In the ongoing battle of words between professor Richard Dawkins and evangelist Ray Comfort, the Oxford University professor has produced a video mocking the spelling ability of the best-selling author of more than 70 books. The war of words is nothing new between the two. Dawkins once called Comfort, creator of 180movie.com, an “idiot” on CNN, for which CNN quickly apologized.
In this video, he mocks Comfort for his spelling of the word “thought” as “thort.” Comfort responded, “Whether the learned professor likes it or not, the English language is evolving and some of us old fossils need to evolve with it. Texting is changing the way we spell. I’m delighted that I was able to catch the wave of social media, a wave it seems Mr. Dawkins missed.”
In reference to the texting generation Comfort said, “Horrific though it may be to a cultured English-speaking professor, words like ‘thought,’ with its superfluous ‘ugh,’ give way to the expediency of words like ‘thort,’ and for the millions who have to learn the complexities of the English language, it’s about time.”
Comfort added that this was just another example of Dawkins mocking something he doesn’t understand: “But in his attempt at mockery, he has not only made himself look old-fashioned, but he has promoted 180 throughout the atheist world. The ‘pope’ of atheism waved my movie from his balcony. You can’t buy such publicity. I’m grateful that he’s helping others around the world to watch the video and hear the gospel.”
Comfort’s 33-minute award-winning movie went viral and received over 1 million views within 22 days of being placed on YouTube. When a family said that they would be seeing Richard Dawkins, they requested that Comfort write a personal note on the cover of a DVD version, and they would get it into his hands.
