Ray Comfort of know fame from his evangelism training "The Way of the Master" released a video to the public this week titled "Evolution Vs God", which addresses one of the key issues of the debate: Faith. It is well know that the Bible teaches about Faith and that without faith it is impossible to please God. But it is also frequently cited that Evolution does not require faith and it just has evidence. So this is what this video is supposed to address. I will post a link to the video at the bottom of this post.
First off, before I go into a critique about this video, I must make clear what faith is. Most evolutionists define faith as being blind. As believing without knowing or without evidence. But no religion in the world to my knowledge defines faith as this. They define faith as a true trust that has evidence. Hebrews 11:1 says "Now faith is the confidence of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen." So when I analyze this video, this is the definition of faith that is going to be used. And here we go.
The video opens up at the 15 second mark with a quote that says "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate the evidence." ~Richard Dawkins. It is clear from the get-go that Dawkins does not know what faith is, using a definition that only atheists us. And little does he know exactly how he carries out his own quote.
At the 40 second mark, PZ Meyers opens up by saying he is an atheist because "There is no God." How does he know this? To know there is no God requires God-like knowledge. But let's move on.
Comfort then interviews a variety of people asking about if they believed in Evolution, if they are an atheist, when they started believing in evolution. Many answers included "Yes, I am an atheist.", "I believe it is science." "I believe in facts". Most seem like straight forward answers.
At the 3:00 mark, Comfort asks for testable or observable evidence. Many answers include "over millions of years". One comment at the 3:30 mark says "Evolution is not testable over time." (she does mention the fossil record as being traceable). At 3:44, Comfort puts a Dawkins quote saying "We are condemned to live only for a few decades, and that is too slow, too small a scale to see evolution going on." This is followed by a Darwin quote "We see nothing of these slow ages in progress until the hand of time has marked the lapse of ages." Now this is often prime material for a quote-mine claim by evolutionists, but what could they mean besides exactly what they said? This is not forming an argument that they intend to directly answer.
When Comfort asks the students in his query about observable evidence (4:00-6:30 ish), none of them could provide any. One student even says "we haven't found it yet." What is also interesting is that neither could the professors provide the observable evidence. PZ Meyers points to a couple fossils that supposedly linked carnivores (namely cats and dogs) 60 million years ago but is that observable? Students later reveal they have trust or faith in what the 'experts' or textbooks say. This lines up with the Biblical definition of faith. PZ Meyers at the 6:15 mark references the stickleback fish as having evolved into various types of stickleback fish as his off-the-top-of-his-head, best evidence of observable Darwinian Evolution. And at 6:27 we have the already now famous line "Humans are fish." from PZ Meyers.
At the 7:00 minute mark, a professor (Craig Stanford) was asked for one evidence for evolution showing the changes of kinds that is not mere variation or speciation, and Stanford could not pull one out of the thousands he said he had. (He may have eventually mentioned one, but as I type this up while watching, he hadn't yet). Lenski's experiment was cited by both Stanford and Meyers. But the bacteria are still bacteria and not an example of the diversification of all life. Comfort pins them down on this point and none of the professors interviewed could answer that. Stanford in particular got a bit upset, telling Comfort he was asking a question that was not being asked. At the 9:20 mark (ish) a student after repeatedly using the word "believe" eventually says that Evolution could be a belief.
Comfort continues to repeat the question "Is there any observable evidence for the Darwinian Evolution for a "change in kind"?" And he specifically referenced Darwin's reference to kinds, not the Biblical reference. He often clarifies it so the person asked does not think speciation or adaptation but the only evidence provided for are the latter. Speciation or adaptation. No changes between something like cats and dogs. Students were dead silent on the issue. They could not think of a single example. (11:00-13:45). Comfort tells one student who claimed to trust the biology experts that they could not come up with one example. Many students really started thinking.
At 13:50, Comfort starts asking about Intelligent Design and asking if a rose could be made from nothing, or if it could be made at all. And he asks if the most brilliant people cannot produce anything from nothing, how could the universe not be intelligently designed. I'm not entirely convinced by this, because Evolution assumes naturalism which has no intelligence involved. I felt he still left that window being an option.
At the 16:30 mark, Comfort talks about Vestigial organs. The appendix and coccyx were two common examples given. Comfort then explains what the functions of these two parts perform.
At 17:15, Comfort asks about any famous atheists. One mentioned Isaac Newton who was well-known for his Christian faith. Comfort then lists numerous well known people commonly cited as atheists but he then reveals that they actually were not atheists. Even Einstein attacked harshly against those who cited him for being an atheists.
At 21:00, Comfort addresses morality. Is Rape wrong? He asks if your neighbor and your dog were drowning, and you could only save one, who would you save? I understand the purpose of this question. The purpose of this question "what is more valuable? A human life or an animal life?" What I saw from the responses who said their dog more had to do with they knew their dog more than they knew their neighbor. I think this could be an follow-up question that Comfort could have addressed. He addressed it as "survival of the fittest", which is a good follow-up because it forces people to think about how morality and survival of the fittest do have a role to play. I think as an in-between question, he could have addressed how well they know the dog vs the neighbor and then tweaked the question if it was between the dog and the person's best friend.
At 24:00, Comfort goes "The Way of the Master". "Are you a good person?" "Have you lied? Stolen?" etc.
At 27:00, Comfort starts talking about how he knows everyone knows there is a creator. While that is all-true, I'm not sure that is the best way to go. He did a great job at revealing short-comings and how we will face a Judge. But I would recommended him taking that stance and starting with "this is what I believe..." and reference in a 30-second to 1-minute run through about Creation, sin, and the need for a Savior. I am concerned that his move here might shut down a train of thought to consider God's Word that was smoothly going up to here. I love how he tells them they are designed intelligently. And by the 30:00 mark, no one had expressed acceptance, they had definitely considered it to be possible.
Comfort asks if you could be wrong about God (32:00) and was asked back if he could be wrong about God. Comfort responded no, he could not be wrong about God. The response was he was close-minded. But he makes a very good response. He tells he could not be wrong about God's existence in the same way this professor could not be wrong about his wife's existence. That is a good analogy to use. It was a good answer.
Overall, what I was very impressed with is that there was only one trick question Comfort asked and that was referencing how do you spell "Shop" followed by what do you do at a green light? His questions were not fancy worded (and I have seen some creationists use complex questions that can be confusing). They were straight forward. He clarified any question that might be confusing. His questions were very easy to follow for where he was going with a clear direction of progression and he got people to really think. It was very obvious from the answers, especially by the students, that they had never thought about it like they thought they had. I do like how he presented the Gospel except for the one point I mentioned above. It truly is pointless for a creationist to get people to question evolution if not for the purpose of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I suspect some of those students re-evaluated their lives after this and if not already, I suspect some of them will shortly accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Overall, good job Ray Comfort. You still have some areas to tweak but you are doing a great work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0u3-2CGOMQ
No comments:
Post a Comment