the Way of the Master Ministry more less
Origins and theology
Comfort believes that evangelisation is the main reason that the Christian Church exists and that many of the evangelistic methods used by the church over the last century have produced more false conversions to Christianity than true ones. The key component Comfort uses is the "Moral Law of God" (the Ten Commandments) to speak about evidence of sin in the lives of his listeners before presenting the gospel of Christ to them. (See Biblical Evangelism for more details.) His realization of this method led to him in the mid-1980s to formulate two sermons entitled "Hell's Best Kept Secret" and "True and False Conversions." Comfort has no theological degree and has had no formal training.
Comfort currently continues as a speaker at many churches and evangelism seminars, including Worldview Weekend events. Comfort also preaches most Saturday afternoons at Huntington Beach, California. As well as co-hosting the former The Way of the Master Radio, he has been, together with former "Growing Pains" star Kirk Cameron, the co-host of The Way of the Master Television Show, since December 2003. The show has aired three seasons. Comfort recently became the "Creationism Examiner" on The Examiner.
Comfort and Cameron were also involved in rewriting some key scenes in the film, Tribulation Force, which co-starred Cameron.
Interviews and debates
Rational Response Squad
Comfort has debated atheists, on numerous occasions. On April 13, 2001 (Good Friday), he appeared at the 27th National Convention of American Atheists in Orlando, Florida, where he debated Ron Barrier, the National Spokesperson for American Atheists. Comfort later stated of the event that "[t]hey laughed at my humor, and although there was unified mockery at some of the things that I said, I was able to go through the Ten Commandments, the fact of Judgment Day, the reality of Hell, the Cross, and the necessity of repentance, and no one stopped me."
On May 5, 2007, Comfort and Cameron participated in a televised debate with atheists Brian Sapient and his colleague, Kelly O'Connor, of the Rational Response Squad, at Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan. At issue was the existence of God, which Comfort stated he could prove scientifically, using at least one argument without relying on faith or the Bible. Nightline correspondent Martin Bashir served as moderator at the event. Highlights included Cameron and Comfort repeatedly referencing the Ten Commandments and denouncing the theory of evolution; conversely, the RRS provided counterarguments in favor of atheism.
Dawkins debate offer
February 2009, Comfort challenged biological theorist and author Richard Dawkins, who argued against the existence of God in his 2006 book, The God Delusion, to a debate, offering to donate $10,000 to him, or any children's charity he names. He said, "(Antony) Flew said that he simply followed the evidence. I would like to see Richard Dawkins follow his example." Comfort ended, "I would be delighted (and honored) if Mr. Dawkins has the courage to debate me, but I'm not holding my breath." Dawkins, who has a general policy not to debate with creationists, stated that he was unaware of having any communication with Comfort, and that $10,000 was not a worthwhile inducement to travel to the U.S. to debate Comfort. However, he added that he would do it if it could be filmed by Josh Timonen for Dawkins' website, distributed as a DVD "if Josh Timonen thinks it is funny enough," and if $100,000 is donated to his foundation. Comfort then raised the offer to $20,000, upon which Dawkins, still only in contact with the journalist, replied that while this was closer to the usual amount, he was not "in this for the money", but presupposed the amount to make it unavailable to creationists and to actually use it against them.
Comfort countered this with a new offer, although to date there are no indications that he has communicated it to Dawkins or that Dawkins has been made aware of it. Comfort proposed that Dawkins go onto a BBC Radio studio in Cambridge and for 30 minutes explain why God does not exist, remarking, "He doesn't even have to acknowledge that I exist."
Comfort also stated that "[Dawkins] is afraid, and he thinks he's safe because I won't pay that much money for an hour of his time;" however, in the same letter, Comfort also stated that he had raised his offer to $40,000 per hour.
Tracts and Books more less
According to Comfort, he has designed dozens of gospel tracts since the 1970s, leading to the tract ministry of Living Waters currently selling millions of tracts each year.Comfort has also authored a number of books, including his most popular book The Way of The Master, God Doesn't Believe in Atheists, How to Know God Exists and Evolution: the Fairy Tale for Grownups. His 2009 book, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think, is Comfort's first book published by WND Books, Comfort went on a promotional tour to promote the book, which Amazon.com ranked No. 1 in both atheism and apologetics categories under religion, and No. 2 in spirituality and No. 6 in Christianity when it debuted in February 2009. Comfort later asserted "some sort of atheist conspiracy on Amazon" of one-star reviews to be negatively affecting his sales. On September 22, 2009, Comfort released his latest book, Nothing Created Everything, which claims atheists "believe — that nothing created everything, which is a scientific impossibility — and in so doing expose[s] the common error that atheists are committed to logical thinking."
In November 2009, Comfort released a creationist-edited version of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, with a lengthy foreword including his evangelical musings, which include creationist arguments. It has been alleged that most of Comfort's brief section in the foreword on Darwin's life was plagiarized from a short text by Dr. Stan Guffey, a biologist at the University of Tennessee, and Guffey is contemplating legal action. The book was given away for free at a number of schools around the United States.
According to Comfort's website, "Nothing has been removed from Darwin's original work." Anthropologist and executive director of the National Center for Science Education, Dr. Eugenie C. Scott, reviewed the book and noted that Comfort deleted four chapters by Darwin that described the evidence for evolution. She wrote that Comfort's foreword is "a hopeless mess of long-ago-refuted creationist arguments, teeming with misinformation about the science of evolution, populated by legions of strawmen, and exhibiting what can be charitably described as muddled thinking."
Discussing the portions of Darwin's book that Comfort deleted, Scott stated, "To take a simple example, why do all land vertebrates (amphibians, mammals, and reptiles and birds) have four limbs? Not because four limbs are necessarily a superior design for land locomotion: insects have six, arachnids have eight, and millipedes have, well, lots. It's because all land vertebrates descended with modification from a four-legged ('tetrapod') ancestor." On his website, Comfort said that the four chapters were chosen at random to be omitted in order to make the book small enough to be affordable as a giveaway, with the absent chapters available for download, but that the missing chapters were included in the second edition, which had a smaller text size that made printing the entire book as a giveaway affordable. The second edition still lacks Darwin's preface and glossary of terms. The National Center for Science Education arranged a campaign at colleges across the U.S. to distribute an analysis of the Comfort introduction, a one page flier and "the NCSE Safety Bookmark (for use with Comfort's edition of Origin)" in the shape of a banana, a reference to Comfort's use of a banana in one of his arguments for the existence of God.
