Posted on 05/10/2006 9:38:22 PM PDT by Tim Long
Author Ray Comfort says TV satirist too insecure to accept offer
A Christian author and TV host whose latest book, "Intelligent Design Versus Evolution: Letters to an Atheist," debunks Darwinism has challenged fellow television personality Bill Maher to a public debate on the origins of the Earth.
Says Ray Comfort: "Mr. Maher, like all believers in the theory of evolution, simply has a blind faith in a theory-tale that can't be substantiated. It's just another opiate of the masses – a religion called 'Darwinism' that piously robes itself in what it thinks is 'science.' It is true science fiction."
Comfort hosts "The Way of the Master" with actor Kirk Cameron.
"I am beginning to suspect that some men may have evolved from chickens, or at least that's the impression I get when it comes to evolutionists standing up for their convictions," notes Comfort. "Mr. Maher can choose the place of the debate. I don't mind if he has it in front of his audience. He can bill it as 'Another simple-minded Christian being thrown to the lions.'"
The former host of "Politically Incorrect," Maher now hosts "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO and is known to be hostile toward religious faith.
In a statement, Comfort quotes Maher as saying last year: "Evolution is supported by the entire scientific community ... the reason there is no real debate is that intelligent design isn't real science. ..."
Responds Comfort: "I can scientifically prove intelligent design. Let's have 20 minutes each. I present my case (I won't even mention 'faith') and then he can present his case for evolution. I say that he doesn't have one. He's bluffing. I don't mind if he spends his 20 minutes telling jokes, because that's all he has."
In 2001, Comfort was a platform speaker at the American Atheists' 27th National Convention. He has also spoken on the subject of intelligent design at Yale, UCLA and other institutions.
Comfort says his publication "The Atheist Test" has sold over 700,000 copies. He's the author of more than 50 books, including "God Doesn't Believe in Atheists" and "The Evidence Bible."
Referencing intelligent design, Comfort said, "Hundreds of scientific scholars and researchers throughout the world support it – including scientists with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian Institute, with doctoral degrees in biological sciences, physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, computer science and related disciplines, from universities such as Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, and UCLA. So Mr. Maher can't dismiss the idea as 'not scientific' just because he doesn't like that conclusion."
Added the author: "'Intelligent Design Versus Evolution' contains scores of letters written by a very intelligently designed atheist who gives evolution's best arguments. I think that's healthy. Yet pro-evolution pseudo-intellectuals are calling for censorship, by not allowing school kids the freedom to listen to both sides of the argument. That reveals their insecurity."
Gary Busey is a filthy, disgusting traitor to this country. Mr. T is cool, though.
I personally am not impressed by the Left Behind movies OR books. Mainly because they take a severely wrong approach to the material. But to be completely fair, they were better than the "Omega Code" movies.
Exactly. I am just tired of the perception that G_d and science are in conflict.
Agreed. The Omega Code series didn't even have plot continuity. Personally my favorite end times films are the "A Thief in the Night" series. That was when Christians weren't afraid to put a little gore and "offensive" content in.
What'd he do?
Verse 1 in Genesis says "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
But pay special attention to verse 2: "And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." Now how long did this last? One day? Unlikely, since "days" didn't exist yet. A thousand years? A billion? It doesn't say. How long did God let this planet sit there before actually putting something on it?
Another interesting thing is that we find that water already existed on earth. God's actual creation of water is never mentioned. Clearly this planet was a turbulent, violent, uninhabitable planet for a very long time before God chose to put life on it.
The first day doesn't start until the end of verse 5. So from 1-4, you may be talking about a span of millions or even billions of years as God, taking His time, creates the Sun, the stars (light), chooses THIS planet to put life on, and then slowly moves this world into a place where it can begin orbiting the sun (to make living conditions suitable for us).
He starred in a horrific terrorist propaganda film called "Valley of the Wolves Iraq." Maybe he was just trying to find work as an actor but I don't know if I can overlook this:
http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/004126.html
Bill Maher could spend 20 minutes intellectually defending ANY subject. The guy has no intellect. He is about as deep as a birdbath.
See post 46 and tell me what you think of my theory.
How is that possible? Doesn't that require intelligence? ;)
"Not necessarily." - Monty Python
Yeah, I did see one of the "Thief in the Night" movies and it was pretty good.
Guest Comment: Hope Springs Eternal - Why People Believe Weird Things
Science has made the modern world; It gives us plastics and plastic explosives, cars and tanks, Supersonic Transports, and B-1 bombers. Science has put a man on the moon and missiles in the silos. Developments in the medical sciences allow us to live twice as long as people did a mere 150 years ago. But we now have an overpopulation problem, without a corresponding overproduction solution, threatening us more than any single disease in history.
Growth in the physical sciences has given us electricity, computers, lights, automobiles, and lasers. But for the first time we have the combined nuclear, chemical, and biological potential to cause the extinction of the human species. Discoveries and theories in evolution and cosmology have given us insights into the origins of life and humans. But for many people these ideas and their corresponding ideologies are threatening to traditional personal and religious beliefs and comfortable status quo.
The part of the world known as the Industrial West could, in its entirety, be seen as a monument to the scientific Revolution begun over 400 years ago, succinctly captured in a single phrase by one of its initiators: "Knowledge itself is power." When Francis Bacon penned those words in the early 17th century, he was equating two elements that encapsulated the offspring of the Scientific Revolution to which he helped give birth - the scientific method. The economist Kenneth Boulding's following observation could not have been made if it were not for science:
As far as many statistical series related to activities of mankind are concerned, the date that divides human history into two equal parts is well within living memory. The world of today is as different from the world in which I was born as that world was from Julius Caesar's. I was born in the middle of human history.
But if we are living in the age of science why do so many pseudoscientific and nonscientific traditions abound? Religions, myths, superstitions, mysticisms, cults, New Age beliefs, and nonsense of all sons have penetrated every nook and cranny of both popular and high culture One may rationalize that compared to the magical thinking of the Middle Ages things are not so bad. But statistically speaking pseudoscientific beliefs arc experiencing a revival in the late 20th century. A 1990 Gallup poll of 1236 adult Americans show percentages of belief in the paranormal that are alarming:
Astrology 52%
ESP 46%
Witches 19%
Aliens have landed on Earth 22%
The lost continent of Atlantis 33 %
Dinosaurs and Humans lived Simultaneously 41%
Noah's flood 65%
Communication with the cleat 42%
Ghosts 35%
Actually Had a Psychic Experience 67%
The big question is: Why? Why do people believe weird things? At Skeptic magazine we ask ourselves this question almost daily. Here is a small sampling of the weird things we have investigated that leave us wondering why: Dowsing, the Bermuda triangle, poltergeists. biorhythms, creationism, levitation, psychokinesis, astrology, ghosts, psychic detectives, UFOs, remote viewing, Kirlian auras, emotions in plants. life after death, monsters, graphology, cryptozoology, clairvoyance. mediums, pyramid power, faith healing, Big Foot, psychic prospecting, haunted houses, perpetual motion machines, antigravity locations, and, amusingly, astrological birth control.
The ultimate answer to the why question must come through understanding the human condition. Our tenure on Earth is contingent and filled with uncertainties, the most frightening of which is the time and place of our personal demise. In fact, this and taxes, as the joke goes, are the only things we can be certain of in an uncertain world. So we become credulous. We cannot accept such a bleak reality, so many people cheat on their income taxes and many more turn to spiritualism. Our critical faculties for rational thought break down under the onslaught of promises and hopes offered to assuage this greatest of life's anxieties. Wouldn't it be marvelous if we did not really die? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could speak with our lost loved ones again? Of course it would.
Skeptics are no different than believers when it comes to such desires. This is a human trait, probably evolved in the two million years of Pleistocene conditions in which one's life was as uncertain as the next meal - whether one was predator or prey. It is only over the past century or so that modern medicine, health and life insurance, and crime prevention have brought some relief from this most basic of fears.
But this represents a mere 0.00005% of the human past. For 99.99995% of our existence life's tenuousness was the norm. No wonder our ancestors all over the globe developed beliefs in an afterlife and spirit world. Who wouldn't under such precarious conditions? The provider of hope has only to make the promise of an afterlife and offer the flimsiest of proofs of his power. Human credulity will do the rest. Alexander Pope, in his 1733 Essay on Man (Epistle i, 1.95), offered this insight on the problem:
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest
The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way,
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, an humbler heav'n.
Hope springs eternal is what drives all of us - skeptics and believers alike - to be compelled by unsolved mysteries, to seek spiritual meaning in a physical universe, to desire immortality. and to wish that our eternal hopes are fulfilled in reality. It is what pushes many people to spiritualists, New Age gurus, and television psychics, who promise hope for eternity in a Faustian bargain requiring a willing suspension of disbelief (and usually a contribution to the provider's coffers). Unfortunately, many are willing.
But hope springs eternal for scientists and skeptics as well. We love the mystery. We are spiritual in our awe of the universe and our wonderment at the ability of humanity to achieve so much in so little time. (Look what science has accomplished in that 0.00005% of human history.) We desire to achieve immortality through our cumulative efforts and lasting achievements. And we too wish that our eternal hopes are fulfilled in this reality.
Science can be and is a celebration of the joy to be found in exploring the world's greatest mysteries, even if final answers are not forthcoming. It is the intellectual journey that matters, not the destination. No one can deny that we live in the age of science. It is the reason pseudosciences flourish - they know that to be accepted they must at least appear scientific because science is the touchstone of truth in our culture. Most of us harbor deep within us a type of faith in science - a confidence that somehow science will solve our major problems - AIDS, cancer, overpopulation, pollution, heart disease, and many more. Some even entertain scientistic visions of a future without aging, where nanotechnological computers will be ingested to repair cells and organs, eradicate life-threatening diseases, and maintain us at our chosen ideal age.
So hope springs eternal not just for spiritualists, religionists, New Agers, and psychics, but for materialists, atheists, scientists, and, yes, even skeptics. The difference between these two loosely bound groups is in our method of thinking and where we find hope. The first group is willing to use the benefits of science and rationality when convenient, and dump them when it is not. Their hope lies in this-world or the other-world, in the here-and-now or the there-and-then; whatever works at the moment. For this group, any thinking will do, as long as it fulfills that deeply rooted human need for certainty. Where did this originate?
The human mind evolved to seek and find connections between things and events in the environment (snakes with rattles should be avoided), and those who did it best left behind the most offspring. We are their descendants. The problem is that this process is not infallible. We will make connections whether they are there or not. These misidentifications come in two varieties: False negatives get you killed (snakes with rattles are okay); false positives merely waste time and energy (a rain dance during a drought). Lacking a knowledge of plate tectonics or meteorology, for example, premodern humans mistook earthquakes and thunder for angry gods. It might not have cost them their lives, but it left us with a legacy of false positives - hypnopompic hallucinations become ghosts or aliens; knocking noises in an empty house indicate spirits and poltergeists; shadows and lights in a tree become the Virgin Mary; random mountain shadows on a planetary body are seen as the "face" on Mars constructed by aliens. The belief determines the perception. "I wouldn't have seen it had I not believed it" becomes the reversed norm. "Missing" fossils in geological strata become evidence of divine creation. The lack of a written order by Hitler to exterminate the Jews means that perhaps there was no such order . . . or extermination. Coincidental configurations of subatomic particles and astronomical structures are evidence for a design intelligence in the universe. Vague feelings and memories evoked through hypnosis and guided-imagery in therapy evolve into crystal-clear memories of childhood sexual abuse (followed by parental confrontation and shattered families), even when no corroborating evidence exists.
Such identification problems are not absent in the second group. Scientists also experience false positives - the cold fusion debacle of recent years being one of the more public mistakes. Although subject to the same mental flaws as our common ancestors, there is a significant difference in thinking. The methods of science were specifically designed to weed out false positives. Had the cold fusion findings not been made so public through press conferences and applications for patents before corroboration from other laboratories, this false positive would really be nothing out of the ordinary in the history of science. In fact, this is precisely how science progresses - countless identified false negatives and false positives. The public, however, does not usually hear about them because negative findings are not often published. That silicon breast implants might cause serious health problems was big news, for example. That there has been no corroborative and replicable scientific evidence that they do has gone almost unnoticed.
In his 1958 masterpiece on The Philosophy of Physical Science, the physicist and astronomer, Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, asked this intriguing question about observations made by scientists: "Quis custodiet? ipsos custodes?" Who will observe the observers?" His answer was the epistemologist. "He watches them to see what they really observe, which is often quite different from what they say they observe. He examines their procedure and the essential limitations of the equipment they bring to their task, and by so doing becomes aware beforehand of limitations to which the results they obtain will have to conform." Today the observers' observers are the skeptics. But who will observe the skeptics? You.
Yes, even abiogenesis, if you take Gen. 1 :11-12 literally. "And God said let the earth bring forth grass ... and the earth brought forth grass."
Humanistically, one can suppose that the authors deprecated the significance of plants vis a vis animals, since animals are granted special creation in Gen. 1:21, but literally, I don't see how the grass can be rescued from its mundane status.
This is a trap, you see, since by our modern understanding, grass has DNA and all the rest, and its relegation to the realm of the "earth", i.e. the merely material, would be fatal to creationist doctrine.
I think your missing a few f-bombs,
ID is complete rubbish. I refuse to believe that intelligent design was responsible for the billions of muslims in the world. Muslims can only be the result of hit and miss Darwinism, not something God intended.
I'd like him to debate Neal Boortz about this.....
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