Comfort and the Origins Giveaway

And today in non-prison-related musings, we have the unveiling (well, an unveiling, as in yet another unveiling) of Ray Comfort's free edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in faux-honor of Darwin's 200th anniversary.

Comfort, as you may recall, is the powerhouse street evangelist behind the Way of the Master, a set of techniques for sharing the gospel that are essentially built around a conversational demonstration of a person's sin and imminent damnation. Together with actor Kirk Cameron, Comfort has started or inspired one of the more prominent trends in twenty-first century evangelicalism--oriented away from denominationally affiliated churches, focused on person-to-person outreach, and grounded in a conservative quasi-Calvinist message.

Of late, however, Comfort has devoted a great deal of energy to combating atheism and agnosticism, particularly as they manifest in the form of proponents of evolutionary theory. His blog, "Atheist Central," has, I admit, become a regular stop in my daily walks through various internet sites. He'll post a cartoon, a link, or (more often) a brief Bible lesson or anecdote, generally wrapping up with some version of "and this shows how foolish atheists are when they deny God."

These posts attract comments like a fresh kill attracts scavengers. Ray's bait apparently offers too enticing a temptation for some professed atheists to resist. Even the briefest post quickly garners, 70, 80, even more than 100 posts, most of which seem to be from "regulars," staunch atheists oddly obsessed with repeatedly, day after day (and often several times a day) pointing out how, once again, Ray's shown how ignorant he is. Of course, the comments also feature regular defenders who pipe up to cheer Ray on or to set out intricate rebuttals to some other atheist's argument.

Comfort encourages such regulars, at times responding briefly to comments himself. Occasionally, a comment or two will itself inspire a posting. Or (like here) Comfort will post some of the more extreme, "I hope you die, Ray," comments. Apparently the only comments he blocks as moderator are those that include cursing, "blasphemy" (i.e., taking the Lord's name in vain), URLs, and/or those that do not capitalize "God" or "Jesus."

Frankly, the comments are half the fun (odd fascination?) of the site for me, staging as they do shrill, repetitive debates between super-polarized sides. The site--and Comfort himself--seem to attract mainly vehement opponents or ardent supporters, anti-Christian (in the Hitches/Dawkins sense) secularists or fundamentalist-leaning evangelicals. Comfort has never really had much truck with mainstream evangelicals or moderate/liberal Christians (the latter of which he would likely not consider Christian at all). If it isn't polarizing, he's not interested (on this site, at least).

Consider, for instance, the Origins giveaway. Lately, Comfort's posts and the comments have revolved around his latest--what to call it?--stunt? Comfort has published and is giving away free copies of Darwin's Origin book with an essay by him that relates bits of Darwin's life and seeks to refute Darwin's theory. Ostensibly, he gives away the book to demonstrate the rationality of Christianity (which for Comfort is utterly opposed to any Darwinian theory). Readers can read Darwin's argument and Ray's (much briefer) rebuttal and decide for themselves who has the right of things.

Early on, Comfort got quite a bit of flack when early readers discovered that he had excised several chapters; Comfort explained that publishing costs had initially prevented him from printing the entire volume and that the expurgated chapters were available for download from his site. The current giveaway apparently solves this problem and includes the unabridged text.

The intro (the link to which appears broken currently) largely recycles standard anti-Darwin arguments, arguments that the more advanced creationist organizations (yes, there are advanced creationist organizations) have left behind.

And that's one of the fascinating things to me about Comfort. As an evangelist, he's distinctive and (from a research standpoint) exciting. As an apologist, and as a creation apologist specifically, he borders on the embarrassing, particularly when compared to some of the slicker creation apologetics outfits out there.

More tomorrow,

JF