Ray Comfort – a Christian evangelist well known among non-believers for his silly and stupid arguments – has just committed what I would consider to be scientific sacrilege. He has taken what many consider to be one of the most important books in the history of science, Darwin’s Origin of Species, and ruined it. The result is Comforts’s Origin of Species containing the Gospel and Intelligent Design. Here is the description of this blashemous book from his website:

This special 280-page edition not only contains an abridged Origin of Species but also has a 50-page Introduction that reveals the dangerous fruit of evolution, Hitler’s undeniable connections to the theory, Darwin’s racism, and his distain for women. It counters the claim that creationists are “anti-science” by citing numerous scientists who believed that God created the universe—scientists such as Einstein, Newton, Copernicus, Bacon, Faraday, Pasteur, and Kepler. It has many original graphics and (as it says on the back cover) is designed for use in schools, colleges, and prestigious learning institutions. The back cover lists the above information as well as saying the book contains “Information on Intelligent Design vs Evolution.” We want to get one million copies into the hands of students and professors in colleges and universities throughout the U.S. Let’s see if they try to ban Darwin’s Origin of Species. That would be interesting.

As PZ Myers recently stated, “It’s like a book with multiple personality disorder — two parts that absolutely hate each other, an intro that is the inane product of one of the most stupid minds of our century, and a science text that is the product of one of the greatest minds of the author’s century.”

This is in some sense like the forward that was published with Copernicus’s revolutionary book that assured the reader that Copernicus’s heliocentric solar system does not have to be believed in any physical sense (the forward was written by the Protestant theologian Andreas Osiander without Copernicus’s knowledge). At least Osiander didn’t abridge or cut out portions of the text, however. One can only imagine the excising that Comfort did.

Laughably, Comfort actually expects this edition to be used by “prestigious learning institutions.” But when these so-called presitgious insittutions “ban” Comfort’s edition Comfort believes that he will be having the last laugh. Oh, look! They are banning Darwin’s freaking Origin of Species! No – this is not in any sense Darwin’s Origin of Species. This is Comfort’s Origin of Species – an insult to everything that Darwin and that book stands for.

If you have the stomach and the patience, you can read the entire 50-page introduction here. Comfort pulls from his usual bag of woefully unconvincing tricks. At the end of the introduction he asks that you accept Jesus as your Lord and savior before you die and, of course, before you start reading the first chapter of Darwin’s book. If you actually become a Christian after reading that introduction, then you probably don’t need to read the rest anyway.