Death Match: Pineapple vs Coconut

The theist's banana is
no match for the
atheist's pineapple.

Coconut or Pineapple: Which one is the theist's worst nightmare?

Note: This is not intended to be a serious post. It should be taken about as seriously as one should take Ray's attempt to prove God with a banana.

Adrian Hayter, from The Atheist Blogger, noted on my first installment of The Theist Test that a pineapple is the proper theist's nightmare, and not the coconut. I frequently devour pineapples and, I must say, they're quite easy to open. The coconut, though, about killed me when I first tried to open it, as I hadn't the slightest clue as to how. When I slammed it against the counter and it came back at me... I take that to be an attempt on my life.

THE RULES
To the point, I decided to do a proper match between the coconut and the pineapple. Since the argument Ray uses is that God designed the banana for us (hands, indicators, opening, etc) and illustrates it with just his hands, the rules of this death match will follow in the same non-numinous spirit:

1. No man-made tools may be used. A knife would certainly make the pineapple easier to open, as would a butcher's knife or machete for the coconut. Since God didn't design the knives or machete, using them would be giving him inappropriate help (cheating).
1a. God did design certain aids, such as rocks and my hands, so those may be used.
1b. The rock or any other God-designed tool may not be improved on. If God truly designed it, it should be perfect anyway.
2. The fruit must be in a condition where nearly all of its edible contents can be consumed using just the mouth and hands. In the pineapple's case this means removal of the skin (not necessarily the leaves) and in the coconut's case this means get it in small enough pieces that it can be consumed.

Following the death match, a tallying will be done covering how the fruits fair using Ray's ten criteria he applied to the banana. A conclusion will announce the winner. If the pineapple wins, I will make this blog my personal pineapple, then.

THE CONTESTANTS
In this corner: a pineapple. In that corner: a coconut.

Which one will cause Ray to start shivering when he passes through the produce isle? Which one will give Kirk some praying pains? Which one will be... THE THEIST'S NIGHTMARE? Only one will remain standing.

THE TOOLS

I am unsure of what I will need, so I have gathered the following for outside:

1. A giant rock almost too heavy to lift. It will serve as some rock structure you might find near where you get the pineapple or coconut to beat it against.
2. Four stones of varying sizes, all able to comfortably fit in the hand (they must have been designed that way).
3. Two sticks. They may be needed to pry or dig some of the fruit out of the skin/shell.
4. Two bananas. If God has designed them to be truly the atheist's nightmare, they should serve as a fine tool to quickly dispel the theist's nightmare.
5. Two hands (conveniently attached to my body, which I found outside at the time).


THE BATTLE -- THE COCONUT
First up, the coconut.



Plan A was to give it a whack with the mighty banana. But alas, it failed miserably. Perhaps the intelligently designed banana that I purchased was defective.

Luckily, I had a Plan B prepared. My strategy was to bang it against the rock (I forgot about the rock and accidentally used the patio where I am staying for the first blow). One mighty thrust downward and the coconut nearly split in two. With a twist of my mighty hands, I failed to finish the splitting process. A whack on my giant rock did the job, though.

The next step was to get the halves into even smaller pieces. The goal, remember, is to get them into sizes small enough to be able to eat the meat from the shells using just my teeth and fingers.

I laid the halves on the giant rock and took one of my hand-sized stones and thrust it upon the coconut, scattering it into many pieces.

It was going much quicker than I had anticipated. Continuing this process with a few dozen more whacks, I finally broke the pieces down small enough to where I could (hypothetically) easily eat the meat from the shell. And now, behold:



THE BATTLE -- THE PINEAPPLE
Next up to bat: the pineapple.



As you may have suspected, my Plan A was to give it a whack with the mighty banana. But alas, it, like the coconut's, failed miserably. Perhaps I was unlucky enough to get two defective intelligently designed bananas.

I just knew the banana would work, though, and I didn't have a Plan B. My college education kicked in, though, and I devised a plan wherein I would whack it against a giant rock. It put a good dent on one side of the pineapple and made it easy to dig the contents out. Before doing that, I decided to remove the tab.

As much as I had studied Ray's video on the banana, it seems I would have flunked any test on it because, try as I might, I could not seem to remove the top of the pineapple by pulling on its leafy tab.

Luckily, I came up with another strategy. I hammered the leafy top off with stone against the rock. After going around it once, I could then pull it off by its tab (with some effort). It seems my pineapple was also defective as it lacked the perforation that Ray noted about the intelligently designed banana.

After that, I dug the fruit out to the core from the dented portion of the pineapple. The other, undented side was too firm to have its fruit dug and ripped out. As such, it was another few whacks against the rock and it came up looking like shredded pineapple.

The skin wasn't removed from the final product. It was, however, in little pieces like the coconut making it easy to eat it off the skin. The core had remaining fruit around it which also could be eaten off of it. In the end, it looked like:




THE SCORECARD

Scoring will be done on a 0-4 basis. 0 being not intelligently designed/unintelligently designed/defective; 4 being as intelligently designed as the mighty banana. I will first use Ray's ten criteria (discussing it for both fruits) and then a few of my own which I think are worthy, including how long it took me to open them.

1. Is shaped for human hand
Coconut: It is not at all shaped for the human hand. It has no ridges matching up with the hand. You can comfortably hold it, though. D-. (+1)
Pineapple: Holding it in the checkout line was extremely awkward, uncomfortable, and unpleasant. F. (+0)

2. Has non-slip surface
Coconut: It does indeed... A. (+4)
Pineapple: There's really no non-slip surface here. The spikes make you want to let it slip. It's not frictionless, though. D-. (+1)

3. Has outward indicators of inward content:
Coconut: It does turn brown when ripened, but no color indicator of being too late or if the coconut water is bitter. C-. (+2)
Pineapple: You can examine the leaves and the uniformity of the markings along the pineapple, but this is no clear outward indicator of inward content. F+. (+0)

4. Has a tab for removal of wrapper
Coconut: It's a sphere. F-. (+0)
Pineapple: It has a leafy tab, but it's hardly for removal of wrapper. F. (+0)

5. Is perforated on wrapper
Coconut: Nope. F-. (+0)
Pineapple: Nope. F-. (+0)

6. Bio-degradable wrapper
Coconut: Yes, but probably a lot longer than the banana's 2-10 days. C. (+2)
Pineapple: Yes, but probably longer than the banana's 2-10 days. B. (+3)

7. Is shaped for human mouth
Coconut: Not for mine. F. (+0)
Pineapple: Epic failure. F-. (+0)

8. Has a point at top for ease of entry
Coconut: "top"? F-. (+0)
Pineapple: Nope. F-. (+0)

9. Is pleasing to taste buds
Coconut: It is pleasing... but as much as a banana? B+. (+3)
Pineapple: I was in tears once I finished mutilating it as I could not eat it. A+. (+4)

10. Is curved towards the face to make eating process easy
Coconut: It's curved towards the face alright (and everywhere else). F-. (+0)
Pineapple: Nope. F-. (+0)

11. Is easy to harvest from the plant
Coconut: It's in a tall palm tree. It falls several months after ripening, striking you on the head, and the water being bitter.? F. (+0)
Pineapple: Telling when it's ready is a bit difficult and it's spikey making it difficult to hold on to. C-. (+2)

12. Is easy to open with just your body
Coconut: Impossible. Epic failure. G-. (+0)
Pineapple: I suppose you could smash it with your fist, but it's far from easy. D-. (+1)

13. Is easy to open using stuff found in nature (like rocks)
Coconut: Took me five minutes to get it opened/broken enough to eat. It wasn't easy. F-. (+0)
Pineapple: Took me four minutes to get it opened and expose all the fruit content to eat. It wasn't easy. D- (+1)

14. Once opened with nature items, it's easy/clean to eat.
Coconut: Not really. Getting the fruit away from the shell was difficult with the teeth. It is clean though. C. (+2)
Pineapple: Messy, messy, messy. F. (+0)


Coconut: 25% (+14)
Pineapple: 21.4% (+12)

CONCLUSION

The pineapple and coconut are both, definitely, theist's nightmares. But which one is worse?

After tallying up the scores and seeing how close the two were, I had to decide how important the fact is that it is impossible to open a coconut with just your hands and feet (no rocks or anything). Certainly that factor is more important than it having a non-slip surface. If God were to design something for humans, he should at least have the foresight to have made it able to be opened by our hands, as he did with the banana.

This was subject to Ray's asinine criteria and, based on those alone, the pineapple gets a dismal 20%. So, if by that criteria alone, a banana is judged to be the atheist's nightmare, then we can say, based on these criteria, the pineapple is truly...
THE THEIST'S WORST NIGHTMARE

The Theist Test, Part I of VII

Have you taken a look at The Atheist Test which you can purchase for $12.00 to give to your atheist friends to convert them to theists (there are no arguments for Christianity)? I printed it out and took it and, I must say, I was spectacularly underwhelmed and must have passed the test as I am still an atheist (since it is a test for atheism).

In response to this, I thought I would create a new series of posts entitled The Theist Test. This will be a direct response to The Atheist Test and will use the same logic against theistic beliefs. A commenter on that page wrote that:

Thank you very much. It is logically laid out from The Word, identifying characteristic denials of fact to explain the world within which we live.

I wonder if others will find this series as "logically laid out" as it will use the same fallacious arguments and approaches. Do note that these are not necessarily arguments against God or creationism; these are arguments against Ray's faulty logic and false analogies.

I will cut this series into 7 parts, stopping after each "test."

The "theory" of creation of me, a human being.

Six to ten thousand years ago there opened a human being factory. The skin and internal meaty parts, including the organs, were made in a laboratory in the back where giant vats were filled to the brim with dust. On the first part of the manufacturing line, a plastic torso mold was lined with skin and filled with the meaty parts for the abdomen and torso. Once that solidified, it passed down to where the legs were bolted to my torso as well as the arms. The head was then fastened to the neck and the head meaty parts were filled in. Once it all solidified, my personality software was loaded in and out I came.

Of course, my "theory" is an insult to your intellect, because you know that if I were biologically produced, there must have been an biological process. If it is evolved, there must be an evolutionary process. The alternative, that it happened by magic, is to move into an intellectual free zone.

The coconut -- the theist's nightmare.

Note (7-18-08): I have had it pointed out to me that the pineapple is actually a worse nightmare for theists than the coconut. To test this statement, I conducted an experiment wherein I found that the pineapple truly is the theist's worst nightmare. In that entry there is a scoring of both the pineapple and the coconut under these ten points where the pineapple clearly prevails.

Although the meat and water is pleasing to our taste buds, note that the coconut:

1. Is not shaped for human hand
2. When it has ripened, it doesn't detach for a few months, at which point the coconut water has become bitter. If you want coconut water, you have to get it while it's still unripened.
3. When it detaches, it falls from tall palms, injuring people.
4. Has no tab for removal of wrapper
5. Has no perforation on wrapper.
6. You have to whack it many times about its circumference with a tool.
7. It is not shaped for human mouth
8. Has no point at top for ease of entry
9. Removing the meat from the shell is a laborious process, even with a tool.
10. Is not curved towards the face to make eating process easy

To say that the coconut was intelligently designed is even more unintelligent than to say that I was manufactured.

TEST ONE
The person who thinks that I was not produced through a biological process is:
___ A. Intelligent
___ B. A fool
___ C. Has an ulterior motive for denying the obvious

COMMENTARY -- COKE CAN

The problems with the Coca-Cola analogy are numerous, but the ones I focused on were:

1) It is a caricature of evolution.
2) The Coca-Cola can is an inanimate, manufactured product. It is a false analogy to use that in conjunction with animate, biological organisms.

The can is a manufactured item that is the result of a manufacturing process. Only a fool would try to make an analogy to it by applying a biological process, as Ray has done.

Similarly, the human is a biological organism that is the result of a biological process (sexual reproduction). Only a fool would try to make an analogy to it by applying a manufacturing process, as I have done.

What biological aspect is Ray going to attack next? Sexual reproduction with Pepsi cans? I can see it now:

The Pepsi Can -- The Embryologist's Worst Nightmare

Decades ago, two Pepsi cans were in close proximity to one another. One's tab grew erect, perpendicular to its can, and penetrated the perforated opening to the second can. In the process, some of the first can's liquid shot through the small opening at the base of the tab into the opening of the second can. Nine months later a miniature Pepsi can was produced. Over time, it grew into a regular sized can and arrived in your hand.

Of course, my theory is an insult to your intelligence. Only a fool would believe in sexual reproduction if sexual reproduction doesn't work for Pepsi cans!

COMMENTARY -- BANANA ARGUMENT

I thought Ray had conceded this argument, yet he persists on using it. Why? Because he not only doesn't care about the truth, he also doesn't believe his followers will check his facts or the soundness of his arguments.

Firstly, the banana he describes is man made -- or at least those attractive features are. Take a moment and Google for the cultivation of the banana. To the right is a wild-type banana.

You can read more on the flaws of this argument in my entry "No, The Banana *Is* Proof."

No, The Banana *Is* Proof

I thought I would have to make a post today about things my fundamentalist father had told me while growing up and becoming a man which convinced him of the truth of the Bible. Thankfully for you, my readers, Ray Comfort has made a monkey out of himself with his latest post today.

In my inaugural post, I made the following remark on why I am doing this blog:

Sometimes he makes arguments which sound very nice to the average reader. When he talks about atheists not having absolute knowledge of God, someone needs to be there without absolute knowledge of Bigfoot. When he says that God controls the rain and fires ripping through the gay-marrying California, someone needs to be there to point out that God also controls the rain and lightning flooding the non-gay-marrying Midwest. And every time Ray holds up a banana, someone needs to be there to hold up a coconut.

This blog is my personal coconut.

Where does this banana-coconut thing come from? Here is a (humorized) one-minute segment of Ray Comfort presenting his banana argument:



This is, of course, a fallacious argument from design. This one is asinine as he makes the argument that the banana:

1. Is shaped for human hand
2. Has non-slip surface
3. Has outward indicators of inward content:

   Green — too early

   Yellow — just right

   Black — too late

4. Has a tab for removal of wrapper
5. Is perforated on wrapper
6. Bio-degradable wrapper
7. Is shaped for human mouth
8. Has a point at top for ease of entry
9. Is pleasing to taste buds
10. Is curved towards the face to make eating process easy

You can check out the Iron Chariots article debunking this ridiculous argument. When I first heard the argument, my first thought was: If the banana proves God, then the coconut must disprove God. I remember my first time trying to eat a coconut; I had no idea how it was done. I must have spent fifteen minutes banging on it and trying all sorts of things until I found out that you must: drive a screwdriver into the one soft spot in it to drain the liquid, wrap it up in a towel (to prevent damage and losing parts of it), whack it with a hammer or the thick end of a butcher's knife, whack it many times around its circumference, then use some sort of tool to separate the meat from the shell.

But anyway, Ray made a post on the argument he conceded two years ago by remarking that:

Thanks to Youtube I realize that I will have to say this over and over. Many times I have compared a banana to a coke can (with its tab at the top, etc.) using something called "parody." This is arguably a humorous way of making a point. Atheists removed the coke can and said that I believe that the banana is proof that God exists. In doing so they did a good job and making a monkey out of me.

A "parody"? What exactly is a parody that it must be surrounded in quotes? "Parody" means a humorous way of making a point? Nice try Ray, but I happen to have a dictionary at my disposal.

parody (v): to imitate (a composition, author, etc.) for purposes of ridicule or satire.

That's another entry for the Dictionary of DisComfort. What Ray was actually doing with the coke can and banana was called "analogy":

analogy (n): Logic. a form of reasoning in which one thing is inferred to be similar to another thing in a certain respect, on the basis of the known similarity between the things in other respects.

Indeed, what Ray has done is taken William Paley's watchmaker argument and substituted it with another false analogy. Just as his watchmaker argument has been debunked, as has Ray's banana argument been debunked. The difference is, though, that Ray's version has even more wrong with it, which is why he conceded the argument when being interviewed on it by an atheist:

Alleee : I'm just saying that, that there are very few plants, and we argue - with some environmentalists a lot who don't believe in bioengineered food, because all, because most of the food that we eat of course is farmed, and is done through horticulture, and we've engineered these - these fruits and vegetables to be more tasty to us. So actually, the banana seems to be not, not made by God at this point, it's more like um... what, what came first, the banana or the hand ? [laugh] You know ? Man took the banana and made it better for man...

Ray Comfort : Okay, you've got that one. You can have the banana.

While Ray's latest post is entitled that the banana isn't proof, I must disagree. It is indeed proof; proof of his dishonesty. He makes no mention of why he conceded the argument or that he even conceded it. In fact, he continues to make the argument at the end of the post, merely omitting bananas:

The banana isn’t proof that God exists--the whole of creation proves that there’s a Creator. This includes apples, oranges, pears, peaches, apricots, grapes and other succulent fruits that God has placed into our hands. They didn’t come from a big bang. That is mindless. They came from the creative genius of a benevolent and holy God, who also gave you life itself, and eyes to look at that which He has so kindly lavished upon you.

Either he never learns, is foolish, or is dishonest. We can chalk this up as at least another example of dishonesty, as he stands with egg on his face.

What's very humorous about the post, though, is the cartoon that accompanies it:

Hi there, I'm an atheist!
It's my mission in life-
To edit everything Ray Comfort writes,
So I can make him look like an idiot.

Hmm... doesn't this sound like someone we know...

Hi there, I'm Ray Comfort!
It's my mission in life-
To edit everything Einstein writes,
So I can make him look like an idiot.

After all, an idiot is what he makes Einstein look like by claiming he takes the fables of the Bible as inerrant, wise, and divine.

(Edit 6-29-08)
I forgot to make this point here until I made it in a comment to the post. I always try to point out when Ray makes claims to pull out his absolute knowledge shtick, so I thought I'd copy it from my comment to here:

Also, you say that atheists clipped out the coke can portion, but how do you know that? It could have been a fellow Christian who simply spotted a bad argument. As you have posted before: To say that an atheist did it you have to have absolute knowledge. To make such a claim means that you are omniscient. But you aren't. Only God is, right?