His Learning Stumbling Block

Does Ray Comfort never learn? I made my first post about him quote mining Einstein and then twisting it around to read his own version of God into it. I speculated that someone must have pointed out his shenanigan to him, after which he promptly deleted the post so as not to look like an even greater fool to an even greater audience. Apparently, he has posted the message he received:

"Ray wrote: 'I have never said that Einstein was a Christian, that he believed in Jesus or in a personal God. He wasn't dumb. He knew there was a Creator...' No, when he denied that there was a personal God, he was denying that there was a creator. His concept of a non-personal God was of physical laws bringing about the universe, not of a pre-existing creator who willed it to happen. You still don't get it, Ray . . . Quote mining is ignoring the real meaning of what a person is saying and instead repeating snippets that, on their own, convey a false impression of the author's intent." Applejack

Notice, though, Ray does not mention at all his original post which also discussed Einstein believing that the Bible was the "Word of God."

Does Comfort acknowledge the mistake he made by using the quote to say that Einstein believed that the Bible was the "Word of God" as I pointed out yesterday? No. Does he acknowledge that he's never read anything by Einstein or Hawking, other than mined quotes? No. Does he acknowledge that it is wrong to post quotes out of context and on their own to distort to his own perspective? No. So, what does he post in his reply to the above? More Einstein quotes so that he can make him into a Christian or a deist!

And how does he do this? By picking words out of the quote which Einstein uses in a different sense than how Comfort uses them. When he talks about God, he isn't talking about an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc God that Ray is referring to. He had to repeatedly clarify his position due to people like Ray Comfort in his time. He has clarified that when he says God or Spirit, he meant that he believe in "Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." What is Spinoza's God? It's a concept that nature and God are the same thing, that "God is the natural world and He has no personality." When he talks about Divine Will, he refers to that which is expressed in the natural laws. When he talks about being a religious man, he meant that "if something is in [him] which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

Ray Comfort did not at all acknowledge that he mangled Einstein's quote to conform to his own view that God wrote a book called the Holy Bible. He did not at all acknowledge that, apparently, he realized what he was doing and how he got it wrong. He did not post a retraction. Ray Comfort is dishonest.

As I have said, it matters NOT that Einstein disbelieved in God (the traditional definition of which). That is not why people, both atheists and theists, attack quote miners like Ray Comfort for distorting Einstein's views. Comfort does a great disservice to history with his revisions. We stand on the principle of the matter. Many people more well read than Ray Comfort have addressed Einstein's religion and the, unlike Ray, have actually read his great writings. The verdict is in, Ray, you need only go to your local library and check some books out or consult an encyclopedia.

Since I have scruples, I do not quote mine Newton, nor do any atheists. Newton was a brilliant man. He was one of the greatest minds to have ever lived. He established classical mechanics, was a brilliant mathematician, astronomer, and natural philosopher. Being a computer scientist, I have run into his basic ideas in calculus and physics and they are simply marvelous. The brilliance of this one man was awesome (awe-some).

And you know what else? Newton was also a theologian, a devout Christian (and his interpretation differs from that of Comfort's). He wrote more on religion than he did on science. But I, as noted in the above passage, admire, respect, and revere Newton too much to take quotes out of context (which I well could) to distort them to my own personal view of religion. Why? Because doing so would denigrate the man himself.

The other reason why I do not quote mine Newton in the same way Ray mines Einstein and Hawking is that I don't need Newton on my side. I can think for myself. I can reason for myself. My view is fully supported by reason, rationality, and thought. I don't need to rest my view on the shoulders of Newton as my views can stand alone.

Ray Comfort disrespects Einstein.

With Egg On His Face

Have you noticed the quotes in my header image? It's a response to Ray Comfort's header image. In it, he lists three quotes:

"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views. " -- Albert Einstein

"Atheism is so senseless" -- Isaac Newton

"It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us." -- Stephen Hawking

EDIT (6-27-08): The first quote of my header image used to be from Einstein: "I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly."

Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking of course do not believe in God. Or, let me rephrase that. They do not believe in a personal God (e.g. the Christian God). They believe in Spinoza's God. Or at least I can say so for Albert Einstein. For Stephen Hawking, I couldn't say if he would claim the same "belief."

But what these men's beliefs are is not what is at issue here. Ray Comfort is willfully ignorant. He made a post today which shows that he is definitely willfully ignorant and when he removed it, one must conclude that he is also dishonest. Don't bother searching for this post, he has deleted it. But I took a screenshot for proof:

Lore Weaver said..."The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish." -- Einstein

I never knew that Einstein believed that the Bible was "the of Word of God." I knew that be was a believer in God's existence (see quote on Blog-header), but this quote is very encouraging. The Scriptures sure were an honourable product of human weakness. God chose to inspire the weakness of men to write His Word to humanity. Albert naturally reacted to it as I did before my conversion. This reaction is explained in Scripture: "But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness to him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Reread the quote posted and then read his analysis of it. Einstein addresses the "word God"; he does not address the "Word of God" as Ray quotes in his analysis. The quote is clearly stating that Einstein believed God to be a childish concept which was the embodiment of human weaknesses. Ray, though, is willfully ignorant. His mind is closed off to reason and rationality. He seeks proof of God in everything he sees. He sees a banana and says it is proof of God given its design, while ignoring the coconut. He sees this quote and all he takes in is "God is for me" and "Bible is honourable."

He posted this at 10:39am CST on June 26, 2008. I read it then on his site and decided I would email him about it when I got back home. By the time I arrived home at 7pm, it was deleted.

I was quite shocked by this. I thought Ray was ignorant and perhaps an idiot (n: "an utterly foolish or senseless person. "), but I did not think he was dishonest. This is because, unlike Ray, I do not think people are wicked, heinous, evil people. He deleted this, though, probably after someone pointed it out, and he posted no retraction. He posts no clarifications. He posts no acknowledgments that he's wrong. He removes not the misleading quote from Einstein from his header. Ray Comfort is dishonest.


Ray thought he was pretty clever in his analysis to point out the quote of Einstein in his header and use it to conclude that he "was a believer in God's existence." Well, allow me to point to my header. It is clear from this quote (which, like Ray, I have taken completely out of context) that Ray agrees with me and believes that if you believe such fantastic stories as Noah's Ark, a Virgin Birth, Jesus magic, zombies, or Jesus flying up to heaven, you have surrendered your intellectual dignity. Let's be clear of what Ray means: dignity is the "quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect." Therefore, as you can see from his quote in my header, if you believe such fantastic stories your capacity to think, reason, know, and understand ("intellect") lacks the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect. Ray Comfort disbelieves the Bible. Or, perhaps, this is just an admission on his part that he has no intellectual dignity.

Ray Comfort is one of the worst offenders today of quote mining. Albert Einstein does not define God as a magical man who sits in a cloud, granting wishes, sending fires to California to give the marrying homosexual a glimpse of Hell, created the universe 6,000 years ago, created man when he got lonely, wrote a book when he felt ambitious, had a son whom he lost to a tragedy, etc etc. Einstein's definition of God is nature itself and the beauty of the universe and the laws which govern it. By that definition, I also believe in God and its majesty. However, I do not use a term so as to avoid being quote mined by the likes of Ray Comfort.

As a concluding thought, here, I do not think Ray mined these quotes himself. I believe Ray has never read anything Einstein wrote, never read anything Hawking wrote, never read anything Darwin wrote, and never read anything Newton wrote. I believe someone else has mined the quotes and Ray simply lacks the reason, rationality, and intellectual fortitude to look the stuff of himself. It is also obvious, by his caricaturing of evolution that he is not a well read or well informed man. I assure you, had he read any of these men's works, he would be and I doubt he could sully their good name by perverting their writing.

I want to make a note, though, that he has Newton's sentiments spot on! I will give you the full context of it (and also for Ray, as he's probably never read it either):

Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that all birds beasts & men have their right side & left side alike shaped (except in their bowels) & just two eyes & no more on either side the face & just two ears on either side the head & a nose with two holes & no more between the eyes & one mouth under the nose & either two fore legs or two wings or two arms on the shoulders & two legs on the hips one on either side & no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel & contrivance of an Author? Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom & the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside an hard transparent skin, & within transparent juices with a crystalline Lens in the middle & a pupil before the Lens all of them so truly shaped & fitted for vision, that no Artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light & what was its refraction & fit the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These & such like considerations always have & ever will prevail with man kind to believe that there is a being who made all things & has all things in his power & who is therefore to be feared.

And... so? It does not matter that Newton believed in the Christian God anymore than it matters that Hawking disbelieves in him and that Einstein calls the very notion of the Christian God "childish." It is a fallacious argument from authority.

The question remains... why does Ray take these mined quotes and also search frantically, as he did in the deleted post, to find some intellectual who he can distort to agree with him? Why do any of the creationists do? It because they are insecure and feel they have to build themselves up with esteemed intellectuals so as to bolster their case.

I wouldn't care if every other person in the world believed in the Christian God anymore than I would care if every other person in the world believed the Sun orbits the Earth. It doesn't change the fact that we live in a heliocentric Solar System and that the Christian God doesn't exist. If he thinks he is going to convince any intelligent atheist to suddenly start believing in God because Einstein or Hawking do, he seriously misunderstands what it is to be a rational individual.

Inaugural Post

Welcome Everyone.

While I have kept a personal, online journal for four years now, this is my first true blog. My goal for this blog is to make the posts interesting, frequent, thought provoking, and hopefully humorous as well. There will be very little censoring on this blog, as I detest the practice. The guidelines will be posted at some later date once I get going on this blog. They will cover the basics regarding spamming, disruption, hate, etc. I may also parody Ray Comfort's rules.

That note brings me to the subject of Discomforting Ignorance. I am a long time reader now of Ray Comfort's Comfort Food: The Soap Box. Ray Comfort is a co-founder of The Way of the Master ministry, which is an evangelical Christian organization. Ray, who is a fundamentalist evangelical Christian, keeps this blog mainly about atheism. In these posts, he often makes asinine arguments against atheism or in favor of God.

I describe myself as a "fan" of Ray Comfort's blog because, well, I am a fan of it. One of my morning rituals is reading his posts, which I always enjoy doing. I do not mean to be cruel in this following comment, as that is not my intention. The reason I enjoy reading it is for the faulty logic he uses in it, his blithe ignorance in presenting the positions of his opponents, and his clumsy attempts at gaining converts. Reading his blog allows me to practice picking apart arguments as the fallacies in his posts are not subtle at all. It also allows me to see how Christians think.

Do not misunderstand me, I do not think Ray Comfort is an evil man. Although he castigates all atheists as evil and wholly ungood, I do not think the same of him. Although he states that he think atheists are liars and that they actually do believe in God, I do not think that he is a liar and I think he really does believe in God. Although he thinks atheists are trying to be wicked by debating theism and speaking about the ills we see posed to society by religion, I do not think he is trying to do anything wicked by trying to debate atheists and spread Christianity.

With that said, he is ignorant. He is closed-minded. He uses flawed arguments. His blog is popular and so I have offered this blog as a refutation of his. I will attempt to respond to each of his posts, though I will not always make this goal.

His blog reaches many people and they need to understand why his points are invalid. 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.

Regards,
JT