Comfort insists that logic requires the thing we call the universe needs to have had a creator in the same way that a painting needs a painter or a building needs a builder.
Comfort challenges atheists with the question "who created everything?" Some will point out that the question is loaded by use of the verb "created". By asking who created something, the idea that it was created at all is put forth as a conclusion or presumption. It is much like the question "have you stopped beating your wife yet?".
To illustrate the silliness of Comfort's favourite question, first assume a method by which something might come to be, then change the verb "created" to something appropriate to that method . Try answering these questions :
- Who belched the universe?
- Who gave birth to everything? (And did they have an epidural?)
- Who knitted the galaxies?
The only sensible, logical and reasonable response this sort of willful ignorance is to bang one's own head against the wall until the pain dulls the senses.We know, for example, that every gaseous burp needs a belch, so who belched the universe? Every child is born, so who gave birth to the cosmos? Every jumper has a knitter, so who knitted the stars and galaxies? Comfort's decision to lump all possible methods of manufacture into "creation" and then insist that creation must apply to everything, makes no difference to the fact the question is loaded and therefore, flawed.
Where Comfort goes wrong is in beginning with the preconceived notion that the universe was created and then choosing an analogy to fit that preconception. Why not use an analogy that animals exist as a result of other animals mating, therefore our universe must be the result of other universes mating? We know that orange juice comes from oranges from orange trees so why not use an analogy in which the universe must therefore be the juice collected from a giant, metaphysical fruit tree? The only thing that prevents Comfort choosing from thousands of possible analogies is that these don't fit with the preconceived idea he's trying to prove.
By invoking a creator in his question, Comfort has unilaterally discarded a potentially infinite number of possible causes for existence. Comfort ignores the fact that just because a painting is created, that does not prove everything is created any more than it proves everything must have been painted. If we begin with a presumption that everything in the natural universe was not created, then we see that those things which we know to be created are so monumentally outnumbered as to be irrelevant to the discussion.
Rather than ask "who created everything?", a more correct question might be "how did everything come to exist?" This question leaves open the possibility that a creator was involved without closing the door on other possibilities and, as such, a fair-minded person would frame their question this way.
Consistently using flawed forms of question or analogy, especially when those flaws are pointed out by multiple commentators every time they are used, amounts to intellectual dishonesty and indicates a fear of being proved wrong. And rest assured, Comfort's own blog is littered with helpful comments from people desperately trying to set him straight on the flaws in his reasoning.
More recently, Comfort has changed from question to statement and now professes that "atheists believe nothing created everything".
This statement is fundamentally flawed on at least two fronts. It again presumes that "everything was created" and, perhaps worse, insists that atheists share a belief system which accepts creation as a default position. The only sensible, logical and reasonable response this sort of willful ignorance is to bang one's own head against the wall until the pain dulls the senses.
What did God use to make the stuff he used to make everything?But, putting logical fallacies aside for one moment, there is another problem with Comfort's analogies and therefore, his simplistic question.
We can all agree with Comfort when he says "every painting needs a painter and every building needs a builder" and we could even go so far as to accept this as evidence that the universe must therefore also require some sort of creator. We might even begrudgingly accept that all the other religions have got it completely wrong and the only creator that could possibly fit the bill is Comfort's chosen god, the Christian god.
But I've noticed that every painter needs paint in order to create a painting. Every builder needs stone or bricks or timber or steel in order to create a building. So, if I'm to accept Comfort's analogy as pertinent to the question of existence, I have to ask where his god got the materials required to create the universe? Is it possible, for example, that a Universe Shop, selling galaxy kits, existed before anything existed? It seems unlikely. Perhaps God could have borrowed the materials from another god but that too seems unlikely since Comfort will tell you there's only one god.
If the answer is that God created the materials in the same way some painters make their own paint, then I would have to ask what he used to make those materials. Painters use pigments and binders like ochre and egg whites to make paint. What did God use to make the stuff he used to make everything?
At this point, real-world analogies have to be abandoned for metaphysical explanations (magic) and we're told God just created everything from nothing - which leaves me wondering why anyone would bother using the analogies in the first place since real-world examples have no relationship with the endless possibilities of supernatural fairy tales. Once we abandon the physical realm (reality), everything becomes possible (fantasy) and logic no longer holds any sway.
I'm also left wondering how someone who struggles with the idea that everything came from nothing (and I share that struggle but have no opinion on its truth) has no problem with the notion that nothing made God who then made everything out of nothing which is apparently what creationists are content to believe.
Digital Cuttlefish has dedicated a song to Ray Comfort
