Debates

It seems that the logic-challenged evangelist, Ray Comfort, has challenged Richard Dawkins to a debate about the existence of God and why evolution is scientific. Comfort is also “sweetening the offer” by offering $10,000 (win, lose, or draw) to Dawkins, either to him or to the charity of his choosing.

From the article:

“Sadly, I have found that even evolution’s most staunch believers are afraid to debate, because they know that their case for atheism and evolution is less than extremely weak,” Comfort said. “I would be delighted (and honored) if Mr. Dawkins has the courage to debate me, but I’m not holding my breath.”

I have a few comments here.

First, Comfort is already known to be ignorant of the topic of Evolution. He’s also known to be an outright liar about it. I have no doubt that Dawkins could heap monumental amounts of scientific evidence for Evolution onto Comfort, but it would all be ignored completely… or dismissed with Comfort’s smug and infantile “But how do you know? It takes a lot of faith to believe all that.” I don’t see any point in Dawkins partaking in that sort of debate.

Second, Comfort is known to use the most absurd arguments for his points ad nauseum (every building has a builder, prove Darwin existed, are you a good person, there’s no evidence for evolution, females and males would have had to evolve separately, atheists don’t exist, etc), despite each point having been soundly debunked repeatedly from many different sources. There’s little doubt that he would do the same thing in a debate with Dawkins. Why waste the time?

Third, Comfort’s Creationist points are absurd, unprovable, and unscientific. If Comfort wants to advance his Creationist agenda, perhaps he should take Nicholas Gotelli’s advice and publish his ideas in some peer-reviewed scientific journals. As Professor Gotelli says, scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of God’s existence would be “Nobel Prize winning work” and would be eagerly published by many scientific journals. None of Comfort’s arguments, however, have any scientific basis, so he’s pretty much out of luck there. It doesn’t stop him from perpetrating his lies, however.

Forth and finally, I don’t think Comfort should get the press time. Having Dawkins agree to debate Comfort would be like a battle of the bands between The Rolling Stones and a local junior high school garage band… only that the garage band members would have to be making grandiose claims about how their musical genius and instrumental skills far surpass anything that the Stones have ever possessed… and the extra publicity would just fan their flames and subject their suburban neighbors to more horrid 3:00 am “practices” at screechingly high, sound-distorting volumes, waking babies and raising blood pressures.

I doubt Dawkins is “afraid to debate” Comfort. I rather suspect that Dawkins would think the idea absurd and realize that it would be a no-win situation since Comfort has no need (or compulsion, it seems) to rely on facts, evidence, or even truth.

I sincerely hope that Dawkins declines with an appropriately scathing response… publicly enough that those interested in the topics can read the response, but not publicly enough that Comfort would get any decent press out of it. Comfort will, no doubt, use a declination to support his claim that “evolution’s most staunch believers are afraid to debate,” but he’ll do it in his own little bubble of a venue, gaining no additional notoriety, and will be refuted by his readers only.

That’s what I’m hoping for, anyway.