"Banana Man" Ray Comfort Now Wants to Convince You God Designed Oranges

[trotsky]

https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/09/23/banana-man-ray-comfort-now-wants-to-convince-you-god-designed-oranges/

In a new video, Comfort explains why God must have designed an orange:

Have you ever thought about the fact that oranges, like bananas, have been made with a non-slip surface, just the right size and shape to fit the human hand? How each one is packaged [unintelligible] take anywhere, orange drink filled with natural sugars, vitamins minerals, and enzymes?

Of course you haven’t. Not if you’re atheist. You probably don’t even know there’s a right way to open it, so you can pick up the mouth-sized, mouth-shaped pieces — all coming to you courtesy of the Maker.

Needless to say, oranges have an extensive evolutionary history, and not all of them taste delicious. If this was an attempt to draw attention away from the banana, it didn’t work. Comfort should at least have the good sense of other Creationists to focus on an eyeball — something far more complex — instead of settling for (literally) low-hanging fruit.

You'd think he would have been embarrassed enough by his banana claims to avoid humiliating himself with another fruit failure, but then again, I've interacted with plenty of theists who seem to have no sense of shame.

[DetlefK]

1. I know there's a breed of oranges in Spain that looks delicious and tastes absolutely horrible.

In southern Spain there's a breed of oranges where the trees are exclusively intended for decorative gardening. The trees look great, the oranges look great, but when you take a bite, the flesh of the orange is so bitter you can barely swallow it.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. I've often wondered why that is done...

The fruit will rot and be just a useless mess to be cleaned up.

If you're going to go to the trouble to come up with a designer crop, at least make it edible.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Oranges and bananas are understandable to their flocks. Science confuses them...

Take bets on when this guy explains the design of a vagina.

[MineralMan]

4. The oranges we enjoy today are the product of human

selective breeding of citrus for generations. Ray Comfort doesn't know what he's talking about.

[trotsky]

6. "Ray Comfort doesn't know what he's talking about."

To be fair, that's always been true.

[MineralMan]

8. Yes, of course.

The Bitter Orange, or Seville Orange, is the closest to the original citrus fruit. It's inedible, unless it is cooked with sugar to become marmalade. Over centuries, various genetic varieties have shown up through random genetic changes. Some of those were more palatable without processing. So, humans planted or grafted those improvements and raised them.

Today, we have a whole range of citrus varieties, most of which were the result of Unpredictable genetic changes that were noticed and cultivated. The Navel Orange, for example, was a mutation. Every navel orange grown today, seedless and easy to peel, came from that single sport mutation, which has been grafted and cloned by humans to produce our favorite eating orange.

Humans created the orange we know today, not some invisible deity.

The Seville Orange is often used as a root stock for grafting, since it is very, very hardy and disease resistant. But, other than marmalade, it has no other uses as a fruit.

[trotsky]

9. I did not know marmalade was made from Seville oranges. Neat.

Much like the Cavendish banana we know and love, an infertile freak that cannot be propagated except via grafting, every single plant a clone of the very first one, and threatened by a fungus that could destroy commercial production capability, like it did for the Gros Michel decades ago.

That's why it's particularly stupid of Comfort, having been widely mocked for his banana claims (and having to retract them), not to have done some basic research on the orange before mouthing similar nonsense.

Oh well, "lying for the lord" has a long and storied history.

[MineralMan]

11. There are a couple of trees in my parents' orange grove

that send up suckers from the roots of the original rootstock. If not cut out, those rootstock branches sometimes produce fruit, which is bitter, like a Seville Orange. My mother has made marmalade from that fruit a couple of times. There's also a bitter lemon fruit that comes up from another tree as root stalk suckers. Oddly, it makes very good lemonade when diluted and with enough sugar. the bitter lemon has a very thick rind and is about the size of a Valencia orange, the orange variety that is used for most orange juice. The bitter lemon rootstock is also used for grafting purposes.

Of course, there is a constant effort to remove such rootstock sucker branches.

They also grow avocados, and there is a wonderful tree in the orchard that is completely based on the orginal rootstalk. The avocados it produces are twice as large as the Haas variety grown for sale, and has a long neck. It's delicious, but has zero market value, since nobody wants an odd-looking avocado. It's my parents' Guacamole avocado tree.

[rurallib]

5. Was the orange designed by gawd to fit the human hand

or was the human hand designed by gawd to hold an orange?

What is the answer?

Or is this all the work of Lord Satan to confuse us?

[packman]

7. Wonder what this guy thinks about in the dark?

Fruit - What about the plum that turns into a prune, or the grape that morphs into a raisin - WHY, WHY---- it must be the work of Gawd Ol Mightie.

[trotsky]

10. Truly a miracle that the Creator made chicken parts in the shape of nuggets.

They are perfectly sized for dipping. Checkmate, atheists!!!

[Cartoonist]

12. So who created watermelons?

I need both hands just to pick one up.

And what's up with walnuts? If God designed these then he needs to go back to packaging school.

[trotsky]

13. And pineapples and cashews and pufferfish and...

why it's almost like it's a free-for-all out there in nature and there isn't a kind, loving creator at all! WTF?!?

[Cartoonist]

14. Ray Comfort, explained

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212493237

[trotsky]

16. Carlin did it pretty well too.

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

― George Carlin

[brooklynite]

15. And who doesn't like an orange-banana smoothie?

[Voltaire2]

17. Orange you glad I didn't say banana?