a lot easier to simply make statements like this and ignore that whole evidence-and-good-arguments thing. What a hassle that is.

• “Count how many of [atheists’] lawsuits are against Muslims, Hindus, Jews, or Buddhists. They are only against Christians. This is because the US is soaked in a Christian heritage, and that’s what is held dear by so many.”

The lawsuits are filed where there are problems. If they’re all against Christians (I suspect instead that they mostly are), then maybe that’s because it’s the Christians who are crossing the line. And Christian heritage isn’t the problem, the problem is unjustified Christian privilege.

The ACLU defends freedom of speech, regardless of whose rights have been trampled on.

• “In truth, these anti-Christian atheists have brought disdain on themselves.”

Disdain because we defend the First Amendment? Disdain for speaking the truth like Martin Luther King? That’s good company to be in.

• “They are the playground bully, preying on Christians—those they consider to be weak-minded and meek—knowing that they will turn the other cheek and not pick up a machete.”

Ray imagines that all Christians are cut from the same cloth. I’m not sure he wants to be lumped in with the hateful pastors saying that the Orlando gay-nightclub shooter who killed 49 people didn’t finish the job or that Orlando was due to God. Consider the pushback from Christians annoyed when their privilege is challenged and then tell me that Christians always turn the other cheek. As for picking up machetes, that unfortunately brings to mind the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which Christian Hutus killed an estimated 70% of that country’s Tutsi minority—about a million people. Machetes were a primary weapon.

• In an interview with TheBlaze, Ray said, “Having to prove the existence of God to an atheist is like having to prove the existence of the sun, at noon on a clear day. Yet millions are embracing the foolishness of atheism, particularly in the United States.”

And again, Ray gives us nothing to respond to. The argument is: God exists! He just does!

• “Most American believe we were created by God with certain unalienable rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—and that our freedoms come from God, not from the government. Yet atheists are attempting to take away our most precious freedom—the freedom of religion—through an abuse of the court system.”

I guess “abuse of the court system” means “filing lawsuits to roll back Christian privilege, which is wrong because it makes me sad.” As for unalienable rights, keep in mind that that’s from the Declaration of Independence, a historic document, rather than the Constitution, which is the law. You can imagine whatever you want about what God provides, but in this country, the Constitution calls the tune, not the Bible.

• “[It is] a bitter blow that [American] liberties are being attacked by atheists whose hatred for God outweighs any respect for those ideas or any love and concern for their fellow Americans.”

I hate God like you hate Zeus—they’re both just mythology. Show me where your rights (and unwarranted privilege is not a right) are under attack, and I stand with you. You’ve not shown a single example.

Ray’s final word

Not that Ray has been subtle or unclear, but let’s close with this attack on the idea of an atheist president.

To give the most powerful position in the world to one who doesn’t even have a moral rudder—but who alone determines right and wrong for himself—would be the height of foolishness and lead to devastating consequences for our great nation. So nowadays, if someone is an out-of-the-closet atheist who wants to run for political office, he may as well change his name to Judas Benedict Arnold and let it be known that he’s a pot-smoking, divorced, homosexual Muslim rapist.

“To give the most powerful position in the world to one who doesn’t even have a moral rudder”? You mean someone like Donald Trump, who claims to be a Christian? Your fellow evangelists have destroyed your argument for me by voting for that.

This handwaving has all been slapped down above. Atheists get their morality from the same place Christians do (Christians may imagine a supernatural grounding that they can access, but Ray has done nothing to show that it exists). There are good and bad atheists, as is the case with Christians. Ray is right that Christian voters have unfounded biases against atheists. That will hurt atheist candidates just like it has hurt groups tarred with the “Other” label in the past—homosexuals and Muslims, for example.

The atheist community will probably advance in the public mind as the percentage of Nones continues to grow. Think of the progress made by the homosexual community. Perhaps the even-larger atheist community will follow a similar path, and hopefully more quickly.

As for Ray’s pig book, I’m amazed that he can consider this mindless and insulting tract to be an evangelistic tool.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 7/4/16.)

Image from Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau (license CC BY 2.0)
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We continue with my book review of Ray Comfort’s Fat Chance: Why Pigs Will Fly Before America Has an Atheist President (part 1).

Ray has positioned his pig book as an evangelistic tool, a book that is supposed to convince atheists of the rightness of the Christian position. Let’s see how well Ray did toward that goal.

Christians and atheists in positions of power

Ray shares his insights into how Christian voters see atheist political candidates.

Our founders understood that people in positions of power would have opportunities to do corrupt deeds for their own benefit. But if they believe in God and in a future state of rewards and punishments, then when tempted to do wrong they won’t give in.

Is that how it works in practice? Christians don’t commit crimes? They’re immune to temptation? No Christians in prison? Are crime statistics in countries inversely proportionate to the fraction of Christians?

Not really. In fact, the very-Christian U.S. does far worse than those godless European countries on measurable social metrics like homicide, suicide, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, and so on.

Oblivious to what it does to his argument, Ray brags that Christians have subverted the Constitution’s prohibition of a religious requirement (Article VI) and made it impossible for an atheist to get elected to national office. But atheists have achieved political power in other countries. Polls within science show that education and prestige correlate with atheism. And I wonder how many of America’s self-made billionaires are atheists. Bill Gates is one, and his foundation, the world’s largest private foundation, is worth $50 billion and has made $55 billion in grants. He’s using it to improve health care and reduce poverty in the developing world.

Because atheists have no absolute basis for good and evil, and don’t believe in an afterlife, they therefore can’t be trusted with public office. Whether this ‘bias’ would stand up to today’s Supreme Court scrutiny, it clearly shows the intent of our founders.

What an obnoxious moron. “Our founders” were very clear about the role of religion in government, and they deliberately kept them separate. The U.S. Constitution admits of no supernatural grounding backing up the government, and it begins, We the people.

Your bias would indeed fail a Supreme Court test because the intent of the founders was clear: there can be no religious test for public office.

Church-state separation

I can’t imagine Ray has thought this through. Despite evidence to the contrary, he has assurance from his deity that non-Christians are bad people. Is that how a society should work? If, decades from now, Ray’s group became a minority, would he still want a religious test imposed by the majority? Or does this only apply when he’s got the power? If that future doesn’t sound good, Ray, maybe you’re seeing the value in the founders’ wisdom.

Atheists, like the rest of us, are not morally “good.” Without an unwavering moral compass to guide him, an atheist president would be easily swayed by the winds of popular opinion and his own selfish desires—doing whatever was right in his own eyes.

Demonstrate this “unwavering moral compass.” Take a contentious social issue like abortion or same-sex marriage and show that all Christians get the same God-given response. Last time I checked, Christians were all over the map on social issues. Some churches have rainbow flags, and some have signs that say, “God hates fags.”

Ray undercuts his non-argument when he denounces the many corrupt Christian politicians:

And this from people who claim to believe in a Supreme Being who will one day hold them accountable!

So then he admits that being Christian is no guarantee of moral action. He doesn’t even attempt to show a correlation. ”Christianity makes you good” is just a bold claim supported by handwaving.

Ray drops in a predictable attack on Islam. His argument is basically: Say what you will about Christianity, it’s better than Islam! Uh, okay, and say what you will about dengue fever, it’s better than smallpox . . . but I’d rather have neither.

He frets that atheism’s attack on Christianity will create a vacuum for Islam:

By dismantling Christianity’s influence in our nation, [atheists] are preparing the way, and making every path straight [for Islam].

You don’t fight fire with fire; you fight it with water. Similarly, you don’t fight Muslim illogic with Christian illogic; you fight it with reason.

The Constitution is all the protection we need against excesses from either Islam or Christianity. Don’t mess with it.

Getting the Ray Comfort treatment

You might have seen Ray’s Ten Commandments challenge on his videos. He gets people to admit that they’ve stolen, lied, cursed, or lusted. You’d feel like you haven’t gotten your money’s worth if you read a Ray Comfort book and didn’t find this flabby challenge, but the pig book has it. He concludes it with this:

God sees you as a lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterer at heart. Do you still think that you are good?

Yes, pretty good, though not perfect. If not being perfect is a problem, talk to my Maker.

And Ray does nothing to untangle the problem of the incompatible versions of the Ten Commandments. Given how little he understands the issues he talks about, I’m guessing he doesn’t even know that there is more than one.

I hope you’re sitting down for Ray’s next argument

Atheists, how confident are you in your worldview? Prepare to have it rocked.

Using the infallible logical fallacy of the Argument from Incredulity, Ray gives an argument that he plans to stretch into his next movie, The Atheist Delusion (critiqued here). First, he points to a book and asks, Do you believe that this book could happen by accident? When you say no, he pounces: the content within human DNA is equal to that within a thousand ordinary books. How could DNA happened by accident?

Ray hammers home the punch line:

DNA’s complexity (for any sin-loving sinner who is honest) instantly shows the absurdity of atheism, which holds that the unspeakably amazing instruction book for life happened by chance.

Wow—where does one begin?

1. It’s biologists who have useful opinions about the origin of DNA, not atheists.
2. Sin isn’t relevant to any issue within biology.
3. Neither atheism nor biology say that DNA “happened by chance.” Mutations happen by chance, but natural selection (also part of evolution) doesn’t.
4. Evolution is the consensus of the scientists qualified to evaluate the evidence. Deal with it. I’d be an idiot to reject that consensus view based on any argument from a non-biologist like you.
5. “Amazing” is no argument. That you’re amazed doesn’t mean that a Designer is behind it.

DNA isn’t a powerful argument against evolution or atheism. In fact, it alone is a powerful rebuttal to the Design Argument, the popular Christian argument that the apparent design we see in nature is evidence of God.

How well would Ray do on his own Ten Commandments challenge?

Ray keeps using his simple platitudes, like DNA happening by chance, because he’s kept the one-liners that work on people and discarded those that don’t (an example of artificial selection, by the way). He’s been corrected by the best—Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and other biologists have pointed out his errors. And yet he pops back up like a Weeble with the same stupid arguments. (This explains my subtitle of this post series, “Why Pigs Will Fly Before Ray Comfort Writes an Honest Critique of Atheists.”)

Ray, what do you call someone who makes a mistake, has it corrected by a reliable authority, and then deliberately repeats that mistake? You him a liar.

Have you thought about how you would do on your Ten Commandments challenge, Ray? Does it worry you that you lie? Or maybe you have some rationalization like it’s okay to lie for Jesus or you can lie as long as you ask for forgiveness afterwards. Or maybe you reserve the right to declare who’s an authority based on how their arguments please you. One wonders how your argument about immoral atheists being unqualified for elected office stands now that you’ve shown that even you don’t feel bound by God’s moral commandments.

Ray then makes the Appeal to Authority fallacy as he points to Antony Flew, who was convinced by the DNA-is-complex argument and went from atheism to deism. (I care nothing about the musings of a non-biologist like Flew about evolution; more here). And then it’s the Christianity of Francis Collins, who was head of the Human Genome Project. (Collins will be quick to tell you that DNA alone gives overwhelming evidence for evolution.)

I think Ray needs to select his authorities with more care.

Concluded in part 4.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/27/16.)

Image from Paul Sableman (license CC BY 2.0)
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This is part 2 of my book review of Ray Comfort’s book, Fat Chance: Why Pigs Will Fly Before America Has an Atheist President (2016). In part 1, we reviewed the poll results showing that Americans won’t vote for atheists (unfortunate but true), explored the reasons why (Christian bias according to Ray, which was a surprising admission), and reviewed some of the church/state separation lawsuits by which Ray thinks atheists cross the line (but are justified pushback against Christian excesses).

I emailed Ray with a link to my critique but got no reply. That’s odd—he’s usually so responsive. . . .

Ray has positioned his pig book as an evangelistic tool, a book that is supposed to convince atheists of the rightness of the Christian position. Let’s push forward to see how well Ray meets his goal.

Ray Comfort, mind reader

Ray acts as psychiatrist and psychic as he tells us what makes atheists tick:

The hatred that many atheists have for Christianity is very real. In part, this is because the idea of a God to whom we are accountable threatens every sinful sexual pleasure for which most atheist males live.

So it’s all about the hedonism? It couldn’t be about there not being a God?

With no God, the idea of sin goes away, but the idea of harm doesn’t. Sexual pleasure is a problem when it hurts someone. If the only person hurt is a nonexistent God, then it hurts no one.

Ray sees Christianity as the Big Answer to life’s problems, but there have been many civilizations besides the predominantly Christian West, including many that came before and did just fine without Christianity—Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, China. If you point out that those civilizations were imperfect, that’s true, but remember that Christian Europe had issues as well (more here and here).

Back to Ray:

Atheism gives them license to feast on porn, indulge in fornication, engage in homosexuality, and commit adultery without any sense of guilt. It means that they can lie to meet an end, love money, blaspheme God’s holy name, and steal if they think they can justify it. They believe there’s no absolute right or wrong, so if something makes them happy, then it’s fair game.

That’s a lot of different things lumped into a single confused list. Some things can be fine when done consensually and without harm, such as premarital or homosexual sex. Some can be fine but can also become unhealthy obsessions—porn or money. Some hurt people, such as adultery and stealing. And some only hurt a thin-skinned god that Ray hasn’t bothered to show exists like blaspheming “God’s holy name.”

Ray is right that I see no evidence for absolute right and wrong (more here and here), but obviously it doesn’t follow from that that my pleasure is all I care about.

Atheism removes any sense of guilt. For a sin-loving sinner it’s a delirious dream come true, so he will say anything to defend those pleasures, including deny that which is as obvious as the nose on his face: the existence of God. We all have enough light to see that He exists.

Ray cites Romans 1:18–20 (“people are without excuse”) as his proof. He’s citing a book that he hasn’t bothered to show is either correct or inspired by a god, a book that non-Christians think is a manmade book just like all the rest.

The pig book hits this hedonism thing a number of times. Reading so much about sinful pleasures makes me wonder if Ray’s working out some frustrations or wrestling with temptations. It was like hearing someone talk too much about their own personal sexual interests, like I want to wash my hands afterwards. Maybe some therapy, Ray?

Stop being mean to Ray

Ray complains about the “disgusting lies” spread about him, but don’t feel too bad. He cites Matthew 5:11–12 to argue that this verifies that he’s on the right path. And to show that he’s truly a good Christian, he turns the other cheek and insults atheists back. (Oh, wait—that’s not what “turn the other cheek” means. Unless I’m confused and it’s not cheeks on the face that he’s thinking of.)

[Atheists] are proud, untrustworthy “haters of God.”

Atheists hate Christians for the same reason criminals hate the police…. The policeman stands for what is right, while the criminal loves to do what is wrong. Atheists, like criminals, are similar to creatures of the night that scatter when light shines.

[An atheist] is someone who has willfully turned off the inner light that God has given to every man. . . . [That] is a fearful state in which to be, because it leads to a “reprobate mind,” where God gives us over to darkness. This is what we often see in contemporary society. Women are viciously raped and murdered and the perpetrators have no remorse. Teenagers kill their parents, gunmen shoot down schoolchildren . . .

Now that he’s charmed us with his flattery, Ray points out the one-star reviews of previous projects, the book You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can’t Make Him Think and movie Audacity. Must’ve been atheists just being mean—those bad reviews couldn’t have been deserved.

But I was inspired by Ray’s example to leave a one-star review of this book. And—what a privilege!—I was the first one. So here was Ray’s pig book after I left my review:

Continue with part 3.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/23/16.)

Image from Austrian National Library (free-use license)

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