According to the world’s smartest man, Ray Comfort, all us atheists don’t actually exist! He says:
It is impossible for any atheist to exist.
This man is hilarious! You’d think he was some kind of fringe wacko cult leader, and he is, but he has many followers in the evangelical world.
So just to clear things up: I do exist, and I really am an atheist!
However, we all know that it is impossible for theists to exist. I know this to be true. I may not have any evidence for that, but I do have lots of faith!
(And yes, that last sentence is sarcasm.)
I stumbled upon his website a few days ago. What do you know, not a single comment field, or any way to contact him about anything. You’d think that, if what he said was true, he’d have no problem defending it.
Good old Ray speaking the truth as always although I’m sure he’s really a atheist who’s come up with a master plan to deconvert Christians.
Huh, this blog apparently had a comment field. Great, then I can post a link to the Wikipedia post on “atheism”, since he obviously hasn’t read it, ever.
You have to hit the link “post a comment” at the end of his posts. There is no comment field on the page itself.
Ray Comfort’s argument has to be one of the worst I have ever seen.
Belief does not require certainty. Even knowledge doesn’t require certainty (though it does require justification.) It’s a good thing, too, because since at least Descartes we’ve known that certainty is impossible.
When a person says “I don’t believe in God” they are not claiming (usually) “It is categorically impossible that a deity exists”, but only, “Given what I know, nothing that I know suggests the necessity of a deity and I have no evidence for the existence of such a deity.”
According to his arguments, it would be just as easy to conclude that there are no Christians.
Ray Comfort says that I don’t exist?
Bahh. I knew we were all a figment of his imagination!
@Elemenope
“Ray Comfort’s argument has to be one of the worst I have ever seen.”
By Ray’s standards this is actually rather good.
Jabster: Yeah, this is the same person who doesn’t realise that Coke cans don’t breed.
He makes Kent Hovind look only slightly delusional.
By Ray’s standards this is actually rather good.
Wow.
[Yikes!]
This argument should really help me get out of that speeding ticket…
I had no idea the banana was such good evidence for the existence of god. According to Ray, the banana as we know it is a gift from god, who designed it for our use.
Unfortunately, Ray neglects to mention that our common banana was cultivated from a wild fruit with hard seeds, bitter flesh, and a thick, unpeelable rind. The banana that Ray says was created by god for human use is, in fact, a product of human ingenuity. The common banana cannot reproduce on its own, and must be propagated by human hands.
The only god involved in its creation and continued existence is man.
@wintermute
I always find his site funny until I remember that he has a band of followers just like him.
I had no idea the banana was such good evidence for the existence of god. According to Ray, the banana as we know it is a gift from god, who designed it for our use.
Oh, now I recognize him! He’s the banana guy!
(I feel like a goof, considering that there’s a picture of him up there holding a banana.)
I think Ray Comfort does more harm to serious apologetics than anyone alive… including atheists. LOL!
Don’t you dare contradict Bananaman!
He’ll smite you with his banana ray!
I just tried reading the Ray Comfort Show site…ugh.
Now, admittedly, I am not an intellectual. However, reading that blog is just enough for me to feel like I have all the knowledge of the world.
Why is it that every answer uses the Bible for ‘proof’? I’d be interested to speak to someone who can show some tangible evidence without using a book I don’t believe in….
…It makes me feel like they’re using quotes from the Wizard of Oz to prove a point.
Urrrggg…
Oh I forgot I don’t exist anyway….
I guess I shouldn’t be too harsh. I used to do the same….
Definitive putdown of Ray Comfort (seen in a Pharyngula comment the other day): The guy who makes Josh McDowell look like the second coming of Thomas Aquinas.
That’s pretty good. Yes, he clearly doesn’t even know the definition of “atheist”.
@Jabster
That would be pretty funny if he revealed that this was his plan all along. It would make sense because all of his arguments are so bad, it’s like he’s trying to be a parady of an apologist.
it is impossible for theists to exist
But seriously, if you would be able to look into the minds of people, how many theists would truly believe in the existence of a god? Without any doubts? Few christians live up to the morals of their own religion…
The guy who makes Josh McDowell look like the second coming of Thomas Aquinas.
Ouch.
This is the guy who thought the perfect person to partner up with to spread his message was Kirk Cameron!
“You’d think he was some kind of fringe wacko cult leader, and he is, but he has many followers in the evangelical world”
The only difference between a cult and a religion is it’s tax-exempt status
He’s fractally stupid.
Dang, he’s right! I just looked in the mirror. Nothing.
I love Ray.
He does the world a really important service. His arguments are so stupid and riddled with logical fallacies, that if I begin a conversation with someone and they quote anything from Ray, I know I can just ignore anything else they have to say.
His followers are in my mental browser’s ‘killfile’ by default. It saves me a lot of time.
Wait–if I don’t exist then who the hell’s paying my bills?
I love that picture, by the way. It looks like Ray is about to give that banana a hummer.
I hate Ray Comfort… I honestly cannot visit his blog anymore… I get too frustrated and angry… It is very unhealthy for me to visit that site. I could have a heart attack…
Does that mean that all atheists are vampires?
An atheist vampire would be immune to crosses and holy water, and thus invincible.
@ Ty – LOL. But what about the wooden stakes?
The best part, he censors all of the comments. His rules for commenting disallow anything critical toward god.
On one sense he’s right. Saying “there is no god” is just as based on belief as saying “there is a god”.
What’s infuriating about this is that there are many people who have taken that leap and declared god’s absence. He’s performed what he believes to be a bit of clever logical judo, when he’s actually just being a dick.
Even as an agnostic, I can still deny the existence of the Christian God, and it’s completely logical for me to do so.
I had someone once tell me that there was no such thing as atheists, because whatever was the most important thing to you became your god.
Sighhhhhh
I smell a straw man…
Honestly, I’m *this* close to calling Poe on Ray Comfort.
Ray mustn’t be taking into account the fact that he is an atheist. Does he accept the reality of Sri Krishna, or Sri Rama or even the demigods? Of course not. His is such a tiny little perspective.
“Atheist” is a relative term anyway. It can only exist because the term “theist” exists. Personally I refuse to be pigeon-holed on the basis of my non-acceptance of something which people believe in on the basis of delusion. So I never describe myself as an atheist because I feel it gives some kind of vitality to the position of theists.
“I smell a straw man…”
You must smell what the Ray is cookin’.
Ray is right. And what’s more the Bible says that you know the truth but are merely suppressing it in unrighteousness. In other words, you have ‘decided’ that you want to indulge your fleshly desires and so have ‘decided’ to say “I don’t believe in God anymore.” Quite convenient but not original.
I think, therefore I am.
“Ray is right. And what’s more the Bible says that you know the truth but are merely suppressing it in unrighteousness. In other words, you have ‘decided’ that you want to indulge your fleshly desires and so have ‘decided’ to say “I don’t believe in God anymore.” Quite convenient but not original.”
@ Ty: What did you say about the mental killfile?
Yep. Didn’t make it past ‘Ray is Right’ before the killfile set in.
I’ve got clean clothes on. Don’t want to get the stupid all over them.
“Ray is right. And what’s more the Bible says that you know the truth but are merely suppressing it in unrighteousness. In other words, you have ‘decided’ that you want to indulge your fleshly desires and so have ‘decided’ to say “I don’t believe in God anymore.” Quite convenient but not original.”
Hahaha… can’t decide if to laugh or cry… I’m telling you I have decided long ago to call god “the imaginary friend for grown ups”…
@Voiceinhishead
Sorry, but I figured out that believing in gods was idiotic back when my fleshy desires were limited to watching Bugs Bunny with a bowl of Cap’n Crunch.
@San
“I’m telling you I have decided long ago to call god “the imaginary friend for grown ups”…”
God is simply Santa without gifts.
Yeah, the Bible also says that Christians can drink poison without harm. Let me know how you get on with that.
Nope, despite what the bible says, I never believed in God in the first place. And I don’t indulge my “fleshy desires” any more that you do. And significantly less than, for example, Ted Haggard…
I for one think that as atheists we should all take a picture of ourselves holding a piece of paper with the word ‘Atheist’ on it, and send it to Ray – that way we can prove to him that atheists do exist. If he’d like to do the same and try to prove the existence of god by taking a photo of him, then that would be an interesting challenge.
Although, maybe we won’t show up in a photo…I mean, when I look into a mirror there’s nothing there, kind of like a vampire. We are mysterious creatures, us non-believers.
I’m truly ashamed that this rediculous person comes from my (new) home country, New Zealand. Thankfully most kiwis have at least a little sense.
I want to go to New Zealand.
Hey Ray, STFU AND go suck on a plantain.
Well, speaking of Banana-Brain Ray, I was at Dan Dennett’s talk tonight (And I even got him to sign our copies of a couple of his books. Try not to be too jealous, OK?) as part of the local U’s Darwin Week series. In his talk, Dennett happened to put up a slide that I recognized as a page from Comfort’s “The Atheist Test” tract (basically the dead-tree version of the banana video, also includes the coke can and a few other classic Comfortisms).
“Ray is right.”
Yes, uh huh. But you might want to consider that you’re talking about a man who says that because a banana is “curved toward your mouth”…[visualize Ray picking up a banana, and simply turning inward, towards his mouth]…. that this is “evidence” that it was “Designed by God”.
Lol.
someone forgot to tell my local store that banannas were a gift from god-i got charged for them,i suppose ray would say “tis the devil at work there”…also if i do not exist why am i going to work???
wow, i’m glad i found out that i don’t exist. it would suck to walk around not knowing that i’m not really here.
how can anyone even think that way? does he not have the capability to reason?
“how can anyone even think that way? does he not have the capability to reason?”
This is the same man that thinks one of the most heavily human modified fruits in the world is evidence of heavenly design.
Yeah, that guy is a complete and total idiot as per his rules that “christianity” and “jesus” be capitalized lest we blaspheme.
So, if I say f*#k Jesus, then he’ll publish it, but if I say jesus suck my b*lls, he won’t?
christians are so brilliant!
Actually, he’s right. Atheists cannot exist. It’s not possible. What you are is an agnostic atheist, which basically means that you can’t prove the existence or non-existence of a deity, but you don’t believe in one anyway. So technically, atheists don’t exist, unless you can honestly say that you CAN prove the non-existence of a deity.
Jim-
By that logic then theists don’t exist either. They are agnostic theists because they can’t prove the existence of a deity.
lra364-
Exactly. As no one can know if a deity exists or not, you either fall into one of two categories: agnostic atheist, or agnostic theist.
Or, of course just plain agnostic which means you don’t know until further evidence comes along……
If you define “atheist” as “someone who has proved the non-existence of God”, then, yes you’re right.
On the other hand, if you use the more common definition of “someone who doesn’t believe in the existence of God”, then it’s all bollocks, isn’t it?
But I’ll grant you the point that I do count myself as an agnositic atheist. I don’t know for sure, and am open to evidence, but as things stand, I don’t believe in the existence of God. I don’t feel that I need to have proved that God doesn’t exist to use the term atheist.
In fact, to go even further, if you define an athiest as “someone who is 100% convinced that God doesn’t exist, and can’t possibly be convinced otherwise”, it’s obviously false that such a person cannot exist, and yet it’s equally obvious that they can’t be described as being agnostic.
Such a position may be dogmatic and unevidenced, but that ahrdly makes it impossible to hold such a belief. Granted, I’m not aware of any atheists who actually are that dogmatic, but I don’t have perfect knowledge of atheists and am therefore unqualified to say that such a thing doesn’t exist.
On the other hand, theists who hold that God definitely exists and can’t be swayed from that position are far from uncommon. Ray Comfort, the Pope, and our own adorable John C are most certainly not agnostic in their theism, but they still keep on existing, in defiance of your semantic games…
Pah! When it comes to Santa Claus, unicorns, fairies and the like, no adult has any trouble dismissing them as nonsense, and ignoring as not worth worrying about, the fact that logically there might be one hiding in some tiny corner of the world where we haven’t yet looked. So why the hell do we get this semantic waffling re god-belief, even from atheists themselves? Any assertion comes with some level of uncertainty, an irreducible background of epistemological noise. If your doubt as to the non-existence of God is down there in that noise along with your doubts about unicorns and orbiting teapots, then you’re an atheist, period, no “agnostic” qualifier necessary. The term “agnostic” properly applies only to those who either think that there is a non-insignificant empirical uncertainty w.r.t. the answer, or who deem the question incoherent and therefore logically undecidable.
I am unambiguously atheist w.r.t. any god relevant to human life, and the rest I don’t care about except possibly as a philosophical exercise.
And Ray Comfort can stick his banana where the sun don’t shine.
Comfort should really, really change his name to Ray Poe.
Teh stupid, brain-rotting crazy foams from every orifice on his webpage.
And probably from him, but I never want to get close enough to find out.
Atheists don’t exist??? Oh no!! This must mean I’m going to disappe
Actually the term Atheist or Atheism does not exist. You see during the early AD era Christians were called Atheist. Atheist back then meant that you didn’t believe in the state religion. The term Atheist today of coursed changed its meaning. Atheist means today no belief in god or gods or lack of belief in religion which just right there is a contradiction because Atheism is a religion. But back to the point. In order for someone to be sure that god or gods do not exist you must be God Himself. For the simple fact no one knows all knowledge! Simply draw a circle and in that circle write down All-Knowledge, then put down what percentage or what area do you know of all knowledge. Even the most arrogant person would simply draw a tiny dot. On top of that the circle represents all knowledge that we know now. Outside the circle represents all knowledge that hasn’t be found. So technically a person would have to know all knowledge from the past, present and all knowledge in the future. In reality an Atheist doesn’t exist, you can only be Agnostic!