Debunking the Atheist's Nightmare

If you haven't seen "The Atheist's Nightmare," it's a short video where Ron Comfort and former TV star Kirk Cameron use a banana to prove the existence of God. It's that ridiculous, but I'm posting it here since no one I know would be persuaded by this anyway. Enjoy:

The audience for this video is clearly not atheists, skeptics or even someone who might head over to Wikipedia to read the bananas article (full of interesting facts that contradict every point in the Comfort-Cameron argument).

This video is for Christians who want to believe that atheists are fools.

But what got me interested in "The Atheist's Nightmare" was the active community on YouTube debunking this and other Kirk Cameron videos. Here's one example:

And in this video PotheadPundit fisks Cameron's appearance on the O'Reilly Factor:

I'm reminded a bit of talk.origins, the UseNet group that generated a vast amount of discussion on creationism back when UseNet was the place for conversation. The TalkOrigins archive organized much of this material into an encyclopedia of arguments against Creationism (e.g. the Index to Creationist Claims).

The archive, FAQ and jargon file were essential because the same arguments kept coming up again and again as new people joined in the talk.origins discussion. You'll find extensive refutations (with sources) on intelligent design, the watchmaker argument, transitional fossil records--Kirk Cameron invokes all of these in the O'Reilly Factor interview.

Even though this is the same conversation we were having 15 years ago on UseNet, it's interesting to watch how people adapt to new tools like iMovie and YouTube. I love the exhaustive and annotated TalkOrigins archives. But the YouTube videos make the same point in a funny and irreverent way--and that kind of suits an argument based on a banana.