‘Famous’ atheist Richard Dawkins not only rejects the offer for the debate, but calls Ray Comfort ‘an ignorant fool’. What a shock. -JT

Read it about it here.
25 Wednesday Feb 2009
‘Famous’ atheist Richard Dawkins not only rejects the offer for the debate, but calls Ray Comfort ‘an ignorant fool’. What a shock. -JT

Read it about it here.
I hope Ray offers the additional money so that Dawkins can hide behind another secretary. I can not believe that Dawkins is going to let a chance to “show up” a leading Christian apologist publicly.
Bingo! In my opinion, Dawkins is simply making excuses, and I think he’s scared to debate Ray. Maybe he wants more money for the debate so when he loses, he won’t feel so bad?
Professor Dawkins should never debate Ray Comfort, for the same reason that a geologist (or anyone of moderate intelligence, for that matter) should never debate a flat-earth believer. It gives the flat-earther credibility that they do not deserve.
So in your opinion, morsec0de, Mr. Dawkins should not speak on matters of God as he does not hold a theological degree?
We can add occupation as another wall atheists hide behind.
I think that Dawkins should not say anything that he claims to be intelligent theological arguments. Comfort thinks he’s being scientific, and wants his tripe taught in science classes.
IIRC, Dawkins’ arguments are based on rationality and science, and has basically said “I need not understand the greatest fashion designs of Paris in order to tell you that the Emperor is naked.” The difference is that Comfort has demonstrated that he doesn’t even understand the basics of evolution, let alone the more difficult specifics.
If Dawkins and Comfort debate, all that will happen is that Comfort will make some emotional pleas, say some scientific sounding nonsense, and Dawkins will correct him without Comfort admitting that he is wrong.
The net result is that it looks like, to the observer who doesn’t know better, that Comfort’s argumentation is somehow on the same level as that of an established scientist.
If Ray Comfort basis his answers on Scripture, He’d win. Dawkins is a fool in that he continues to say ‘No God!’
“Dawkins’ arguments are based on rationality and science”, but Mr Dawkins beliefs are irrational…. “nothing became everything by random chance”. Yes I am simplifying it to save time, but it is his position.
Debating someone does not give them credibility, that is another wall Darwinists hide behind, it can only discredit someone.
““nothing became everything by random chance”. Yes I am simplifying it to save time, but it is his position.”
No. You’re CHANGING it to save your own position.
Briefly, correct me then.
Neither evolution, Prof. Dawkins’ field of study, nor cosmology say that ‘nothing became everything’ or that the processes that led to today was ‘random chance’.
You’re presenting a false dichotomy. The choices aren’t ‘random’ or ‘completely designed in every way by a deity’. Nor are they ‘nothing became everything’ or ‘goddidit’.
Thats what I love about Atheists, there willingness to commit.
What I am hearing from Mr. Dawkins, and you moresc0de, is “I don’t know how it all began I only know that god didn’t do it.” And that is why Mr Dawkins will not debate Ray Comfort, Mr. Dawkins knows he is not standing on solid ground.
That’s what I love about theists. Their willingness to make stuff up and commit to it as if they were certain.
At what point in my response did I say the answer was “I don’t know”? I didn’t.
We know that the evolutionary process is not entirely random. Natural selection is actually not random at all. But ‘not random’ does not equal ‘designed’. Water pouring over a cliff will make a non-random pattern on the ground, but it’s not designed.
I find it hilarious that you claim Comfort is on ‘solid ground’. Have you even watched his banana video? Comfort either has zero idea of how evolution actually works, or he is lying to try and make his argument stronger.
Either way, he doesn’t deserve to debate an actual scientist.
mosrcOde: would you be ok if the debate was framed around Atheism vs Theism?
mcoville: Depending on how the wording of the debate question was, I’d be okay with that.
Of course, in a debate about atheism I don’t know if I’d have Professor Dawkins as my top choice for debater. I think I’d choose Daniel Dennett.
<>
My most troubling concern regarding the topic in itself is that a person, one whom can be assumed to accept his morals as sound, kind and just, would offer $10,000 to a person who is remarkably well-fed, simply to argue with an audience to seek praise from.
That same $10,000 could have been donated to any one of an insurmountable sum of world-changing charity organizations.
…
In conclusion, these debates are entirely pointless. Those of faith are unshakable. Those of reason are usually too arrogant to communicate their points in a fashion that a listener will accept.
(For those who haven’t gathered, I am an agnostic. I have a decent understanding of the universe back and up to the big bang. The time before that cannot be observed or understood by any means and it is there that I hold the creator of all energy. I believe it HAD to come from SOMEWHERE. But I accept that I will never know the how or why. And it doesn’t bother me in the least bit.)