Refutation of Ray Comfort's "God and Sexuality"

Thanks to the members of the Ray Comfort watch-dog page WeAreSMRT.com, I was able to obtain a free booklet of Ray Comfort's track "God and Sexuality." My readers know that I try to review as much as Ray Comfort's material without giving him any amount of money, which is why I rely on Google Books to review his books.

Like Ray Comfort's film, "Audacity," the target audience is not “homosexuals” seeking to repent, but supportive Christians who aren’t doing enough to marginalize and harass their LGBT friends and family.

The booklet starts off with Ray making up a scenario (what a shock) of a woman locked in a car. When a man tries to get her out, he is believed to be a lunatic. But when he gets her out of the car, a train runs over the car, thus making the lunatic man a hero.

On page 2, Ray Comfort says, 

"But you have nothing to lose by reading on so let’s do it, and see if you will become convinced of your danger. All I ask is that you are open-minded and honest." (Page 2)

Ray Comfort is anything but an open-minded and honest person, as my blog reviews of his material clearly demonstrate. Whenever he asks others to be "open or honest" all he is doing is asking them to be gullible, making it easier for others to swallow his bait and hook with illogical fallacies and terrible arguments (which fill this entire booklet).
 

Exiting the Car

"Each of us is born with a limited perspective. A member of a tribe living deep in the Amazon jungle may think that his tree-surrounded world is all that exists. But place him in the heart of New York City on a Friday night, amid 10,000 yellow taxis and buildings that disappear into the clouds, and his worldview will change in an instant.

We are all born with a limited perspective of God. To some, He is a bearded man in the sky who has a big stick He’s waiting to hit us with if we do something wrong. To others, He’s a friend we can lean on when troubles arise. In Psalm 50:21, God spoke to sinful humanity and said, “These things you have done, and I kept silent; you thought that I was altogether like you; but I will rebuke you. . .”" (page 3)

Actually, we are not born with any perspective of God. All babies are plank slates when it comes to things like gods. No one is born a Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu or anything. A baby mind has no grasp on what is a god.

All perspectives of god(s) come from parents and traditions. This is why where geographically one is born is a big factor of what religion one will follow in life. This is why people born in India will more likely be a Hindu, or people born in Italy will be Catholic, or people born in Saudi Arabia will be Muslim.

Perspectives of god(s) are not inherent. Babies who were raised to believe in one particular god may very well change their minds and believe in another god they were taught was not real, or end up not believing in any god(s) at all.

"Our Creator is nothing like us." (Page 3)

That's right!

We exist. God does not.

Too easy, but let's assume for the moment that the God of the Bible is real (the key word being "try" because this god-character makes absolutely no sense). Is this "God" nothing like us?

Doesn't the Bible say humans were made in "god's image."

If God is nothing like us, why does he feel anger? Anger is a emotion that humans share. Why does God have Jesus born of a woman? Human babies come from women.

This video series was produced by psychologist Valerie Tarico, examining the painfully obvious: God is human (more accurately, a human invention).
 

"We are also limited to being in one place at a time. In addition, we are limited to the dimension of time; we have to wait for it to pass. Neither can we create anything from nothing. Try making a frog or a dog, from nothing. How about a tree or a flea, a fly or an eye? We can’t create even a tiny grain of sand from nothing. But God created everything we see and what we can’t see (air, gravity, etc.) from nothing." (page 3-4)

If we are limited to time, what does that make God? Does that mean God transcends time? If that is so, then he cannot be omnipresent.

The Transcendence vs. Omiprensence Argument

P1) If God exists, then he is transcendent (i.e. outside of space and time)

P2) If God exists, then he is omnipresent

P3) To be transcendent, a being cannot exist anywhere in space

P4) To be omnipresent, a being must exist everywhere in space

P5) Hence, it is impossible for a transcendent being to be omnipresent (from 3 and 4).

C) Therefore it is impossible for god to exist (from 1, 2, and 5).

And did God create time?

P1) God is defined as the arbiter of all things, including time;

P2) A decision requires transition from indifferences to will (requires time)

P3) Since time cannot exist prior to its existence, God cannot choose to create time;

P4) If God cannot choose to create time, he is not arbiter of all things;

P5) Therefore, a personal entity cannot be the ultimate arbiter of all things;

P6) Therefore, God as defined is internally inconsistent

C) Therefore, there is no God.

"He also has all knowledge in His mind. Ponder that one thought. He has infinite thoughts, all at once. He’s never surprised, has an idea, or suddenly “thinks” of something. He is omniscient —possessing all  information about everything. Such a thought is mind-boggling." (page 4)

Such a thought MAKES NO SENSE, it is completely illogical in so many ways.

If a being possess all information and is "never surprised"... then that means God is responsible for everything. An omniscient Creator's has done all of his creative work already before it sets it's creation in motion. From the moment of Creation, everything is mechanical. This means that the God-character of the Bible knew that sin, suffering and evil would enter his creation, and he allowed it to happen. An omniscient God who is "never surprised" would know that Adam and Eve would be confused and tempted by the serpent into disobeying God. God knew the first humans would disobey, and "felt anger" and punished them for doing something he knew fell well what they would do before creating them. There could be no anger in response to Adam and Eve's disobedience, because anger reflects a sentiment of something has happened that should not have happened. But an omniscient being "possessing all information about everything" cannot feel any more anger than we can deliberately dropping a brick on our feet.


On that note, since God is "never surprised" and "has all knowledge," that ultimately means there is no free will. God already knows everything you are about to do. Just as it says in Psalm 139:4 - "before there was a word on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely." Then later in verse 16, "your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalm 44:21 says that God even knows our thoughts and inner intentions. Isaiah 48:3 says, "I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass." This describes not just a Being who knew what happened, but what will happen, and furthermore the active part it will play in that plan. Verses like these give credence to Ray Comfort's claim that the God-character of the Bible is indeed a all-knowing Creator who is "never surprised."

To further illustrate my argument, take for instance you are walking down a road towards your desired destination. You then come to a T in the road, you can only go left or right, and either way will get you to your destination in the same amount of time. And let's say God is watching and you decide to turn right, and God possessing "all knowledge" and is "never surprised," means he knows before you do that you will turn right. Following this logic, God knows your every action and choice before you are even born all the way to whether you end up in Heaven or Hell. Your entire life and fate is already decided. That means, for instance, that God intended for billions of people in India to be born into the Hindu faith and ultimately burn in Hell. But let's say you decide to turn left instead of right, and God did not know you would go that way. That means your choice was unknown to God... but Ray Comfort said you cannot "surprise" God for He "has all knowledge." So that cannot be the case. You can get the picture: 

1. Either God is omniscient and there is no free will and evil and suffering were created by God himself OR
2.  there is free will and God is not omniscient, that is he does not possess all knowledge.

But according to Ray Comfort in this booklet, the only option (for the sake of argument that his God is real) is that God "possess all knowledge" and is "never surprised," therefore Option 1 is the one and only option.


My case has been made, that if Ray Comfort's God is real as he describes it (as supported by the Bible verses I just quoted) then free will is non-existent. All I will add is another reason why I reject Christianity, as it is relevant to this very topic. While the verses I have shared show that God knows what we will say before we say it and knows our actions before we do them, let us not forget the stories about God that contradict his supposed nature. Recall that God seemed unaware that Cain killed his brother, that God asked Cain "where is Abel?" Why would an Being who possess all knowledge ask such a thing? Why did God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, but just right before Abraham could kill his son, God stops Abraham and says, "now I know that thou art a God-fearing man." Now I know? What kind of Being that possess all knowledge would not already know? And finally, when God is disappointed with humankind and floods the world except for Noah and his family. A all-knowing Being cannot feel disappointment, for disappointment is the non-fulfillment of what one hopes. An all-knowing Being does not hope, it knows. So here we have instances of a being claimed to be omniscient, while other times where God is without certain knowledge. The two scenarios are in direct conflict. It is for these self-contradicting stories and claims of God and what God is is further reason why I reasonably reject the Abrahamic religions and their theistic claims.

"Moreover, He dwells everywhere. If you go two billion light-years into space, He’s there—in every direction. He is omnipresent. Neither is He limited by time. You will see ample proof of this if you examine Bible prophecy. As the Bible’s thousands of fulfilled prophecies show, God alone knows the details of the future. He created the dimension of time and will one day withdraw it. When you die, you will leave time and enter eternity. That’s where God dwells—in eternity. He has neither beginning nor end." (page 4)

To say that God can exist spacelessly and timelessly seems to be the same as saying God can exist nowhere and never. If God created space-time of his own free will, then he must be capable of existing in the absence of space-time. That makes no sense to me. I don't know what it means for something to exist in the absence of space-time, or at the very least some kind of an extension through some kind of dimension. But I am especially confused when by the idea that a conscious mind can exist without space-time. A conscious mind is always in motion, it's always in flux. I don't know how something that is completely static can be considered a conscious mind. Consciousness is a process, it's an event. If God is timeless and some would also say changeless, then I don't know what it would mean for a god to have a conscious mind. A changeless conscious mind is inconceivable to me. William Lane Craig said that matter and energy cannot exist timelessly like God can because matter and energy are never quiescent, matter and energy never stop changing and therefore they cannot be timeless. But as Theoretical Bullshit pointed out, a conscious mind is never quiescent either, and I cannot conceive of a conscious mind that is quiescent, that seems like a contradiction to me. I see no conceptual difference between a quiescent mind and a unconscious one. If the fact that matter and energy are never quiescent, that means that matter and energy cannot be timeless, then a conscious mind also cannot be timeless.

"Add to these thoughts that He can do almost everything. Almost, because the Bible says He cannot lie nor can He do evil." (page 4)

A limited God is not a omnipotent God.

If god is omnipotent, then he must be capable of doing anything. That is what omnipotence means. And if a god is omnipotent, that means he is also capable of doing evil. And if he actually never does do any evil, the fact that he is potential of doing great evil means that he is not perfectly good. However, if he is not capable of doing evil, then he is not omnipotent. Some may say that God is good by nature and therefore it would be logically contradictory for him to do something evil and the inability to do something logically contradictory acts does not count against an entities own omnipotence. But it seems to that in order to be meaningfully omnipotent, one must have a nature that does not constrain the kinds of acts it is logically possible for one to perform. If being omnipotent means only being able to do things that are not logically contrary to one's nature, then I am omnipotent. I can do anything that is not logically contrary to me as a mortal finite material being. But of course I do not believe that I am omnipotent. I am not omnipotent precisely because it is my nature constrains that is logically possible for me to be able to do. It is my nature that renders me non-omnipotent. So in order for a being to be omnipotent, that being would have to have a nature that does not logically constrain it's capabilities. If God cannot do evil because he is good by nature, then his nature constrains his capabilities and he is therefore no omnipotent. But if God could do evil things, then God is potentially evil and if a being is potentially evil then they cannot be perfectly good even if it never does anything evil.

"It’s essential that you be willing to expand your awareness of God’s true nature." (page 5)

It is pointless examining the "nature" of something that does not evidently exist. It is as pointless as expanding your awareness of the Red Unicorn's true nature. Well what is the point of examining the nature of the Red Unicorn when there is no proof that the Red Unicorn is even real? That's exactly the point!

Ray Comfort never takes the time to even properly define what his God even is -- because he knows that as soon as he get's specific, he's in trouble. This is why he says "I know there is a God" and claim's God's existence is "axiomatic" therefor relieving him of the burden to define and prove there is a God, and dance around acting like we all know there is a God so he does not have to bother proving evidence.

"As we have seen, the most intelligent of human beings can’t create a grain of sand from nothing, so simple logic tells us that something much greater than us must have made all things." (page 6)

Can a God create a more powerful God from nothing? If not, then by it's inability to do something must therefore mean that something greater than God must have made God, if we followed Ray Comfort's poor logic.
Simply because we as humans do not have the ability to perform every task demanded of us, as ridiculous as some of them may be, does not mean that a invisible unproven magic-man must therefore exist. I cannot create thunder, but that does not mean Thor or Zeus must therefore be real.

So why does Ray Comfort bring things like this up (asking humans to create something from nothing)? One way is to use the "God of the gaps" fallacy, by asking people questions, and when they are incapable of answering, he says "therefore God did it" without having to prove his God is even real to begin with. It's the old theistic question "why is there something instead of nothing?" To which I respond by asking why they think that "nothing" is the natural default, then ask them "why is there God instead of nothing?" That usually stops the theists in their tracks.

Born This Way

"Usually when a homosexual says that he was “born this way,” he’s saying that he can’t help being gay; it’s just natural for him. But that’s like a fornicator saying that he was “born this way” because he keeps wanting to have sex with every woman he sees. Or like an adulterer saying that he can’t help his behavior because he naturally longs to have sex with women other than his wife. In one sense the homosexual is right: he was born with a sinful nature that loves to sin." (page 21-22)

This is where Ray Comfort does full retard. And it is pretty much the bulk of Ray Comfort's argument against homosexuality and gay marriage, which was the center focus for his film Audacity and his new tactic for street preaching: by making it appear that homosexuality is a choice just like being an adulterer is being a choice. (If you ask me, Ray Comfort should feel less proud of himself for this than his pathetic Banana argument).


Homosexuality (like heterosexuality) is scientifically confirmed to be a matter of being born homosexual. People are naturally born homosexual's, it's as normal and natural as people being born heterosexual. On the other hand, there is no gene or hormone or anything at all for being born an "adulterer." Adultery is a choice, just as being a married person is a choice. No one is born an adulterer or born a married individual.

What about fornicators? Fornicators are just unmarried people engaging in sex. But sex is what humans are biologically built to do. Marriage is a human social and cultural invention (and a late invention at that), not a biological creation. Humans are biologically meant to engage in sex, just as they are biologically meant to digest food for fuel and breath oxygen. Sexual intercourse has existed long before the concept of marriage was ever invented. There is nothing inherently wrong with two consenting unwed adults engaging in sex.

The point of this whole segment is that some people are naturally born homosexual and others are naturally born heterosexual. It is in their biological makeup to be naturally born that way.

So what about the science that confirms that people are born homosexual? Here are two studies:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-008-9386-1

http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/JMichael-Bailey/Publications/Bailey%20et%20al.%20twins,2000.pdf

What's the significance of these studies?

They are two of the many studies that show that homosexuality is in fact a matter of being "born that way."

So due to the fact that homosexuality is not a choice, Ray Comfort's entire argument crumbles away.

Q&A on Homosexuality

What’s wrong with gay marriage?
The institution of marriage was instigated by God as a moral union between one man and one woman for the purpose of procreation, and reflects the relationship between Christ and His Church. Gay “marriage” is not a moral union instigated by God for the purpose of procreation.
It is a civil merger between two men or two women. Someone may “marry” the Eiffel Tower as a woman did in 2008, but this has nothing to do with the moral union of marriage. The same applies to homosexual “marriage.”

First and foremost, SO WHAT? America is a free nation that is not ruled or governed by what any particular religion dictates what constitutes as "marriage." By this fact alone, Ray Comfort's has no case to stand on. But it gets even worse.

Second of all, there is no proof that marriage was created by Ray Comfort's God (let alone any proof of Ray Comfort's God even existing). In fact, marriage predates Judaism and Christianity by thousands of years. Ergo, none of the Abrahamic faiths created marriage and do not have a monopoly on what constitutes as marriage.

Third, even in the Bible, marriage is not only between one man and one woman. Too often, it is a man with multiple wives, as many as he can afford to look after. And if he can, he can have multiple concubines, i.e. women he can have sex with whenever he pleases, because female concubines are just objects of property meant to please the owner.

If Ray Comfort and his Christian ilk even gave a damn about marriage, especially in America, they would be all in favor of polygamy and fight tooth-and-nail to abolish "divorce" (something that even Jesus openly spoke out against multiple times).

Do Christians believe gays should be stoned?
Definitely not. Why should Christians in the United States (or elsewhere) want to institute
the laws of another nation, from another era? Each country and civilization has its own laws.

And yet Jesus criticized the Pharisees in Jerusalem for not obeying the laws of the Old Testament, particularly how the Pharisees failed to stone to death rebellious children. Matthew 15:3-4 Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.'"

But if Ray Comfort believes that a country should not institutes laws from another country from another era (and phrase it with "why" as if it's a silly proposition), then any law proposed in Congress that is religious in nature should be struck down.... thankfully in America, we have this thing called Separation of Church and State.

Do Christians hate homosexuals?
Christians are commanded to love everyone. If someone professes to be a Christian and has  any hatred, then he doesn’t know God: “He who does not love does not know God, for God is
love” (1 John 4:8).

If a Christian has any hatred.... then they do not know God...

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--such a person cannot be my disciple." - Jesus' words, Luke 14:26

There you have it, from Christ's (God's) own words, a Christian should harbor hatred. Hatred toward even their own lives.

Aside from the fact that no one can "know" anything about a being that does not apparently exist, Ray Comfort apparently does not even know what his sacred book says about his theology.

Isn’t Romans 1 speaking of “vile affections” rather than loving homosexual relationships?
Scripture says that homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9,10), whether their relationship is vile or loving. Homosexuals must repent, just like everyone else.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 says "The unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom ... neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."

Any mention of homosexuality? I don't see any.

What I did spot was the claim that thieves cannot go to Heaven.... and yet I recall that in Luke, a thief was crucified next to Jesus. But when the thief called out to Jesus as his savior, Jesus saved the thief, "And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:32-43).

So wait... aren't thieves supposed to be unable to "inherit the Kingdom of God"??? 

This is one of the fundamental problems with Christianity: You can break 612 commandments out of the whole list of 613. There is only one sin, that not even God has the power to forgive...unbelief. Nowhere does the Bible damn believers for their works – belief can always get them out of that. Nor does the Bible allow that good, kind and charitable saintly souls can go to heaven even if they do not believe.

So believers can be as vile as they wish – it doesn't matter. Atheists can be the most moral people ever – it doesn't matter. Morality doesn't matter. Gullibility is the only criteria required for redemption.

The Bible says it’s an “abomination” for a man to lie with a man (Lev. 20:13). This clearly isn’t a serious sin because it also says it’s an “abomination” to eat certain fish (Lev. 1:10).
It’s not the word “abomination” that should be looked at here. It’s the punishment prescribed in each case, because in any judicial system the punishment given for a crime reveals the seriousness of the particular transgression. Eating non-kosher fish has no punishment; however, “if a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman,” it was so serious under Hebrew law that “they shall surely be put to death.”

Do you know what else was a serious abomination worthy of death? Wearing clothes made from two different fabrics.

So according to a ancient fable book, the all-powerful Supreme Being of the universe says homosexuality is just as bad a wearing clothes of mixed fabrics, both of which are apparently so serious, they are worthy of death.

Was Sodom’s sin being inhospitable, and not homosexuality?
The Bible says, “Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 1:7). The Amplified Bible says of the same verse that the men of Sodom “gave themselves over to impurity and indulged in unnatural vice and sensual perversity.” They may have lacked hospitality, but the reason God rained fire and brimstone on the city was because of their sexual perversity.

Wrong, the Bible says Sodom's sin was not sexual perversity, but because of their terrible hospitality...

Whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words ... Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city. Matthew 10:14-15

But into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you not ... I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city. Luke 10:10-12

....laziness, pride, wealth, and ignoring the poor...

Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom ... ye people of Gomorrah ... Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Isaiah 1:10-17

This was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness ... neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. Ezekiel 16:49

... and for adultery and lies.

I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah. Jeremiah 23:14

None of these five verses that delve into the "sins" of Sodom mention homosexuality or sexual perversity.

The word “homosexual” wasn’t even in the Bible until the mid-1900s.
A man lying with a man as with a woman wasn’t called a “homosexual” in the 400-year-old King James Version because the word “homosexual” didn’t exist yet. The term “homosexuality” wasn’t coined until the late 19th century.

How is "did you choose to be a heterosexual?" in any way a loaded question? It might well be a question that can't be answered with a simple yes or no, but it makes no presuppositions, as loaded questions do. And since Ray & Co believe that "does one choose to be a homosexual?" is a simple question with the simple answer "yes", then they are not really being logical here.

The sexual attraction that heterosexuals have towards the opposite is sex is exactly the same as homosexuals feel for the same sex. This information is easily obtained by talking to and listening to gays and by reading the scientific literature. It is reality, something Christians are not well acquainted with. A Christian gets facts about the world around them from a book and fails to check and see if reality confirms or contradicts their information. 

Refutation of Ray Comfort's "Mark Twain: A Christian Response to His Battle with God"

Oh Ray, 

I should inform my readers that this post will not cover each chapter (though it may be updated over time) because I read Ray Comfort's books for free online through Google Books, because I do not wish to send a penny on this lying sad excuse for a apologist.

But from what I have seen thus far, Ray Comfort, being the deceitful liar he is, tries and fails to portray Mark Twain as a theist by quoting material from the earliest parts of his life when he was a believer, and whenever Mark Twain shows that he does not believe in God, Ray Comfort paints Mark Twain as a sexually immoral man which therefore discredits Twain's criticism of the existence of God, Heaven, etc.

Don't believe me, look at this Facebook post:

Simple, if you can't take down the arguments against your god, call him a "sexually immoral man" and call it a day.

Some may tell me, "but Wolf, you call Ray Comfort things like "liar"..." well yeah, because I have shown when and where Ray lies every time, unlike Ray Comfort my words are not baseless or without merit.
  
But does that quote by Mark Twain ("None of us can be as great as God, but any of us can be as good") mean he believed in God? Of course not, I myself can say "no hero can be as great as Harry Potter or Robin Hood," that does not mean I therefore think that Robin Hood or Harry Potter are real, it just shows that I can see and acknowledge the ethics of these characters and evaluate if they are moral or not.

Ray Comfort got that quote from Mark Twain's notebook, but he seemed to miss these quotes, 

"God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New--the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance."
- Notebook, 1904  

Mark Twain made other comments on God and the Bible many times,

"It [the Bible] is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."
- Letters from the Earth 

Now, my readers are likely asking, "just cut to the core of the issue, was Mark Twain an atheist?"

The answer is unclear, as Mallory Howard, the curator at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, said, "He was always trying to figure out an answer without ever coming to a conclusion."

Yes Twain was raised in a Presbyterian church and buried at one, and yes he was very vocal and critical of religion throughout his life, and he was especially harsh against the mixed messages in the Bible, but he was a spiritual man who late in life was fascinated with Joan of Arc and started to write a book about her.

At best, Twain was a spiritually-minded individual, who shunned religion and the Bible, but likely held some belief in a higher force. And I, a godless apistevist, think no less of Mark Twain. He was a talented writer, and I wish I could have enjoyed his company over a few beers. He was what he was, and if he was not an atheist, it would make no difference to me. When it comes to the debate whether theism or atheism is true, it does not rest in the slightest of who or how many past writers where theist or not. If we are going to address whether there is a god(s) or none at all, that is a separate topic.

But what I would not stand for is someone trying to use him, slander him, with their evangelical propaganda agendas. I say propaganda because of several reasons, such as Ray Comfort pushing in this book the claim that witches are a real thing. Oh yeah, spoilers!

Introduction

Ray Comfort gives a very brief story of Mark Twain wishing to publish a book discussing about sex and God that society was likely to reject, so he published the book a hundred years after his death, thus "sparked a revival of atheism and anti-Christian thinking across the world."

Chapter 1: The Naked Couple

Ray Comfort shares that God made man and woman naked and commanded them to multiply.

Not once in this book or any of Ray Comfort's books has he ever provided any evidence to back up his claim that humans were made by any divine being. The only thing Ray Comfort relies on is his belief in the story of a ancient fable story that he thinks is literal. However the fact is that there is only explanation that has supportive positive evidence is that humans, and all animals, came to be is through evolution. It is also a fact that evolution is the only explanation of biodiversity with either evidential support or scientific validity and no would be alternative notion has ever met even one of the criteria of being a scientific theory.

"Ask a believer in evolution to explain the existence of male and female in elephants, horses, birds, fish, whales, giraffes, kangaroos, bears, fleas, flies, dogs, frogs, cats, bats, rats and all the 11.4 million different species of animals and they will be befuddled. As evidence of their befuddlement they will try to take you up a rabbit trail by pointing to a few snails and such that reproduce asexually. But the elephants are still in the room -- both male and female."

 Ask and ye shall receive... unless you wish to remain willingly ignorant like Ray Comfort.

The number of times it has been explained in person to Ray Comfort how the theory of evolution can and has explained the origin of sexes cannot be counted with two hands. Every time this topic comes up, the same explanations is provided, and no matter how much it is explained or simplified, Ray Comfort parades wherever he goes that the explanations and evidences do not exist. The only way to describe Ray Comfort is a lying ignoramus.


So why do people like I bother with this man? The evidence is out there for anyone wanting to research it, the libraries are open and the universities are full of people willing to share their knowledge. So why do I do this? I know there is no chance whatsoever to change Ray Comfort's mind -- the fact that he is aware of the evolutionary causes of the origin of sex and still pretends it doesn't exist reveals that he is a liar and has no intention to change his mind (and why should he? His twisted dogmatic and insane faith demands he believes in fantasy over reality, plus he makes over a million dollars a year spewing his garbage to the world) -- so the answer as to why I bother to continue to address the insane and ignorant arguments by Ray Comfort is to inform as many people as possible how the world works, how logic works, and how science works and how it has answered the many questions raised by creationists like Ray Comfort.


So how did sex originate, why does every species have male and female (accept for the hermaphrodites and asexual species)?

"If the entire universe is the result of nothing exploding into something, caused by nothing, why is it that almost every species has male and female, and they reproduce after their own kind... just as the Bible says? If you press skeptics, they will admit they don't know. They will embrace intellectual insanity, hoping that someday someone will come up with an explanation."

It would be intellectual insanity to deny reality, and the reality is what Ray Comfort refuses to accept.


To begin with, regardless to how the universe originated, it is unrelated to how life on this one planet in the dark corner of the universe evolved to produce male and female. Even if, for the sake of argument, that some Deistic god created the universe, such things within the universe would still be facts, like gravity, atoms, and evolution. Humans would still be apes, lions would still be cats, and ducks will still be birds.


So does every animal reproduce "after their own kind" as Ray Comfort says?


NO!


Why? Because "kind" is a meaningless term. Literally. It means whatever pseudo scientific creationists want it to mean whenever they want, making it a word that is more loose than a alcoholic's breakfast
I could literally go on and on and on explaining how the word "kind" is absolute bullshit that makes absolutely no sense, but I am certain my readers want to get on with reading my review of this book. So I will greatly shorten my response to refute the Bible's word "kind" with the help of a friend of mine, who we both had a great time confronting Ray Comfort himself in person at Huntington Beach.


The following video was made by KingCrocoduck, a brilliant and entertaining man who I salute for his hard work. The video is a response critical analysis to Ray Comfort's propaganda piece regarding the theory of evolution. Feel free to watch the whole thing, but I urge my readers to make it to or skip to exactly 25 minutes in, where KC starts addressing the word "Kind" and obliterates that creationist word into oblivion.

I should also note, that even though KC has shown that the creationist word "Kind" can mean anything the creationist wants to (anything from Genus to freakin' Domain), I would like to add an interesting fact. Ray Comfort says there are the "dog kind" and "cat kind" and such, but what about the "bird kind"? I would like to inform my readers that in the Bible, in Leviticus 11, the Bible uses the word "every raven after it's kind." They make that specifically clear to give ravens a special kind.... but what is the difference between ravens and other birds? What makes them so special? Short answer, there is none... but the point is that even the Bible authors used the made-up word "Kind" to mean whatever they wanted to mean as well.

Ray Comfort goes on to say that Bible says that humans are a fallen creatures, and the evidence is the usage of blasphemous words used by practically everybody, even professing Christians.

Profanity and offensive words that are distasteful to any religion does not prove any part of that said religion true. 

Here are the simple facts 1) humans are not "fallen" as there was never a fall to begin with 2) humans are apes that share a common ancestor with other primates and 3) usage of any number of blasphemous words does not give a religion and credence.


If we used Ray's logic, that man was acting in a way that was blasphemous, isn't Ray Comfort a living proof that his blasphemy towards Lord Krishna mean that Hinduism is real?

Dirt on God

"Mark Twain thought he had found a lot of dirt on the God described in the Bible. If Mr. Twain could show that the God portrayed in Scripture was morally bankrupt and merciless judge, then the judgment spoken of so often in the Scriptures shouldn't take place. Humanity's case would be thrown out of court."

Even if Mark Twain attempted such a thing, it wouldn't mean much because the burden of proof to show there even is a God to begin with hasn't been met yet.


It would be like trying to show describe the evilness of Lord Voldemort, which can be done (with Yahweh it can be done much more easily), but evaluating the moral bankruptcy of a fictional character is one thing, but ultimately it's existence remains unsupported. I could argue all day long that the Green Goblin is a evil bastard, but that does not mean there is a man in a goblin suit flying on a glider and terrorizing the citizens of New York in reality.

"One example of his moral outrage was the pitiless judgments of God upon the Midianites.  Although Twain doesn't give the source of the passage to which he refers (leaving no easy way for the thoughtful layman to examine the legitimacy of his claim), he is clearly pointing to portions of the Book of Numbers: Numbers 25: 16-18 and Numbers 31: 9-18.

Human history in all ages is red with blood, and bitter with hate, and stained with cruelties; but not since Biblical times have these features been without a limit of some kind. Even the Church, which is credited with having spilt more innocent blood, since the beginning of its supremacy, than all the political wars put together have spilt, has observed a limit. A sort of limit. But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy -- he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered.

He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty. The babies were innocent, the beasts were innocent, many of the men, many of the women, many of the boys, many of the girls were innocent, yet they had to suffer with the guilty. What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.

The heaviest punishment of all was meted out to persons who could not by any possibility have deserved so horrible a fate -- the 32,000 virgins. Their naked privacies were probed, to make sure that they still possessed the hymen unruptured; after this humiliation they were sent away from the land that had been their home, to be sold into slavery; the worst of slaveries and the shamefulest, the slavery of prostitution; bed-slavery, to excite lust, and satisfy it with their bodies; slavery to any buyer, be he gentleman or be he a coarse and filthy ruffian.

Here is Ray Comfort's response: If what he is alleging actually took place, there would be no justification for such terrible humiliation. However, there is no validation for his belief that more than 32,000 women were subjected to a medical examination to determine that they were virgins. Eastern cultures often indicate a woman's status. For example, Indian women wear a red "bindi" (dot) to indicate that they are married. In biblical times, women wore a veil or jewelry, or they had certain hairstyles which indicated that they were married. This was because virginity was associated with legal proof for blood-inheritance issues in biblical times. Other women, such as prostitutes, also wore indicative clothing or jewelry (see Proverbs 7:10; Hosea 2:4-5). So it wasn't difficult to see those who still had their virginity, without this presumed medical examination."

First of all, where is Ray Comfort's historical sources that the Midianites practiced this? All he did was quote a book written by and for the Israelites, about Israelites way of dressing. They don't cover what the Midianitese did, if they did anything to make their women indicate they were virgins or married.


Take a look at the sources Ray does provide;


Proverbs 7:10 -- "And, behold, there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtil of heart."


Hosea 2:4-5 -- And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms.
For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink."


WHERE is there any talk of them wearing jewelry? And why did Ray Comfort not cite any biblical sources of married women wearing certain clothing or with certain hairstyles? Didn't Ray Comfort just say "Although Twain doesn't give the source of the passage to which he refers (leaving no easy way for the thoughtful layman to examine the legitimacy of his claim)"... so isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?

A Relevant Question

A relevant question coming from Ray Comfort.... who are you kidding?

"Mark Twain clearly had a belief in God, despite claims to the contrary. He believed in a Creator. He said, "God puts something good and something lovable in every man His hands create." But he qualified his belief in God. He said of the god of the Bible; "I am plenty safe enough in his hands; I am not in any danger from that kind of a Diety. The one that I want to keep out of the reach of, is the caricature of him which one finds in the Bible. We (that one and I) could never respect each other, never get along together. I have met his superior a hundred times-- in fact I amount to that myself." He also said, "Man proposes, but God blocks the game."

The first part "God puts something good and loveable in every man His hands create." is from The American Vandal speech, 1868.

"So Mr. Twain was a theist. He believed in the existence of a Creator."

Please remember this part where Ray Comfort labels Mark Twain a theist, as he will be flip-flopping throughout the book.

Then Ray Comfort pretends that he could go back in time and have a talk with Mark Twain, and say the following; 

"Mr. Twain, I know from your writings that you were not an atheist. You had a belief in God and this Deity is which you believed was different from the God of the Bible. That One is an offense to you. So here is my important question. Do you believe the Bible is speaking the truth when it says, "The Lord said to Moses, treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them"? Did Almighty God actually speak to Moses? If you believe that He did, you have a problem. You are saying that the God--the Creator of our Universe--your Creator and mine, supernaturally spoke from the heavens to Moses and told him to kill the Midianites. If that took place, you are admitting that the God revealed in the Old Testament is the one true God. He supernaturally spoke to Moses."

Aristotle once said "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Mark Twain was indeed an educated mind, as are many non-Christians and non-theists. It is possible to discuss certain stories in a book without accepting that any of them actually happened. And in so doing, you can discuss the ethics within the contents of the book without accepting the story actually happened.

On top of that, we damn sure can discuss the ethics of the Old Testament without accepting any bit of it. For example, there is no historical evidence of there ever being a Moses, in fact historians and rabbinical scholars are in overwhelming agreement that Moses is a collection of at least 5 different sources.

Ray Comfort continues: "On the other hand, if you are saying that the Old Testament is merely mythology, then why are you so indignant? Why are you irate about something that never happened? Again, either God spoke to Moses or he didn't. If he did, you have a problem, because He is therefore the true God and the Bible is the Word of God. If he didn't, you are outraged about something that never happened. That's like being angry at Cinderella's fairy godmother because she turned the carriage back into a pumpkin at midnight."

It's not irritation about something at never happened that's the problem, it's that people believe these immoral acts were good.

Genocide, infanticide, familial cannibalism, child sacrifice and rape... all these are in the book, and the book says all this was done because a invisible immoral monster commanded it. In any other story, we would acknowledge them for the immoral monstrosity for what they are. But the problem is that this book has twisted the moral compass of it's devout followers into thinking that the immoral monster and the book as a whole is somehow good, when it is anything but. 

Ray Comfort brought up a story like Cinderella, what about another fictional character like

(continued) "Or do you think that the Bible is a myth and you are indignant because other people have a belief that's different from yours? Are you that intolerant of what others believe? Or perhaps you see yourself as the moral and intellectual savior of humanity and it's your job to tell them that their unthinking beliefs are inconsistent with good morals; morals such as yours. But who are you to say what is right and wrong? From where do you get your ethical standards? I would suggest that they trace themselves back to the Book you despise. The basis of your moral indignation is rooted in "Thou Shall not kill.""

The ethical standards that the ethical atheist rests on is far removed from anything in your book of fables and human sacrifices (yes literal and common human sacrifices).


Where do morals come from? Although there is no such thing as unanimous agreement on complex philosophical issues, if we approach the question from a humanistic, scientific stand point, atheists ought to agree that there should be rational standards for arriving at moral conclusions. Like science and mathematics, useful systems of morality derive from some basic axioms, or recognize assumptions.
A few possible axioms in morality are:

1. Every person has their own feelings and desires, and they are more or less similar since they are based on the same brain chemistry.
2. When I look inward to my own desires, I fundamentally desire to pursue happiness and avoid pain and suffering.
3. Other people have these same basic desires, and these desires are valuable to them.
4. With all else being equal, it is better for people to be happy than not be happy.
5. Conflicts arise mainly because people's desire to be happy and avoid suffering conflict with each other. The goal of secular morality is to resolve those conflicts in the best possible way for all concerned.

A few natural consequences of these axioms:

1. All else being equal, it is wrong to needlessly inflict suffering on people.
2. Except for the case of self-preservation, with all else being equal, it is best to avoid killing other people (on the assumption that they don't want to be killed).
3. Actions such as slavery and rape are wrong because they excessively limit people's happiness and freedom of action.

Based on these, we can (and do) build a moral framework with objectivity. The worry that a without religion or god we've no basis for on which to discuss morality, is without foundation. Plain empathy can trigger natural help responses to others distress and crate natural aversion to causing others harm. Likewise, the simple experience of living alongside others is a simple feedback about how our actions affect each other and how we might have to affect our conduct in response. The human brain contains "mirror neurons"; which mimic the activity of other parts of the brain or of other brains. This provides a literal biological foundation for empathy: individuals with mirror neurons, including humans and other primates, can actually feel what others feel. (Source: Thomas S. May, Terms of Empathy: Your Pain in My Pain—If You Play Fair Game, Brain Work 16 (May—June 2006): 3)
The two prerequisites for reliable moral assessment are 1) reason and 2) accurate and relevant information. Sound reasoning won't lead to valid assessments if we are operating under flawed information, nor with sound information if our reasoning is flawed. Without sound reasoning and information, we can' determine how the universe works, how different life forms suffer or flourish, where responsibility lies, or would the short or long term consequences of actions are on an inter-personal or global scale. And these are considerations on which moral judgments depends.


In summary: moral foundations do not come from divine and supernatural sources, morality can be found from moral natural axioms, logic, empathy and reason. What religion does for morality and for society in general is move the authority, the responsibility, for rules and institutions out of human hands and then attributes the whole system to a unproven nonhuman and superhuman source.
Humans are not the only species that show signs of morality, which gives credence that morality is a evolved trait, not a special recipe written into us by some sky genie who hates foreskins and loves child sacrifices.

(continued) "If you concede that God indeed spoke to Moses, that it's simply a matter of you standing in moral judgment over Almighty God. You think that God did something detestable, and you are pointing out the clear inconsistencies in His character. These are delusions of grandeur indeed for one sinful man, but they are not at all unusual thoughts for any human being, because our carnal minds are at enmity to God."

For starters, I DO NOT concede that a fictional, unproven, magical genie-like immortal spoke to any man, both past and present, especially a man who has no historical evidence at all that supposedly led a large host of Jews out of Egypt on a journey that never took place.


Furthermore, I can indeed evaluate the moral behavior of characters, even fictional ones, using the objective moral frameworks I discussed earlier. And FYI, calling our minds "carnal" or inferior to that of a God does not mean your God is untouchable or immune from moral and logical criticism, as I will demonstrate.


Imagine a leader declares smiling on a Tuesday is immoral. This cases no identifiable harm, so there are no valid grounds for declaring it immoral. Nor can it be made immoral by making it a law and then saying it is immoral to break the law. If this was how our morality worked, any arbitrary behavior can be made immoral. We do not base morality on revelation based on authority. That would render us merely obedient. Moral behavior is doing what is right, not what we are told (unless what we are told is also right). This is why when asking "why is X immoral", appealing to scripture or a divine figure gets us nowhere. There must be valid independent reasons to define what is moral, right or wrong, good or bad. If intuition tells us what is immoral, we may ask what triggers the intuition? There must be valid reasons, once we are dealing with valid reasons, we're having a conversation that has no need to refer to Scripture or authority (divine or otherwise). Valid reasons are available to us all. 
Now imagine that your society had a new leader, who published four laws that would intend to phase in as follows;

1. Any citizen who talks on a Friday will be executed. The leader was born on a Friday and did not talk and thus wants this respected in law.
2. Your leader can kill citizens or order their killing for any reason.
3. Any citizen forced by your leader to commit crimes through mind-altering drugs will be punished.
4. Parents who commit crime will have their children killed. And if it is not their first offense, they will be made to eat their children.

These laws would no doubt spark outrage. Law 1 kills people for a crime with no victim. Law 2 makes the lawmaker unaccountable by declaring their own killings lawful by definition. Laws 3 and 4 explicitly punish the blameless, directly contradicting the principle of personal responsibility with Law 4 adding an obscene element designed to dehumanize. They are definitive cases of injustice. So if asked about our objections to these laws, we are not confined too say that they are not to our taste. We have non-arbitrary reasons to object. These laws would clearly lead to identifiable abuses, we know too much what constitutes as harmful behavior, suffering, and responsibility to allow such laws to be incorporated into our justice systems.
But what if this leader has been in office all your life and you have been brought to think of him as morally perfect? Such a lawmaker would not make laws that were unjust. So this would create major cognitive dissonance. How would we respond? Perhaps we would fit some context into which it is of course right for someone who had done so much for this society to make some obsessionally arbitrary demands, or perhaps we would try to evade the problem that saying the leader's grasp of morality was so far ahead of ours that we could not understand them, that they worked in "mysterious ways." But we would be wrong, clearly the root of the problem is the root and false corrupting idea that the lawmaker is perfect. It is corrupt because it is causing us to accept unjust laws, it leaves us defending the undefendable. Remove this idea, and we can see the unjust laws for what they are. When we accept ideas uncritically, or make them sacred so we don't question them, this can distort our moral reasoning because we are them prone to make mistaken ideas ruling our attitudes and behavior outside our awareness. Those who swallow whole, or injected the idea, the lawmaker is perfect, cannot properly evaluate the law until this distorting idea is identified and removed. Removing uncritical ideas we swallowed whole is often the key in resolving certain problems we have in many areas of life. 

When we see the traits attributed to the biblical deity Yahweh, clearly if it existed, it could not be better placed to meet our fair consistent justice. We are told it knows our thoughts, knows whose guilty or innocent, and is perfectly moral. So unlike human justice administrators, it would have no excuse for punishing anyone but the guilty, or for punishing them disproportionately. And yet according to the Bible, it permits, commits, and commands the vilest atrocities corresponding directly to the laws we just rejected above as unjust. It orders the killing of those working on the Sabbath, gay people, and women who show insufficient evidence of virginity on their wedding night. It kills 70,000 people when David takes a census at Yahweh's request, and kills almost all land animals by flooding for human wickedness. It hardens the heart of the pharaoh, the Egyptians, and the King of Heshbon through mind control to enable their defeat and destruction. It sends a powerful delusion to make certain people believe a lie just so they can be condemned. And it deceives prophets into giving false messages, then punishes them for doing so. Having stated that no child shall be killed for the sins of the father, it orders the killing of children for their father's sins, the killing of the Amalekite infants, the killing of children without pity, and at least three books in the Bible have Yahweh committing perhaps the most vilest atrocities we can think of; making parents eat their own children.
But if there is a person who argues that God "works in mysterious ways," ways that utterly contradict our notions of moral behavior, then its nature is clearly not the source of our morality. If according to the Bible that Yahweh's nature is familial cannibalism a just punishment, yet when we call any human who provides such a law as depraved, then these positions are in direct conflict. And invoking divine mystery does nothing to resolve that conflict.

Ray Comfort says these questions are unfair because Mark Twain can't answer them.

Duh we know that, and we know that you were not asking Mark Twain these questions, you are asking any atheist reader reading this these questions in a indirect manner.

Ray Comfort notes that Mark Twain thought Roman Catholics are Christian, to which Ray says they are not.

And of course Ray Comfort is wrong again. Catholics are Christians. There are over 30,000 denominations of Christianity, and there is no one true Christianity. There only way to classify a religion properly is similar o how an anthropologist categorizes cultures and faiths. Catholicism is a Christian religion because it meets all the requirements and tenets of being a Christian religion: they accept there is a God, that Jesus is their savior, the Bible is God's Word, and there is a Heaven they will go to for their salvation.

Chapter 2: Mark Twain and Sex

Ray Comfort starts this chapter by quoting Mark Twain discussing how mortals and immortals have always placed sex as the highest pleasure, and yet sex is left out of Heaven, which Ray Comfort says is ridiculous.

It is ridiculous, it's like arguing over whether or not there is sex in Narnia or Never Never Land.

My readers may take a different approach, but I for one am very hesitant to let a conversation progress any further until all the burden of proof has been met and a mythical existences has been proven to be real before engaging in discussion what anyone can do in said location. So as it stands, talking about whether sex is allowed or not is not important as showing there really is a Heaven or not, and Ray Comfort in all his ministry has failed to provide an inkling of proof for this mystical realm.

Ray Comfort agrees that sex is highly desirable, but goes on about how sex has ruined the lives of presidents, politicians, and celebrities. He notes that King David fell victim to lust for Bathesheba. 

What Ray Comfort does not share in the King David reference is that God did not punish King David or Bathesheba. Rather than punishing those who committed adultery due to lust, God decided to punish the only one innocent in this story: the child David and Bathesheba had. The story goes for seven days, God punished the child with pain and agony, until the child died on the seventh day. Calling this God character a "thug" does not do it justice, this God-character is a monster.

Ray Comfort goes on about how he asked two blind when the "Are You a Good Person?" tactic, but when he got to the "have you ever looked at a woman with lust?" he was stumped when he suddenly remembered they were blind. So when he rephrased the question to is they had "sexually impure thoughts" towards women (he does not share what he means by "sexually impure thoughts") they said yes. Ray Comfort thus concludes that the human heart is full of sin. Ray Comfort says all humans have a "insatiable lustful appetite. We all have it because of our sinful nature."

WRONG. We do not have lust because of sin (which is still yet to be proven to be real by Ray Comfort), basic understanding of the human biology reveals why we are biologically hot-wired to enjoy and love sex. In other words, we are meant to love sex. This is a overwhelmingly common throughout the animal kingdom, which we are apart of.
Every human has a digestive system, we therefore get hungry and develop the need to eat. We also have a reproductive system, and upon reaching puberty, we develop sexual tendencies, whether you are blind or not. Psychologists can also explain that we are biologically wired to spot another person that is sexually appealing and have an involuntary reaction to find it pleasing. Just as when you see a delicious dish of food, you may suddenly feel hungry or think "that looks yummy." It is very similar when you see an attractive person, your brain fires up involuntarily.

Ray Comfort reminds the readers that "Mark Twain didn't believe the Bible. He didn't believe the Genesis account of man being made in God's image"

Well why should he or anyone, considering that every part of the Genesis account has been proven wrong?


The Genesis account says water existed before light and stars, which we know is false based on our scientific understanding of the early universe and chemistry. Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, and we know that oxygen did not exist until the first stars formed it through fusion. So right off the bat, the "Genesis account:" is wrong in the first two lines. We know for a fact that the Earth is not older than the sun and stars, even by a day; we know for a fact that the "firmament" dome model of the world is completely false; we know for a fact that Earth is billions of years old; we know for a fact that plants cannot live without a sun; we know for a fact that the moon does not generate light; we know for a fact that birds did not predate all land animals; we know for a fact that all life evolved; and we know for a fact based on genetics that there never was a Adam and Eve.

Moving on, Ray Comfort says Mark Twain did not believe the Genesis account, to which Ray Comfort says that God actually made Eve to be sexually pleasurable to Adam, and God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply, and therefore enjoy sex.

And yet this is the same God made sex a sin. That is like saying you create a car to make it enjoyable to drive, but then make a law that says driving is illegal punishable by eternal torture.

The Instruction Book for Sexual Relations

Oh yeah, let's take a look at a book about kidnapping virgins and raping them, and use that as a instructions book for sexual relations.....

Ray first quotes Proverbs 5:19 

Ray Comfort says we are to have a "guilt-free sexual relationship, and that is what we have, if we are within the confines of the marital bed.... and according to the New Testament the marital bed is the proposed place to have this intimate pleasure." He cites Hebrews 13:4 but doesn't provide the full verse, which is this: "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge."

Crafty, claim the "marital bed" as if it is just a place of consent, but leave out the detail you have to be married.

Ray Comfort then says "In other words, Christians should get married if they are in heat -- burning with sexual desire. Regular sexual relationships between married couples keep the fire under control. So according to the Bible, sex isn't something sinful, but rather a wonderful gift from God to be thoroughly enjoyed within the boundaries of marriage."

Too bad reality is not that simple, otherwise the pro-family-values and anti-drug and anti-gay evangelical televangelist Ted Haggard wouldn't have got caught cheating on his wife with a male prostitute with meth.


If the burning of sexual desires was maintained and contained within a marriage, then hysterically Ray Comfort already disproved that by quoting Mark Twain who pointed out that Solomon had hundreds of concubines in addition to his wives (plural). So even the Bible shows that a man's sexual passion can go so far beyond that not even one wife can maintain it.

Ray Comfort also says "While a blind world hasn't a clue why or how sex "evolved," --- 

STOP! The Bullshit Meter just maxed out, because not only is that a big and odious lie, we know that Ray Comfort has been explained multiple times on how sex evolved, but he disregards all of it and lies about all of it.


Even a simple Google search shows that scientist PZ Myers responding to Ray Comfort about sex in 2009!

Then Ray Comfort provides the full verse for 1 Corinthians 7:3-5: "Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." Ray Comfort notes the only time a married couple shouldn't have sex is during fasting, and then rails again Mark Twain for not believing the Bible on the Genesis Account, or about enjoying a wives breasts, or enjoying sex with a married couple in bed... and therefore Twain's argument about there not being sex in Heaven is somehow undermined. 

Somehow Twain's argument is undermined even though Ray Comfort did not once cite any Biblical reference that sex is allowed or enjoyed in Heaven? That makes no sense. All Ray did was cite Biblical references for sex in this life, nor the next.


And I hope that I am not the only one who noticed (and was disgusted) when 1 Corinthians 7 straight up said "The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does." The fact that Ray Comfort shared this part shows that he either did not think this through, or he accepts it himself. The Bible is literally arguing that women do not have authority over their own bodies, the males do. How barbaric.

Future Plans

Ray Comfort starts this piece with "Put yourself in Adam's shoes (his bare feet) before sin entered the world."

Okay, I'll pretend I am Adam. What's my world like? For starters, I'd be living in the same world as I am now: a sin-free world, because sin is a religiously made-up defect.


Also, I would not be alone, I would be sharing this planet with my fellow apes. I am Adam, I am an ape, and all my descendents will be apes too. My parents were also apes, and yes I would have actual living parents and I would be growing up with them. In fact, I would be with a large community. I would not be the only male, nor would there be only one female, in fact there are scores of females and many females have existed long before I did, because as the fact of evolution explains: evolution focuses on a population, not the individual.
What does Ray Comfort say was going on in Adam's world?...

"There were no dead leaves, weeds, thorns, rotting branches, or pest-eaten plants. There were no fleas, disease-carrying mosquitoes, scorpions, wasps, leeches, leeches, or filthy flies. There were no gophers digging holes in his garden."

It is clear that each part of this description is 100% made up. Even the sloppiest Bible-reader knows that in the very first chapter of the very first book in the Bible, Genesis, it says that after God created the sun and moon and stars on the fourth day, it says God made these to know when the "seasons" are. Seasons, that's right. Ray Comfort thinks that there were no "dead leaves" when seasons like Fall and Winter come about.

"Animals that were more majestic than lions, and others cuter than puppies, played together in the garden. All food was pleasurable to the taste and turned into energy. Nothing turned into waste."

You do realize that food is digested and turned into waste right? And you know what else that indicates, that things break down


Those lions and puppies must have fun, as would the parasites, bacteria and fungi. Or maybe Ray Comfort like other creationists think those parasites and thorns on flowers came after the Fall.... which ironically means that they think these creatures "evolved." However you slice it, the big a change of the original creation after the Fall to a death-based ecology would be a special form of macroevolution. 

And think about this: Why do organisms have defenses against pathogens in the first place? They would not need immune systems in a pre-Fall world without pathogens. 

"The cool air was fresh without a drop of humidity, and no amount of expenditure caused Adam to sweat or become tired. He was incapable of experiencing depression, aging, sickness, or even pain. There was no such thing as sadness, boredom, or futility, and there was no death."

No such thing as boredom... and yet the book says Adam gets "lonely" and even God gets tired after creating a universe.

And no such thing as futility??????????

I have to point out that humans have certain primate genes that are "shut off" such as our bodies cannot produce their own Vitamin C. Tell me, how is it not futile to create humans with useless genes?

Just Dust

Ray starts this piece with "Skeptics like to mock the thought that God made Adam from dust of the Earth." 

No more like we mock this story because it is word-for-word a "Golem spell" with no evidence to back it up. All the evidence in fact points to the first humans sharing a common ancestor with other apes -- this is the ONLY model that matches all the evidence, in fact it is the only model with any evidence.

Ray suggests the readers that whenever anyone "mocks" the thought that God made Adam, ask them how they think the first man was made.

In other words, shift the burden of proof. Throughout this whole segment of this chapter, as well as throughout this whole book, Ray Comfort does not provide one iota of proof for his belief that a God created man. But in Ray Comfort's mind, as well as those like him, if any other explanation is not complete or appears to be incomplete, his version wins automatically even if he never has any evidence for his views to begin with. 


What does Ray Comfort think the alternative explanation is? A straw-man version of the Big Bang Theory (which has nothing to do with the origin of life), and eventually leading to "life coming from non-life, which is is a scientific impossibility." Wrong, not only did Ray Comfort not provide a source, scientific paper or any reference whatsoever to justify his claim that abiogenesis is a scientific impossibility, the truth is that abiogenesis is a very plausible scientific theory.


While the theory of abiogenesis is incomplete and new knowledge is being uncovered all the time, scientists are virtuous enough to admit we do not know every step of the abiogenesis process that happened on Earth. But because of this, Ray Comfort says scientists "don't have a clue" and yet "they just know God didn't make man from dust of the Earth." That's right Banana-man, and how do they "know" this? Because it is a demonstrable fact that man came from other ape-like ancestors, not dirt. When discussing human's history, do you say your grandfather did not have any parents and just came from dirt? Of course not. You know your grandparents had parents, and so on. The further back in our evolutionary history, we go from apes to a series of mammalian animals, then land-dwelling fish, and so on. Life may have started in the seas, or a chemically rich pond, or in clay or amino acids from meteorites.

"What is the alternative for those who prefer the evolutionary theory to Genesis? They either don't know, or they believe that there was nothing, and nothing created everything through a big bang. The heat from the big bang sent massive rocks flying through space, and over time, non-life miraculously produced life, or the seeds of life were already on the rocks. Rocks produced human beings, animals, insects, and fish life--and all (as we have seen) produced male and female, each with the ability and specialized equipment to produce after their own kind."

Evolution explains how life diversifies, not how it began. Since evolution at every level is -by definition- limited to the variation of allele frequencies inherited over generations of living organisms, then it obviously can’t operate where no genomes yet exist. The evolutionary process starts with genetics and can’t start before it. So Ray is lying whenever he says that people who accept evolution must also believe something, anything, else before evolution takes place (like the origin of life).

Here he is combining big bang cosmology, abiogenesis and evolution into one theory. This false oversimplification isn't remotely accurate and any scientist who made such an elementary mistake would lose all credibility. In science, those theories are completely separate and in very different states. The Big Bang is explained by physics whereas evolution deals with biology.

Not only that, his over-simplification is misleading. Take for instance, "rocks produced human beings"... no, living biological hominids (apes) reproducing through sex produced more hominids (apes). Rocks are not biological and therefor cannot reproduce through sex. This is just Ray Comfort trying to use ignorance to tackle abiogenesis,

Does Ray Comfort ever try to provide proof that man created man? Yes, but as usual it is beyond pathetic. He starts of with rehearsing the old saying "from dust to dust" which is an old saying that hints that God made man from dust, breathed life into him, and then returns to dust at death.

The scientifically-inaccurate Bible says God made man from dust, "breathed" life into him, and then returns to dust at death.... so basically it's a Golem Spell.


Yes, in the Talmud (Tractate Sanhedrin 38b), Adam was initially created as a golem (גולם) ... in other words, Adam was a mud-man brought to life with magic (kinda gives credence to atheists online who call God a "magic man").

And for the record, this is not the first time the god-character "breathed" life into non-living things and made them come alive. In Ezekiel 37:9, God commands the "four winds" to come down unto a valley of dead soldiers and "breathe" into them, and then the bones come back to life, flesh and all. (sounds like Necromancy!) Yep, the Bible says the wind brought an entire army back from the dead. Thus it seems that the wind is literally the breathe of god, which is quite common in a lot of mythologies, for it is common knowledge that you would die if you did not breathe or had lack of air, so the air and winds is what keeps you alive which must come from the life-giving gods.

In conclusion, Ray Comfort revisits the belief that God created everything and all the beauty and pleasures we see in the world, and yet we cannot "begin to imagine" how wonderful the world was before the Fall when sin entered the world. He ends it with that a grander life awaits in the afterlife, and Mark Twain didn't believe the Bible or God creating Adam and Eve, and therefore saw the "fallen and cursed creation" and thought that this is how things are because the "God he believed in was too lofty to give him any other explanation."

I love it when Ray Comfort says that the world was so great that we cannot begin to imagine what it is was like, and yet he knows the details of it such as that leaves did not die and there was no waste, despite the Bible says there were seasons and the fact that in biology waste is produced whenever we digest food for fuel.

Chapter 3: Where's There's Smoke There's No Fire

The chapter starts off with Ray Comfort quoting Mark Twain's Letter of Faith about the difference in  God's law for male and female sexuality. Basically, the female is unrestricted while the male is restricted. Ray Comfort says those who believe in Genesis "know" that this is not true.

But then again, while this piece about "God's Law on sexuality" may not be true, we know that Genesis certainly isn't true either.

Ray Comfort ends this bit talking about what we know about carcinogens, something that Twain's generation knew nothing about.

Still not a argument to prove there's a god(s). There are plenty of things Mark Twain and many other people of his time did not know about. But their ignorance does not overrule what we know now. And what we know now is a lot, such as 1) the origin of sexuality and 2) that the universe does not require a god or an outside agent to come into being. In fact, the universe appears as we would expect if there was no "creator."
 

Mr. Dullbrain

Ray Comfort then introduces a fictional character, who constantly fills his house with smoke from the fire place. Everyone tells him it is harmful and lethal, but he says it makes him feel good. Then one day he dies from sickness, Ray Comfort says he realized what a fool he has been.

Then Ray Comfort says Mark Twain loved to fill his house with smoke. Not with smoke from a fire place, but with cigars. He quotes Twain saying he smoked about 300 cigars a month, which Ray Comfort says perhaps explained why Twain's thoughts were "clouded" against God and the Bible. Comfort then goes on to explain who smoking can lead to a series of problems, including erectile dysfunction.

Bringing up the health issues of smoking, and then trying to bridge that lifestyle to diminish Mark Twain's image to make his criticism of religion seem less important. How childish.

Whenever I criticize Ray Comfort, it's targeting his lies and failed apologetics. I don't take cheap shots at him by pointing if he lives a healthy lifestyle or not, for that is irrelevant to the debate regarding religions and whether there is a god or not.

The only reason why I suspect Ray Comfort dedicates his time to addressing Mark Twain's personal lifestyle rather than bothering to engage in a intellectual debate is that Comfort hopes to make it look like Twain's path moving away from organized religion had nothing to do with his intellect but rather with his body. And in so doing, Ray Comfort may hope to indirectly convince his readers that must be the case for all or most atheists and non-christians. 
 

The Christians House

Comfort starts this section by sharing that Christians know how to get the best performance in a healthy life by quoting 1 Timothy 4:8-9, which mentions bodily exercises being profitable, but "godliness is profitable for all things." Ray Comfort goes on that as Christians, they care for the "house" with exercise and good eating, and mentions that "sensible living has a natural benefit in this life, and godliness has a supernatural benefit in this life." His proof? Abraham, who enjoyed sexual pleasure into his late nineties.

So many wrong things here.......Okay where to start.......


I will go backwards. To start off, Ray Comfort is trying to defend a book of fables, with a fictional character. That is like trying to defend the Medieval lifestyle with the tales and sagas of King Arthur by sharing a livelihood story of Sir Lancelot.


Bottom line, there is no historical evidence whatsoever of there ever being an Abraham. Just like Noah, Moses, Adam and Eve, these characters of the Old Testament are fictionally religious-inspired characters forged to tell a story. Whenever historians or archeologists reveal that the stories of the Old Testament do not add up or are inaccurate, Ray Comfort's first reaction is to deny the uncovered facts and side with the book that we just proven to contain errors. Here is a latest example,

Next one,  Ray Comfort says that Christians know what it means to have a healthy lifestyle through "sensible living" such as exercise and good health..... this may seem catchy and appealing to most people, who wouldn't want a healthy life, but let's use actual statistics and see if the Christian lifestyle really makes one's life better.

Statistics show that the higher religious a State or nation is, they always fall short when compared to secular States and countries. In America, evangelical Christians have higher divorce rates, more teen pregnancies, more abortions, higher rates of child abuse (statistics show that child offenders more often tend to be religious), the prison population is overwhelmingly Christian while atheists make up less than 1% of the prison population, Christians who are frequent church goers are more likely to support the torture than Christians who don't often go to Church. Basically there is a negative correlation whenever anyone says that Christianity makes a person a better/moral person. The statistics don't add up. Every single one of the Christians in these statistics may have practiced a healthy diet and exercised often, but their faith failed to make them a better person.

My point I want to drive home is this: Christians can have healthy lifestyles, but one does not need to be a Christian to have a healthy lifestyle. The secret to a healthy lifestyle is not in the Bible. Even older sacred texts of Hinduism thousands of years before Judaism ever existed provide insights to how to live healthy, but granted even they are full of fables and weird stuff. If anyone wants to learn how to live healthy, all they need to do is study the human body and research any scientific data on what is harmful to human life as well as the environment.

Finally, last part I want to address. Even Ray's source for arguing about Christian "healthy lifestyle" is a big fat embarrassing lie. I'm going to jump back to the part about 1 Timothy. Whenever ANYONE quotes ANYTHING from 1 Timothy, red flags should immediately raise up. Why? Because 1 Timothy is a forgery. There is a class of books called by scholars pseudepigraphy (literally “false writing”) characterized by pseudonymity (“false name”) in which the author deliberately tries to present his writing as originating from someone else. We all know there are many religious writings outside the Jewish and Christian canon that are pseudepigraphical. Jewish writings such as the books of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, Wisdom of Solomon, and Psalms of Solomon are all well known to have been written much later than the time of their supposed authors. Christian pseudepigraphy outside the canon includes works such as Paul’s third letter to the Corinthians (3 Corinthians), the Gospel of Thomas, and the Letter of Peter to James (found in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies). All are falsely attributed to the various apostles by their actual authors.

Are there pseudepigraphical works even in the canonical Bible? The answer is something critical scholars have known for years—an unequivocal “Yes.” In the OT, the book of Daniel, some portions of Psalms, and the later part of Isaiah are all known to be pseudonymous. In the NT, the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus) are considered by a vast majority of critical scholars not to have been written by Paul.

Ray Comfort continues this piece about how Scriptures promise the pleasures of the afterlife are everlasting, to which Ray Comfort never provides any evidence for. 

To Ray Comfort, it is more important that you believe it is true rather than show that it is true.

Ray Comfort then goes on about how all the problems of the world (earthquakes, hurricanes, animals devouring each other, and all things die and such) were all caused when Adam and Even sinned in an act of rebellion. 

Not a single line in this true, whatsoever. We know for a fact that scientifically and through genetics there was never a Adam and Eve (it is a fact we share a common ancestry with other primates); we know from geology that earthquakes have existed long before humans ever appeared on this planet; we know for a fact that animals devouring animals have always been the case long before humans ever appeared on this planet; furthermore, we know that animals die long before humans ever appeared on this planet; and we know that the story of Adam and Eve was not an act of rebellion once you realize that the God-character who knows everything and plans everything allowed this act to happen because he wanted it to happen -- there is no other explanation.

Ray Comfort says that his God is wonderful because he made a wonderful creation and "promised" eternal life, if we accept Jesus... but points out that men like Twain called God a "thug."

Calling God a "thug" is going to be a very common thing to address in this book, though really it is too vague and doesn't grasp the full weight of what a immoral monster the God-character of the Bible is. I can quote several people who got it more right and closest to the mark, but I will settle with one: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
 
Now that I got that out of the way, I might as well address Ray Comfort pleading with his readers that in order to obtain eternal life is by accepting Jesus. Not once does Ray Comfort prove his God is even real, he fails to prove that there is a so-called Heaven where people live forever (let alone if it is true that they are happy). On top of all that, Ray Comfort fails to prove that accepting Jesus (who by the way has no historical evidence to demonstrate he was real as the New Testament describes) will get anyone into Heaven. Ray Comfort has barely shown Jesus as the actual Messiah. There is a lot to cover on this, so I will keep it short and simple, and allow a rabbi to explain.

Chapter 4: Twain, Flies, and Evolution

Ray Comfort says that Mark Twain was like a mad passenger aboard a sinking ship, who blames the captain for the situation while ignoring the captains instructions for all passengers to get a life preserver to live. Ray Comfort says that Twain wants us all to sink along with him. Then Comfort says "we know that God graciously given us his Word and it tells us that to be saved we must trust the Savior."

Trying to paint the God of the Bible as the Captain of a sinking ship trying to throw everyone a life preserver. That is not a realistic image of the God of the Bible.

More like the Captain deliberately planned the ship to sink weeks before the voyage, and was plotting to take down all the passengers with the ship. Then he wrecks the ship, and blames it on the passengers for not obeying his order to eat pass 12:00.

And when the ship starts sinking, the ship doesn't throw the crew a life preserver, he only promises to offer one after you've drowned.

Ray Comfort says the Bible says we live in a fallen creation, which is "proven" by all the suffering, diseases, and natural disasters anyone can name. But Twain uses these examples to bash God. Twain gives an example of how people "excuse" God for creating the filthy fly, but Comfort says no one "excuses" God because the fly or mosquito or cockroach all bite and devour because of the Fall.

Completely backwards. Suffering does not prove a book of fables. It rather demonstrates that the world itself is a world of suffering, and the book of fables was written as a reflection of the world we live in.

"The fly is annoying, horrible, diseased pest. It is a curse, and he is mad at the God of the Bible for making it, even though he doesn't believe that God of the Bible made it. Why doesn't he blame his god -- the one we have seen in which Mark Twain believes? Yet he insists on blaming the God of the Scriptures for the fly (and everything he considers to be evil) and refuses too give him thanks for everything that is good."

So Mark Twain is a theist, but not a Christian according to Ray?

To criticize something does not mean you have to believe it is real, any rational mind understands that. Whenever we debate on whether it was good or bad of Zeus punishing Prometheus for giving humans fire does not mean that we think either Zeus or Prometheus are real. Or whenever we debate on the right or wrong of punishing Sisyphus by making him roll a stone up a hill for eternity, that does not mean that we think that Sisyphus is a real person or that Tartarus is a real place.

And what kind of argument is it to "thank" a Creator who created everything that screwed up? How often do you hear a customer keeping a busted watch or computer and not send it back to the manufacturer? Never! In fact, we naturally get mad at the manufacturer for trying to sell us a watch that does not work. So, given the sake of argument that there is a creator, why would we not feel angry at the complete failure of the manufacturer -- ESPECIALLY when the manufacturer KNEW that the creation would fail (multiple times) or was too inept and  dumb to see failure coming? If you put two kids in a closet with nothing but an open canister of rat poison, what do you think is going to happen? And yet, the all-knowing creator of the universe is clueless when he creates a couple of humans with no knowledge of right and wrong near a cursed tree (which he points out to them, and does not put the cursed tree on a far away island) and then deliberately creates the mechanism (the serpent) that would lead to the Fall of everything? Seriously, how could you not see anything going wrong in that scenario? And yet, Ray expects us to be "thanking" that fuck-up of a idiotic god-character (which he has yet to proven is even real to begin with)?

Ray then says Mark Twain accused God of immortality, and called the follower of the church a "trained congregationalist" and the pastors "parrots of the pulpits."

It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for the earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and sorrow which we can relieve and do not do it, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin, then? If He is the Source of Morals He does - certainly nothing can be plainer than that, you will admit. Surely the Source of law cannot violate law and stand unsmirched; surely the judge upon the bench cannot forbid crime and then revel in it himself unreproached. Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself.

Then another quote from Mark Twain about evolution;

Adam is fading out. It is on account of Darwin and that crowd. I can see that he is not going to last much longer. There's a plenty of signs. He is getting belittled to a germ -- a little bit of a speck that you can't see without a microscope powerful enough to raise a gnat to the size of a church. They take that speck and breed from it: first a flea; then a fly, then a bug, then cross these and get a fish, then a raft of fishes, all kinds, then cross the whole lot and get a reptile, then work up the reptiles till you've got a supply of lizards and spiders and toads and alligators and Congressmen and so on, then cross the entire lot again and get a plant of amphibiums, which are half-breeds and do business both wet and dry, such as turtles and frogs and ornithorhyncuses and so on, and cross-up again and get a mongrel bird, sired by a snake and dam'd by a bat, resulting in a pterodactyl, then they develop him, and water his stock till they've got the air filled with a million things that wear feathers, then they cross-up all the accumulated animal life to date and fetch out a mammal, and start-in diluting again till there's cows and tigers and rats and elephants and monkeys and everything you want down to the Missing Link, and out of him and a mermaid they propagate Man, and there you are!

Ray Comfort questions if Mark Twain seriously accepted Darwin's theory, because based on the above paragraph he made it seem like a joke, and the following quote shows that Twain sided with "Adam";

Well, then, was it? To my mind, it don't stand to reason. They say it took a hundred million years. Suppose you ordered a Man at the start, and had a chance to look over the plans and specifications -- which would you take, Adam or the germ? Naturally you would say Adam is business, the germ ain't; one is immediate and sure, the other is speculative and uncertain. Well, I have thought these things all over, and my sympathies are with Adam. Adam was like us, and so he seems near to us, and dear. He is kin, blood kin, and my heart goes out to him in affection. But I don't feel that way about that germ. The germ is too far away -- and not only that, but such a wilderness of reptiles between...

Very well, then, where do we arrive? Where do we arrive with our respect, our homage, our filial affection? At Adam! At Adam, every time.

Anybody can joke around with something they accept is true and accurate. Take a look at English comedian Eddie Izzard who said this, "Mr. Charles Darwin, who looked a bit like God which is interesting, wrote a book called You're a Fucking Monkey, Mate. He played around with the title for a while: We're All Fucking Monkeys; You're a Fucking Monkey, Mate; Get Out of My Face, You Fucking Monkey. And he ended up with On The Origin of Species.”Izzard knows that Darwin did not start off like that or wrote like that, but he's having fun with it. Just as Mark Twain can have fun with Darwin's theory by throwing in mermaids right after mentioning the "missing link."

Nevertheless, how are we not surprised that Mark Twain sides with the human-character than a germ... because Mark Twain is a human! Who/what else can he sympathize with? We are not like thoughtless germs, thus making it more appealing to side with a human in a garden who understands labor and struggle and having a wife and children.

Ray Comfort then notes that Twain was confused with the time it took for man to evolve;

Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If the Eiffel tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; & anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would. I dunno.

Mark Twain's stances on how long humans evolved were based on the scientific data of his time, this was way before the discover of DNA. Now we know that homo sapiens emerged around 50 to 100,000 years ago in Africa. Though Mark Twain's dating was off, he was not that far off when compared to the anti-science creationists who think the Earth itself is no older than 6,000 years old.

That being said, Mark Twain was right with the rest of this piece. The emergence of humans when compared to the timeline of the Earth is tiny! The analogy to the Eiffel tower is spot on.

Then Mark Twain describes evolution a unplanned;

Evolution is a blind giant who rolls a snowball down a hill. The ball is made of flakes--circumstances. They contribute to the mass without knowing it. They adhere without intention, and without foreseeing what is to result. When they see the result they marvel at the monster ball and wonder how the contriving of it came to be originally thought out and planned. Whereas there was no such planning, there was only a law: the ball once started, all the circumstances that happened to lie in its path would help to build it, in spite of themselves.

Guess what? Evolution is unplanned AND non-random. Whereas mutations are random, natural selection is not. Selection of randomly introduced variation is known to be able to produce complex formation.

Ray Comfort then ends this chapter with a poem that he dedicated to Charles Darwin, but it is pointless to address it.

Chapter 5: Little Bessie's Big Lies

Ray Comfort starts this chapter by sharing that Twain wrote "Little Bessie", a story of a 3 year old child and a Christian mother. He cites his source for this story on Positive Atheism. Ray expresses his views on this story by saying Twain "airs his anger the God of the Bible, in whom he doesn't believe." So Twain doesn't believe in God.

Ray Comfort disses Twain and "Little Bessie" as being separate from "reality" because the child is 3 years old when a more believable story would be if she was 7 or 8. He calls it a "out of touch with real life" story, such as when the child is ready for sex by the age of 3.


Ray Comfort then quotes the entirety of the first chapter from "Little Bessie" and provides a response hoping to point out the twisted "lies" in Twain's story. I therefore will respond to his counter-arguments.

Chapter 1
Ray Comfort Lie #1: God disciplines us to make us good.
That is not true. God doesn't discipline anyone to make him or her good. Twain may have believed that it was so, but he was wrong. Had he taken time to study the Bible---

I'm going to stop you there Ray!

Hebrew 12:6 - "For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives."

Proverbs 3:12 - "because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in."

Just read this list for more.

Now take a moment to think this through. The god-character is always portrayed like a "Father" and the Jews are his children. All throughout the Old Testament, whenever the Jews were getting out of line, God would send a prophet to plead with them, and if that did not work, God would send a plague or an army to crush them (ex. Jeremiah 40). If that is not a clear case of "do what I say or I'll chastise you" I don't know what does.

---he wouldn't have misrepresented one of it's most basic truths -- justification. The moment a sinner repents and trusts in the Savior, he is justified in the sight of God. He is made righteous through His amazing grace (see Ephesians 2:8-9). This happens in an instant of time. The righteousness of Christ is credited to his bankrupt account. He was morally in debt to the Law, under it's fierce wrath, but Jesus paid the fine in full. But the guilty criminal's case was dismissed by because of more than a lack of evidence. It was terminated because of no evidence at all. Guilty through the sinner is because of a multitude of sins, they were all washed away the second he or she repented and trusted in Jesus alone.

1) This whole case is rather rendered pointless due to the severe lack of historical evidence for this Jesus.

2) The absurdity of the atonement: it is illogical, immoral and incoherent.

So a Christian is morally perfect in the eyes of God. He doesn't see a sinner. Instead, He looks upon the imputed righteousness of Christ, and any of life's trials that then come a Christian's way happen for his good (see Romans 8:28). They don't happen to make him good, because he already is "good" in the Biblical sense (morally perfect). For Mr. Twain to say such a thing is to serious misrepresent the Christian faith, slur the character of God, and to perpetuate a lie.

The core of Christianity says all it takes is "belief" that saves a person. In Matthew 5:19, Jesus says anyone who ignores those old commandments will be called least in Heaven. So you will still go to Heaven, you just have to fly coach. You can break 612 commandments out of the whole list of 613. There is only one sin, that not even God has the power to forgive...Unbelief. So believers can be as vile as they wish – it doesn't matter. Atheists can be the most moral people ever – it doesn't matter. Morality doesn't matter. Gullibility is the only criteria required for redemption. So whenever Ray Comfort says "Christians are morally perfect in the eyes of God" and "He doesn't see the sinner," he is basically saying that Christians are "morally perfect" only because they've picked and worship and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, and therefore God does not see rapists, murderers, pedophiles or any criminal, for even the most heinous of human beings can be saved so long as they believe! It does not matter how much of a horrible a Christian can be, they go to Heaven, whereas the most generous non-Christian goes to Hell. Take a look at the Crucifixion story in Luke 23, where two criminals were crucified next to Jesus. Only one of them accepted Jesus as their savior, and that criminal went to Heaven according to Jesus (verse 43), whereas the other one went to Hell.

So, Ray says "life's trails" don't make a Christian "good" because all it takes to be "good" is to just be a believer, that's it. I guess this is the golden keystone that holds Ray Comfort's worldview and conscience up: he can be the most chronic liar and charlatan on Earth, but in his mind he is already "good" because he believes, and that is all she wrote. He can lie to everyone he can about science and history, and make money off those he lies to, but that's okay because Ray Comfort thinks "Hey, I've lied for money and threaten people with Hell, but I'm a Christian and therefore I'm morally perfect in the eyes of God, so HA HA."

Ray Comfort's Lie #2: God's will is to murder children
If Twain had loved God and believed his Bible, he wouldn't have made such wild and untrue claims. But he didn't love God. He hated him, and so a little twisting of Scripture was no doubt justified in his sad and twisted mind.

Loving someone or your favorite book character does not change anything. If the character wills the death of children, then his will is to murder children. Read Numbers 5 where God specifically instructs the Jews to kill the unborn babies of adulterous women (in which God plays a role by blessing the brew that will terminate the pregnancy).

There are at least two wills of God. There is firstly his perfect will. God's will is now what we see here on earth. It will eventually be done on earth as it is in heaven, when God's Kingdom comes to this sinful earth. He will then put a stop to the murder of babies with pitchforks, and the murder of babies with sharp scalpels and suction machines, all done in the name of a woman's choice. He will put a stop to rape, hatred, greed, pride, envy, jealousy, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, blasphemy, lust, and a multitude of other things He sees as being evil.

If you see something like rape as evil, and yet you see it on a daily basis, why would you wait even for a moment to stop it?

 And why would the god-character want to stop killing babies when he is the ultimate abortionist?

The second will of God is His permission will. He allows murder in the womb, with a pitchfork, and in Nazi Germany. He allows rape, adultery, theft, lying, blasphemy, lust, fornication, etc. But as each evil is committed, the guilty criminal is storing up His just wrath for his sins (see Romans 2). God, in His great mercy, even allows mockery, blasphemy, and the twisting of Scripture, in the hope that the offender may repent and trust in Jesus -- to avoid the damnation of Hell.

In other words, imagine there is a Judge, who is called many great things like "righteous" and "just" and "holy".... would you call that Judge those words if he was in constant 24/7 observance of every criminal activity everywhere and did nothing to stop any of it, simply because he "allowed" every crime to happen because he's making a list and "storing it all up" for the upcoming sentencing in court? We would never call such a judge "just" or even "good." That said judge is just sitting by and allowing such crimes to take place, which makes him just as guilty.

Take for instance Ariel Castro the kidnapper in Cleveland, Ohio. Castro kidnapped 3 women and kept them in his basement for 10 YEARS and raped them all (Castro pled guilty to 937 criminal counts of rape!). Castro impregnated one of the victims, Michelle Knight, five times and made her miscarry them by beating her and slammer her into the walls. Castro even killed a dog by snapping it's neck because it tried to defend one of the victims.

Now imagine that a Judge was aware of this from the beginning, and knew every detail what was happening every day for all those ten long years. Despite the pleas and cries of the victims, the Judge hears them and does nothing. The Judge says he is "good" and says all the things Castro is doing is "evil"... and yet the Judge allows all of this to happen. This Judge is clearly not "good" in any sense of the word, calling him an immoral monster would be more accurate.

And to make it even worse for the defenders of the indefensible faith, even the abuser, Ariel Castro, publicly and openly praised God by calling him "good." The very same "good" god that allowed 3 women to be kidnapped, raped, beaten, humiliated, and scared for ten long years.

Now that this example has been brought to your attention, now realize that evil things like this happen all the time around the world. Imagine the global sex trafficking, where little children are kidnapped and sold as sex slaves. They are beaten, starved, raped, forced to have abortions, and when they are no longer deemed usable, they are killed and their bodies dumped.

But don't worry, as Ray Comfort would like to remind you that his still-not-proven god is "making a list" and "checking it twice" and will punish all the bad-guys later on when they finally die.... except that if any one of these bad-guys just repents once and loves the Judge's Son, those bad-guys skip all justice and punishment, and are instead treated to an eternal life of bliss (whereas some or all of their victims may be tortured forever in Hell if they did not love the Judge's Son as their savior).

Seriously, the god-character of the Bible is without a doubt the most evil monster there is.

In Luke 13:1-4 certain people came to Jesus with the same assertions that Mr. Clemens made through Bessie. A number of Galileans had been murdered, and another 18 had died when a tower fell on them. The assertion was that God had judged these unfortunates for their sins. Jesus rebuked them for their presumptions, and told them rather repent of their own sins. Mr. Twain would have been wise to heed such advice.

So dodge making sense of why the god-character would allow a wall to crush 18 people and worry about yourself? Classy act of "don't ask questions, just repent."

Ray Comfort Lie #3: God created everything as it is
Once again, Mr. Twain completed ignored the Genesis Curse and complained about the plight of the hog, the spider, and the fly. The whole of creation: spiders, fleas, hogs, frogs, and logs -- everything is under the Genesis Curse. Nothing has escaped. The happy, hopping frog eventually croaks and the solid log ultimately rots. The spiders eat the fly, and the fly is swatted with the hand. The hand is stung by the bee, and the bee is eaten by the bird. The bird is eaten by the cat, and the dog kills the cat. Dogs would seem therefore to have made it, but they have fleas. The filthy fleas suck their blood; the dog gets sick, gets old, and dies. And so it goes on, and will go on until God's Kingdom comes to this earth and God's will is done on this earth as it is in heaven when the wolf will lies down with the lamb. But Mr. Twain didn't have that glorious hope. All he had was the problem of suffering and death and fleas and flies, all for which he blamed God in whom he didn't believe.

Once again, Ray Comfort fails to provide any proof for his holy book. Suffering in the world is no more proof for Genesis as is the Vedas or the polytheistic Greek faiths.

Ray Comfort's Lie #4: We should cause suffering
Mr. Clemens then builds on his faulty foundation and takes his argument to it's logical conclusion. If god wants babies to be thrust through with pitchforks to discipline humanity, we should help Him by killing babies with pitchforks. 

Well duh, that is exactly what Ray's God commands the Jews to do in Numbers 5? God instructed the Jews that if a wife became pregnant through adultery, she must be tested, and if guilty her unborn baby must die.

In other words, kill the unborn.

Once again, keep in mind that his god (the wonderful lofty one who he thinks made all things) is just as guilty as the God he doesn't believe in, who he is blaming for human suffering. God allows suffering, but the Scriptures tell us that the god of this world (Satan) who inflicts disease. We see this explained in Scripture through the suffering of Job 1:6-12.

Bear in mind, that in Job, it is Satan who makes a bet with God regarding the faith of Job.... so God is the one (not Satan) who ruins Job's life, gives him boils, and kills his family and destroys his home and property. So why did God do this? Cuz the Devil made him do it. 

This is where Jesus puts the blame for human suffering (Luke 13:12-16).
Jesus didn't say that the suffering was God's will because of the woman's karma. He didn't say that God was disciplining her for her sins or trying to make her "good." Instead, He fulfilled the will of God and healed her. This is because the thief came not but to steal, kill, and destroy (see John 10:10). Jesus came to give life, health, not death and suffering.

So Jesus (if he even existed) not saying anything about God "disciplining" anyone magically makes Proverbs 3:12 and Hebrews 12:6 disappear?

Basically, Ray's argument by quoting Luke 13:12-16 is literally blaming everything on the Devil, despite that the Bible says that God is the one who created imperfect humans (and blaming them for being imperfect), the cursed fruit, created the mechanism that led to the Fall, and wrote the rules and cursed all the descendants of Adam and Eve for their "mistake" (which in all honesty is God's mistake) and it was God who created evil and (by Ray's own admission) allows such evil to happen.

Chapter 6: He, Being Dead, Yet Speaks

Ray Comfort starts this chapter by claiming that Mark Twain's works have provided an "unending arsenal" to those who fight against God. Ray Comfort says Twain's work is greatly accepted by this generation to "fortify their position that pornography, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, etc. are morally acceptable. This is is because if the god of the bible (the One who requires moral accountability) can be shown to be unjust, He has no case against me for my sins."

For starters, and I will  point out again, the God of the Bible does not require moral accountability.

Matthew 5:19, Jesus says anyone who ignores those old commandments will be called least in Heaven. So you will still go to Heaven, you just have to fly coach. You're still supposed to follow those old creepy Jewish laws, including the one having to murder anyone who works on weekends and the one that instructs you to sell your daughter to the one who rapes her first. But you will still be forgiven even if you don't – even if you eat at Red Lobster while wearing nylon-polyester blend. It does not matter how good or bad you are, love your sin all you want. Noah was a naked old drunk, cursing his own children. Lot offered his daughters to a rape mob, before he got drunk and molested them himself – and he even blamed them for seducing him (what a schmuck!). Yet these are the men that God considered to be the best in the whole world. Graded on a curve, wouldn't you all be better than that? Graded on a curve, how can anyone of you be called least in Heaven? What sin can you commit that would be worthy of damnation? You can break 612 commandments out of the whole list of 613. There is only one sin, that not even God has the power to forgive...which is weird because God wrote the rules – but I guess he made a rule himself so he would not break his own rule. And he lives by those rules, even when the circumstances demand exception, because it is considered virtuous to never admit when you are wrong.

Anyway, one unforgivable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Blasphemy has been legally determined to mean criminal irreverence of, or disbelief in, someone else's dogma. And it still carries a death sentence in some countries. Nowhere does the Bible damn believers for their works – belief can always get them out of that. Nor does the Bible allow that good, kind and charitable saintly souls can go to heaven even if they do not believe.

So believers can be as vile as they wish – it doesn't matter. Atheists can be the most moral people ever – it doesn't matter. Morality doesn't matter. Gullibility is the only criteria required for redemption. So if you love sin, and you don't want to get killed for it, just say that you don't believe in Jesus and the Holy Ghost. Because the only real way to piss God off is not to believe in him.

And what exactly is the justification that, let's say, fornication and homosexuality is inherently immoral? The Christian answer is simply this: cuz God said so. That's all it ever boils down to.


But I like it that they will say X is immoral because their God says so, but they ignore their same God said slavery and child sacrifice is morally good. This mere fact shows that either 1) they don't give a damn what their God says about ethics or 2) they too also think that it is morally okay to sacrifice children and own slaves or anything else a moral dictator commands them to accept.


For the rest of the chapter, Ray Comfort addresses Chapter 2, 3, and 4 of Mark Twain's "Little Bessie." I will only address the counter-arguments.


Bessie Chapter 2

Ray Comfort's Lie #5: God made man vicious
The Bible wasn't the reservoir for truth for Mr. Twain to gather information about God. It was rather from other sources, including his fertile imagination. It was Napoleon who said that man will believe anything as long as it's not in the Bible.
The Scriptures tell us that God didn't make man "vicious instead of angelic." Neither did He say, "Be angelic, or I will punish you and destroy you." God made man good, without any sin (see Genesis chapter 1). But instead, believing that, Twain concludes: "But no matter, God is responsible for everything man done, all the same; He can't get around that fact. There is only one Criminal, and it is not man."
If Mr. Twain is correct, we should quickly take his evidence to the Supreme Court and make a case for the immediate release of every rapist and murderer from our prisons, because they are all innocent. Who would dare waste the court's (and our) time with such a frivolous case? Mark Twain.

Mark Twain is not wrong about God being responsible for everything man has done, but thankfully Christianity itself is wrong so we don't have to bother going to the Supreme Court.

If Christianity is true, that there is a god who knows everything, controls everything, plans everything, and created imperfect humans he must have foreseen the corruption of humans, and he allowed it to happen just to punish them for being imperfect (the way they were created). So it logically follows that God created man to be imperfect and vicious, and then blames them for being what they are.
 

Bessie Chapter 3

Ray Comfort's Lie #6: God gave the Bible to show us right from wrong.
Twain accuses God of giving Jones a bad temper and therefore making him kill Smith. Let's follow his logic. If God gave man a lustful heart that desires to commit adultery or rape, it's not the man who is guilty of rape or adultery. It is God because He made them with that nature.
Then Mr. Clemens uses the theologically ignorant Mamma to preach theological ignorance. This way of arguing is commonly known as a "straw man." The person putting forth the argument perpetuates lies then easily dismantles the lies. He with ease pulls apart the straw man and then pats himself on the back for winning the argument.
Mamma (the straw man/woman) says that Jones is responsible because God gave Him a Bible. Perhaps she was unaware that the printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, upon which he printed the Gutenberg Bible. Until then, the millions (perhaps billions) didn't have access to the Scriptures, as we know them. Besides, most of them couldn't read. So how could the Bible make them responsible?
There are millions of heathens who dwelt in the deepest jungles of Africa, the billions of Chinese, Russians, Australians, New Zealanders, etc. who didn't have access to the Scriptures until the last two hundred years. If murderous Jones was responsible because God gave him a Bible, then the billions down through the ages who didn't have a Bible cannot be held guilty. The sinned in complete ignorance.
However Romans chapters 1 and 2 tells us that God has given every son and daughter of Adam the powerful restraint of conscience (con means "with" and science means "knowledge"). It's there for every angry man who doesn't have the temperance of a rabbit. It's there for the lustful man who burns with a desire to rape, fornicate, commit adultery, or drink in pornographic images. The conscience was given by God, is shaped by society, and is universal. The Russians, the Chinese, the tribes in deep Africa, and Mark Twain (as well as you and I) were all given the impartial judge in the courtroom of the mind. It's up to us whether or not we listen to that voice.

Chapter 4

Ray Comfort's Lie #7: A Jew cannot be a Christian, therefore Mary wasn't a virgin
It seems that Mr. Clemens did believe some portions of Scripture. Mary did have at least five more children after she had Jesus, so she was no longer a virgin after she bore Jesus. (cites mark 6:1-3)
Then Clemens said, "Well, let me see. It's something like this: a Jew couldn't be a Jew after she became a Christian; he couldn't be Christian and Jew at the same time. Very well, a person couldn't be mother and a virgin at the same time." I was born with Jewish blood, and when I became a Christian I kept my Jewish blood.

There is no such thing as Jewish blood. There is only blood. Judaism is not genetic, it's not a race, it's not a blood type.

I'm not alone. All of the disciples were Jewish and they were Christians. So where the 3,000 Jews who converted on the day of the Pentecost when the first sermon was preached. Twain's "Very well" is unfounded. He is wrong about a Jew not being a Christian, and he was wrong about Mary being a virgin and being the mother of Jesus.

The only one here in error is Ray Comfort. You cannot be a Jew and a Christian. Christianity demands that you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, Judaism rejects Jesus Christ. Judaism demand that you worship/praise no one else but God the Father, Christianity demands that you praise his Son. The two religions are in direct conflict.

Chapter 5

Ray Comfort's Lie #8: Roman Catholicism and biblical Christianity are synonymous.
Mr. Twain reveals that Mamma is a Roman Catholic. She says Mary's virginity, "Certainly she is; and has never been anything but a virgin -- oh, the adorable One, the pure, the spotless, the undefiled!" A Roman Catholic believes in the sinless nature of Mary. A Protestant who knows his Bible will protest and say that she was blessed to carry Jesus, but she was a sinner like the rest of humanity. This is because the Bible says "All have sinned" (Romans 3:23). It also says "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10). Mary said that she needed a Savior (see Luke 1:47). Only sinners need a Savior. She was also present on the Day of the Pentecost where she received the Holy Spirit and had her sins washed away. Roman Catholics who have truly repented, trusted alone in Jesus, and have been born again are Christians, but the Roman Catholic religion at it's core is not the same as biblical Christianity. It is Roman Catholic, having it's own set of beliefs and dogmas and it's own Bible.

Chapter 6

Ray Comfort's Lie #9: That God and Jesus are like Siamese twins
Bessie asked, "Mamma, is Christ God?" and followed with "Mamma, how can He be Himself and Somebody Else at the same time?" This was Mamma's opportunity to expound Holy Scripture. Instead, she gives a dimwitted opportunity to talk about his favorite subject and blaspheme God at the same time. The Bible says (and cites 1 Timothy 3:16)

I must point out right away the fact that 1 Timothy is a forgery.

When Almighty God (the upholder of the universe) created a body in Jesus of Nazareth, He didn't cease to be Almighty God. He still upheld the universe. Jesus was the express image of the invisible God. It is so simple a three-year-old could understand it. But Twain's Bessie was no ordinary three-year-old. She wasn't just a student of philosophy and biblical theology; she was also well versed in the the birds and the bees and the perversion of incest.
Samuel Clemens hid himself behind the name Mark Twain, and then distanced himself further behind a non-existent little girl. His biblically twisted and sexually perverted childish scenario was written in effort to mock and discredit the character of God so that he could justify his sins. No wonder he wanted it published when he was dead. It certainly would have been considered sexually perverted and blasphemous in his day. However, the tragedy is that he mistakenly thought that after 100 years, the grave would surely save him from the consequences of such idle words. But there is going to be a resurrection of the just and the unjust, and Jesus warned (cites Matthew 12:36)

Chapter 7: God's Unfair Sexual Dispersion

Ray Comfort starts this chapter by noting that in Letter VIII in Letters from the earth, Mark Twain disliked that the Ten Commandments forbid adultery. "In the book, he writes on behalf of his spiritual father (Satan) words that come naturally to his children." In which Satan writes to Michael and Gabriel about ho God gave man the "law of nature" (Ray notes Twain uses those words instead of "sin") which filled man with natural desires, and then gave man the "law of God" which forbid those desires, and humans are therefore blameless and should be pitied instead of judged.


Ray Comfort notes that Twain did not mention theft or murder in the Commandments. "If God is the criminal, then thieves and murderers are innocent and He is the one who is guilty. Twain's philosophy only works when it comes to sexual inclinations."


Ray Comfort's defense against Mark Twain's arguments against restricting the youth from engaging in sex is, as you may have guessed, a story in the Bible. Ray uses King Solomon telling his son about sex in Proverbs 5:1-5, 18-21). In summary, fear of God keeps man from committing or thinking about sin.

Twain's Trained Eye

Ray comfort says Mark Twain could see the sexual sin in others because he saw it in himself. As for men like Twain who struggled with what they feel and what God's Law demands humans to obey, Ray brings up Paul in Romans 7: 21-27 about how the men around Paul struggled with the law in his mind, the law of god. Ray says "Twain faults the Law because he doesn't understand it's purpose."


He doesn't understand it's purpose... and neither does Ray Comfort. What is the purpose of a set of unnecessary stone tablets that are not the source of morality? Simple, religious hustlers seeking to control man. Men controlling men with superstition.

Ray says "Mark Twain heard the Law saying that his actions were unclean, and consequently became angry with the mirror, when all it was doing was reflecting the truth." 

And the Laws of Allah can show you that you are filthy.

"Paul goes on to say that the Law is holy, just, and good. There's nothing wrong with the reflection. It's a good mirror."

There is nothing good about a law forbidding people from working on any given day under penalty of death.

Chapter 8: Witches, Babies, and Hell

Ray Comfort first provides a quote from Mark Twain expressing that there are no witches but Ray Comfort counters and says there "certainly are genuine witches, both in the Bible, in history, and in contemporary society."

Ray Comfort pulls out the dictionary to see what a witch is: "A person, especially a woman, who professes or is supposed to practice magic, especially black magic or the black art; sorceress." Ray Comfort says a witch believes in the demonic realm, and the Old Testament says a witch should not live (Exodus 22:18) and Deuteronomy 18:10 says no witch should live among you.

Ray Comfort says "we know that witches exist, and we know that the Biblical text does remain." Ray Comfort says we do not need to kill fortune-tellers and those who practice witchcraft, because they have a right to practice witchcraft in America.

I am not making this up in the slightest or taking this out of context. Ray Comfort straight up said "we know that witches exist, and we know that the Biblical text does remain."

Mark Twain says there is no hell fire, but Ray Comfort says "I, too, would like to believe that hell doesn't exist, but I know that it's reality isn't determined by my belief or non-belief in it's existence. If someone who who had never visited New York didn't believe that it existed as a city, I could show them pictures and video of it's high-risers, but hell has even more compelling evidence for it's actuality." So what/where are these compelling evidences? Ray quotes the Bible (Psalm 9:17, Matthew 5:29-30, Mark 9:45-46 KJV, Luke 12:5 KJV)

In summary for this section, Ray Comfort says the Bible contains both civil an higher laws.

The Support of Reason

Ray Comfort returns back to Twain's example of the slaughter of Native Americans. Ray Comfort says that Twain's god could not save them and is just as bad as the murderers, but Ray's god (according to Ray) is nothing like that.

More Twain Lies

Ray says anyone who seeks the "pleasures of sin" always look into the Bible for negativity. Ray quotes 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 about "the ungodly who embrace a lie rather than receive the truth."

If it is "ungodly" to embrace a lie, then creationists like Ray Comfort are very ungodly.

The logic behind the argument of criticisin a book therefore means that the criticizer is just dwelling in being bad is like arguing that anyone who criticizes the Communist Manifesto is a secret communist or dwells in the pleasures of apathetic greed.

It's a great self-defensive mechanism, to ward off criticism of a book or ideology. You cannot argue with it, and those who do are the corrupted ones.

Ray says that Mark Twain said "infant damnation is goes, but the text remains" which has spread like "wildfire" on atheist sources, but Ray who has read the Bible daily for 40 years has found not a single verse to support this claim. But Ray has said that he found the opposite with Mark 10:14. Ray also says that when King David's child died, it was promised salvation rather than damnation. Ray Comfort says that children are "incapable of violating [God's] law." Therefore, Ray concludes, that Mark Twain twisted some Scripture, was confused or mistaken, or lying.

One, for someone who claims to have read the Bible everyday for 40 years sure as hell does not know squat about it.

Two, Ray quotes Mark 10:14.... but read the very next verse!!!! Verse 15 says "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." David's new born baby did not know about God, Jesus, or even knew how to understand language.


Three, nowhere in 2 Samuel was David's child promised salvation.

Four, if children are incapable of violating God's Law, then why are they born sinners under the Original Sin rule? If they are born in sin, then by default they are worthy of damnation.

"Sadly, it is human nature to believe and pass on rumors that have no basis in truth."

And Ray Comfort is a shining example of this.

Chapter 9: The Sexuality of the Goat and Tortoise

Ray accuses Mark Twain as finding faults with God and humanity, all except himself. Ray quotes Twain:

I suspect that to you there is still dignity in human life, & that Man is not a joke--a poor joke--the poorest that was ever contrived--an April-fool joke, played by a malicious Creator with nothing better to waste his time upon. ...Man is not to me the respect-worthy person he was before; & so I have lost my pride in him & can't write gaily nor praisefully about him any more. And I don't intend to try.
- Letter to William Dean Howells Howells, 2 April 1899

Everyone has faults to some degree, but skipping over one's own faults to discuss the faults of a unethical book character does not magically make the criticisms of the book character go away.

Ray Comfort says the "proud" will not let the Ten Commandments "stir his conscience" or realize that Christ died for our sins. Ray quotes Paul saying "I delight in the Law of God," and argues that Mark Twain's "carnal mind" was hostile towards God and his Moral Law (Romans 8:7)

I cannot understand how one can have their conscience "stirred" by a list of rules called the Ten Commandments (only called that in Exodus 34).

 
Here's a parody version of that story.

 

Ray Comfort then quotes Twain to show how Twain tried to "shake off" the guilt of the Law by blaming God for the sins of man:

The Bible and man's statutes forbid murder, adultery, fornication, lying, treachery, robbery, oppression and other crimes, but contend that God is free of these laws and has a right to break them when he will. He concedes that God gives to each man his temperament, his disposition, at birth; he concedes that man cannot by any process change this temperament, but must remain always under its dominion. Yet if it be full of dreadful passions, in one man's case, and barren of them in another man's, it is right and rational to punish the one for his crimes, and reward the other for abstaining from crime. 

There -- let us consider these curiosities. Take two extremes of temperament -- the goat and the tortoise. Neither of these creatures makes its own temperament, but is born with it, like man, and can no more change it than can man. Temperament is the law of God written in the heart of every creature by God's own hand, and must be obeyed, and will be obeyed in spite of all restricting or forbidding statutes, let them emanate whence they may.

Very well, lust is the dominant feature of the goat's temperament, the law of God is in its heart, and it must obey it and will obey it the whole day long in the rutting season, without stopping to eat or drink. If the Bible said to the goat, "Thou shalt not fornicate, thou shalt not commit adultery," even Man -- sap-headed man -- would recognize the foolishness of the prohibition, and would grant that the goat ought not to be punished for obeying the law of his Maker. Yet he thinks it right and just that man should be put under the prohibition. All men. All alike.

On its face this is stupid, for, by temperament, which is the real law of God, many men are goats and can't help committing adultery when they get a chance; whereas there are numbers of men who, by temperament, can keep their purity and let an opportunity go by if the woman lacks in attractiveness. But the Bible doesn't allow adultery at all, whether a person can help it or not.
(Source: http://www.classicreader.com/book/1930/9/)

Ray Comfort first responds with, "This is sad and even pathetic." Ray Comfort goes on to address Twain's remarks on adultery, regarding the Bible does not allow it whether a person can help it or not. Ray explains adultery as, "Adultery is the willful and sinful act of taking another man's wife." Ray goes on to say, "No man is in the state where he cannot help it; no more than a man cannot help but rob a bank. He is taking something that belongs to another person."

Hold on a second.... adultery is the act of taking another man's wife.

Ray Comfort is notorious for using the Ten Commandments to evangelize to the public to guilt them into Christianity using his "Are You a Good Person?" tactic (which I have refuted here), but when Ray Comfort asks a person "have you ever looked at a woman with lust?" he never specifies whether the woman being looked at already belongs to another man.

So if adultery is, as Ray Comfort just defined it, the act of taking a woman belonging to another man (to which Ray Comfort quotes Jesus saying that just "looking" counts as adultery), then it should therefore be appropriate to look at a person who is not married yet. 

Furthermore, we talked about King  David and God killing his child in the previous chapter. If adultery is taking a woman who belonged to another man, what if the man is dead? I understand that David killed Uriah to take his wife, but what if a husband dies naturally? Wouldn't that make the widowed wife a free woman?

But that aside, lets examine this whole thing again. Mark Twain is making the point that man and animals such as the goat, are naturally born the way they are meant to be. They cannot change their nature. In the case of the goat, it is it's nature to be lustful -- therefore it is unthinkable to demand it to be anything else. 

Whereas humans, as a biological fact, are lustful creatures. Now science has a hard time determining whether humans are monogamous or polygamous, in fact we might be a bit of both considering the history of so many different cultures around the world on how to approach sexual relationships. Currently, only 1 in 6 societies enforces monogamy as a rule. If that is the case, then it is very possible for a person to be unable to control their natural need to be with more than one mate (thus refuting Ray's claim that "no man is in the state where he cannot help it.").

Ray goes on sharing Twain's quote,

It allows no distinction between goat and tortoise -- the excitable goat, the emotional goat, that has to have some adultery every day or fade and die; and the tortoise, that cold calm puritan, that takes a treat only once in two years and then goes to sleep in the midst of it and doesn't wake up for sixty days. No lady goat is safe from criminal assault, even on the Sabbath Day, when there is a gentleman goat within three miles to leeward of her and nothing in the way but a fence fourteen feet high, whereas neither the gentleman tortoise nor the lady tortoise is ever hungry enough for solemn joys of fornication to be willing to break the Sabbath to get them. Now according to man's curious reasoning, the goat has earned punishment, and the tortoise praise.

 

Chapter 10: The Strange Mr. Twain

To sum up, Ray Comfort says Mark Twain became angry and hostile towards God after the death of his wife. Ray quotes Mark Twain over the articles he wrote about his dead wife, and concludes that Mark Twain was feeling old, lost the ability to enjoy sex, lost his wealth, and his friends, family, and wife died. But in that same paragraph, Ray Comfort says "He believed in God." But four quotes later, Ray Comfort says in another paragraph, "[Twain] was lost in the darkness of this life with no map or any sense of direction. Neither did he have faith in God." Ray Comfort cannot make up his mind whether Mark Twain believed in God or not.

Chapter 11: Did Mark Twain Become an Atheist?

Ray Comfort says that the "new" atheists aren't new, they are old. He claims that Thomas Paine was considered an atheist, even though Paine wasn't an atheist, and Paine was just a "pale clone" of Twain. Though Ray Comfort points out several anti-Christian quotes, Ray says these anti-Christian points is why many "contemporary atheists latch unto Paine as a founding father of modern atheism, yet (as with so many of the heroes of modern atheism) Paine wasn't foolish enough to be an atheist. He believed in the existence of God."

How can Paine be a "clone" of Twain when Paine died almost 30 years before Twain was born!?

Paine was a deist and did not believe in the same or similar god as Ray Comfort, but Paine's personal beliefs are not as important as his ideas and arguments against religion and theism. That's the point.

There are no "founders" of atheism, that is like trying to say that Thomas Jefferson was the "founder" of thinking the OFF button is a TV channel. Or Ben Franklin is the founder of not collecting stamps as a hobby.

Atheism is the lack of belief. It is the null position where all it takes is for one to be unconvinced of the theistic claims. If one is "Apolitical" that means they lack any political views, and trying to attribute a past historical person as the "founder of apolitical-ness" is just as ridiculous as trying to attribute a past historical person as the "founder of atheism."

Ray then quotes Paine, "That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in the creation toward all his creatures. That seeing, as we daily do, the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practice the same toward each other."

The ful quote is: "That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in the creation toward all his creatures. That seeing, as we daily do, the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practice the same toward each other; and, consequently, that everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty."

Throughout this chapter, Paine is examining the problems with miracles and prophecies. Paine even goes into how ridiculous some biblical stories are, such as Jonah and the whale, and comments that it it is so unbelievable as claiming that Jonah swallowed the whale.

Near the end of the chapter, Paine lists three abstract summaries of  his long chapter. The quote that Ray (somewhat) picked was #3. Paine is not declaring that there is a god, he is only commenting on the theology of Christianity.

Paine also said,

"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, t renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as ameans of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter." [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]

"As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions and a history of bad times and bad men." [Thomas Paine, writing to Andrew Dean August 15, 1806]  

Ray concludes that Thomas Paine was not an atheist, and uses a quote from an atheist website, "Infidels.org" to make his point, 

The "Age of Reason," instead of being an Atheistic work, as popularly supposed, was written to oppose Atheism. In a letter to Samuel Adams, Paine says: "The people of France were running headlong into Atheism, and I had the work translated into their own language, to stop them in that career, and fix them in the first article of every man's creed, who has any creed at all -- I believe in God."

Ray then quotes Ron Powers,  
In The Age of Reason, Paine's icy 1795 deconstruction of the “heathen mythology” that was the Christian faith, Sam was mesmerized by a rebuttal to the terrifying sermons of his Presbyterian boyhood. He "read it with fear and hesitation but marveling at its fearlessness and wonderful power."

Next quote,

The Bible According to Mark Twain (1995) brought together Twain's most important religious writings, the most important anthology to date of Twain's religious musings including texts not previously published. The volume, as the editors note, demonstrates how Twain's conflict between religion and science was as a typical thinker in the nineteenth century, influenced by Paine and Darwin. (http://infidels.org/library/historical/john_remsburg/six_historic_americans/chapter_1.html)

So Ray Comfort finally asks did Mark Twain become an atheist? He notes that many atheists today are convinced that Twain was, while others say that at times Twain did hint he was an atheist while other times hinted he was a theist.

I already shared where I stand on Twain, and I made it clear that his personal beliefs make no difference as to whether his arguments against religion and theism are valid or not. As to how other atheists view Twain, that is up to them, all I can ask of them is to research Twain before making a conclusion of whether he was an atheist or not. But regardless, I doubt learning a past writer would be a convincing argument to make an atheist suddenly think "hmmm, maybe theism is right" because there are many past important writers who were theists. So what? Their personal views do nothing in the debate of whether there is a god or not. Nobody argues, for instance, Occam's Razor is invalid because George Washington wasn't an atheist

Then Ray brings up more quotes from Twain,

I believe in God the Almighty...

I think the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of God are manifested in His works: I perceive that they are manifested toward me in this life; the logical conclusion is that they will be manifested toward me in the life to come, if there should be one.

What Ray Comfort doesn't share is that these quotes come from Twain's early life when he held to his Deistic beliefs. But his views towards God and religion changed over time.

Ray notes that Mark Twain did not see blasphemy as bad, and notes that atheists from Dawkins to the "teenage atheist who has just arrived at his atheist beliefs" echo the thoughts of Mark Twain regarding blasphemy and calling god a "thug" despite these thoughts coming from a man who wasn't an atheist.

So what if he wasn't an atheist? If Jesus Christ himself called God a thug, it would have some accuracy.
 

After noting several atheists claiming that all of Ray's quotes were off, and they showed signs of sarcasm, Ray Comfort then brings out another quote by Twain.

Let us now consider the real God, the genuine God, the great God, the sublime and supreme God, the authentic Creator of the real universe, whose remotenesses are visited by comets only comets unto which incredible distant Neptune is merely an out post, a Sandy Hook to homeward-bound specters of the deeps of space that have not glimpsed it before for generations a universe not made with hands and suited to an astronomical nursery, but spread abroad through the illimitable reaches of space by the flat of the real God just mentioned, by comparison with whom the gods whose myriads infest the feeble imaginations of men are as a swarm of gnats scattered and lost in the infinitudes of the empty sky.

Based on this, Ray Comfort says Mark Twain's issue was with the identity of God, but his "contention wasn't with the Creator of the universe. He was no fool. He knew that it was scientifically impossible for nothing to create everything."

It is still possible to be an atheist and have trouble with the identity of a god as well as questioning whether there is a god to begin with. That is why most atheists are agnostics and most agnostics are atheists.

The Only True God

Ray Comfort expresses his disappointment that Twain favored Paine over the Bible and never experienced the "new birth."

Accepting Reason over faith/superstition is to be celebrated, for there is nothing disappointing in that in the slightest. Only con-men get disappointed when a person rejects the scam.

Ray Comfort says that the Christian Church rest on the person Jesus Christ and his teachings, and those who don't experience the "new birth" will end up in Hell. So Ray Comfort tries to explain what the Christian Church is by sharing what it is not. It is not about being baptized or belonging to a certain church or the Salvation Army, all that matters is hat you are born again in order to enter heaven "you have Jesus' promise on that." And once you are born of the "Spirit" you will no longer know about God, but you will know him.

How can you "know" something that does not evidently exist?

As for this "new birth" feeling, how can you differentiate between spiritual experiences and natural experiences? What if all this holy-holy feeling born again evangelicals feel is all in their heads? A number of investigations have shown that deep temporal lobe stimulation in the area around the amygdala and hippocampus of the limbic system produces feelings of intense meaningfulness, of depersonalization, of a connection with God, of cosmic connectedness, of out-of-body experiences, a feeling of not being in this world, déjà vu (a feeling that something has been experienced before), jamais vu (a feeling something is happening for the first time even though it has been experienced before), fear, and hallucinations.

 

In summary, perhaps the god that you can "know" is, as a lot of atheists say, is just the one in your head? Indeed, findings in neurological science are pulling back the curtain in religious moral thought. In a revealing study by Nicholas Eply (Eply, N. et al 2009, "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 106), Christian volunteers were asked to report their own views, the views of their deity, and the views of others on a range of controversial issues (such as legal euthanasia) while having their brain activity scanned. Results show that thinking about divine views activated the same brain regions as thinking about their own views, indicating that when believing themselves to be consulting the divine moral compass, theists may instead be doing is doing what the rest of us do: searching their own conscience. An idea further supported by the finding that manipulating the subjects beliefs consistently influence their views about divine beliefs. As Eply put it, "Intuiting God's beliefs...may serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one's own beliefs."

Young or Old?

Ray Comfort uses an analogy for the rest of this chapter. It is about flying on a airplane that suddenly loses control. You turn to the guy next to him with his earphones on. You tell him to take the earphones off and get a parachute. The man says "I don't believe the plane is in danger." The man says he believes the plane had no maker and pieces of the plane fell together by chance, and says the instruction manual is bogus because he found mistakes in it. Ray Comfort says you are dumbfounded that anyone could believe such a crazy thing. So when you try to talk back, but then he asks you if the plane is young or old? He "insists" that the  plane is old, which proves that it has no maker.

Basically, this is a recycled version of Ray Comfort's old "Parachute Argument." As readers of my blog will know, Ray Comfort always reuses the same old argument word-for-word for his books one right after the other. This is the zenith of what Ray comfort is capable of. I guess that Ray Comfort was using the original argument for too long and it has been refuted to death that he had to re-write it slightly.

Chapter 12: Twain and the Ten Commandments

Throughout this chapter, Ray Comfort notes that Mark Twain did not believe that the Bible was the word of God, nor did he believe in God. 

AND YET Ray Comfort elsewhere calls Mark Twain a "theist." Did Ray Comfort not read his own book?

Ray Comfort says that we all inherently know that it is wrong to commit adultery, to lie, steal or kill because God wrote his moral law on our hearts. 

Wrong, we do not need a God to know these things nor is a God necessary to explain why we have such moral behavior.


Although there is no such thing as unanimous agreement on complex philosophical issues, if we approach the question from a humanistic, scientific stand point, atheists ought to agree that there should be rational standards for arriving at moral conclusions. Like science and mathematics, useful systems of morality derive from some basic axioms, or recognize assumptions.
A few possible axioms in morality are:

1. Every person has their own feelings and desires, and they are more or less similar since they are based on the same brain chemistry.
2. When I look inward to my own desires, I fundamentally desire to pursue happiness and avoid pain and suffering.
3. Other people have these same basic desires, and these desires are valuable to them.
4. With all else being equal, it is better for people to be happy than not be happy.
5. Conflicts arise mainly because people's desire to be happy and avoid suffering conflict with each other. The goal of secular morality is to resolve those conflicts in the best possible way for all concerned.

A few natural consequences of these axioms:

1. All else being equal, it is wrong to needlessly inflict suffering on people.
2. Except for the case of self-preservation, with all else being equal, it is best to avoid killing other people (on the assumption that they don't want to be killed).
3. Actions such as slavery and rape are wrong because they excessively limit people's happiness and freedom of action.

Ray Comfort says that the law "thou shall not kill" in context means "thou shall not murder." He says that tigers don't murder lambs, they kill them.

OH REALLY? Because, Ray, I recall you having a certain conversation with a youtube atheist, thunderf00t.


(skip to 12:31 in the video to about 12:39)

In this clip, Ray admitted two things;

• Killing someone is the same as murder (TF asked if Ray could make a "distinction" between murder and killing someone, to which Ray answered "No.")
• Killing someone out of self-defense is not murder (despite that Ray just admitted they are indistinguishable)

So did you catch that first part? When specifically asked, Ray Comfort said there is no distinction with killing and murder.


What this all boils down to, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron cannot defend moral absolutes. They cannot maintain the claim that the "Law of God" (Ten Commandments) is absolute and yet they willingly break it constantly (through the case of lying, work on the Sabbath, etc.). If they both agree that "thou shall not kill" is absolute, and yet they are perfectly fine with killing another person if said person would harm someone in their family (or someone close to them). They agree they would kill the criminal before the crime would take place, but they label such a thing as "moral relativism." See the contradiction? They defend "moral absolutes" and yet would break it given the circumstances - which in conclusion shows that Ray and Kirk are "moral relativists" too.


Ray Comfort says that animals are not "moral creatures because they aren't made in the image of God." Basically when a tiger eats a lamb, no crime is committed because it was an animal. ray says humans on the other hand must be held accountable because God wrote the moral law on their hearts.

Chapter 13: The Illegitimate Founding Father

"Theist Mark Twain has been adopted as the illegitimately found father of modern atheism." Why? Because Twain called God a "thug."

There are no "founders" of atheism, that is like trying to say that Thomas Jefferson was the "founder" of thinking the OFF button is a TV channel. Or Ben Franklin is the founder of not collecting stamps as a hobby.

Atheism is the lack of belief. It is the null position where all it takes is for one to be unconvinced of the theistic claims. If one is "Apolitical" that means they lack any political views, and trying to attribute a past historical person as the "founder of apolitical-ness" is just as ridiculous as trying to attribute a past historical person as the "founder of atheism."

Ray Comfort says that atheists don't understand that there can be "rational faith based on solid evidence." He says "we conclude that there is a Creator because creation could not have created itself. We know that there is an intelligent designer because nature is intelligently designed. To see such complexity in nature and come to the conclusion that there is no Creator is more than irrational, it is ridiculous."

First of all, there is no such thing as "rational faith." Frankly, if you had "solid evidence" to begin with, then you would not have faith at all! Watch this presentation, and see for your self how irrational faith is.

Also, as Ray Comfort has been explained to hundreds of times, every example he was given about "complexity" in nature is not all that complex; nature itself can make complexity on its own (when you see the complex patterns in snow flakes, do you assume there are Ice Dwarves in the clouds chiseling each individual snowflake?); and finally complexity is not a sign of intelligent design, simplicity is.


Another thing, as this has been drilled into Ray Comfort over and over and over and over again: he has not once demonstrated that we live in a "creation." I am not exaggerating. Back in May 2007, Ray Comfort and his side kick Kirk Cameron had a debate on Nightline with the Rational Response Squad. When Ray Comfort brought up this "creation proves there is a creator," the Rational Response Squad shot him down, like hitting a car with heavy artillery. They pointed out that we can actually test if a painting had a painter and we could verify who it is and how they did it, but we cannot do so with God. We cannot observe, test, or verify that God (yahweh) made the universe, if he did at all. And that is where Ray fails, who claimed that he would be able to prove the existence of God scientifically.


So, Ray's thesis that complexity exists in nature is already bogus, therefore it follows that his ending argument about atheism has no leg to stand on (rather, it's the other way around).

Next, Ray Comfort shares a story when there was a note on the door telling him the electricity was fixed and he could turn the lights on, he learned the note was true when he flicked the switch. In the same way, according to Ray Comfort, the reason why he believes the Bible because it made him a "new person" as it said it would, thus authenticating itself as the Word of God. 

Well from the looks of things, Ray, the Bible made you a lying shameless charlatan. 
I wonder what kind of low empty shallow person you were before then, if you have changed at all. Because if the book known as the Bible has made you into the sort of person you are know, you are revealed the Book is twisted and should be shunned.

Sell it All and But a Place in Heaven

Ray brings up Jesus telling the rich man to sell his belongings in Luke 18:18-22. Ray then asks are we supposed to sell our riches too? Nope, Ray Comfort says "in context" all Jesus was doing was bringing the knowledge of sin through the Law, revealing the sin of covetousness.

Wrong, in Matthew 19 Jesus explicitly gives clear instructions: "sell your possessions and give to the poor."

Ray Comfort expresses his dislike of Hitchens, calling him "dishonest" and concludes the reason why Hitchens is "dishonest" is because in Hitchen's view, dishonesty has no retribution and is a means to an end, so long as that end is the end of Christianity -- opening the gates to "guilt-free pornography, fornication,and every other sinful pleasure." 

Such an odious lie with a pinch of projection. If there is anyone who is deliberately dishonest here with an agenda, it has been proven to be Ray Comfort and his ministry of lies for profit.

Ray Comfort then quotes the late Christopher Hitches, 

"Atheism by itself is of course not a moral position or a political one of any kind, it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Naziism, that it was the implementation of the work of Charles Darwin is a filthy slander, undeserving of you, and an insult to this audience. Darwin’s thought was not taught in Germany; Darwinism was derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief that all the great modern atheists, Darwin, Einstein and Freud were alike despised by the National Socialist regime."

Ray Comfort responses with, "Hitchens was wrong. Adolf Hitler was a believer in Darwinian evolution. He put survival of the fittest into practice. Hitchens was also either ignorant or he was lying about Darwin and Einstein. Neither of the two were atheists."

Wrong. Wrong. And wrong.


Hitler REJECTED Darwin's theories, as did the Nazi party. Hitler was a creationist.

Finally, while Charles Darwin grew up as a Christian, he became an atheist at the later end of his life. And Einstein rejected the idea of a personal god, he was mostly a pantheist.

The Problem for Atheism

The guy who didn't see a problem in thinking bananas are proof of the divine and the Earth does not move thinks he can find a problem with atheism.

Ray brings up a BBC documentary "What happened before the Big Bang?" and when a group of scientists were asked if they think anything happened before the Big Bang, most raised their hands. Then he brings up a snippet of what the commentator said,

Ten years ago, this would never have happened. Then, there was no doubt that "before the big bang" made no sense. But today, the certainty has gone. There is no escaping the inconvenient truth that Hubble's graph, work of genius though it is, contains a huge problem. It tells us that everything we see in the universe today -- us, trees, galaxies, zebras, emerged in an instant from nothing. And that's a problem. It's all effect, and no cause. The idea of "everything from nothing" is something that has occupied physicist Michio Kaku for much of his professional life.

The physicist then says,

You know, the idea sounds impossible. Preposterous. I mean, think about it -- everything from nothing! The galaxy, the stars in the heavens coming from a pinpoint. I mean how can it be? How can it be that everything comes from nothing? But you know, if you think about it a while, it all depends on how you define "nothing". In Sandusky, Ohio, is Plum Brook Station. It is here that NASA recreates the conditions of space on Earth, and part of that means generating nothing. ..in vast quantities. This is the biggest vacuum chamber in the world. Its eight-feet-thick walls are made from 2,000 tons of solid aluminum. It takes two days of pumping out the air, and another week of freezing out the remaining molecules to create a near-perfect vacuum. A cathedral-sized volume of nothing. When they switch this place on, this is as close as we can get to a state of nothingness. Everywhere we look we see something. We see atoms, we see trees, we see forests, we see water. But hey, right here, we can pump all the atoms out, and this is probably the arena out of which genesis took place. So if you really understand the state of nothing, you understand everything about the origin of the universe.

The commentator then continues:

Except, of course, it isn't quite that straightforward. For a start, the "nothing" created by NASA still has dimensions -- this is nothing in 3-D. And the tests carried out within the chamber can, of course, be viewed. This is nothing through which light can travel. NASA's "nothing" has properties. This "nothing" is, in fact, something.

This sort of absurdity needs a warning that those who watch it are in danger of becoming dumber after the unfortunate experience. Many don’t get a warning and believe what they hear--that nothing that is something, is still nothing…a new and special scientific version of “nothing.” In their mind they think that it gets rid of the unscientific craziness of the “nothing created everything” scenario. An atheist website says,

“When physicists say there was ‘nothing’ before the Big Bang of our universe they do not mean literally “nothing.” What they mean is that there was no matter, just energy.” (Source: "Something from Nothing," http://truth-saves/god-doesnt-exist/.)

It is an intellectual embarrassment to have to point this out to a supposed rational human being, but if “energy” is present, there’s not nothing at all. There is “energy."  (page 126 - 127)

So the man who LITERALLY never went to college thinks professional physicists and cosmologists are wrong..... and says we need "warning" from material that could make us dumber..... is the same guy who didn't know where bananas came from!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Moving on, tTo understand why "nothing" is a near useless word is that it is near unimaginable to comprehend. In order to define "nothing" you have to give it some defining property, but that which has property is not nothing! So, in reality, we try to apply words that closest correspond to reality. So when you remove all matter and energy in a given location, you essentially are left with a vacuum, which is the closest we can get to "nothing." It's as nothing as nothing can get. But as Nobel-laureate physicist Frank Wilczak one famously said, "nothing is unstable."

The total amount of matter + energy in the universe may be almost zero when the negative mass of the energy stored within gravity is summed with the positive mass of the universe. In this sense universes can spring out of the vacuum almost effortlessly.

Theists often ask why is there something rather than nothing, to which one has two ask 2 questions. One: why do they assert that nothing is the default position, and Two: why is there God instead of nothing?

We know that nature is fully capable of building complex structures by process of self-organization (simplicity arising to complexity), and in the probability of a nothing (as unstable as it is) producing something is over 60% (Source: Stenger, The Comprehensible Cosmos, supplement H). It would take a supernatural agent outside the universe, like God, to maintain a state of nothingness -- so the fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God and the universe originated naturally.

Ray says: We received this following email: A dear friend of mine called me last night absolutely heartbroken, sounding like he had just finished intensely sobbing. His wife, who was once a zealous lover of Jesus, and also a big fan of your ministry, had slowly slipped from God for about a year. She spent much of her time feeding he doubts with atheist blogs and has no become a complete skeptic herself. She has cried saying she wants to believe as she used to, but can't anymore. My friend, her husband, is very intelligent and well versed in apologetics and has given her apologetic books, but it seems like nothing he says gets through. My friend is one of the most godliest people I know, so was his wife. They have a few children as well. He was calling me for support and advice. Do you have any suggestions on what he should do?

If I am to accept the contents of this email is accurate, we have a woman who once believed in Jesus and was a big fan of Ray Comfort, but then she realized it was all bullshit (after all, how can anyone be convinced that a banana is proof of god, isn't that right Mr. Comfort), and no amount of apologetics was "getting through." As luck would have it, as I started writing this review, I just happened to be watching Orange is the New Black and started watching the 12th episode, and heard this speech by Piper which speaks volumes, I think, about this email:

"And I wish I could get on that ride.... but I need it to be real." Did you catch that? No make-believe. Remember in the email, where the wife said she "wants to believe as she used to, but can't anymore"? Maybe because that she, like Piper Chapman and millions of real-life people, prefer to believe in things that are real. No make-believe. No fooling ourselves into believing something that is not real. That is delusional.


Wanting to believe in things that make you happy or deal with the shitty things in life does not mean they are even a little real, true, or even deserve respect -- especially when such beliefs are based on nonsense. For instance, a person's "faith" makes them cope with the world and find happiness in an afterlife, but that belief also demands that they mutilate and harm their children. On top of that, there is not an inkling of evidence to justify this belief even being true.

Religion is not harmless, it affects others. And no I am not talking about extremists or radicals, moderate religious people too. Even if you ignore the religious allowing the outbreak of measles in America and other nations because vaccines are against God; or the suppression of minority and women's rights; or the support of holy wars; or the continuation of witch hunts throughout Africa (yes, witch hunts are STILL happening); or a group of Haitians stoning a wedded couple because the wedding was pagan; or blocking access to condoms in third-world countries; Hasidic Jews rioting and attacked cars outside an Intel factory in Israel, because it operated on the Sabbath; Muslims marching in the streets of London, Paris, and other cities trying to block and shut down businesses; creationists trying to unconstitutionally infiltrate science classes; really I could keep this list going all week long.


But back to the book. In response to the email, Ray Comfort right off the bat calls her a false convert. "According to the Bible (and to common sense), atheist are fools who profess to be wise, and their agenda is to reproduce after their own kind. That is where they find their sense of security. They think that stupid is no longer stupid, if enough people believe the stupidity."

Then Ray says atheists try to pin God down with morality by citing things like Joshua slaughtering the Canaanites, but Ray says when they do this they paint themselves into a corner: either they admit these things happened, or it didn't happen and they are fussing about nothing. Then he says anyone who reads atheist blogs often will become one, just as when people who frequently visits porn sites becomes a "porn freaks." He later on says the atheist movement is rooted in arrogance and ignorance.

Regardless whether or not the events told about in the Bible happened (which archeological often goes against the Bible), it is the atrocious moral lessons that is the core problem. Even if stories like Joshua slaughtering the Canaanites never happened, the point is that this is a wicked and vile story, with Yahweh being the orchestrator of all this evil. THAT'S THE POINT.

Watch this video of a film, where a Jew in the concentration camp makes his case. Even if we do not accept these things never happened, and all of the Bible is just a bunch of stories, the one fact that cannot be avoided is that Yahweh (god) is not good.
 

 

Chapter 14: What Faith Aint

Ray begins with a talk he had with an atheist who said that he did not have faith, just trust and confidence. Ray asked the atheist if he loved his wife. Instead of giving back the verbatim response, Ray Comfort says that faith and love are like a horse and a carriage that go together. 

WRONG. You nor any husband has "faith" in their wife. Why? Because there wives actually exist, and we can empirically prove that they exist. The same has yet to be done with Yahweh.

Another quote from Mark Twain,

"There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is - in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree - it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime- the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt."

Ray Comfort responds with, "Once again, there are inconsistencies in Twain's condemnation of God. What did God do that was wrong? If evolution is right and we are merely animals, then God's killing of human beings through the Noahic Flood is just an example of Darwinian evolution. The fit survives. Noah and his family made it through the Flood. If God killed the Canaanites through Joshua, the Hebrews were the fit ones who survived and they passed their good genes down to their children. Morals don't come into the equation. That's just the way it is."

The Noahic Flood is not an example of natural selection. Natural selection is unguided and uncontrolled. The Noahic Flood is about a Being who twists the laws of nature to commit worldwide slaughter, willingly and on purpose. This is an act of global murder, not species adapting to a new environment.

(continued) "If on the other hand that it's not an example of evolution, but these were examples of murder, who is to say that it is wrong? Who says that it is morally wrong to take the life of another human being? Is it written in stone somewhere? Who wrote it?"

In Ray Comfort's world, morality is meaningless unless it is created by a untested and unproven entity created by primitive superstitious men.

(continued) "The answer is that the God of the Bible wrote it in stone and passed that Law down to Moses. So Clemens has a problem. His basis for right and wrong comes from the God he accuses of sinning."

Clemens is far from the person with the problem, the one with the only problem is Ray Comfort. For starters, Moses is not a historical person and the story is nothing but a myth.

When Mark Twain is quoted again about Christians not being Christians, and not even Jesus would be a Christian, Ray Comfort counters with "was he [Twain] surrounded by people who didn't live up to the ideal of which Jesus spoke? Did he know some people who professed faith in jesus and yet play the hypocrite? Then what was stopping him from being a genuine Christian himself?" Ray Comfort concludes that Twain did not see things clearly because he judged his fellow man and judged God.

One does not need to be a perfect cult-member to spot the hypocrites. If you saw a Christian lying his ass off all the time even though he believes all non-truths are lies, and one lie makes you a liar and all liars go to Hell (yes, I'm looking at your Ray Comfort), then you can call that person out without having to be a Christian because you have an understanding of the tenets of Christianity and clearly see when self-proclaimed Christians fail to live up to those tenets or outright act against them.

I call out Ray Comfort's lies all the time, and how he so easily does it without a passing nod to his conscience or the gospel he believes in that says liars go to Hell. It is easy to do this, and I am not a Christian. So what is stopping me from being a Christian? Well, I have a lot of reasons for not being a Christian, particularly that it is severely lacking evidence to back up it's claims and I therefore have no good reason to accept it or like it. But that being said, being a honest person is not synonymous with being a Christian. I do not need a religion to be an honest person, and therefore my criticisms of Ray Comfort of being a religious hypocrite does not mean I should be a "genuine Christian" as Ray Comfort asks why Mark Twain didn't become one himself.

I am perfectly happy and satisfied being excluded from a cult/religion and having a rational mind that is capable of spotting and calling out the hypocrites and charlatans of other faiths.
 

Chapter 15: Father of Mercies

Ray starts off this chapter with this gem:

"I am forever amazed at how the Scriptures pinpoint our motives. If you want proof that the Bible is inspired, study it. Don't go to skeptic's websites and believe what they say, or read verses about the atrocities of men in Scripture, or the frightening harsh judgments of God. Study Scripture for yourself. Do a "subject" study. Follow what the Bible says about one particular subject -- for example, the sinful nature of man, the place of blood in redemption, the issue of faith, and 101 other subjects." (page 139)

Don't go to a skeptic's website and ***don't believe what they say.*** Just study the Bible.

I'll give you one simple mistake in the Bible, and all I need to do it is look at the first three verses of the first chapter of Genesis, the first book. It says “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void, and God separated the waters from the firmament.” Later on it says “light” and “stars” were later created by God. This is all I need to go with.

My objection: I am going to prove that it is impossible for “water” to exist before the creation of stars. Some Christians believe the “let there be light” refers to the birth of stars, but that does not resolve the problem that according to Genesis, water existed before this light.

We all know water is simply Hydrogen and Oxygen. These two atoms is what you need to make water. So where did Hydrogen and Oxygen come from?

All of the matter in the universe is a condensed form of energy. We know this from mass energy equivalence (E = mc²), and we have been able to convert one to the other with two nuclear forces by the manipulation of qluons, W+ and W-, and Z bosons. These are also naturally occurring processes, the rule of these processes and the Big Bang Theory is by following inflationary epoch, approx. 10 to the minus four seconds after the Big Bang.

The expansion of the universe causes temperature to fall, to the threshold temperature of protons and quarks, the fundamental constituents of matter, is reached. Further expansion causes the temperature to drop further, allowing protons and neutrons to form, and there are your first Hydrogen atoms. So where are the Oxygen atoms?

The first hydrogen atoms get attracted to each other under the force of gravity to form structures of extreme density and heat, eventually resulting in quantum tunneling and allows fusion to take place and thus creating the first stars in the universe.

This fusion that power's the stars allows heavier elements to form within the star (Helium, Neon, Carbon, Oxygen, Iron, etc). But eventually the stars die and explode in a supernova, thus releasing all the atoms inside it across the universe. New isotopes are unstable, so neutrons decay into protons, turning them into elements higher on the Periodic Table, and form essentially the constituents of everything you see. But the point is that Oxygen is finally released into the universe, which can now bond with Hydrogen and form the first water molecule.

Look at the order of events: Hydrogen comes first, Hydrogen forms stars, fusion inside stars form Oxygen atoms, supernova releases the Oxygen, to finally Oxygen and Hydrogen bond to form water.

Now compare that to Genesis: water already is formed, light and stars are created later.

The case is clear – Genesis made a mistake, and got the order and origin of water wrong. And that is just one of the hundreds of mistakes within the Bible. That is not even the first mistake within the first chapter of the book of Genesis.

But fear not, says ray Comfort, just don't believe that and study the Bible, because belief and make-believe is more about than what is real. So skip over that and study another topic in the Bible.... like how it is okay to own slaves and how adulterous women should get an abortion (yeah, in Numbers 5 it shares how to test whether your wife has been unfaithful; you drag her to the priest, who mixes up a potion that is essentially filth and water enchanted by pyrotechnic display and a prayer for gods assistance. If her belly bloats and her womb discharges, meaning that she miscarries, then she is guilt of infidelity. If not, she was faithful all along, but still does not get an apology for her domineering addictive husband.)

Ray Comfort ends this section by giving a guy named Ever a copy of his anti-abortion propaganda film "180", then walking Ever through the "Are You A Good Person?" tactic, and claiming victory.

More Criticizing of God

Ray quotes Mark Twain again,

And now you know, by these sure indications, what happened under the personal direction of the Father of Mercies in his Midianite campaign. The Minnesota campaign was merely a duplicate of the Midianite raid. Nothing happened in the one that didn't happen in the other.

No, that is not strictly true. The Indian was more merciful than was the Father of Mercies. He sold no virgins into slavery to minister to the lusts of the murderers of their kindred while their sad lives might last; he raped them, then charitably made their subsequent sufferings brief, ending them with the precious gift of death. He burned some of the houses, but not all of them. He carried out innocent dumb brutes, but he took the lives of none.

Ray Comfort responds to this with, "Twain sarcastically calls God, the "Father of Mercies," not understanding the nature of mercy. Mercy is extended when God doesn't treat us with justice. Mercy is when we get what we don't deserve. This is perhaps the greatest error of the ungodly. They have no understanding of righteousness, holiness, or the justice of God." (page 141)

Mercy (noun) - "compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm."

Ask yourself, is it justice to punish and kill someone who was not at the scene of the crime or even aware of it? In I Samuel 6, the ark of the Lord was being transported across country and five farmers of Bethshemesh “rejoiced to see it.” They opened the box and made a burnt offering to the Lord, and for this terrible sin God “smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the Lord had smitten many of the people with great slaughter.” Is it moral to kill 50,000 people for a petty offense? Is it moral to punish 50,000 people (who weren't even there or had any idea what was going on) for the crimes of 5 farmers? Is that justice? And exactly what was the crime? These men were trying to worship this very god, in their own way. Wouldn’t a God of mercy understand their innocent mistake? What if one of your children gave you a birthday card with the words “Daddy/Mommy, I luv you” and you punish them for spelling the word wrong?

If that is "holiness" "righteousness" and "justice".... then they are all lies. This is a common theme in religion, where you have to hijack words and spin everything in reverse.

 

Ray then takes the reader through his "Are You a Good Person" test. He admires Mark Twain for sharing some things he was ashamed of himself, but Ray says honesty wont "save" you, it is no different than a criminal pleading guilty but still has to be punished.

Except that we have nothing to feel guilty of, as "sin" is a made-up crime for a make-believe punishment.

Then Ray Comfort touches on morality in society. He says we look at "sin" through the standards of society (and says that if morality is based on what works, then stealing is okay if no one notices.) He then says "sin is wrong because God says it's wrong."

Even if no one "notices" a theft, there is still a damaged party as they have lost property that belonged to them. If we did not think this was the case, then society would not care about a bank robbery.

God said that picking up sticks on a special day is wrong, even though it is a victimless crime, whereas he did not think slavery and child sacrifice was in any way wrong.

Ray goes on to discuss that the only way to be saved is to be "born again" and goes on about how god is "merciful" because he came to Earth as Jesus to die and grant us salvation.

The god-character is so merciful that he will overlook the punishment for the rule he put in place for the imperfect humans he created and knew they would be imperfect and not act the way he wanted to.... and he created this loophole for his rule only to those who "believe" the story of a failed savior (if he ever existed) and not based on whether that person was moral or immoral.

"Just like Mark Twain, we want to get as far away from the God of the Bible as we can... and in our minds the furthest we can get is atheism. If God doesn't exist, then anything goes---there's no right or wrong." Later on Ray writes, "If Mark Twain had looked at his own morality with the critical eye he used  to look at God's morality, he would have fallen at the feet of His mercy, found forgiveness of sins, and everlasting life."

Why would Mark Twain, the man who never commanded the genocide of hundreds of thousands, the man who opposed slavery, the man who never told ordered the death of children, get on his knees and praise a bloodthirsty immoral monster? No amount of extended life makes up for the evil committed by the god-character of the Bible.

Atheism does not mean there is no right or wrong.