Destinations: Huntington Beach w/Ray Comfort

18 CommentsAA- EVANGELISM SCHEDULE

On 9/11 we will be sharing the Gospel along with Ray Comfort in Huntington Beach. Meet at Hope Chapel at noon to carpool. We will be leaving at 12:15, so arrive promptly.

Below, see an example of what happens when Ray tries to reason with an unbeliever (an atheist?) using the Intelligence Test. Ray is friendly, direct, gracious and humorous when dealing with this young man, eventually causing him to doubt what he believes, er, doesn’t believe.

Next evangelism training classes:

One Day class: Saturday, September 25,
9am-5pm @ Hope Chapel Del Rey in Westchester

6 Week class: Thursdays, starting September 30
at 7pm for six weeks.

More info: Email me at [email protected]

Comments (18)

  1. Nohm

    Reply

    Ray must have well-oiled wheels on the bottom of his goalposts, considering how quickly he’s able to move them.

    Steve, I don’t see where the non-believer expresses doubt. He seems pretty convinced that Ray is only speaking on his (Ray’s) beliefs.

    Where did you see the kid in white express doubt?

    Lastly, Ray might be all those things that you describe him as, but he’s also ignorant as all get-out when it comes to scientific explanations and probability calculations.

    Oh, and I’m pretty sure that the claim of “Bible is the best-sold book” is an urban legend. Unless you have actual evidence to support such a claim, which would… oh, who are we kidding, you’re not about evidence.

  2. Steve Sanchez

    Reply

    Nohm, I’d love you check out what the best selling book is. Maybe it’s something else, maybe not. I’m betting that it is because it is God’s desire that all would come to him.

    Atheist doubts: TIMES ON THE VIDEO: 3:12, 3:16,4:18-4:26.

    C’mon, you were watching the news or sipping your coffee while watching this, huh? 🙂

  3. Steve Sanchez

    Reply

    According to this, it’s the Bible at 6 billion copies. Mao is next at 900,000,000.

    Even liberal Wikipedia acknowledges this FACT! Hey! Evidence! I did it!!!

    No Dawkins book in any top ten. Hmmmmm……

    In fact, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “The Poky Little Puppy” are way up there, too.

    Still no Darwin or Dawkins….

  4. Nohm

    Reply

    Your first source is highly questionable.

    The second source might be a bit better, but it appears that you skipped the disclaimer: ““Best-selling” refers to the estimated number of copies sold of each book, rather than the number of books printed or currently owned. Comics and textbooks are not included in this list.” (Emphasis mine)

    So, in short, no one knows what the actual best-selling book of all time is. My point of view on this is because I don’t believe that most Bibles were *purchased*; they were *given*. Most published book? Sure, I’ll agree with that. But best-selling? Until I see numbers, I have a hard time believing it.

    As another reason why I have a hard time believing it, look at the numbers that wikipedia gives as estimates: 2.5 billion or over 6 billion. That is one big huge variance there. If you asked me to estimate how many people I work with, and I answered “100 or over 250”, wouldn’t that be just a slight bit strange?

    Also, why mention Dawkins or Darwin? I would never consider that they would be best-selling of all time… not even close. What is your deal with Dawkins? Can you understand that not all (if even *most*) non-believers are impressed with his writing? There *is* a reason we call ourselves “freethinkers”, you know.

    Seriously, what the heck is up with: “No Dawkins book in any top ten. Hmmmmm……“??

    No duh, Steve! Who in the world would expect that any of his books would be? Are you going to express amazement that Hitchens and Harris aren’t in the top 100 either? Because that? Would be silliness.

    Lastly, you claimed: “Even liberal Wikipedia acknowledges this FACT!”

    1. Unless “reality has a liberal bias”, wikipedia is not liberal, unless you can show otherwise.
    2. It’s not a fact, as I showed by way of their significant disclaimer.

    Your ability to make unfounded claims is ever a source of… well, “amusement” isn’t the word… maybe “shock”? “Dismay”? Something like that.

  5. Nohm

    Reply

    “Nohm, I’d love you check out what the best selling book is. Maybe it’s something else, maybe not.”

    Yeah, because I’m suuuure you would be okay with the latter. 😉

    The numbers don’t exist to know. As I showed above, all we have are “estimates”. I make estimates all the time at work. Call me unimpressed.

    “I’m betting that it is because it is God’s desire that all would come to him.”

    Yet it is still the FACT that the vast majority of humans (even if you’re a YEC) who have lived and died were not Christians. Most people who currently live on the Earth are not Christians. A third of the people living today are Muslims. So maybe it’s Allah who has a desire that all would come to Him, right?

    “Atheists doubts: 3:12, 3:16,4:18-4:26.”

    You forgot to list which book of the Bible you’re referencing. Psalms? Genesis? Revelation? Matthew? What?

    And I’m shocked, SHOCKED I say, that the Bible would have comments on the doubts of non-believers. It’s just like the Qur’an, surprise surprise!

    Ancient holy books say that people who don’t believe them are wrong! Amazing!!

    “C’mon, you were watching the news or sipping your coffee while watching this, huh?”

    Nope, just in between projects. I don’t drink coffee (never liked the stuff) and I don’t watch the news often (except for NFL news on ESPN… it’s getting close to time for me to wake up early on Sundays!).

  6. perdita

    Reply

    Does the 2.5 to 6 billion include the 1.6 billion the Gideons claim they’ve given out? I have to admit, most books don’t have the fan-base the Bible has. 😉

    Actually, the New Yorker had an interesting article about Bible publishing a few years back.

    “The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book. The amount spent annually on Bibles has been put at more than half a billion dollars.”
    http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/18/061218fa_fact1,

    “…eventually causing him to doubt what he believes, er, doesn’t believe.”

    Steve, I think you’re seeing what you want to see in that exchange. 3:12 and 3:16 is qualified by 3:18 – 3:24. 4:18 – 4:26 appears to be more of the same.

  7. vintango

    Reply

    Ray’s a pretty good showman, he’s gotten plenty of practice with the whole preaching thing, but really I don’t think that guy’s going to really change his ways, he represents lot of people in this country that are either rationalists, non-religious, or follow a different religion. I mean it would have been more interesting if the dude had been a devote Muslim, Jew, or even a Scientologist. Then it might have been a more interesting conversation.

  9. Garrett

    Reply

    The Naked Ape is on there, Steve. It’s a book dealing with evolution.

    Hawking is also among the high-sellers.

  10. waynedawg

    Reply

    “My point of view on this is because I don’t believe that most Bibles were *purchased*; they were *given*. ”

    Do you think the publishers of Bibles give them away?

    The publisher(s) of Bibles do not give away Bibles; they sell to those who give them away.

    I have given away hundreds of Bibles myself…I bought everyone one of them.

    Gideons don’t get free Bibles to give away….those Bibles are bought and paid for to give away for free.

  11. Nohm

    Reply

    Okay, now that I understand that those aren’t chapter & verse numbers, and that they’re time spots in the video, I don’t know how you’re able to claim that those are indications of doubt.

    It seems pretty obvious to me that he’s just agreeing with Ray so that Ray can continue.

    Look, if you asked me if I’m going to Heaven or Hell based on your belief system, of course I’m going to say “Hell”. That doesn’t mean that I suddenly think it’s true.

    Steve, were you serious about thinking that those were expressions of doubt? The guy’s vocal inflections and body language say otherwise.

  12. Melissa

    Reply

    Wow. Evolutionists estimate wild numbers all the time, but we’re not allowed? How much deviation has there been in their opinion of the age of the earth since they started postulating that theory? (Not that I think estimating Bibles sold is a wild number, because I don’t.)

  13. Nohm

    Reply

    Melissa wrote: “Evolutionists estimate wild numbers all the time, but we’re not allowed?”

    Straw-man much? Who said that you weren’t allowed to estimate numbers? When you can show the… wait for it… method that you use in the estimations, like these “evolutionists” (hah!) do, then we can take the estimations seriously.

    Melissa wrote: “How much deviation has there been in their opinion of the age of the earth since they started postulating that theory?”

    Since there is no such thing as “their opinion” (because that would include people LONG before the scientific method), your question doesn’t make much sense. But let’s just say that there’s a lot of deviation… tons of it.

    So… what’s your point? How are the two situations similar? Is there *currently* a large deviation in the low and high numbers that cosmologists give? No? So then WHAT’S YOUR POINT?

    Lastly, and this REALLY doesn’t help you at all, what does evolution have to do with cosmology?? Why are you conflating two separate areas of scientific inquiry?

    (Yeah, I think I know the answer there.)

  14. Nohm

    Reply

    Wayne,

    I would then ask, who publishes all of those Bibles that the Gideon’s buy?

    But ultimately, this is all irrelevant, which is where my confusion comes from when people, such as Ray, bring it up.

    Who cares what book is the most purchased of all time? What relevance does that have? If the Qur’an was the most purchased of all time, would that mean anything to anyone here? Because it wouldn’t mean anything to me. It says absolutely nothing about the veracity of the book. It’s ultimately an argument from numbers, which is a fallacy.

    For example, say I set up a computer program which sells a book that I wrote to a friend of mine for $1, and then sells it back to me for $1, then back to him, then back to me, and so on… automated to do this 7 billion times.

    That would then make that book of mine the “best-selling book of all time”… which would mean… what?

    So, I guess my question really is, why would Ray bring this up in the first place?

  15. Steve Sanchez

    Reply

    Bottom line: Whether it’s 2 billion Bibles sold or 6 billion, the Bible is the best selling book of all time.

    C’mon, Nohm, you’ve seen the evidence!

  16. perdita

    Reply

    Do you think the publishers of Bibles give them away?

    Gideons publish, don’t they? They claim to have given out 1.6 billion of those babies. (Where did I read that before?)

  17. Nohm

    Reply

    Bottom line: Even if I was to agree with you that it’s the best selling book of all time, why would a Christian mention it? What relevance does that have to anything, except for book sales comparisons?

  18. Garrett

    Reply

    It’s a common tactic for interested and wealthy parties to buy a many copies of a book and give them away. This inflates sales numbers and gives the false impression of popularity. In reality, many people have the book without ever fully reading, and others have read it simply because it’s free entertainment.

    This is especially true when concerning persuasive books, such as those concerning politics and religion. Which is why the Bible numbers are so dubious: a few people buy many copies and hand them out. The Bible isn’t necessarily popular: a group of people just want it to appear as such.

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