Ray Comfort: feeding God

There are few evangelists that are as simultaneously clueless and entertaining as Ray Comfort. And when one of his readers writes him with a question, he doesn't disappoint...

“I'm from Brazil and I really loved the movie/documentary, but Ray I have a question. Atheists [have] an argument…against Christians…: hunger and poverty in Africa, and God is bad with them? What is your opinion?” Felipe Matsuri

Hypocrisy much?

Um... They don't have that phrased quite right. We don't think that God is 'bad with them', we just
point out that if there was a supposedly all loving god, he seems to be displaying this endless love in a rather curious way.

1. As atheists, they have “no belief in a god.” So God doesn’t exist, and therefore didn't let anyone starve.

Wow, he actually got that part right. Maybe this won't be as bad as I thought.

2. For an atheist, a starving child is no big deal, because it's just evolution's “survival of the fittest” in action.

Unfortunately, the cruel truth is that suffering is a very real part of the reality of nature. Some do better, and some do worse. Those that do better are more likely to pass on their genes. But to say that a starving child is no big deal to an atheist is both wrong and offensive. We have feelings. We empathize with those that are suffering and want to help out how we can. Like people of all walks of like, we care. So don't act like atheists see a starving child and think nothing of it. We do care, and when we help, we actually help. Believers may sometimes help, but some simply pray and act like they are actually helping when they're not.

3. Much of the hunger in Africa is political, rather than a social problem. When food is sent for starving people, governments often block its delivery.

True. But that shouldn't be an obstacle at all for a god that's supposed to be all powerful. So he can create the universe and flood the Earth, but he can't defy a small African nation's government or military? Apparently God is less powerful than many of the nations on Earth...

4. Starvation, poverty, disease and death are evidences that the Bible is right when it says that we live in a fallen creation.

Except that he's supposed to be all loving... Anyone that's truly all loving couldn't and wouldn't allow as much suffering as is visible in the world around us if they could help it. And he's supposed to be all powerful too, right? What we are left is another inconsistency in the theology... But what we see is the world we'd expect to find if we truly do live in a fully natural world.

Like I said, Ray's ridiculousness is always good for a laugh.

5. We are the guilty party, and yet sinful atheists (in the ultimate gesture of a delusion of grandeur) stand in moral judgment over Almighty God—when they have no real basis for any morality.

What a load... Guess I was wrong when I briefly thought that Ray might surprise me with an isolated moment of lucidity. Atheists are perfectly capable of morality. While believers may like to pretend that they follow some type of objective morality, they truth is that they don't. We atheists get our morals from the same subjective and societal means that we all do. Morals that are far superior to those in the Bible... A book that has no problem with genocide and slavery.

6. God lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust, and if He withholds rain for some reason, we know that all of His judgments are righteous and true altogether. He never doesn't anything morally wrong. Ever.

I'm guessing Ray meant to say 'He never does anything morally wrong. Ever.' Really? God never does anything morally wrong in the Bible? Advocating slavery? Punishing innocent children for the actions or thoughts of their parents? Demanding the murdering of entire cities? Committing worldwide genocide? Demanding a ritual human sacrifice? The list goes on and on, but if the god of the Bible is one thing, it's certainly not moral.

7. If atheists really care about starving children, they will go to other countries and join the thousands of Christians who are feeding them.

Um... We do. Atheists go overseas, create organizations that help at home and abroad, and donate to existing organizations. Atheists and believers alike help those in need. But when an atheists helps the hungry, it's always by way of food and water, or by donating money to secure as much. And many believers help out in the same way, but some also think they are helping the hungry by sending them Bibles instead of food, or simply preaching to them and praying for them instead of offering actual help.

8. The Bible says we are to love our neighbor (others) as much as we love ourselves. Instead of doing that, most secular governments spend billions of dollars each year creating weapons to kill people.

An interesting complaint, since (at least in the United States) the most religious factions of the electorate, are also the ones that back war and military spending much more swiftly than the less religious. In fact, many Christians backed Bush's Iraq war as a just and glorious holy war. Meanwhile, a non-believer like myself feels it was a war we never should have started.

9. We also spend billions of dollars searching for intelligent life in space; money that could instead be used to feed, house, educate, and clothe the less fortunate.

As if space exploration is worthless... So much of our modern lives owes it's origins to the space program. While it is important to know if we are alone in the universe, space exploration is still important even if we never find other life. We may eventually find ourselves needing to leave the Earth. Either we will pollute it to the point that our home can't sustain us anymore, global warming may one day reach extremes we can no longer cope with, or the eventual expansion of the Sun will force us to move on or die. And isn't criticizing space exploration (something that's actually useful) hypocritical when Christians are wasting at least $70 million on building a replica of the (fictitious) Arc in Kentucky instead of putting that money to noble use.

10. A plane hits severe turbulence. Flight attendants quickly take to their seats before getting food to the hungry passengers at the back of the plane. The atheist is like a man who sees those hungry people, makes an insane leap of logic, and says, “Those people are hungry. Therefore no one made this plane.” Atheism believes that nothing created everything. It is a quiet form of intellectual insanity.

Has anyone else noticed that Ray comes up with the worst, and most flawed analogies that I've ever heard spewed? Lets see if we can actually fix this one for him...

Claims that the banana is the 'atheist's nightmare' because it is
perfect proof of God's design. Doesn't realize that humans
selectively bread the banana into it's current form, which
is nothing like a wild banana.

There is a plane that is crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Some passengers claim that Superman is on board and will take care of all the accommodations. But in the middle of the flight attendants handing out food, the plane hits turbulence and everyone takes their seats. The Christians on the plane would be those that say not to worry, Superman will take care of those that didn't get food yet. Meanwhile, the atheists would be those that hear that claim, but see that those in the back of the plane never got fed. Seeing this, they would doubt that Superman was on the plane (lest he would have helped) or that Superman didn't exist at all.

That would be the more accurate version. I must wonder why Ray feels the need to jump to the unrelated tangent of who made the plane? My guess is that he is knowingly creating a strawman. He makes and absurd statement that atheists don't believe anyone made the airplane to try and also discredit anything else an atheist says. Sad really... Oh, and atheism doesn't say that nothing created nothing. Atheism is simply nothing more than the lack of a belief in gods. But why all this fussing about 'nothing'?

Some believers say that everything had to be created. But then where did God come from? He would have had to come from nothing. They may claim that he's eternal. Technically, that's a bit of a cop out of an explanation, but if the most complicated thing that has been conceived can 'just be' eternal, why not simple energy? Something simple always existing, is far more likely than something complicated after all...

Ray is always good for a laugh. But in that way that he's so wrong that you can't help but shake your head and laugh in dismay at the magnitude of his fail. Sadly, he has fans and followers that eat up his every word (as inane as they often are), and that's troubling.


-Brain Hulk

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