Saturday, March 1, 2008

My Response to Ray Comfort's "Lincoln Was Right"

Ray Comfort wrote:
"Even more disheartening for evolutionists is the fact that for over 50 years evolution has been espoused from all quarters in this nation, and yet the amount of people believing it since that time has only increased by a measly one percent."

Firsty of all, I'd liek to know precisely which poll you are looking at. I looked up several polls, including the ever reliable Gallup, and the most of them have very variable results. Some of them have questions that are loaded (especially ones conducted by Religious groups).

According to Gallup, (www . gallup . com), it depends on the questions asked! Type in "Evolution" into their search engine on their website, and you will see several polls with different questions. The first one I found was "what do Americans know about Creationism and Evolution. According to the poll's questions, most Americans aren't very familiar with either subject enough to comprehend. 20% believed that evolution was "definitely true", while 35% believed it was "probably true". The numbers for Creationism were 29% and 29%, so the two are almost even.

They compiled questions week to week, and the results were different every week with different people.

This is quite different from your informal poll, where you and Kirk Cameron concluded that evolution must be false, because a bunch of random people that you filmed at an airport said "I don't know". Yours was hardly a scientific poll. IN fact, if you asked people about Gravity, or what chemicals make up DNA, they'd say "I don't know" -- because most average people do not get into biology enough to give an education opinion or summation of those things.

I'd never trust the opinions of accountants, auto mechanics, bus drivers, finance experts, or salespersons on matters of science, simply because their professions do not give them exposure. You really need to speak to actual experts who work in the field.

Ray Comfort wrote:
"Why has this happened? The answer is simple. It takes no faith to believe in God’s existence. This is because evidence is everywhere. Even a child knows that if there’s a creation, there must be a Creator."

It takes no faith to believe in God? Wait a second, I thought that Christianity was all about having faith in God? You're engaging in a kind of double-talk here, Ray. I think you need to explain how you can talk about how we all need to have faith In God and the Bible one minute, then proclaim that it takes no faith at all to believe in God. It's pretty much a contradiction.

Ray Comfort wrote:
"But because there is no empirical species-to-species evidence for evolution, it takes a huge leap of faith to believe in the theory."

It only takes a huge leap of faith for all of those people who are "Bored to tears" when reading the technical details of actual science, or hearing biologists explain how they inferred facts from experiments. If you're NOT bored to tears with actual science, then you will need no faith to examine specimens or read a report in a peer-reviewed science journal (something I am willing to bet you have never done in your life) -- you will understand the technical details, and you will be fascinated, and interested to keep on reading. See -- When I hear you say how bored to tears you are with science, I keep saying to myself "Then why does he bother trying to make his readers think that he knows anything about science?" I'm not about to try telling people why one automobile is a better one than another, because I'm not an expert on Cars, their engines, or what makes one better from another. I'm honest to admit that I'm no expert, and that my opinion on cars means nothing.

Why is it so hard for you do just admit that you're not an expert on science, and just leave it at that? What is this problem that you have proclaiming to know something abour science, then saying how much science bores you (actually, I dont' think it bores you as much as it goes above your understanding level). Why do you keep trying to behave as though you actually know somthing about science, when you obviously don't? It's one of the reasons that so many people consider you perhaps a bit dishonest.

Ray Comfort continues:
"For a time it seemed that the masses were being persuaded by evolution, but recent media attention to the issue has made them give the issue some serious thought. The "folks" are not that easily deceived. "

Ray, I think it's more accurate to say that most people are simply not knowledgable enough in science to know any better. The Gallup polls that I read clearly show that most Americans simply don't know a lot about science. To people who believe in the "great conspiracy theory", that proclaims that "atheists since Darwin have been undermining science and pushing evolution to the exclusion of all other views" is to be totally ignorant of the scientific method, the process of discovery and experimentation, and how all data is peer-reviewed and re-tested by independant people.

All it would take is a single "Creationist" scientist to conduct an experiment and publish his results in a peer-reviewed science journal to prove that creationists are actual scientists. They have never really done this. All tehy have done is complain to churches and media outlets about allegations that never pan out.

The Discovery institute just made a documentary with Ben Stein where it is claimed that "scientists have been fired from their posts for believeing in creationism". I have personally studied every single case that has been in the news about so-called scientists who got "fired for believing in Evolution", and every single case was exaggerated by the Discovery Institute beyond credibility.

They claimed that a researcher was "fired" from the Smithsonian Institute. The reality was that the guy was never actually an employee there to begin with -- he was a post-grad student who was doing his post-doctoral research there, and he's still there -- he lost nothing.

They claimed that Dr. Gonzales at U.C. Berkeley was "fired from jis job as a science professor" for being a creationist. Well guess what? He's still working there, and was never fired -- he got denied tenure, among hundreds of potential candidates, many of whom were even more qualified than him (he simply had not been there long enough, or done enough work to be given tenure, but he still is employed there).

Why do you think that Creationists like the Discovery Institute need to lie and exaggerate so much to prove their point? What's more, it only takes a tiny amount of fact-checking to discover their lies. You obviously never spend the 5 minutes it takes to check your facts on these matters. Why is that? Could it be that you're so confident that you're always right, that you don't think you need to check facts on these things -- because facts bore you to tears?

I'm curious to know.

6 comments:

Cypress Christian said...

So, David, you are responding to Ray personally, knowing that he's not going to read what you have to say? Isn't that a little like talking to a wall?

David W. Irish said...

I posted this into his forum. If he chose to delete it, it's here. That's the only reason I cross post to my own forum -- because he has a history of deleting posts that he doesn't like.

Reynold said...

Dave! I assume that on this blog, you can give me the URL for that "Christian Skeptic" site that Sye got his arguing skills from?

Reynold--from the "Lincoln was Right" post on Ray Comfort's blog.

David W. Irish said...

You caught me off guard, Reynold!

Every day I surf to dozens of sites, and I don't save sites into my favorites unless I need to return to them again. Pus, I am at several locations during the day, so I have issues with sending bookmarks/favorites between PCs.

I just spent 10 minutes trying to search for it again, and failed. I recall that I was searching for "how do you know your selses are reliable" in Google. I hit the Skeptical Christian website first, which several bloggers posted responses to on other blogs. This site is here:

http://christianskepticism.blogspot.com/2007/02/answering-rational-responders.html

While searching the other links, I hit one, two, three, and found the "how to argue with an atheist" site, or that's what I thought it was called. I remembered it incorrectly. There's hundreds of articles with that title, and I know it wasn't any of the ones that popped up.

Sorry, but because of the way I am, I'll keep searching till I find it... :)

David W. Irish said...

Suffice to say, I found it!

http://www.proudtobecanadian.ca/index/writergroup/comments/how_to_shut_up_an_atheist_if_you_must/

I've read other sumations of this book, including a Youtube parody of it.

This is a review of Doug Gile's book, which I've seen tossed around as though it's the ultimate guide to arguing with atheists.

More info on debate tactics of Christians is found here. I'm throwing this one in because there's a lot more material here than I care to search through for specifics -- just pick a new article every time you visit.

www.ex-atheist.com/

Reynold said...

Thanks, Dave. I may have to make a reply to that, perhaps. That guy's arrogant as hell.

After reading stuff by Ray, that guy in your link, various ID and YECs, the entries on www.fstdt.com, etc. one begins to understand where the stereotype of the self-righteous religious person comes from.


By the way, you've mis-spelled "everything" in the intro to your blog:

This is Psycho Dave's (of Weirdcrap.com) official Blog of commentary on everythign from Philosophy to politics to current events.


Since Comfort doesn't allow URLs on his blog, I'll post the link here to a reply to his idiotic attack on that Klimt guy.

http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9697