Ray "Banana Man" Comfort wins award for best science film. Wait, what happened?

So this is apparently an award given to Comfort for his ridiculous attempt to attack Atheism in a film which uses clips of Banana Man confronting scientists and college students with poorly presented "facts" and then carefully editing their responses to make them seem incapable of responding rationally.

Comfort claims to attack Atheism with science, but in fact the simply misrepresents science, refuses to accept correction, and calls that a win.

Here is how The Friendly Atheist responded to news of this "award.":  

The only time “science” appears in the movie is when Comfort asks random people how DNA could have possibly evolved on its own, a rhetorical question that he believes points to the truth of Intelligent Design. It’s not like he explains DNA. He doesn’t add to our scientific understanding of anything, unless you count ignorance as a virtue. 

The Friendly Atheist also points out that "Int'l Christian Film Festival" seems like a fly by night organization, and that there appears to have been no other films competing against "The Atheist Delusion." 

I think it is quite telling that a Christian film festival only gives a "Best Science Film" award to a movie that does nothing but attack scientific knowledge.

Pretty much says it all, don't you think?

Ray "Banana man" Comfort is rescued from embarrassment after D.C. police bar him from trying to evangelize Atheists at the Reason Rally.

Courtesy of the Christian News Wire:  

Filmmaker and author Ray Comfort has to revise his outreach plans to atheists, according to Washington, D.C. police, or face arrest. At the June 4 Reason Rally in the National Mall, where an estimated 20,000 atheists will gather to hear speakers such as Johnny Depp and Penn Jillette, Comfort had planned to give away 5,000 copies of his new book about atheism, along with $25,000 worth of Subway gift cards to atheists, as a gesture of Christian love. 

After announcing the D.C. outreach, and plans to film open-air preaching for his TV program ("The Way of the Master" -- broadcast in 190 countries) he had over 1,000 Christians officially register to join him. "To the D.C. police," Comfort reported, "that constituted a protest and therefore we needed a permit to gather. We would have to stay at the other end of the National Mall, and they said that if we persisted to approach atheists to speak with them we would be arrested." 

The best-selling author then decided to cancel the outreach event, though they would still be filming at the Washington Monument. 

I mentioned in a previous post that Comfort was apparently helping to train Christians to approach the Atheists attending the Reason Rally and attempt to convince them of the error of their ways.

Now personally I would have enjoyed an exchange like this because I really like seeing superstitious people cry, however I totally understand that it could have proved really annoying to people who were hoping to engage in intelligent conversations.

Later in the article Comfort claims that he has a "good relationships with Atheists." Which is probably fairly accurate as most Atheists see him as a non-threatening buffoon after viewing his now famous "banana argument" against Atheism.

A classic in every sense of the word. 

Christians are receiving special training so that they can confront Atheists at the Reason Rally. Oh this ought to be fun!

Courtesy of Reason Rally Outreach:  

The Atheists will be having another “Reason Rally”. They will be gathering, which gives us a great opportunity to witness to 20,000 atheists in one day. Our hope is to get 1,000 Christians to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them. If you love to share the gospel or not this will be a great opportunity for you. With so many other believers sharing the gospel you will get to learn from other and enjoy great Christian fellowship. 

Friday night we will have a special training with Ray Comfort, Matt Slick and Andrew Rappaport. Ray will be sharing an exclusive sneak peek of the first 10 min. of their upcoming film “The Atheist Delusion”, only to those that attend the Friday night training.

Wait, was Ray "Banana Man" Comfort on that list of trainers?

Holy crap this will be a debacle.

Here is more courtesy of The Friendly Atheist:  

It’s telling that they need training before approaching atheists. The idea here is that we’ll challenge them with arguments they don’t have responses to, so they need to know how to really get their message across. Given that trainer Ray Comfort’s past efforts have included exaggerated movies and a silly banana, this will inevitably be a crash course that takes the crash part literally.

Damn, I hope somebody takes footage of some of these exchanges between the Reason Rally attendees and the newly trained evangelists showing up to save their immortal souls.

You can bet I'll be posting it if they do.

Good news Christians, Kirk Cameron is riding to the rescue of Christmas. Is it that time again?

Courtesy of The Blaze:  

Actor Kirk Cameron is taking political correctness to task this fall with a new movie that aims to deflate arguments regularly made against Christmas, while simultaneously pushing back against atheist activists’ annual attacks on the holiday. 

In “Saving Christmas,” Cameron plans to tackle some of the most controversial and disputed issues surrounding the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birthday — claims that he says have had a profound impact on the way believers and nonbelievers alike view the Christian celebration. 

Cameron said some of the claims that will be addressed in the film include: the notion that Christmas is really a church co-opting of winter solstice celebrations, that Jesus was not born on December 25, that Christmas trees are pagan and that consumerism is overshadowing the true reason for the season.

Well bad news there Mike Seaver, because in fact Christmas WAS indeed a pagan holiday and virtually everything about it is borrowed from other traditions predating Christianity.  (As you can learn for yourself by clicking here.)  

The “Growing Pains” actor, who has gone on to direct and produce numerous faith-themed films, said that atheist activists’ attempts to diminish the true nature of the holiday by taking aim at nativities and other symbols of faith amounts to political correctness run amok. 

“[It is] offensive to 90 percent of people in our country who want to see nativity scenes and who know the birth of the Christ child is the fundamental root of Christianity, which is the ideology that built this country,” Cameron said.

Once again Atheists do not care about crosses and nativity scenes placed on private property, we only want them kept away from government facilities and public areas.

And that 90% number is bullshit by the way.

Personally I LOVE Christmas and have no problem with a Santa Claus, commercialism, and even a baby Jesus or two. However for me it has always been the religious people demanding that everybody remember the "reason for the season" and cramming Christianity down our throats who have poisoned the well.

And I personally find the idea that the idiotic, Bible thumping Kirk Cameron is going to actually convince anybody that Christmas is solely a creation of Christianity laughable on its face.

Remember he is the guy who along with Ray Comfort literally tried to prove the existence of God using a banana. 

(H/T to Politicususa.)

Creationist's opinion of Atheists. Must be read to be believed.

This comes from a Daily Kos post about Ray Comfort. Or as we refer to him here on IM the Banana Man.

This is how Comfort responded to a question posed to one of his followers about Atheists.


For an atheist, a starving child is no big deal, because it's just evolution's “survival of the fittest” in action. 

I have never met and Atheist who thinks like this. However when we do provide help it is in the form of actual money and food, and not Bibles and attempts to "save their soul."

Starvation, poverty, disease and death are evidences that the Bible is right when it says that we live in a fallen creation. 

There has NEVER been a time in human history when all of those things have not been part of  our existence on this planet.

We are the guilty party, and yet sinful atheists (in the ultimate gesture of a delusion of grandeur) stand in moral judgment over Almighty God—when they have no real basis for any morality. 

There are plenty of very ethical and moral Atheists. And I would argue that our morality is superior because it is based on a real desire to do the right thing and to help others, and not based on a fear of eternal damnation or the reward of eternal life. Using the system of reward and punishment is a method used to train dogs to stay off the furniture, not how to instill a sense of morality in human beings.


The Bible says we are to love our neighbor (others) as much as we love ourselves. Instead of doing that, most secular governments spend billions of dollars each year creating weapons to kill people. 

The country that spends the largest sum of money on weapons of war is America, a country that Fundamentalists claim is a Christian nation. And when our many wars are waged, among the first to sign up are Jesus worshiping Christians.

A plane hits severe turbulence. Flight attendants quickly take to their seats before getting food to the hungry passengers at the back of the plane. The atheist is like a man who sees those hungry people, makes an insane leap of logic, and says, “Those people are hungry. Therefore no one made this plane.” Atheism believes that nothing created everything. It is a quiet form of intellectual insanity.

I don't even have an answer for this last one.  That is literally too stupid to deserve a response.

It never fails to amaze me how little these people understand non-deists.

In their minds morality comes from God or it does not exist at all. Therefore they see everything in black and white, where they see themselves as good and everybody else as consorting with the Devil.

There is simply no reasoning with a mindset like that. And sadly Ray Comfort is not alone when it comes to those delusions.

Fortunately for all of us they are being chased further into the shadows by the shining brilliance of the new enlightenment.

Ray "The banana man" Comfort explains why Neil deGrasse Tyson is wrong that the Bible is not a reliable source of science. Uh huh.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Creationist Ray Comfort complained that Neil deGrasse Tyson had misrepresented the Bible. 

The astrophysicist and host of Fox’s “Cosmos” said recently that using the Bible as a scientific source was problematic, because no one had ever scientifically proven a theory based on scripture. 

Comfort said last week on his online “Comfort Zone” program that Tyson wasn’t qualified to make that determination because he’s not a theologian. 

“You know, the word ‘science,’ it’s kind of a magical word,” Comfort said. “‘I believe in science.’ It just means knowledge, that’s all it means. There’s different areas of science, different areas of knowledge. When you say the Bible is not a science book, you’re saying it’s not a knowledge book? It tells us how God created the Earth!” 

Knowledge, of course, is not quite all that defines science, which is characterized by systematic methods of observation in pursuit of new understanding. 

But Comfort insisted the Bible was a science book because it described the origins of the universe. 

“It gives us the basis for all creation, and it passes the scientific method,” he said. “It’s observable – Genesis – and testable. Evolution is not. You can’t observe something 60 million years old, but you can observe what Genesis says.”

So to be clear, this idiot is saying that Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, cannot judge the scientific merit of the Bible because he is not a theologian, that science itself is a "magical" word, and that the Bible does indeed describe the origins of the universe.

Here let us examine this incredibly detailed description of the beginning of our universe, as explained in the Bible, shall we?

From the book of Genesis:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. 

6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. 

Wow, that really does describe exactly how the universe came to be, how it functions, what it is made up of, it's dimensions, it's age, and everything right? Um, not exactly.

So according to this there was an earth BEFORE there was the light of the sun? But are we not trapped in the orbit of the sun?

And the sky is made up of water? Water?

What about the stars?

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

So the stars are trapped in the "vault of the sky," which is made up of water, and are there simply to "mark sacred times?"

And the moon is a "lesser light to govern the night," and NOT simply a satellite trapped in earth's orbit which reflects the light of the sun back to earth?

Really?

But what about dark matter, gravity, super novas, black holes, the Big Bang?

The Bible addresses none of that. In fact, and I hate to be a skeptic here, it is as if the people who wrote the Bible only had a fundamental, and perhaps illogical, understanding of the world around them.

Do you know what might help to clear up any questions that might remain, AFTER reading the Bible?

Science.

In fact it does not appear that there are really any actual factual explanations about the world, its people, and the universe in which we live, that cannot be answered WITHOUT the Bible.

I'm just saying.

And I would assume that as science moves forward and continues to answer heretofore unanswerable questions, the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran, will be looked to less and less for answers that can now be factually explained, with evidence provided to back them up.

And that's really the problem that Ray Comfort has with this Cosmos program isn't it?

He knows in his dark little heart that the more people turn to education and science to find answers, the faster charlatans like himself, and Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, and William Lane Craig will be out of a job.

P.S. For those who may wonder why I call Comfort the "Banana Man" take a moment to learn why NOBODY should take this guy seriously about anything.

This just in, Kirk Cameron knows NOTHING about being an Atheist.

So the two things that you MUST cling to by faith to be a good Atheist is that "there is no god" and "you hate him. " So sayeth a man with NO understanding of what motivates the Atheist community.

And as nutty as that sounds the explanation for "why" we supposedly have those two tenets of faith is even more ridiculous. 

For the record Atheists don't hate things they don't believe in, though they may get a little testy with those attempting to impose their beliefs on them.

You know, like though a batshit crazy movie like this one.

I have not yet seen the film, and I don't know anybody who has, but here is one person's impression based on the trailer:  

The film is ostensibly the story of how Cameron uncovered the truth about God and why bad things happen in a world where God exists. He claims to have all the proof and that we can follow him along on his journey. Pretty impressive given people have been searching for this "proof" forever. 

Regardless, it's not the story that is so insane here. It's his eyes ... yikes. I will never forget his eyes. 

Yeah personally I feel that if you are trying to convince people of the reasonableness of your argument you may not want to appear as if you just escaped from a mental health facility. 

I don't know who would expect the kid from Growing Pains to finally answer the age old questions that prove the existence of God, but I imagine that they are few and far between, and I would have to seriously question their mental health as well.

Some of you may remember Cameron's last attempt to prove the existence of God, with the help of his pal Ray Comfort, using a banana.