Leaving Kirk Cameron Behind

Note: This was originally posted in the old UTI back on April 23, 2004 and was lost during my server crash earlier this year. I recently stumbled upon a video by Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron that is so incredibly insipid that I had to dig into my hard drive and find that old post and post it again. The video is called "The Beauty of a Broken Spirit - Atheism". Here's the byline:

"Never again do you need to be intimidated by an atheist. Learn how to prove God's existence and effectively witness to these so-called 'intellectuals'".

"So called"? "So called", eh?!? Them's fightin' words, podner! Please excuse me while I take a short break to scrub my eyes out with bleach and scream until my throat hurts. While I'm away, enjoy this blast from UTI's past.

Did you know that once upon a time, Super Christian Atheist Fighter Kirk Cameron was an atheist himself? Yes! It's true! He even described himself at 18 as a "devout atheist". I suppose that means that he never missed an Atheist Church meeting and before he went to bed every night he said his Atheist Prayers to No God.

[link]Although he had only been to church once or twice in his life, the young man had seen hypocrisy and self-righteousness among those who believed in God—so much so that Cameron began to consider himself a "devout atheist."

"As far as I was concerned, thinking people didn't believe in fairy tales," he remembers telling himself. When asked in interviews about God, the teenager would respond: "There's no God. You can't prove that there's a God. Absolutely not. You guys are performing your own lobotomy in order to believe this kind of stuff."

Of course, he was a spoiled-rotten child actor at the time. He probably had a hard time thinking straight with the weight of his giant, conceited head constantly throwing his neck out of whack. So it's likely that he didn't know that "atheism" merely means the absence of god belief and nothing else. He wouldn't have called himself a "devout atheist" if he actually was an atheist because the term is complete and utter nonsense. There's no such thing as a "devout atheist". You would have to stretch the meaning of the word "devout" completely out of shape to marry it to the word "atheist". You know, kind of like the Supreme Court thinks that the words "Under God" in the Prayer of Allegiance can mean "Under --insert your deity of choice here--" and "no god." Ridiculous.

So, let me get this straight. Kirk goes from being a (non-existent) "devout atheist", to buying into not only the concept that "god exists", but also that this god that he previously didn't believe even existed at all, was indeed the Christian God, and moreover, he was guilty of sin before this God and needed to become a Christian. Hmnn. Sounds like Kirk performed a lobotomy on himself.

Now, his ministry, "The Way of the Master" runs on this principle:

[link] "Jesus did not get stuck in intellectual arguments with people. He did not go for the intellect; He went for the conscience."

Uh-huh. Intellect is bad, feelings are good. Intelligence is evil. How very - typical. Kirk and his partner in crime evangelism Ray Comfort's guideline on how to "debate" an atheist is laughable. A mixed-up rehash of tired old cliches, misquotes, confusing evolution with atheism, and misunderstandings about basic concepts and ideas. They actually use Dr. Dino's 250,000 dollar "challenge" as valid source material on evolution. Yup. Dr. Dino. The creationist idiot and tax evader with the intelligence of a bright four year old.

"The theory [evolution] doesn't disprove the existence of God."

The problem here - aside from the fact that "atheism" has absolutely NOTHING to do with the many diferrent theories which attempt to describe the mechanism by which the fact of evolution occurs - is that no evolutionist has ever made the claim that "Evolution disproves God". Evolutionists AGREE with the statement above. Evolution says exactly ZERO about the existence of the Christian god, or any gods. The issue simply isn't addressed at all. It is absent.

The entire document is so full of out-of context quotations and downright lies that it's difficult to know where to begin the deconstruction. The effort would be huge. First there is the the laughable assertion that "Christianity" is not a "religion" because religions are "[...]accompanied by ignorance, intolerance, and superstition." So, believing in an invisible magic man in the sky is not superstitious? Then they pull a bait and switch and give the Websters definition for the word "religious" instead of the definition of "religion" which are two completely separate things. One can religiously follow Nascar races, but this does NOT mean that Nascar is a religion, or that Dick Trickle is God.

After a brief and embarrassingly mangled attempt to restate the Design Argument in folksy language, it is concluded that "God is axiomatic." They then confuse someone who states positively that god does not exist, with atheism. Atheism, as I said earlier, means the absence of god belief. Someone who states positively that a god or gods does not exist may be an atheist becuase they lack god belief, but their stance on the existence of a god or a particular god is not necessary to being an atheist. This is not very surprising. This is probably the single-most common misunderstanding about what atheism is and is not.

They then go on to present their "evidence" for the Bible being true and of "supernatural" (but not "superstitious"?) origin by quoting something that Samuel Clemens, writing as Mark Twain said: "Most people are bothered by those passages of Scriptures they don't understand, but for me, I have always noticed that the passages that bother me are those I do understand." For some insane reason, this is presented as support for the divine origin of the Bible and not as what it actually is, which is a fearfully intelligent comment upon the scary, human origin of the Bible.

Then they lay on the guilt trip with a series of questions tied to each of the Ten Commandments. Of course, the premise being that their God is axiomatic, and that their Bible is this God's own handbook. Then they insist that the only way to be "morally clean" is to follow their Ten Commandments.

Then they go off on a tangent about evolution, a screed really, chock-full of creationist misquotes and misunderstandings. The pull out the hoary old "micro/macro" evolution false dilemma, and end with Kent Hovind's laughable and unwinnable 250,000 dollar "challenge". Talk Origins has this to say about the "challenge":

[link To be as clear as possible at the very outset: Kent Hovind's "offer" has nothing to do with the validity of the vast body of evidence, from a breathtakingly broad range of disciplines, that establishes the Theory of Evolution as one of the bedrocks of modern science. His challenge, as will be seen, is a mere humbug without value in any rational appraisal of science. The terms of the offer are formulated to be unattainable and it would be nothing but a total waste of time and effort for any proponent of evolution to participate in his charade. The only intent of the offer is to gull the credulous and confuse the uninformed.

They then falsely equate the science of evolution with the desire to indulge in unrestricted sin and pleasure. "[...] every sinful pleasure can be enjoyed with no qualms of conscience." Yup. Those evolutionary biologists (who all happen to be atheists, of course, because a Christian could never, ever be an evolutionist,) are all a bunch of hedonists. Crazy with lust while they stare through their microscopes.

Then there's the stupid contention that evolution is a "religion" and that you need more faith to "believe in" evolution than you do to be a Christian because there is no evidence for evolution.

I'm sorry, but it's just so fucking stupid that I'm at a loss as to how to proceed here. Cameron and Comfort's "ministry" is designed to appeal to the already-converted. They throw a lot of flash and dazzle out there and mainly preach to the choir. None of the "points" made in this utterly idiotic guide to debating atheists is original or effective. They are using the exact same technique that Kent Hovid uses in his "debates" - that is, a shotgun approach whereby the creationist throws out 15 or 20, or a hundred assertions, all incorrect and badly misunderstood, then the poor evolutionist gullible enough to be sucked into this three ring circus spends all of his time trying to straighten out the convoluted, misquoted, misunderstood crap spewed by the creationist. Of course, straightening out the falsehoods and outright lies takes MUCH longer than simply asserting them in a rapid stacatto monologue. So, the Christian audience to these "debates" - usually held in a church - ends up getting the impression that the evolutionist is beaten handily by the creationist. What utter hogwash. The smart evolutionists simply decline the invitation and go on with their work, but then the creationist claims that the evolutionist was "scared" to debate them and this is also seen as "victory".

Let me make this perfectly clear: Creationists who use this tactic are dishonest liars - hucksters and snake-oil salesman. Ignoring their hysterical, superstitious bullshit sales pitches is the only rational way to deal with them.

And Kirk Cameron.