Monday, February 23, 2009

Ray Comfort's devious ignorance amazes me yet again



This is kind of funny, Ray Comfort is challenging Richard Dawkins to a debate – and he is sweetening the deal by offering Dawkins $10,000:

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=89453

Dawkins' last book, The God Delusion, sold over 1.5 million copies, and has been translated to 31 other languages. His books have been selling well since 1976 when he published The Selfish Gene, the book that put Dawkins on the map as an intellectual heavyweight. He has TV specials on British TV.

$10,000 is just chump change to Dawkins. It's probably asking for a bargain in light of Dawkins' speaking fees. And Dawkins has already said that he will not debate creationists because appearing with them gives them too much credit.

Ray Comfort is just an annoying nobody, a street corner preacher who would get too much undeserved credit from even appearing on stage with Dawkins. If you don't know who Ray Comfort is, check out this post and this one.

I, however, would debate Ray for half of what he is offering Dawkins.

I challenge you Ray to save $5,000 and debate me instead. Are you chicken, or does $5,000 mean nothing to you, Ray?

UPDATE:

PZ Myers, at Pharyngula, reports that Dawkins has heard about the challenge and made a counter offer. Dawkins will do it for $100,000, to be donated to the RDF. Comfort upped the ante to $20,000. It's not enough for Dawkins.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a fellow atheist, I'm sorry to say that I think you'd do very poorly. A lot of atheists in debate situations can't seem to avoid being put on the defensive, trying to correct all the stupid things christians say. It's pointless. To win the debate, you have to do three things: win the moral high ground, win the emotional high ground, and win the common-sense high ground. Ray Comfort is very very good at claiming all three. You would spend all your time trying to 'educate' people when that's not the point of a debate!

Anonymous said...

well, all you'd need would be a plantain, a pineapple, and a jar of tainted peanut butter and you will have him eating out of your hands.

normdoering said...

Steve Vanden-Eykel,

If you think you can win a debate with Ray Comfort, then why don't you go over to his blog and try to convince him or his followers of anything. Here's Ray's blog.

There is no winning of debates.

And besides, for $5,000 I'd happily lose.

The point is that Ray would never pay me that. He's trying to buy the credibility he would get just from being on stage with Dawkins. He would get none of that debating me, thus he won't pay.

normdoering said...

The Barefoot Bum left a comment on my post "I CHALLENGE RAY COMFORT TO A BLOG DEBATE!"

Since that post is reserved for Ray Comfort I will publish the Bum's comment here:

"Since Dawkins is asking Comfort for $100K, you might as well cough up at least a Jackson."

Ray will have to haggle with me himself.

And please, do look at the Amazon.com rankings of their books.

InfuriatedSciTeacher said...

@Steve> That depends on whether a 'win' is judged by the people reading the debate or by Ray... I've a strong suspicion that Comfort could be laughed off of the stage in a debate with Dawkins and still think he's won.

normdoering said...

InfuriatedSciTeacher wrote:
"I've a strong suspicion that Comfort could be laughed off of the stage in a debate with Dawkins and still think he's won."

If you've seen the comments on Ray's blog then you know that not only would Ray think he won but his loyal creationist followers would think he won too. They've never been able to grasp that a mere assertion is not an argument.

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