Was: Ray Comfort. Is: Creation / Evolution yet again.

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

I know Kirk Cameron (and he is hilarious), but who is Ray Comfort?

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

The banana argument is classic - if idiotic.

[youtube]2z-OLG0KyR4[/youtube]

The problem with the argument is he ignores the fact that wild bananas are virtually inedible and the fruit he's praising as God's creation only exists because of selective breeding and genetic engineering.

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

Wow, what a moron.

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

I can't wait to see them come back from a commercial at some point and pan in on Comfort and Kirk, each holding a banana, just itching to start speaking.

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

Anselm of Canterbury
Thomas Aquinas
René Descartes
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Ray Comfort


Hm... looks a bit strange .

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

I guess rampant silliness never gets old.

Who wants to believe in a God that needs his existence proven, anyway? Just keep your Creator/trix mythical and its Creation clean. The rest will take care of itself.

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

why ignore facts?

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

Against my better judgement...


I think you're confusing "Mythical" and "Non-Existent". I'm on your side in the whole atheist <---> theist continuum. Really. Big-time theist on this side of the keyboard. I just don't need any particular "proof" of the existence of my Deities. It was a gorgeous Spring day out there. Birds, bees, all that -- that's all the proof I need.

I'd write more, but my sweetie just got home, and it's Beltane after all

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

as in T. Rex --> "Beltane Walk?"

but seriously folks: i like the fact that there is an enzyme in fruits that is needed for peoples to digest dem fruits what makes the fruits liquify so's to get the seed into der groun', as it were. kind of neat.

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

Like the fact that a banana would also fit pretty well in a chimp's hand?

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

The fact is that bananas are intelligently designed - by man. The one that God made is awful - it's tiny, it isn't easy to peal, and it tastes like crap.

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

I like bananas. Bananas are the new cheese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

Yeah, that guy is your typical crazy christian that tries to pawn something off as created by God when in fact he's proving the opposite and doesn't even know it. I love it.

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

and you think that the enzyme in the banana is the result of natural selection because...?

you know that fruits are the plant equivalent of ovaries, i suppose? so if there wasn't a process whereby the seeds of the plant could get into the ground and germinate, then the plant wouldn't propagate, right?

and the fact that the original bananas don't taste good to humans is irrelevant. the same process of enzyme decomposition occurs in the "natural" banana, does it not?

as a process, natural selection does not produce evolutionary change. finches remain finches, moths remain moths, and Liverpool fans remain Liverpool fans. how sweet is that?

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

Y'know, I'm a religious guy. I go to church every week. Voluntarily, even. I believe in God. And I never back down from that view. But I'd never go on a show and try to prove God's existence with a banana. I mean, I know that small examples can provide great lessons and all that jazz, but cripes, a banana?!?! And even if I were to listen to a banana-wielding evangelist concerning matters of Heaven and eternity, I'm not going to sit at the feet of the guy whose best friend is named Boner. I just can't do it.

QUIT MAKING THE REST OF US LOOK BAD, YOU HOSERS!

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

Because it's the best idea we have right now. If that idea was proven wrong somehow (and it REALLY looks like it never will be), then we are still absolutely no closer to accepting your idea of a magical spirit making everything out of nothing.

Many, many plants propagate without animals eating seeds. It's nicer when they do, because you then get a ready amount of fertilizer and you get to travel away from the parent tree. But as you can see it is a pretty tricky trait to pick up which is why fruit trees are kind of late to the party.

It's relevant to destroying the claim by Boner (or am I getting my 80's sitcom characters mixed up?).

Yes it produces change. It even produces new species within our lifetimes. Don't tell me you didn't bother to read my repeated posts where I list some examples.

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

I'm not going to watch this stupid video, but I'll ask this anyway: is Comfort assuming that bananas evolved to be edible to humans? What's to say that animals didn't evolve into something that could digest bananas?

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

Because dolphins didn't know any good "a platypus, a priest, and a rabbi walk into a bar" jokes?

 

Re: Ray Comfort to prove existence of God!

Given what I suspect you mean by "natural selection," "natural selection," by itself, did not cause the existence of bananas. I suspect that you are using the phrase "natural selection" to refer to the idea that some organisms produce more offspring than some other organisms that are fairly similar anatomically to them. Over time, the differences in the number of offspring produced contributed to differences among most organisms. For instance, there are lots of humans on planet earth right now. There are no homo erecti on planet earth right now. This is partly because homo erecti stopped producing offspring until eventually there were no more homo erecti. However, other kinds of events have been important in causing the differences among organisms in general. Five different kinds of events have been particularly important in causing the differences between parent(s) and offspring: genetic recombination, sex, mutations, genetic drift and diet. For instance, a population of fish evolved into amphibians partly because (1) vast numbers and combinations of organisms sexually reproduced with each other and (2) many organisms in this sexual lineage had mutations to their gametes (sex cells). Lateral transfer has also been important in causing the differences among some asexually reproducing organisms.

An additional point. Differences in reproductive success have probably contributed to some mutation rates. For instance, reasonable estimates are that RNA-based lytic viruses average 1 new mutation per replication. The mutation rate in today’s RNA-based lytic viruses has probably come about partly because those ancestors of today’s RNA-based lytic viruses that mutated at about that rate tended to receive a reproductive benefit from that mutation rate. In other words, it is probably the case that a higher rate was reproductively deleterious and a lower rate was also reproductively deleterious. So, differences in the reproductive success of population X's ancestors probably contributed to the mutation rate among the organisms in population X.

Differences in reproductive success among organisms did not, by itself, cause a population of fish to evolve into amphibians. Among the other kinds of events that were important in resulting in this event were sex and mutations to gametes. For instance, I'm quite different than my parents; I am partly because they reproduced with each other. Also, blue eyes in humans were proximately caused by a mutation to a gamete.