It must be Ray Comfort Day on twitter or something, because he has his followers whipped up into a fine froth. Among the recent noisemakers was someone called Republican Mom (I already dislike her) who said this to me:
The atheist scientists are richer than Ray is silly little boy! Big business evolution is! $$
Then I did nothing, but someone else looked it up. In case you’re curious, here’s Ray Comfort’s worth in 2008. I’d have to say he’s doing quite a bit better financially than I am.
I can see the business card now:
Professor Silly Little Boy
Big Business Evolution, Inc.
This is small potatoes compared to big wig televangelists like Pat Robertson or Glenn Beck.
I’ve never understood the whole scientist conspiracy trope. Do people think scientists make a name for themselves by agreeing with everything that’s already been explained? Is Einstein famous for not challenging Newtonian gravitational theories?
I’m sure it would just make me very very sad.
No matter how much money he has he still has to cope with that head full of mush.
OMG U CONVICTED HER IN THE COURT OF YOUR MIIIIND
Talk like Yoda she does?
I wish I could show her my bills if she thinks we’re rich. :(
Rey, I just cooked you up a nice internet. With chocolate chips.
I find the prevalence of the myth of rich scientists and other acadmics fascinating. The rich ones are all in the college of business or in occasionally in engineering and materials science. There’s the occasional rich chemist who’s invented some patented product, but they’re no more common than best selling authors in other fields, I expect. Even the best paid professors aren’t exactly rich from their salary (for various values of “rich”), but rather form outside contracts with private businesses. And the average professor – well, my family would be in serious financial trouble with our mortgage on a modest home in a lower property value part of down and two kids if we had to live on that salary alone. Yes, academics often have great health coverage. Yes, academics make more than a lot of people. But a lot of people don’t make what they should, and you can find unionized blue collar workers making more than most academics, with similar benefits, with ease. And don’t even get me started on adjuncts and grad students.
@carlie #7
Don’t you have access to the secret evolutionist shared bank account? Ask about it at the next Conspiracy to Destroy God meeting. The name on the account is “allhaildarwin” and the PIN is 666.
@9 – Although I’m sure there are exceptions, the only rich professors I ever knew were also in the college of business, but they all got rich working in industry first. Being a professor was more of a retirement job to keep them busy.
Thanks, Carlie, I’m terribly hungry right now.
@9:
I know a number of geology professors who are very well paid. This is necessary to ensure that they don’t defect to high-level consulting jobs with the oil and mining industries. But you’re quite right that the engineers and business types are the ones who make the most money (around here, it’s the profs in CS at Stanford and Cal who come up with ideas that Silicon Valley licenses for very large sums).
(Stealing Colbert’s shtick) The market has spoken! As a good republican mother, she has to accept it. If evolution is big business, it must be not only right, but good too.
No.
If Darwin said it, it must be true.
Loqi – I knew they’d been holding out! I need to find a different chapter to attend.
Maybe she means scientists are “rich in spirit”. Yeah. that’s it.
Evolution: Making people rich for 3.5 billion years.
She “home schools.” I weep for the future.
Fear not, PZ. The royalties from your book will undoubtedly help you close the gap. (My copy arrived yesterday!)
Now, now, WTF Blues, try to assume the best in people. Optimism irritates more than spite, after all.
Maybe she has a disabled child and no school nearby would be able to take them on? I know, the whole “republican” thing may throw off an aire of pungent ignorance, but we can’t be attacking people without evidence! Until we see through very specific tests that she has an IQ a standard deviation below average and is registered as a republican and not only calls herself one, we aren’t allowed to judge her without evidence! Be skeptical!
(This parody of more serious topic derailments on every other thread here is brought to you by Old At Heart.)
Sweet FSM!
Those are numbers of 7 years ago. FSM only knows how much more he’s been bilking of the sheeple since. And their 13-in-a-dozen Liars Inc breached the 1 million barrier within a year? Damn … why do I have a conscience again?
Yeah … the athiest conspiruhcie evilutionistas make so much more than that. That’s why I was forced to leave academia and work as a desk-jockey to be able to pay the bills. Solid gold humvees don’t come cheap after all.
Here’s a YouTube video analysing Ray’s accounts from 2011:
The Pay of the Master
“Humble Ray versus the evil rich scientists” makes for a better story to the true believers than the truth. Just as they only like science when it agrees with their nonsense they only like rich people when they’re their rich people. I’m sure lots of Ray’s fans are Prosperity Gospel fans, except of course that being rich isn’t proof you’re right with the Lord unless you mouth the right crap. If you don’t you’re being rewarded by Satan.
Thanks for that procrastinatorordinaire.
Not a surprising jump compared with 2008 then (looks like there’s some kind of upper limit on the amount of money you can bamboozle people out of in a year). But still fucking waaaaay too much for those cheating numbskulls to get for doing diddly-squat.
Meanwhile, I see how little my mother (a retired primary school teacher) gets for her pension and something inside just burns white-hot….
@2 Thank you, my thoughts exactly.
@Alex, It’s is his business, so he can withdraw as much money as he needs as a salary. Note that he has his wife, both of his sons, and his son-in-law on the payroll also. He is not short of money by any stretch of the imagination.
from the link I see only the surface of what is his compensation.
It is made to sound like he is an employee when he is for all intents and purposes the “company” so what does the company own that he is the sole user of . Who is Camrolio Productions Inc could it also be him and or family?
He makes enough money to higher the better tax lawyers and accountants. We know how much he respects the truth so nothing would surprise me.
uncle frogy
I’m not a fan of Comfort at all, but that guy made a few wrong assumptions about Bellflower. It’s not a very nice neighborhood at all. If Comfort’s house is worth $250,000, then it’s $110,000 less than the median home price in LA county. For reference, the median price in Compton is $205,000, and in Watts it’s $222,000. So he lives in an area that is slightly better than the worst parts of LA county. As to what he’s doing with the money he’s getting, I don’t know.
Just for the record, I grew up in Long Beach, and my personal experience of Bellflower matches.
Dayum, I guess there is no point in evolving then. All my offspring from now on will be clones, end of story.
Alas, I lived in sunny Bellflower, CA for a couple of years. Lovely little generic pit of a typical lower-middle-income SE LA area suburb, almost famous for its shocking banality. Until an earthquake in October of 1987 shifted the house I was renting slightly askew of its foundation. I called a city building inspector to look at the house shortly after the quake. He revealed that the entire upstairs had been an afterthought probably glued on just after WW1. He said the house might stay up until the next quake. He had no authority to condemn it(!). I called my landlord, who reacted to the news only by scolding me for calling the inspector. I moved.
F @18
Fixed it for you.
(Also frogs and trees and viruses and beetles and seagulls and sponges and tardigrades and everything else, too.)
I thought it was just Big Pharma, Monsanto and Big Gubmint that paid scientists bajillions to do research on obvious hoaxes and nefarious plots and live the good life. Who is paying the biologists and palaeontologists to promote and “study” evilution? If I contact the right folks, will my paper be accepted quicker for publication? Because this peer review stuff is hard, I tell you!
Camrolio is a corporation registered in California. The registered agent is Kirk Cameron and they own Kirk’s website. I was hoping to find something beyond the generics, but no luck. However the very fact that it’s a corporation instead a partnership or just a “doing business as” for Kirk implies a fair amount of money and resources and investors. Kirk must be rich from the Growing Pains years and investing in his own corporation sounds like a smart way to use his money.
The corporation also has a charity which runs a camp for disabled kids. The donations from the corporation reduce their tax load and the charity doesn’t pay tax. There’s more info on the charity as they are required to file publicly, and it appears to be much less sleazy than Living Waters. So plus one to Kirk for being a smart businessperson and plus one for the charity.