Another item for your personal Ray Comfort trophy collection via the Global Secular Humanist Movement Religion Is A Joke Facebook page. [Updated: or even better, via fredericksparks]
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Or a biblicist?
https://proxy.freethought.online/blackskeptics/2013/04/01/ray-comfort-though-that-bibliophile-meant-what/ ;-)
Holy shit, he actually took a correction! Though on reflection it is probably only because this particular one didn’t challenge any cherished worldview, ah well. My tiny optimisms for him didn’t last long.
Yes, I know that my first thought when I saw bibliophile was that it meant the person is an underage Bible fucker.
I don’t know if Comfort’s reaction is funny or tragic.
She might have called his wife a thespian.
Or asked if he had ever matriculated.
Or . . . what an astoundingly ignorant douchebag!
There’s only one book he loves, and he’s never cheated on it by opening another book in his life!
He said ‘phile’. [Butt-head chuckling]
I also hope that Bible pedos don’t squirt in Ray’s eye.
Oh this I love. Especially Leonie’s subtle extra jab about not casting that ‘particular aspersion’ upon him. That apparently going over his head is just perfect.
Isn’t the cross between a pedophile and the Bible called a “priest”?
That is some spectacular ignorance – any word with ‘phile’ in it must relate back to paedophillia in Ray’s eyes? Has he never heard the term ‘anglophile’ ? If he has, what the heck did he think it meant? What about ‘haemophilia’? One assumes that Ray must think that this is someone who touches blood in a bad place…
The snarky bit at the end of Leonie Hilliard’s second post – that Ray must know she never intended to cast ‘that aspersion’ (that he is a lover of books and the knowledge to found therein) – was just perfect.
If she’d accused him of bibliolatry it wouldn’t have been far from the truth either – he sure does worship that book of Bronze Age mythology! I did notice how the subtle jab about ‘that particular aspersion’ went straight over Ray’s head too.
Ah – I see that beardymcviking got there ahead of me.
@8
That or a lover of children’s books.
He got there ahead of me too. That cracked me up. What a well-crafted insult!
Good job Leonie’s not a paediatrician. Or a pedagogue.
“Just another atheist insult”? What is that idiot talking about? Atheist insults are much more direct than that.
@zinc #5 said, “There’s only one book he loves, and he’s never cheated on it by opening another book in his life!” You’re probably on target with that one. The Bible and perhaps some approved reading about the Bible…Bible study blah blah, you know. Oh, a some books on how to live the Christian life in these trying times. A church youth director once told a group of us teenagers that if gospel music was available to us on the radio but we listened to pop music instead, we were sinning. I think that’s when I knew it was time for me to get out of it, that and the “Give me a J” cheer for Jesus in church one Sunday night.
Rob Grigjanis:
Read the freaking post titles, newbie.
I think he knew what it was. He just brought it up to avoid talking about the biblical contradictions to his claims (ie John 1:18, Genesis 32:20, etc).
Them atheists always gotta use those big words no decent gawd-fearing person would ever think of using.
People have seen him masticating (and with bananas) in public. When a child, other kids ridiculed him for philately. He was likely kicked out of a christian college for his seminal thoughts, but still embraced by republicans for his homeopathic stance.
Chris Clarke: Now I see that a commenter at blackskeptics provided the same link. I am suitably chastened (i.e. not at all, ya desert-dwellin baastid).
Fellow species?
Jafafa:
I understand Ray’s especially fond of Musa × paradisiaca
Thank the cosmic muffin she didn’t call him an bananaphile.
Good point, did he ever address the points being made?
Ahh, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of him.
(Sorry, this just felt like it needed a Londo quote.)
If you allow a little biblophilia, what’s next? People marrying books??
(asks the guy who sleeps with his “philosopher’s mistress” (i.e.: books occupying the other half of his bed) every night….
PS – if I could marry my library, I would.
So there.
Likely, he ignored the remarks about cognitive dissonance due to his own cognitive dissonance. That, and a total lack of exegetic proficiency and, probably, curiosity.
This reminds me of the brouhaha that erupted after a Caucasian Aide to a former D.C. Mayor used the word “niggardly”. Sigh.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/williams/williams020499.htm
Technically, I’d classify him as a bible-fetishist.
But can it give meaningful consent?
–
kayden:
Said aide was a fucking idiot not to have seen that coming and avoided the word like the plague. And since then it’s basically used as a way for racists to taunt African-American people grade-school bully style. “But I’m not touching you!”
This illustrates the value of a good bible college education.
But can it give meaningful consent?
That’s why I can’t. :( So sad.
Marcus, “PS – if I could marry my library, I would.” Well, now, according to Bill O’Reilly, once we have same-sex marriage then you might just have an opportunity to do that. Or your goat. Whichever.
I have it on good authority that Ray may in fact be a homosapiens. There’s no proof of that, however.
But would Marcus’ goat want to marry his library?
–
Yeah, the ‘niggardly’ thing was pretty dumb on the part of the aide. So dumb you have to question whether it was truly an innocent mistake.
This on the other hand…
http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/2008/07/dallas-county-meeting-turns-ra.html
Lindwurm,
Can you not see that the term ‘black hole’ can be used in a racist way? Surely if the person who used it, when pulled up on it, could have simply said they did not intend to use it in a racist way and apologised. The person in question later went on to use mental health slurs. My impression is that this is someone who just does not give a shit about how other people feel.
On more than one occasion I’ve heard people (either disorganised people, or those with a widely scattered range of interests) refer to themselves as scatological. I never let them forget.
Why would ‘pedagogue’ be bad?
What’s a ‘gogue’?
*wide eyed blink*
Anyone have a link to the full thread? (Apologies if I’ve overlooked it)
The way he begins, “One other thing,” and the broken borders on Leonie Hilliard’s reply below, suggest that some replies in between were spliced out to focus on the comedic part of the exchange.
Like Rev. BigDumbChimp @24, I’m rather curious what, if anything, he had to say to Hilliard’s initial question.
Koshka, the term “black hole” is a cuss word in both Hindu and Russian and a few other languages. The approved term is “hypermass”.
dmgregory #42
The whole thing is still up on Ray Comfort’s Facebook page.
You don’t need to sign-in, just go and read.
(it’s a busy page, use ctrl-f)
Hi Chris. I tried to find an email for you but I can’t so I am posting this here. You have the Global Secular Humanist Movement listed as credited with this photo. In fact, it was created by an admin on the Facebook page Religion is a Joke as you can see in the tag on the bottom right. It was shared from that page to Dawkins and Gervais’s Twitter accounts and GSHM shared it without credit, as is common.
I would appreciate if you would update the link at the top to reflect that.
In fairness, he took the correction. Not everyone can be expected to understand words with four or more syllables.
What do you think his reaction would be if you informed him he was a Hominid? I think he’d probably start accusing you of being both homophobic and racist.
Notice that when he was confronted with a word he didn’t know (which happens to the best of us) he didn’t look it up anywhere, he just forged right ahead with whatever he assumed it meant.
It’s as if it never occurs to him to seek out knowledge. That’s telling.
It doesn’t matter if Comfort knows the word or not, because he sure doesn’t understand English. Leonie Hilliard called him/herself a bibliophile not anyone else.
Trebuchet #36. A few years ago on “The Ali G Show”, Ali G intentionally made the same “mistake” to confound his invitees. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XZ_cd1vYX0
As a plus, he makes a fool of Kent Hovind on the program.
To Ray’s defence, the use of the greek suffix ‘-philia’ (friendship) to denote all kinds of sexual fetishes baffles me.
And I’m Greek.
As for ‘pedophile’, there is a way out: a pedophile is someone who is sexually attracted to children. A pederast is someone who has sex with children.
I occasionally find Comfort grotesquely amusing. A little like watching one of those cringe-inducingly bad movies the MST3K people lampooned.
I’m not saying I’m proud of it or nothin’.
Reminds me of the hillbilly who asked Bill Hicks:
“Watcha readin’ for?”
@46
He only took the correction because 1) it was blindingly obvious to everyone else he was wrong 2) it didn’t contradict his current views and 3) it allowed him to dodge the other questions and set himself up as the victim if pressed on it.
Why think up new insults, Ray, when “idiot” continues to provide sufficiently?
Not knowing what a word means is not stupid per se.
What is stoopid is reading the work on the ‘Net but not using the ‘Net to find out what the word means.
And then illustrating the lack of research is such a spectacular car-crashing fashion.
Albeit, as others have said, bananaman did accept the correction.
I’ve heard that ol’ Ray masticates at least three times a day!
@Alverant
The first two I’ll give you, but the third? I doubt very much it was a cynical attempt to dodge the questions. I don’t like the guy, but I hesitate to take than dim a view of his motives when in reality we have no idea why he reacted like that.
“It means lover of books, as I’m sure you know, and I never meant to cast that aspersion on you.”
POW! =D
@thumper
You honestly doubt whether the profoundly dishonest man is being dishonest?
It’s not like he hasn’t usd bullshit derailing and hand waving before. its what he does.
He knew the word
QFT.
Compare pedagogue and demagogue… apparently agogos is someone who leads or misleads… But that’s all beside the point: I’m sure the idea was that The Amazing Banana-Man would misread pedagogue as pedophile.
QFT!!!
Euphemism. *whisper* “S/He… likes… stuff… a little too much.”
Does not follow. See comment 53.
Marcus Ranum (#26)
Hey, why not? Some nut in Japan married a video game character.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/16/japan.virtual.wedding/index.html
An Agogô is a type of bell, apparently “used in the ceremonial music of religions in Yorubaland” and also “used for congregation or heralding the coming of a dignitary”, so there is something to that…
</snark>Chris Clarke (#32)
The case of the professor at the University of Wisconsin has to be seen in context. The word came up in a class on Middle English literature and Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” (written in the 14th century, pre-slavery and pre-conquistadors) where that word along with many other words was thought to have been printed for the first time.
Did the word come up only once or twice in the context of discussing the story and a student overreacted? Or did the professor say it repeatedly, intentionally baiting the one black student in the class? Different accounts of the story have said both things happened.
Back to the point of Ray Comfort, I have no doubt he would have flipped out at the Smothers Brothers. For those who never heard, a one line joke is reportedly why their show was cancelled in 1968:
http://alturl.com/dxywc
Comfort’s arrogance makes me laugh more than his ignorance. Instead of opening up a dictionary and checking what the word meant, he ignorantly assumed a definition. It was an exchange on facebook, not face to face, so he could have hid is ignorance from the world, getting his Webster’s out without being seen. It’s what I do when I encounter a new word, and I’m sure most reading this do.
Instead, Comfort chose to display his ignorance for the world to see and laugh it. It seems the less educated someone is, the less likely that person is to fact check. But we are dealing with one of the fervently religious, so that shouldn’t surprise. (I doubt Comfort knows what “fervent” means either; he probably thinks it has something to do with the flu or infections.)
@ #43
That the term ‘black hole’ is offensive in other languages should be off no concern when speaking English.
The advantage of black hole over hypermass is that it doesn’t require a footnote.
@ #50
Modern Dutch in official use seems to prefer pedosexual.
The remark about pediatrician is real. A couple of years ago in a British community there was a pedophilia scandal. Someone defaced and maybe tried to burn the house of a doctor that had a “pediatrician” sign outside.
Not only was Reagan a known heterosexual, but it was an open secret that both of his wives were thespians.
The stupid! It burnsssss uss!
Leonie talks about his butchering of English:
Xe got piled on, and did really well from the glance I took. Loved this:
Godbot:
Leonie:
Wouldn’t you think that having studied the Bible he would have run across the Greek “-phile”? Does he actually not know that the Theophilus in the Book of Acts had a name that could be construed as meaning “One Who Loves God”?
I suppose Comfort would think it a compliment to be called bibulous. He does not come across as very bright or well-read.