Let me start by saying something nice about Ray Comfort’s movie, The Atheist Delusion: Why Millions Deny the Obvious (2016). It’s not that I have something nice to say, but I’ll quote praise from another makeshift evangelical, Ken Ham:

Ray shows the foolishness of the religion of atheism and helps the young people he speaks with to come to the realization that their atheism is not based on an intellectual position but a heart issue.

Who doesn’t want to hear about the foolishness of atheism and how there are no intellectual obstacles to believing Christianity?

Movie overview

The style is trademark Ray Comfort as he interviews a dozen or so atheists, mostly 20-somethings. We follow them as Ray works through his arguments, and at the end they’re all left with either a lot to think about or a commitment to follow Jesus. Throw in some nice graphics, take a few tangents, overlay some stirring music, and he’s done. Any subject who saw through Ray’s thin arguments and made him look foolish was cut from the movie to give the impression that this approach is devastating to the brittle worldview of any atheist.

The production quality was good, but one consequence of the high-quality audio caused a problem. You almost never see Ray himself, just the atheist of the moment. Often Ray would speak a seamless paragraph while we see the video cut between two or three subjects listening patiently. I see how that makes things visually more interesting, but it brings to mind old charges that in previous movies Ray had mixed and matched video segments to line up pleasing answers in response to questions, distorting what the subjects had actually said. When a subject says, “Yes,” what are they answering? Maybe it’s the “Have you changed your mind?” you hear in Ray’s voice. Or maybe it’s “Are you still an atheist?” spliced in from another part of the interview. (The Friendly Atheist pressed him on this question here in an interview about the movie.)

“Atheism destroyed with one scientific question . . .”

That got your attention, right? It’s the tag line for the movie’s trailer. Ray may be a science-denying apologist who refuses to be corrected on his childish understanding of evolution, but surely he’s not going to make a claim like that without something pretty compelling.

Or not. He gives people a book and asks, “Do you believe that book could’ve come about by accident?” That’s the scientific question. He then talks about how marvelous human DNA is and concludes that if the book had a maker, then DNA must have, too. It’s the Argument from Incredulity: “Golly, I can’t imagine a natural explanation for this, so it must be supernatural!”

Let’s revisit the “by accident” part. DNA didn’t come about by accident, it came about through mutation (random) and natural selection (not random). How many times has this guy been corrected on this? He can’t be that stupid, so I can only see willful ignorance. Telling the accurate story doesn’t suit his agenda, so he makes up an inaccurate one.

In fact, the sloppiness in DNA nicely defeats Ray’s Design Argument (more here).

“Could DNA make itself?”

Here’s another of Ray’s probing strawman questions. He lives in a simple world: DNA either made itself or God did it. But DNA didn’t make itself; chemistry made it. DNA was simply the result of unguided processes. Again, I have to wonder if this wording was clumsy or calculated.

He talked about how nicely fit we are to our environment, but of course that’s backwards. Remember Douglas Adams’ puddle that marveled how well its hole had been fit to itself.

“You’re an atheist, so you believe the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything.”

Wow. Where do you begin with this black hole of bullshit?

• An atheist has no god belief. That’s it. Atheists can have any views on cosmology they want.
• Cosmologists don’t say this.
• “Scientific impossibility”? Show me. Pop philosophy is not helplful at the frontier of science.
• What’s the problem with something coming from nothing? Isn’t that how you say God did it?
• You’re still stuck on “created.” You imagine a cause, but there might not have been one. The Copenhagen model of physics argues that some events don’t have causes.

In an odd attack, he claims that Richard Dawkins says that nothing created everything. Analyzing the hamster wheel that drives Ray’s brain is tricky business, but here’s my theory. Richard Dawkins says it and he’s the pope of the atheists, so therefore all atheists must believe that nothing created everything. Conclusion: “You’re an atheist, so you believe the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything.”

I could begin by saying that I’m not bound by what Dawkins says, but Dawkins didn’t even say this. Ray’s evidence for his charge is a video of Dawkins speaking about physicist Lawrence Krauss’s A Universe From Nothing. Dawkins says, “Of course it’s counterintuitive that you can get something from nothing” . . . but how did we get from Comfort’s charge of “nothing created everything” to Dawkins’ defense of something possibly coming from nothing? Only in the hamster wheel are these equivalent.

“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

In interviews years ago, I heard Ray explain his idiotic understanding of evolution. Say you have two lizards, and because of mutations, they give birth to a healthy monkey (cuz that’s what evolution says happens, right?). The monkey matures and looks for a mate, but since monkeys from lizards is quite rare, it can’t find a monkey of the opposite gender, so it dies without making more monkeys. Cue sad trombone sound.

In the movie, Ray goes down a similar line of “reasoning” to ask whether the chicken or the egg came first. He wonders where the rooster came from to fertilize the egg to continue the line. Then he asks whether it was the heart or the blood that evolved first. If the heart, what was it doing without blood? If the blood, how did it move with no heart? Ray’s questions are useful because they sometimes get a “Gee—I’ve never thought of that” from a layperson, not because they’re effective against a biologist, which would actually count for something.

Come to Jesus

The last third of the movie moves from “intellectual” arguments to the usual evangelism. You’re avoiding your conscience, you have selfish motives for denying what you know to be true, morals come from God, you just want to keep sinning, imagine if you died today, and more.

Several reviewers said they needed tissues. I needed a barf bag.

Then there’s Ray’s old standby, the Ten Commandments Challenge® (patent pending), in which he convicts people based on their failure to satisfy the Ten Commandments. Ray, did you forget that they don’t think the Bible is binding since they’re atheists?

(How the Ten Commandments don’t say what Ray thinks they do here.)

Ray’s project was, “Atheism destroyed with one scientific question,” but that was just clickbait. I didn’t notice a single correct scientific statement from Ray in the entire movie. The entire thing collapses into a pretentious pile of elementary emotional arguments, which, unfortunately, may be effective on people who haven’t thought much about these issues.

See also: Fat Chance: Why Pigs Will Fly Before Ray Comfort Writes an Honest Critique of Atheists

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 7/29/16.)

Image credit: Living Waters

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The evening before the 2016 Reason Rally, I attended a Christian event at which several Christian apologists coached about a hundred Christian evangelists to spread the gospel to atheists (supposedly) hungry for the Word®. Attendees were given a copy of Ray Comfort’s new book, Fat Chance: Why Pigs Will Fly Before America Has an Atheist President. I stood in line to have Ray sign mine—a highlight of my life.

At about 15,000 words, it’s a modest little book with much to be modest about. Since it’s positioned as an “evangelistic” book, let’s take a look to see if it provides convincing arguments. Fasten your seat belts, atheists.

Surveys show atheists are unelectable

(Ray quotes a number of sources to make his argument. I’ll be careful to identify which quotes are Ray and which come from articles.)

He leads off with studies that show many Americans won’t vote for atheists.

A Pew Research survey conducted in May [2014] found that Americans consider atheism the least attractive trait for a candidate to possess, with voters more likely to back a candidate who smokes marijuana, has never held office, or has had an extramarital affair than a self-professed atheist. (Source)

So Americans rank the adulterer higher than the atheist, concerned that atheists might be “untrustworthy, insensitive and morally rootless” (source), despite the fact that the adulterer has proven that they have poor morals? Clearly just because a voter has an opinion doesn’t make it logical.

Thankfully, we have Ray to unpack things for us. Here’s the Christian’s logic: “While the words ‘God-fearing’ are often maligned, we know that if a man truly fears God he won’t lie to you, steal from you, or kill you.”

Suppose you offered the counterexample of a bad Christian—a Christian murderer, for example. Ray would doubtless respond with the No True Scotsman fallacy: Ah, but that murderer wasn’t a true Christian! That might be, but then of course you have no way to evaluate a claim that someone is a good Christian.

Different Christians define “God fearing” differently. In the happy world where Ray was king, he could impose his Christian beliefs worldwide, and we’d have a single Christianity. Unfortunately, Christianity now has 45,000 denominations, a number expected to grow to 70,000 by 2050, and a single Christian definition of “moral” isn’t possible.

And Ray’s argument is simply that Christianity is useful, not that it’s true. Let’s figure out the truth claim first.

Ray undercuts his argument

He gives evidence (that we’re all familiar with) that atheists are scorned, but is this phobia based on anything? Ray gives this quote:

Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.

But who does this make look bad? That’s right, Ray: the only statement in the original U.S. Constitution about religion is to limit it. There can be no official religious test for public office. Christians can vote however they want—they can flip a coin to decide—but Christians reluctance to vote for atheists seems like nothing more than xenophobia, fear of the Other.

Ray then paraphrases sociologist Phil Zuckerman: “[Zuckerman] surmises that atheists are disliked by so many Americans because of prejudice—since we equate atheism with ‘being un-American and/or unpatriotic’—and because believers are basically insecure and nonbelief threatens their ‘shaky’ faith.”

Right again, Ray. Christians’ snubbing of atheists certainly sounds like simple bigotry. I’m surprised that he’s pointing out how Christians treat atheists unfairly, but I agree.

Atheists slap Christians’ hands when they cross the line—must we apologize for that?

Ray moves on to argue that atheists like to rain on the Christian parade. He lists sixty lawsuits filed by atheist groups. Most sound like important corrections to Christian excesses—no God in the presidential inauguration, encouraging the IRS to sanction churches who flout nonprofit rules, Christian symbols on government property, and so on. These Christian excesses outrage me, so I’m not sure why Ray listed them. If his audience is atheists, does he not know that they will also want them corrected?

Admittedly, a few of the lawsuits make the atheists sound like spoilsports. For example, “School cancels toy drive for the poor after atheists threaten to sue.” A public school had an annual project to encourage students to provide shoe boxes with toys for poor children.

The facts behind the project are a little darker. The parent organization is Samaritan’s Purse, Franklin Graham’s evangelical Christian organization. From the AHA, the organization that threatened the lawsuit:

Because the purpose and effect of Operation Christmas Child is to induce impoverished children to convert to Christianity, the school’s promotion of this program violates the Constitution. . . .

It is a clear constitutional violation for administrators of a public school to push students to participate in a proselytizing religious program. . . .

The boxes of toys are essentially a bribe, expressly used to pressure desperately poor children living in developing countries to convert to Christianity and are delivered with prayers, sermons, evangelical tracts and pressure to convert.

Here’s another: “Atheists sue every retail store in mall over ‘Happy Holidays.’” This time, Ray got fooled by a fake article. The bad guy here is the Foundation for Equality, Atheism & Resistance (FEAR), a nonexistent organization whose spokesperson is Merda di Pollo (Italian for “chicken shit”). The article says that atheists are furious over the use of the greeting “Happy Holidays.” According to the spokesperson, “Hearing ‘Happy Holidays’ is painful for us since we don’t have any holidays coming up, no parties to look forward to, nothing to celebrate. It’s discriminatory.”

Be a bit more skeptical next time, Ray. I haven’t looked in detail at all of them, but it sure looks like this is in general an excellent list of atheist good works (or a rogues’ gallery of Christian privilege).

Ray summarizes the big picture problem: “Atheists are suing their fellow Americans for things they hold dear, and it’s all done under the guise of loving the Constitution.”

Atheists’ legal actions are done under the guise of loving the Constitution? What a dick. What does he suppose the real reason is—that our hearts are two sizes too small? Yes, Ray, we really do it to protect the Constitution, predominantly the First Amendment. God knows you won’t.

Taking a broader look at the legal landscape, remember also that the ACLU’s religious lawsuits are predominantly in defense of Christians (more), despite what many Christians want to believe.

Here’s a helpful way to evaluate these lawsuits. Change the Christianity in each of these to Islam. Now the lawsuits are focused on removing Allah from the presidential inauguration, removing Muslim symbols from government property, stopping public schools from supporting Muslim evangelistic charities, and so on. Are these still a problem, Ray? Or do you have a little more appreciation for the principle of the separation of church and state now?

Continue to part 2.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/21/16.)
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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 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 also blameless and faithful (Genesis 6:9). Anyway, why fret about humans being imperfect? God made them that way—you should celebrate God’s perfect plan.

• 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).

Ordinary judges are bound by a law they didn’t create. God as a judge can simply dismiss the charges. Or change the rules. (Yet again, the atheist must explain to the Christian how omnipotence works.)

• 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.

• 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).

• “[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, it’s unjustified Christian privilege that’s the problem.

• “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? We atheists may be in good company.

• “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 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 just 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 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 would be 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. I’ve not seen a single example.

Ray’s final word
Not that Ray has been subtle or unclear, but let’s close with Ray’s summary of his position.

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.

This 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 non-Christians, 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. (BTW, happy one-year anniversary, Obergefell!) 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.

Why would you … choose to create a completely imaginary person
who you live in fear of offending?
Aren’t we all disappointing enough people in reality?
— Bill Maher

Image credit: Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau, flickr, CC

Remember John Hagee’s hysterical fulminations about the upcoming “blood moons”? I wrote about that here. In brief, four Jewish holidays in a row (two Passovers and two Sukkots) will have lunar eclipses. Eclipses during any one of these is common, but four in a row are rare, and Hagee makes an enthusiastic but weak argument that important things happen to Israel during each of these periods of four blood moons.

The first of these lunar eclipses is tonight. Barring poor weather, it will be visible in North America (the eclipse will be total 12:08–1:23 am in Seattle). But no, Israel won’t be able to see this or the remaining blood moons. You’d think that would be required since Israel’s wellbeing is the focus of Hagee’s prophecy. I guess John Hagee works in mysterious ways.

He says about these celestial fireworks, “God is literally screaming at the world, ‘I’m coming soon.’” Let’s see if tonight’s eclipse is God’s calling card.

Time to bring in another expert

End times prediction is strangely attractive to some apologists (I’ve written more here). It’s a shiny thing to a baby. Ray Comfort couldn’t help using his annoyance at the recent Noah movie as a grandstanding opportunity to make his own movie about our own imminent end, and it has that je ne sais quoi that only Ray Comfort can provide. Or maybe it’s WTF.

Ray gives ten New Testament passages that make clear that we’re in the end times. “The end of the age is happening now,” he says. Let’s take a look to see if we can see it as clearly as Ray can.

He begins with 2 Peter 2:1–3:

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

Yes, there are lots of false prophets in our time—Hal Lindsey vaguely predicted the end in 2000, Harold Camping in 2011, Ronald Weinland in 2013, and there were others. But don’t imagine that naively idiotic prophecies are a recent thing. There’s the Great Disappointment of 1844. And the many failed predictions by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. This is no sign of the end. These Christian doomsday prophets have always been with us.

And now Ray Comfort is yet another prophet. Give us a specific date, Ray, so we know when to add you to the false prophets list. But be careful: this passage says that God will judge these liars like he judged the wicked people he drowned in the Flood.

On to Ray’s next verse of what to look for in the end times:

Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. (Matt. 24:7)

Yes, there are wars, but no more now than in the past. The incidence of famine and pestilence is far less today (no thanks to Christianity), and science is helping predict earthquakes and make cities more resilient. This argues against Ray’s claim.

The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. (Acts 2:20)

Consider the context of this verse. The disciples were gathered for the feast of Pentecost, shortly after Jesus had returned to heaven, and the Holy Spirit descended on them. They all spoke in tongues, and passersby marveled that they could hear God praised in their own language. Peter explained that this was a fulfillment of a prophecy from Joel (the verse above is Peter quoting Joel).

Now consider the entire quotation (2:17–21). Joel was listing what will happen in the last days, and Peter said that this visitation of the Holy Spirit indicated that Joel’s symptoms of the end were happening at that moment. Yes, the sun will turn to darkness and the moon to blood, but it will happen in the time of Peter and the apostles.

Another fail, Ray. You’ve really got to read these things more carefully.

There will be terrible times in the last days. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers … (2 Timothy 3:1–2)

Ray’s focus here is naughty words used in movies. I’ll grant that there are more R-rated movies now than centuries ago, but this seems a tiny point to put in a Top Ten list.

It was the same in the days of Lot. … But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. (Luke 17:28–30)

Ray interprets this as an increase in the acceptance of (shudder!) homosexuality.

You know you live in strange times when the atheist has to explain to the Christian what Bible passages mean. No, Ray, that’s not what we’re talking about here. The point is suddenness. The wicked people during Noah’s time were going about life as usual and were caught unawares by the Flood. The people in Sodom were surprised by the hail of destruction. The section continues with admonitions against going back to your house for your stuff when the end comes—just run for safety.

Yes, we’re more accepting of homosexuality. No, that’s not what this passage is about.

Let’s finish up Ray Comfort’s Kant-Fail® Signs of the End tomorrow. If John Hagee is to be believed, however, it’s not clear that there will be a tomorrow …

Part 2.

I used to be Christian,
but then I thought about it.
— Anon.

Photo credit: S Vivek