There is no refutation of Darwinian evolution in existence. If a refutation ever were to come about, it would come from a scientist, and not an idiot.
—Richard Dawkins, discussing Ray Comfort in an interview with CNN on November 25, 2009.
Dawkins: Ray Comfort An “Idiot”
November 25, 2009 By 50 Comments
Banana Man should have his picture in the dictionary under the voice “stupid”.
But maybe he’s just a fraud.
Once that’s what you do for a living, it’s hard to find another honest (and equally paid) job.
I can understand him.
He does not need to win, he needs just visibility.
I particularly enjoyed his look of puzzlement: “What did you say his name was? Comfort?” Clearly Ray is too insignificant to show up on Dawkins’ mighty radar :D
Comfort as in Southern Comfort, drink of champions?
Real mature, Richard.
I wasn’t aware it was immature to call a spade a spade.
Whether intentionally or not, Ray Comfort is not only an idiot, he is a professional idiot. His livelihood is literally dependent on his continued ignorance of reality. The only question remaining about the man is whether he preserves that ignorance deliberately.
In a profession where you are intentionally defending your field with ration and reason, how is it justified to be so petty as to name-call? You may have your ideas of what constitutes and “idiot,” and so may Richard Dawkins, but that doesn’t mean either of you are necessarily right, and you just come off looking mean and snarky doing it. It’s such a charged, condescending term.
I don’t think this helps the atheist cause. It just gives fundamentalists more fuel for their fire.
Treating people like Comfort with respect has gotten our side nowhere, and may in fact have worked to legitimize them in the minds of people who aren’t all that well-informed on the science.
And no matter what we do or say, fundamentalists will just add it to their book-burning bonfire. It’s what they do.
and you just come off looking mean and snarky doing it.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Yes, because being snarky and condescending means you’re pretentious and you consider what you have to say and what you think more valuable than anything anybody else has to say. And isn’t that one of the things we dislike and deride about fundamentalism?
If a whore’s parrot says that the sky is blue, is the sky less blue because a whore’s parrot says it is so?
Calling Ray Comfort an idiot is like saying that the sea is wet. It’s not an insult, it’s a statement of the obvious.
Dr. Dawkins has spent decades calmly explaining science to the people the world over. Many people have sat down with Ray specifically and explained in perfectly clear language what evolution is and how it works, after which he looks them in the eye and says I don’t really get it so you’re wrong.
Ray Comfort is an idiot.
Yes, because being snarky and condescending means you’re pretentious…
Pretentious? How presumptuous of you. Perhaps my opinions are better grounded in fact than those of my opponents.
The thing is, Leah, this isn’t name calling. It isn’t an ad hominem to state a fact, even if that fact casts a person in an unflattering light. Calling Bill O’Reilly a pompous loudmouth is a statement of fact; it is an accurate description of his character and demeanor.
Likewise, calling Ray Comfort an idiot is simply a statement of fact when it comes to ANYTHING regarding science. He has had evolution explained to him, multiple times, by commenters on his blog, in emails, by youtube’s thunderf00t, and by no lesser figures than PZ Myers and Eugenie Scott, in terms so simple a gradeschooler could’ve grokked it ten times over. He is either incapable of understanding evolution, or is willfully preserving his ignorance because of what acknowledging the reality of evolution would imply for his deeply held belief in the christian creation myth.
That makes him an idiot on anybody’s yardstick, and it legitimizes that idiocy to call him anything else.
In general I agree, and Dawkins can sometimes take things too far.
But at some point, you really just have to marginalize the marginal.
“In a profession where you are intentionally defending your field with ration and reason” it must be very frustrating to have to hear something about Ray Comfort every time you do an interview.
Enter emotion. Enter insult.
Richard Dawkins is a human. Get off your high horse.
It would be a high horse if I asserted that I do everything right as opposed to Dawkins. However, I’m merely asserting that what he did may not be the best way to handle fanatics.
I know all about emotion and the impulse to insult. But at the same time, he’s representing his movement in a very critical time on national television. I don’t suspect this is the best forum to come off as pretentious.
Many Creationists could be described as frauds or deluded, but it would indeed be name-calling to describe them as stupid or idiots.
But Ray Comfort is special.
He’s not like the others.
He is REALLY an idiot.
He has been explained evolution several times and still keeps saying that “Every male dog, cat, horse, elephant, giraffe, fish and bird had to have coincidentally evolved with a female alongside it (over billions of years) with fully evolved compatible reproductive parts and a desire to mate, otherwise the species couldn’t keep going. Evolution has no explanation for the female for every species in creation”
(BTW, funny that he assumes precedence of males over females, mammalian embryology tells us that it’s the opposite…)
There is no single best way to handle fanatics, but in this case that is not the issue. Comfort, the fanatic, is not the one being handled. The ones being handled in this case are the general public, and they benefit from seeing stupid ideas shown to be stupid. People who spout stupid and idiotic ideas should be publicly acknowledged as idiots. Ideas that are unworthy of respect should not be shown false respect just to present the illusion of ‘niceness.’
There is a pattern in history that you may be unaware of. At times in the past you would have heard phrases such as these from people who were opponents of a given agenda. Nice girls don’t want the vote. Good girls don’t want the pill. Nice people wouldn’t do this or that or the other.
Those phrases are manipulative. By defining what behavior is ‘good’ or ‘nice’ and placing limits on behavior based on the wishes of those who don’t want to risk offending anyone, effective methods of getting change are taken off the table. If the way Dawkins speaks is troublesome for you, fine, but learn from history. Those who don’t fall for those illusions are the ones that get actual change. Those who don’t want to offend others never accomplish great changes because great changes inevitably offend someone.
Leah!
Ray Comfort is the men that called the banana “the atheist’s nightmare”, using it as proof of ID because it was made to be consumed by man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yArPNtiQDcM
The modern banana is the product of artificial selection, the wild, natural banana just sucks!
If this is not sheer stupidity, then what is?
There’s a reason he’s called Banana Man.
Do you really want scientists to take seriously someone that does not even bother himself with the most basic reality-checking?
Ray Comfort’s worst nightmare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBJV56WUDng
Meah, Ray Comfort IS an idiot. You don’t have to be smart or atheist to see this.
I have no doubt that many creationists also are ashamed of him pretenting to be a creationist.
Richard Dawkins is mean, therefore God exists.
if only it were that simple
He is an idiot.
What chapters did comfort omit from his darwins theory?
Congrats to Dawkins for calling a spade a spade, but the fact is he can be just as much of an over-bearing, self-righteous, unreasonable man as any creationist. I know people who attended to his lectures (they are not Christians, if that makes any difference). They were not impressed and, as students, were a little frightened of the man because he refused to give students a voice the instant they disagreed with him. Yes, he’s human, and yes he’s closer to the truth than the Answers in Genesis crowd, but the fact remains that he is no better than what he fights. He should not be demonized, but neither should he be trumpeted as the saviour of mankind from the dark depths of religion.
Honestly, I think Dawkins is fed up from years of calmly explaining evolution to people. His earlier books (Blind Watchmaker etc) were purely about promoting the science rather than attacking religion. Over the years his books have grown more disparaging of religion until we come to books calling God a delusion and him stating on TV that creationists are idiots. I think years of repeating the same rational explanations to deaf ears have worn away his patience and thats the reason that his approach has changed so markedly.
So atheists call people who believe in God idiots?
Only when we can’t think of any worse names.
Ok, vorjack was kidding.
We don’t call all believers “idiots”, most of they aren’t. But that’s not the case for Ray Comfort.
Why do Atheists care about people who believe in God? I thought you would just think ‘live how you want to live and believe what you want and then die’. I don’t even understand why you would or how you could prove that something that doesn’t exists – doesn’t exist. Do you even need to carry out a scientific experiment? On what. The time you spend debating why don’t you just go out and have fun?
In part, because we live in a society dominated by people who believe in God, and who want to alter the laws of the society to reflect their beliefs. In part because many theists present hostile stereotypes of atheists that we have to fight back against. In part because most of us value the truth, and want to engage in our society’s attempt to reach true conclusions.
The time you spend debating why don’t you just go out and have fun?
But debating IS fun …
Why do you care what atheists care about? Why don’t you just want us to live how we want to live?
oh and have we proven anything else that doesn’t exist that it doesn’t exist apart from God?
Could you rephrase that? I don’t quite follow.
Well it doesn’t seem you think of anything worse as that’s the only term I see on here so that’s quite tame then.
Hold on but it says no name calling in the policy!
I’ll try to rephrase
Is there anything that doesn’t exist been proven that it doesn’t exist
Depends on who you ask. Some would say that logically contradictory entities (square circles and married bachelors) can be proven not to exist. But for entities that logic does not prevent from existing? No, it is impossible to show beyond *all* doubt that such entities do not exist. Invisible pink unicorns could exist, for all we know.
Of course, it’s not a good bet that they do, and one shouldn’t arrange one’s life as though they do. That would be silly.
To me there’s a contradiction of sorts in wanting to find the truth and debating. Debating can go on forever because
1. There’s a lot of people on this plant with their own and developing views
2. We are still discovering things in the world – we will never with our limited knowledge discover everything about our ownselves much more the universe and belong
But if you like debating as a hobby I guess go for it
Truth can be something you choose to believe in whether it is the truth or not. It’s a decision rather than an opinion, I think.
No. Truth has a definition, and what you are talking about is a belief. Please consult a dictionary. In fact, that sentence… ‘truth can be something you choose to believe in whether it is the truth or not” is so blatantly false that it makes me wonder if you understand your own words. Its like saying pink things can be something you choose to call pink whether it is pink or not.
Aor – my friend is one. I care about him.
You don’t see it do you? I used your own words, turned them back on you to make a point. I’ll do that again here, and see if you can detect the error in your way of thinking.
We have friends that are christians, or muslims, or hindu or wiccan or whatever, and we care about them. Now.. what does that mean to you? Does it answer your question, or do you get to use that answer and atheists don’t?
How old are you? Your comprehension level leaves a great deal to be desired.
But everyone believes in something
Maybe. But not every belief command us to live in a definite way.
yes but if I call pink yellow isn’t that my truth. Who decides that pink is pink? lol
Reality.
You can easily test this yourself. Go into a shoe store sit down and ask them to show you the yellow ones. Reject the ones that are not the “true color of pink” that you want.
You can believe all you want that you can fly, the moment you step off the ledge reality will show you just how incredibly wrong you are.
You don`t magically get the right to define truth differently than the rest of the world. That is just a way of tricking people by pretending to use a word they know the meaning of while substituting your own alternate meaning. If you don`t mean truth, then don`t use the word. It is deceptive to use those kinds of methods.
If you can’t speak honestly about these things, you shouldn’t bother speaking at all. It just makes you look foolish or manipulative.
Christianity today has turned very much back towards a form of gnosticism. I’ve been told at least three times that I don’t really “know” love because I’m an atheist and I can’t really love without first bowing to Imaginary “Skydaddy & Son, Inc.” Actually, it’s probably the most offensive thing that gets said to me, now I come to think of it. I do know love, and I don’t need God to do that.
No. Unless you’ve decided to redefine words into meaninglessness.