(February 7, 2013 at 6:04 am)apophenia Wrote: Given that Craig and Ray Comfort are similar apologists in style, there's probably not a whole lot that separates them in terms of technique and message. So it's tempting to dismiss them both in the same breath. However, the complexity and sophistication of a Craig holds greater fascination.I get what you're saying here, though Cumfart is a special brand of huckster all his own. I don't know if anyone's familiar with his "parachute" routine; it goes a little something like this:
Quote:Imagine you are on a plane, and suddenly it is going down. You fear for your life and want to be saved. Someone hands you the Mona Lisa, you push it away. Someone offers you keys to a Ferrari, you reject it. Someone offers you a million dollars, you reject it too. Suddenly someone offers you a parachute that can save you. This parachute provided to you from Ray Comfort is faith in Jesus Christ that will save you from a terrible fate.(courtesy of IronChariots wiki.)
The best smackdown of this I ever read came from the Open Thread for the Atheist Experience episode on which he was a guest caller: “For the airplane analogy, it’s more like he is telling you he will cut the engines, and won’t give you the parachute if you don’t agree to kiss his feet forever. He’s creating the problem and then offering you the solution. Then you look around and realize, he can’t cut the engines, and there was never a ‘chute anyways.”
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'