"Comfort" Food for Bigots

Procrastinator's Link of the Day: Ray Comfort, half of the brains behind the asinine Way of the Master, actaully has his own blog, which he calls Comfort Food. The subtitle claims that this food "gives a sense of well-being," which unfortunately is not what Comfort's blog does. What the blog actually is, is an opportunity for Comfort to take potshots at every other religious group. The main page right now features a largely unnecessary observation that scientologists don't preach the love of Christ, repeated mockery of atheists, and criticism of what Comfort calls "Christianity Light." Coming from someone who apparently believes we can reduce Christianity to the Jewish Ten Commandments, this is a stunningly ironic post.

What's even better, though, is the part where Comfort claims that atheists are picking on Christians because if they picked on Muslims, the Muslims would come over and chop their heads off. Well done, Mr. Comfort. You've made atheists, Christians, and Muslims look like assholes all at once. It takes rare skill to pull that off. Here's a thought: most North American atheists are more concerned with Christianity than Islam because Christianity is a lot closer to home. Most of them also aren't, for example, very much concerned with countering the claims of Judaism, mostly because it's not predominantly Jewish or Muslim evangelists who are prancing around North America mocking atheists.

Comfort rationalizes being an ass on the grounds that he's doing it "in love." That doesn't make it better, sir, it makes it worse. The idea that your "love" for the atheists is so fluid that it justifies whatever you were going to do anyways basically makes it clear that you don't love them, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word. You're writing this so that like-minded Christians can read it and chuckle, I suspect.

If Comfort really wants to be a fantastic evangelist, he needs to consider humility. You're unlikely to sway people through childish mockery. Instead of parading into "dark" urban areas with your film crew, ditch the crew, ditch the fancy clothes, and actually try living with the people you're trying to "save." After all, if you really believe what you're preaching, you're going to be living with some of them for eternity, so you might as well get to know them better now.

In other news: The U.S. wants everyone to mourn the passing of former Indonesian president Suharto, who died this weekend, for his contributions to "economic and social development" in that country. Well, we ought to do that. Then we can also raise a glass to the half million "communists" murdered by his regime, and to other hundreds of thousands killed by massacres or subjected to mass rapes committed on East Timor by invading Indonesian troops while the Americans looked on approvingly.