AronRa vs Ray Comfort

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It's the 17th of September and AronRa is planning to debate creationist Ray Comfort on Radio Paul today. You would think that it should be unnecessary to waste your time debating creationists but when it comes to people like Ray Comfort who just lies to children in order to spread the "truth", it is necessary to expose them for the frauds they are. Judging by Ray Comforts utter stupidity, he can look forward to a good ass-kicking. Here is AronRa's Promotional video on the debate:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hoPb1ucSik&feature=plcp[/youtube]

Even the Catholic Church says evolution is real.

Who would have thought the Catholics would be more progressive than Protestants-and-co? I mean, originally it was the other way around. When Martin Luther fought against the Catholic Church, it was the Catholics taking the bible too literally and it was the Protestants saying it was metaphor. Funny how times change.

I think in order to do an organized debate on the Theory of Evolution, the debaters must first take a test to insure they understand the material they're debating. Every time I see a debate, Creationists demonstrate a clear misunderstanding of the Theory of Evolution and in science in general. It's disappointing, because then it's no longer a debate and a debate, something that is supposed to expand ones mind, is what I came for. It turns into a class lecture and they cover material that's taught to 6th graders. Very disappointing.

In general it's a bad idea to publicly debate creationists, especially if you are a noted author or scientist. Sharing a stage with them gives them credibility they do not deserve. As Jono rightly points out, it is as ridiculous as debating whether or not gravity exists.

Also, many creationists welcome such debates because they rapidly spew ridiculous crap in what is known as a "Gish Gallop" (named after Duane Gish, a peddler of pseudoscience b.s.). Much of the audience usually isn't very science literate, so explanations of why the creationist b.s. is b.s. take too long for every point to be refuted. Since some of their b.s. is unanswered, it makes it look like the scientists are conceding those points.

It's really funny when a creationist will offer a howler such as "If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" and then sit back with a smug expression on their face as if that were unanswerable. An equivalent question would be "If white Americans came from Europeans, then why are there still Europeans?" This is because creationists usually have a very distorted view of what evolution is and how it happens, besides their misunderstanding the scientific method AND being ignorant of most of the evidence for evolution and badly misinformed about the rest.

I was at such a debate at a Christian Life Center in Vacaville, California in the 1980s. Afterwards the floor was opened to questions from the audience. One person asked both sides if sufficient evidence were to be shown to them that they were wrong, would they change their minds? The scientists all said "Yes, of course!" The creationists all said "No, absolutely not!" This illustrates the key difference between science and religion.

One of my favorite quotations from an excellent 1984 book edited by Ashley Montagu called Science and Creationism is "The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof."

For those of you who didn't get to listen to the debate (I didn't either), here it is:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ9OyxAiehk&list=FLAJfDidJyukTekgSRZrjadw&index=0&feature=plcp[/youtube]

Enjoy.

I listened to it and it was unfortunately cut short. AronRa killed this one though, if you really want to hear Ray Comfort get frustrated, give it a listen.

I listened to most of it...might finish the rest later.

Two things of interest: first there was much discussion about the religious beliefs of The Beatles rock and roll band, lol.
Later, AronRa mentioned more than once that it is POPULATIONS that evolve, not individual organisms. This is something I have also tried to emphasize to some creationists on some recent threads here in PPR on WrongPlanet. When one understands this, then questions such as which gender evolved first are understood to be meaningless questions that only show the ignorance of those asking them.

Ignorance is not a crime and isn't really anything to be ashamed of. Being stupid is nothing to be ashamed of either since it is usually not one's own fault one is stupid. Many people have tried to explain things to Ray Comfort over the years, to point out his fallacies, expose him to the evidence for evolution, and so on. Because of this, Ray Comfort can't really claim ignorance anymore as an excuse to deny evolution. That means he must be either stupid, insane, wicked, or some combination of the above. It seems to me he might be genuinely stupid and insane (he at least plays stupid quite consistently, asking for things to be explained in small words for example), but since he apparently has quite a lot of business giving talks and selling books and videos, there might be a greater chance he secretly knows he is lying and does so anyway to make money from the gullible sheep he lies to.