Show Some Respect to Ray Comfort March 19, 2008

Show Some Respect to Ray Comfort

By Guest Contributor
March 19, 2008

He wants you to post comments on his website.

But only if you follow the rule:

I am honored that so many non-Christians frequent this site, but if you don’t write God or Jesus with capital letters, your comment will be automatically deleted.

Good to know where his priorities are.

A thoughtful response with god not capitalized will get deleted.

A lunatic who contributes nothing to the dialogue but capitalizes Jesus is fine.

I THINK A RANT ABOUT JESUS AND GOD IN ALL CAPS WOULD TECHNICALLY WORK, TOO!

I should have a similar comment policy.

If you dare capitalize Atheist or misspell it as “athiest,” you’re hereby banned from this site!

Damn, that felt good.


[tags]atheist, atheism, Ray Comfort[/tags]

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  • Christophe Thill

    Why would we write Jesus without a capital? Isn’t it a proper name?

    On the other hand, God/god, well… that’s open to discussion. Depends of how many gods there are. I suggest we use Yahweh, which is far less ambiguous.

  • What if you spell it Jebus?

  • Alex

    Er, maybe Yeshua? Or does that contradict the belief that the KJV is the only true bible?

  • What about if the word Athiest atheist is at the beginning of a sentence?

  • Cade

    Wouldn’t it just be easier to have a bot look through all the comments and automatically capitalize it? All you need is a simple replace function. god -> God jesus-> Jesus etc.

    This way just makes him look like a (bigger) @$$hole.

  • TXatheist

    I remember this was a big thing with Marvin Olasky when he use to write in the Austin American Statesman paper. Using the word god is a adjective as I see it. Example: the god Yahweh or the god Allah but just god by itself isn’t descriptive enough for me.

  • the Shaggy

    You can’t really blame a Christian for asking people to respect his own spelling on a Christian blog.

    If someone (say Hemant) asked us not to swear in the comments, it is a matter of respect to not do so. Honestly, if there was anything recent to lambast Comfort for, it was his blatant misrepresentation of evolution (not that that is new), or that he recently ended a post by saying “We have common sense on our side, and they make the contrast very evident.”

    However, Ray isn’t posting that anywhere on his site outside of that one post, I doubt it’ll stick with anyone new.

    Also, anyone noticed that he’s upped the quality of his blogging, to try to seem more coherently intelligent?

  • Ron in Houston

    OK – let me see if I understand

    Ray Comfort is a god damned idiot. – Not correct and subject to deletion

    Ray Comfort is a God damned idiot. – Correct and will be posted.

    Don’t worry Ray, I know you’re not a God damned idiot. There’s no God to damn you.

  • Hemant, will I get banned if I type a-theist or non-theist? What about anti-theist? What about agnostic? Should the Flying Spaghetti Monster be written as “Flying Spaghetti Monster” or “flying spaghetti monster”? I wouldn’t want to offend anyone touched by his noodly appendage (Noodly Appendage).

    Actually on the subject is “God” a title, a name or a designation? I mean, the divinity has several names already: Yahweh, Jealous, Jehovah, Jesus, El, Judge, Word, The Spook, etc. It’s confusing. Odin had the good grace to stick to one name and a few variant spellings at least.

  • benjdm

    If someone writes Athiest, do they get struck by lightn

    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    Ow.

  • Siamang

    I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.
    -Voltaire

  • Shimon Ron

    Out of curiosity, is the theory of evolution the main reason y’all are atheists ?

  • Susan

    The use of poor grammar and typos is something up with which I will not put.

  • Jen

    Well, good for Ray, I say, mostly because I keep running into people who apparently don’t own shift keys, and they annoy the everloving crap out of me. Unless you are bell hooks, stop it, stop it now.

    I mean, Ray is still a moron. But people, come on, capital letters are not The Man’s way of keeping you down.

  • Spurs Fan

    Unless you are bell hooks, stop it, stop it now.

    Or unless you are e e cummings

  • hoverFrog: “Actually on the subject is ‘God’ a title, a name or a designation?”

    Is “Mom” a title, a name or a designation? Depends. Look at these two sentences:

    1) I’ll ask my mom to help me with my homework.
    2) Can you help me with my homework, Mom?

    In sentence #1, it would be wrong to capitalize “mom” since it is used as a common noun. In sentence #2, not capitalizing it is wrong, since it is used as a proper noun to refer to a particular person.

    It’s pretty much the same rule for the word “god.”

  • Ron in Houston

    As a devout Pastafarian, I take extreme umbrage at anyone not capitalizing the name of my noodly deity, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

  • Ray always makes me laugh a little and throw up a little.

    HJ

  • Well, it is Mr Comfort’s blog, and he can set the rules as he wants. But given what some people here have said about Mr Comfort’s response to comments (and from what I have seen of same), perhaps this is just a pretext to avoid discussions that will make him look bad.

    Wasn’t Jesus’ main complaint about the Pharisees that they cared more about little petty rules that sincerity? What if you get an intelligent comment that spells “God” as “god”?

    Then again, a lot of Christians seem to care more about the letter of the law than the spirit of the law.

    Or should I write “the Spirit of the Law”? I leave that up to you.

  • the Shaggy said:

    You can’t really blame a Christian for asking people to respect his own spelling on a Christian blog.

    If someone (say Hemant) asked us not to swear in the comments, it is a matter of respect to not do so.

    It is out of respect for Hemant, not for some third party. The difference is that ray’s reason for creating the rule is to show respect for someone other than himself. It is his blog and he has the right to enforce any rule he wants to, but there is a significant difference between not allowing swearing because the blog owner doesn’t like it and not allowing “god” or “jesus” to be written because “God” or “Jesus” might be offended.

    the Shaggy said:

    Also, anyone noticed that he’s upped the quality of his blogging, to try to seem more coherently intelligent?

    I noticed a slight improvement. He has probably hired some ghost writers.

  • What’s so bad about capitalising Atheist? It’s even listed as an article submission guideline for the American Atheist Journal. (Last line of the page: http://www.atheists.org/aam/guidelines.php)

  • J. J. Ramsey, thanks, that’s much clearer.

  • Josha

    When I officially left the Catholic religion I stopped capitalizing ‘god’. For years in Catholic school I had to capitalize it and I have to admit, it felt good to bump God down to god.

  • The use of poor grammar and typos is something up with which I will not put.

    No sentence fragments.

    Eschew obfuscation.

    We must stamp out and abolish redundancy.

    It is always wrong to use a preposition to end a sentence with.

    🙂

  • weemaryanne

    It shouldn’t be difficult to get around this dumbass rule. Just remember to always refer to god as “a god” or “the god” or “any god.” That way you’ll be both grammatically and Comfortably correct.

  • ash

    But people, come on, capital letters are not The Man’s way of keeping you down.

    no, their omission is my way of displaying my laziness.

    capitals – official writings? yeah sure. names? yep, mark of respect for actual people in existence (such as people called Jesus). comment on some blog? scuse me for being more interested in content than presentation skills. god? prove to me he exists to be offended, and i’ll think about it (although mostly to wonder if he’s not got more pressing concerns)…

  • Solomon

    “Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn’t have a good answer to.”
    -Douglas Adams, “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”

  • Mriana

    Well that sounds a bit disrespectful to me, someone who writes and has taken writing classes. I don’t know why he expects respect from us if he doesn’t give any. In fact, when I used the word “god” in a paper, I used it with a lower case “g” and the prof understood I was not talking about the God of religion, specifically Christianity or Judaism. In fact, I wasn’t talking about God at all, which the prof understood and the use of “god” instead of “God” was accurate. Seems to me, Comfort needs to educate himself on the uses of the word God v. god before he starts going around disrespecting people. Oh wait! The only deity that exists in his opinion God and it isn’t love or what you see from Don Cupitt or anything like that. It’s a supernatural anthorpomophic deity that sits in the sky and throws lightening bolts. 🙄 Let’s make sure we don’t confuse what “God” is with silly “god”-talk that refers to some numinous human emotion which takes out the supernatural. Let’s make sure we make no reference to the “god” of Spong, Cupitt, etc. which is not truly “God”. 🙄

    Comfort needs to get a life and realize that his definition of a god isn’t the only one or he’d suffer a heart attack from my papers that includes some Christian Humanists in it and speak of god as non-metaphysical, non-supernatural, and in actuality something is really part of the human condition or as Spong likes to call it- in non-theistic terms, which granted I have challenged him about this a couple times.

    Then there are all the Greek gods and other mythical gods, in which the word “god” is not capitalized. Gee, I wonder if I should go over there and rant about this word? 😆

    Even so, not all gods deserve a capital and some gods don’t even deserve respect- ie Comforts God. 🙄 I rather show a little respect to Spong and Cupitt’s god even if it is just a human emotion or alike.

    Gee, maybe I’ve been writing about this subject too much, but I think Comfort needs some writing lessons before he makes such a disrespectful rule. He may also want to educate himself about the various gods too, before he makes a blanket statment, as well as a hard and fast rule or he made find his GOD being shoved where the Sun doesn’t shine, esp when someone is talking about Greek gods or something that doesn’t pertain to his stupid deity.

  • the Shaggy

    bugsoup wrote:

    It is out of respect for Hemant, not for some third party. The difference is that ray’s reason for creating the rule is to show respect for someone other than himself. It is his blog and he has the right to enforce any rule he wants to, but there is a significant difference between not allowing swearing because the blog owner doesn’t like it and not allowing “god” or “jesus” to be written because “God” or “Jesus” might be offended.

    This is true, but we’d do it out of respect for Hemant, who doesn’t want swearing. It doesn’t matter WHY he doesn’t want swearing, he would just prefer we don’t.

    It is the same with Comfort. He doesn’t want God or Jesus to be offended, but that, in the end, is irrelevant to us the atheists posting on his blog. He’s asked us as a matter of respect (and respecting the rules on his blog is respecting him) to capitalize names which are proper to him. I don’t particularly care why he wants us to, but that, specifically, is important to him.

    I’d like to think that most intelligent, atheist debaters would be interested in showing the proper respect due in a man’s own yard, but when you read the comments on his blog… it really is amazing how much some people want to fight him on every little detail.

  • robin

    No athiests? Damn. I liked to think of it as being the most athi.

    “I’m more athi than you”
    “Uh uh no you is not. I am the athiest.”

  • Shimon

    So, was it evolution or (as Joshu implies) a disgruntled experience when you were younger that made everyone choose to be athiests ?

  • What’s so bad about capitalising Atheist? It’s even listed as an article submission guideline for the American Atheist Journal.

    They also call “Atheism” a “doctrine” so I don’t trust their standards:

    http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/

    Why would you capitalize “atheism”? Wouldn’t it be silly to capitalize “theism”?

    “If you believe in a god, you are a Theist.”

    Doesn’t that look weird?

  • Old Beezle

    Shimon said,

    March 20, 2008 at 7:58 am

    So, was it evolution or (as Joshu implies) a disgruntled experience when you were younger that made everyone choose to be athiests ?

    Since you asked nicely twice…(I apologize to the community if I’ve fallen for a troll…)

    It’s different for different people. Some always knew that religion had nothing more than personal faith/feelings to back it up. Others figured that out during the course of their former religious lives. Essentially it all comes down to two steps:
    1) realizing there is no proof of gods
    2) realizing that religious feelings are no substitute for the aforementioned lack of proof

    Arguments about evolution are just semantics.

    P.S. I don’t know if every atheist would say that it was their ‘choice’ to become atheist either. Some people simply cannot accept religion whether they want to or not–no choice about it. I was raised religious and realized eventually that feelings can come and go and felt no differently when I ceased participating in religion so I chose to find out why. I did not necessarily choose to become atheist, but I chose to seek the truth and here I am…and here we are.

  • Out of curiosity, is the theory of evolution the main reason y’all are atheists ?

    No. I had never heard of the theory of evolution when the concept of God was first introduced to me. The priests and religion class instructors just never gave me a good justification for their claims – unlike history, or science, or math, etc. No reason to believe = no belief.

  • Darryl

    So, was it evolution or (as Joshu implies) a disgruntled experience when you were younger that made everyone choose to be athiests ?

    The taste of freedom was worth my religion.

  • Jen

    So, was it evolution or (as Joshu implies) a disgruntled experience when you were younger that made everyone choose to be athiests ?

    I was sitting in science class one day. My teacher started talking about Darwin- the first I’d ever heard of him- and when she got to the finches, it all fell into place.

    “Ahhh!” I screamed, knocking over my desk and throwing my Bible at the wall. “It’s all a lie! There is no God”

    I went shrieking out of the room to discuss this with the school therapist.

    Later on, friends told me that the teacher sighed and mentioned my reaction was an annual occurance.

  • Maria

    typical Ray Comfort. LOL

  • Shimon

    Thank you to those who were kind enough to answer my question. I appreciate you all giving me the chance to understand your perspective and beliefs.