How to Know God Exists

[LAGC]

Wow, I guess this would be a 20th Century version of the teleological argument (argument from design):

I would like to begin by sharing a simple analogy that I have used for many years as a tongue-in-cheek illustration for the existence of God. This is my theory of where the Coca-Cola can may have come from.

Billions of years ago, there was a massive explosion in space. Nobody knows what caused the big bang, it just happened, and from that explosion issued a massive rock, and on top of that rock was found a sweet, brown, bubbly substance.

Over millions of years, aluminum crept up the side and formed itself into a can, then into a lid, and eventually a tab. And millions of years later, red and white paints fell from the sky and formed themselves into the words "Coca-Cola, 12 fluid ounces."

You may rightly say, "What are you talking about? You are insulting my intellect." You know that if the soda can has been made, there must be a maker. If it was designed, there must be a designer. To believe it happened by sheer chance -- created out of nothing -- is to move into an intellectual-free zone.

This parody of evolutionary theory illustrates how silly it is. Yet this is exactly what evolutionists claim: something can bring itself into being from nothing, and with enough time, complex systems can be assembled by chance through random, unguided processes. We intuitively know when something is designed, and we know that things don't design and create themselves. For some reason, we understand this logic for every subject except our incredible creation -- with its amazing design, complexity, beauty, and order. That just doesn't make sense.

If the first man to walk on the moon had uncovered a Coke can on its surface, would it be reasonable to surmise that it had evolved there over millions of years? Or would you know it was designed and created, and therefore someone must have been there before? Now think about how simplistic the Coke can is compared to the design, beauty, order, and complexity of our marvelous creation!

On our television program, "The Way of the Master," after using the Coke can example I held up a banana and jokingly called it "the atheist's nightmare." I explained how it was shaped for the human hand, had a tab, a wrapper, etc., comparing it to the Coke can to show obvious "design." Although my co-host, Kirk Cameron, gently warned me that atheists would take it out of context and make me look like a fool, we went ahead and used the clip anyway.

-- Chapter 1: Are Atheists Smarter than Most? from How to Know God Exists - Scientific Proof of God by Ray Comfort


Why do I have a feeling that the rest of this book isn't going to go well? (Yes, I got my free copy in the mail.)

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. ?

"This parody of evolutionary theory illustrates how silly it is. Yet this is exactly what evolutionists claim: something can bring itself into being from nothing"


And what do "religionists" do?

:rofl:

[Roland99]

4. Yeah, they like to distort evolution to mean the creation of life

[EvolveOrConvolve]

24. Creationists and other idiots like Ray Comfort do that often

They conflate evolutionary theory with abiogenesis then use that to attack science. It's a classic strawman argument. It's an intellectually weak tactic, but unfortunately, all too often it works to convince the dumb and lazy.

[thereismore]

2. These guys are funny. They think evolution is random change. It isn't. Natural selection directs

changes. But you know all that, who am I lecturing. The fundies will never understand. They will totally buy the Coke from Space "proof."

[Roland99]

3. wow...I mean....wow

there is literally no way to debate or argue with pure fantasy.


"What if..."

[Lint Head]

5. The shape of the modern bananna is a result of a man made

cross pollination and grafting experiment. Goolge it.

[Warren Stupidity]

11. Fruit trees make edible fruit in order to spread themselves far and wide.

Duh. It is actually a great example of how evolution functions under Darwin's Theory.

[onager]

17. Not to mention Egytian bananas...

Which I always enjoyed when I lived there. They were delicious and cheap - a kilo for about U.S. $1, sometimes less.

They were a lot smaller than the typical Dole etc. grocery-store bananas in the U.S. But bigger than the tiny "plantans" sold in Hispanic grocery stores here in Los Angeles, like the Vallarta market chain (where I often shop, since one is in close walking distance.)

I was surprised to see bananas growing in Egypt at all - that's a tropical fruit growing in a mostly desert country. Thanks again, human ingenuity...

[dimbear]

21. Not only is that exactly true, compare the ear of corn

that God designed with the one man created.

[struggle4progress]

22. Actually, that's completely wrong: the supermarket bananas we get

have only vestigial seeds and hence cannot be improved by breeding. They're actually natural mutations that were discovered and cultivated by vegetative propagation

[Tikki]

6. Severe brain freeze, I say...dude took a sip from a cold...

can of Coca-Cola...


Tikki

[derby378]

7. Because, after all, bananas were designed SOLELY FOR HUMANS

I love these humanocentric arguments for creationism and ID. So simplistic and insulting.

You know what it takes to create a star? The ingredients are surprisingly simple - hydrogen gas, gravity, and time. Just collect the gas in a specific volume in proportion to the size and class of star you want (a little dust is fine, too) and then sit back for a few million years and wait. The collective gravity of the nebula will cause the gas to coalesce somewhere in the cloud, which will attract more gas due to its increased gravity, and the proces continues until internal temperatures reach a point where hydrogen fusion is possible. Voila! Your very own G-class main sequence star. Name it after your spouse, your brother, your sister, or your favorite furbaby.

[SDuderstadt]

8. Ray Comfort is an...

even bigger idiot than Kirk Cameron, as hard as that is to believe.

[stopbush]

9. These idiots again. And they're STILL citing the banana as

an example of intelligent design aimed at humans eating them, even after it has been pointed out to them over and over again that the store-bought banana (the Cavendish) that they hold up in their stupid demonstrations is a cultivar, ie: a product of man cultivating a type of banana that is not found naturally in nature.

Fucking idiots.

[outerSanctum]

13. I absolutely don't care what you say....

If bananas have anything to do with Chunky Monkey ice cream - then they had to be created by God.

[stopbush]

18. Comfort and Cameron should be spending their time figuring out

how they get the monkey in Chunky Monkey.

[laconicsax]

23. Good point!

After a little investigating, I'm sure they'll start touting it as proof that evolution is false--if evolution is true, why hasn't the monkey in the ice cream evolved into a human yet?

Checkmate, atheists!

[JuniperLea]

15. Which, from my POV, supports evolution...

We can change plants and animals rather quickly actually. Even our natural selection of same will do that.

I've been reading many Michal Pollan books lately... Botany of Desire, and The Omnivore's Dilemma both pointed to this in a very logical, well written, and well researched way.

http://michaelpollan.com/

[drm604]

10. "Ray Comfort"

All I needed was to hear that name in order to know it would be nonsense.

This, right here, is where it all falls apart:

Yet this is exactly what evolutionists claim

No, Mr. Comfort. This is not exactly what "evolutionists" (his term) claim. It's not even inexactly what scientists claim.

What I can't decide is if he knows this or not. Is he a conman, or a gullible true-believer?

[stopbush]

12. And of course, Uncle Ray believes in the uncreated creator:

"Yet this is exactly what evolutionists claim: something can bring itself into being from nothing, and with enough time, complex systems can be assembled by chance through random, unguided processes."

Uh, do ya mean like...god? Didn't god "bring himself into being from nothing?" Isn't "god" the ultimate complexity? Or, was god also created by something? Can you say "infinite regression?"

Or, maybe you'd like to stipulate that something CAN bring itself into existence. If so, then the Big Bang is just as valid a "something" as is god.

These guys are so smart they're stupid.

[rurallib]

14. I think his brother Southern brings more wisdom

[trotsky]

16. If it weren't for the argument from ignorance, Ray would have nothing.

So thankfully for him, he's got a nearly infinite supply of it.

[stopbush]

19. Isn't it great when Ray writes something so stupid that a third grader

would laugh at him in an effort to "prove how silly evolution is?"

[struggle4progress]

20. How can you even stand to read that jabber?

[LAGC]

25. I try to keep an open-mind and explore others' opinions.

Alas, I had hopes that the book would focus more on reasons to believe in God on his own merits, without resorting to quoting the Bible and muddying the waters by bringing Jesus into it, but indeed it just seems to be thinly-disguised Christian evangelical propaganda the further I read.

Oh well. At least I didn't make the guy any money off of it. (He even paid for shipping!) Now we'll just have to see if he stays true to his word about not trying to proselytize me later down the road... its mostly just Mormon/Jehovah Witness missionaries who come to my door, so if there's a sudden uptick in non-denominational evangelicals, I'll know that he lied about his "no-strings-attached" offer of that free book.

[trotsky]

26. "That jabber" is how a majority of U.S. Christians think.

Why are you insulting the beliefs of others?

[GoneOffShore]

27. First clue that the writer is full of crap - the book came free in the mail.

Second clue - Ray Comfort.

[pokerfan]

28. He says it's a parody and then uses it as an analogy

:banghead:

Off the top of my head, I see two problems with his "analogy," i.e. straw man argument:

1. Aluminum doesn't reproduce.
2. Aluminum doesn't have genetic memory.

[dimbear]

29. The first primitive Coke cans had removable pull tabs.

Over the years through natural selection the pull tabs became permanently affixed. The cans also gradually shed weight and slightly altered their shape.

Fossils exist and show the changes. Their are types that went completely extinct, like "New Coke."