Thursday, June 26, 2008

Ray Comfort concedes banana argument

I just read yesterday at the Friendly Atheist blog that Ray Comfort has conceded that the banana is not really the "atheist's nightmare," and that it's not a good argument. But he is still continuing his habit of saying incredibly stupid things, such as that light is invisible and California wildfires are punishment for same-sex marriage. I find it remarkable that he continues to pass himself off as a "master" when his blog is full of commenters who are vastly more intelligent than he seems to be, who shred his arguments in a manner more amusing, witty, and persuasive than anything he writes.

But then, maybe he's actually an atheist playing the role of an exaggeratedly dumb Christian, in the way that Stephen Colbert plays an exaggerated conservative. After all, there's clearly success to be had and money to be made by being wrong on the Internet. I've speculated in the past that some people are intentionally putting forth bad arguments just to get the traffic from corrections.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that, despite the fact that people like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Moore, Michelle Malkin, and the Stop the ACLU bloggers often say things that they clearly should know are false, it's not that they are being ironic parodies like Colbert, it's that they just don't care about the difference between truth and falsehood--they are bullshitters. And it's just scary that there are people who take them seriously as reliable sources of facts.

3 comments:

Eamon Knight said...

I'm getting "This account has been suspended" at the Friendly Atheist link. Is something going on over there?

Lippard said...

I'm now getting the same...

I've updated the second link ("it's not a good argument") to the Ray Comfort concession to another blog post with the transcript of what he said.

Lippard said...

The Friendly Atheist is back.