Ray a Day – 2:3

Here’s more of Ray Comfort’s second chapter.  I’d like to take this moment to point out that Comfort states that the point of this chapter is to show that the human moral conscience proves the existence of God, just as he tried to show in the first chapter that creation proves a creator.  Yet virtually every question in this chapter results in Comfort ranting about all human beings being worthless, evil creatures.  He literally claims, over and over again, that it is impossible for any human being to be “good.”  Does it even need to be said that the vast, overwhelming majority of people (theist and atheist alike) do not possess a sense of morality that even remotely resembles these bizarre assertions?

Next up, we’ve got another person who claims that someone can be a good person without being a born again Christian.  Comfort takes lots of cookie-cutter questions almost exactly like this in rapid succession, and these following couple quotes pretty much sums up his ranting for most of this chapter:

The dictionary has fifty-eight definitions for the word (good), but the principle meaning is to be “morally excellent.”  In other words, to be good means to be morally perfect in thought, word, and deed.

No, Ray, no it doesn’t.  See, what you did there was blatantly exchange the word “excellent” for the word “perfect.”  They are not synonyms, and your entire argument crumbles.

In the above objection, the person implies that you don’t have to be a Christian to live a good life.  That’s true.  Anyone can do the things that Christians do.  They can start hospitals, schools, feed the poor, build houses, etc.  But that won’t get anyone to heaven, nor will it save anyone from hell.  This is because salvation has nothing to do with our “good” works.  How could it?

Yes, here, Comfort literally states (pay attention here, let it sink in, there will be a test), “So stop pretending to be good, and realize that doing good will do you no good on Judgment Day.”

1.  This brand of fundamentalist theology is truly horrifying.  It should be apparent by now that Comfort has no evidence that there is a heaven, hell, or any need to save ourselves from either of them, yet this is the one, singular point of consideration in Comfort’s worldview.  It is childishly irresponsible and amoral to say that we shouldn’t bother with doing any good in the world, instead only being concerned with our own reward in the afterlife.

2.  If  (and granted, this is a big if) the state of the human moral conscience says anything at all about the existence of a god or gods as Comfort claims, then by the measure of my own moral consciousness and that of every other half-way intelligent human being I know, Comfort has just conclusively proved that his god does not exist.

3.  This is such a ridiculously distorted, narrow doctrine that Comfort seems to almost be trying to make Christianity look bad.  It goes without saying that even a considerable majority of Christians are more intelligent and reasonable than this.  Statements such as this are so extreme, even by Christian fundamentalist standards, that they will probably literally cause at least a few Christians to (at least) begin to doubt their faith.

Central to Comfort’s arguments in this chapter is his assertion that even though we can be decent people by our own standards, by God’s standards, we are all literally liars, theives, serial killers, and as far as God is concerned we all probably have sex with goats, too.  Every part of this chapter rests entirely on his idea that according to God (whose opinion on morality is the only one that matters, and for no other reason than that he is the one we must please to escape the horrors of eternal hell), there is either moral perfection, or there is complete, unadulterated evil (with all of humanity falling into that latter category).  Expect to see a post or two dealing with this absurdity in detail.