Ray a Day – 5:9

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Now, obviously Comfort takes great pleasure in insulting atheists (and anyone else outside of his “true Christianity”).  If you think you’ve seen some horrifyingly baseless and utterly absurd fear-mongering so far, get a load of this single page from his book.  Of course Comfort completely dodges the actual challenge here, but that’s par for the course.  There is a bigger issue here.  This is in response to a skeptic questioning why so many Christians seem to be afraid of atheists (the skeptic suggests that perhaps some Christians are afraid that their belief system is so easy to take apart):

A very wise man once said, “Most I fear God.  Next, I fear him who fears Him not.”  Atheists are probably about as dangerous as “religious” people (as opposed to those who truly love God).  Religious people have killed millions throughout history in religious wars (the Crusades of the Catholic church, Islamic terrorism, etc.), the Spanish Inquisition (the murder of Christians by the Catholic church), the killing of the prophets of God (by religious Jews), the murder of Jesus, the persecution of the Church (see the Book of Acts for details, or read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs for greater and horrific detail).  Religious hypocrites come in a close second to atheistic communism, which is responsible for 100 million deaths throughout history.  If someone doesn’t fear God, they will lie to you (if they think that they can get away with it), they will steal from you (if they think that they can get away with it), and they may even kill you (if they . . . you know why by now).  The atheist thinks that he’s getting away with his sin.  He denies that there is a God, and therefore he believes that there is no judgment for his actions.

Of course, I’m going to go over this bit by bit, but I wanted you dear readers to be able to read this all at once.  Just let this mountain of fail sink in for a moment or two . . .

Where to begin?  “. . . as dangerous as ‘religious’ people (as opposed to those who truly love God)”  Again, Ray, if you claim to love God, you are, by definition, religious. You use the adjective “religious” as if it’s a grave insult, yet you have no rational basis for denying that you yourself are religious.

*List of terrible shit that the Catholic Church has done* – Still, with the ridiculous assertion that Catholics are not Christians!  Do Catholics believe in the Bible? Check.  Jesus?  Check.  Were Jesus and God one and the same?  Check.  By any reasonable definition, they’re Christian.  Get over it.  Again, what’s your basis for insisting that Catholics aren’t Christians?  They’re theology isn’t perfectly straight, according to the Bible?  The Catholic Church created the Bible.  If you’re disgusted by the Catholic Church, Ray, take a good, hard look at your own religion, because to all intents and purposes, your religion is Catholicism by a different name.

Islamic Terrorism:  Islam is also a Judaic religion; it’s from the same school of thought as your religion, Ray.  Islam is not as different from your religion as you obviously think.  Did you know that Jesus is an extremely revered and honored figure in Islam?  Muslims even agree with you that he was born of a virgin.  Consider:  It can probably be safely assumed that atheists universally reject any supernatural attributes of Jesus Christ, if they believe that he existed at all.  Islam agrees with Christianity that he existed, was born of a virgin, was a great prophet, performed many miracles, and was taken into the sky, into heaven, by the monotheistic Jewish God.  There is no real guilt-by-association to be explored here, but if there were, it would not be within atheism.

“Religious hypocrites come in a close second to atheistic communism, which is responsible for 100 million deaths throughout history.”  See, now, this is exactly the sort of thing that would warrant a reference (preferably more than one).  The obvious implication here is that atheism caused the human rights abuses that took place in communist Russia and China, which doesn’t logically follow at all.  The governments in question were also made up of people who wore clothes.  Did communist human rights violations occur as a result of a pants-based ideology, as well?  Besides which, there is a crucial distinction that is completely ignored here:  Communistic regimes invariably begin with an authoritarian worldview, which shares many doctrines of common philosophical support with most monotheistic religions.  However, the regimes in communistic Russia and China absolutely did not follow the principles of Secular Humanism.  It’s one thing to say that history demonstrates that communism as a political philosophy is very seriously flawed; it’s quite another to say that communists had a certain attribute in common and that attribute is the direct cause of that government’s gross human rights abuse.

“Most I fear God.  Next, I fear him who fears Him not.”  People who don’t “fear God” will apparently lie, steal, and commit homicide as long as we don’t think that we’ll get caught.  One big question, made up of a very small word – why?  Why does Comfort know with such certainty that we atheists are horrible people?  I have two major responses to this:

1.  As has been mentioned on this blog numerous times, atheists, agnostics, and all varieties of freethinkers are no more likely to commit immoral actions than persons of any other demographic.  We’re no more likely to divorce, cheat on our partners, or commit a violent crime.  This correlation that religious bigots want to see so badly simply isn’t there, in any way, shape, or form.  As many such religious bigots do, Comfort tries to explain this by claiming that persons who commit such immoral acts are not “true Christians.”  Of course, this actually defines religious bigotry as part of their worldview.  No religious group can reasonably claim that their “true” members are, for example, people who believe in God, the Bible, and Jesus, and behave in a moral way the vast majority of the time.  One would need a truly staggering volume of evidence that their particular group is almost always moral to even attempt to demonstrate that such a qualifier could be rational.  Many, many religions claim to have a monopoly on morality, so this qualifier is completely meaningless.  I can state unequivocally that atheists are no more intrisically moral than anyone else.  Why can’t folks like Comfort do the same?

2.  So, Comfort makes no bones about it; he’s certain that people who don’t fear God will commit any immoral act, if they think that they can get away with it.  How on earth does he come to this conclusion?  Every single atheist that I know has morals that they follow, and every single one has many morals that are completely independent of a threat of punishment.  This is the main thing that worries me about folks like Comfort – why would he be so certain that people will act immorally when there’s no threat of punishment, unless he himself would act immorally without threat of punishment?  Comfort states this many, many times; all humanity is horribly sinful and immoral.  So he doesn’t actually mean that “people *who don’t fear God* will commit immoral acts if they think that they can get away with it,” he means that everybody will commit immoral acts if they think that they can get away with it.  He just thinks that people who believe in a wrathful God “know” that they’ll never get away with it, because their God sees all.  That’s the main issue here (possibly the main issue with Comfort’s entire worldview . . .):  In Comfort’s wor
ld, not one single person does anything moral out of an actual moral conviction!  Genuine ethics literally don’t exist!  In his world, the only reason that anyone does anything moral is merely to avoid punishment!

No, Ray.  People do have genuine morals and ethics.  Altruism and compassion are real parts of being human.  These humanistic principles stand on their own merit – the betterment of our world and humanity are worthwhile goals in and of themselves.  A person who is truly moral is exactly a person who does the right thing without the promise of reward or the threat of punishment, and the real, godless world out here is full of such people.  Your bizarre theology genuinely depresses me, Mr. Comfort.  It is your worldview, not atheism, that is so forlorn . . . dismal . . . indescribably bleak.  What a sad, pathetic fantasy world you live in.