Damn It, Ray!

So I've just watched the YouTube rendition of Ray Comfort's ABC debate with a couple atheists. I'll admit I only watched part of it (I got too pissed off to finish the whole thing), but one question struck me pretty quickly: Why are the people we see arguing for Christianity on television always so stupid? I know at least a dozen people who could have done a better job than Mr. Comfort in that debate, and half of them aren't even really Christians. I should mention that I'm not too happy with the atheists either (although I think one of them was at least smarter than Ray), but the burden of proof was not on them, so all they had to do was find out how Ray screwed up... a much easier task.
What really gets me is that I think Ray started out with a good point; the idea that when we see a building, we know there was a builder - when we see a painting, we know there was a painter. And then he does something really stupid. He uses this to say that since we "prove" the existence of a painter from the existence of a painting, we can "prove" the existence of a Creator from the existence of Creation. This is where he pissed me off. The atheist on the other end of the debate made the point that we can call the builder or the painter, while we cannot call the Creator.
Almost a good point, but this doesn't really prove that the builder built this or the painter painted this. Now what Ray could have done is said that it is reasonable to believe that the painter and the builder are not lying to us, and whatever documentation exists is accurate. We therefore take it on faith that the builders and painters we call are not lying to us, and that the documentation was not forged. We cannot prove this; but it is reasonable to believe it. By the same token, you could say that it is reasonable to believe in a Creator. You could say that we take things on faith every day of our lives - why are we so opposed to taking something like the existence of God on faith? But Ray doesn't do that. He continues to pretend that he can prove scientifically the existence of God, when really it is impossible to prove almost anything at all. Scientific proofs are not about what it true anyway, they are about what it is reasonable to assume is true. If people could see this, then they could make much more intelligent arguments.
People like Ray's biggest problem in these debates is the burden of proof; if they would stop thinking of it as proof and start thinking of it as reasonable belief, maybe they'd get somewhere. Or maybe they still couldn't go anywhere with it. I don't know. They might not be smart enough to ever get anywhere. I just wish we could start finding real intellectuals to consider intellectual.