Making the rounds again, I encountered a recent post where a Christian blogger attempts to encapsulate the position of former-believers-turned-Atheists, concluding that it "doesn't make sense".
They write...
I too have been having dialogues with atheists, many claiming to have been saved and now being abandoned by a God who doesn’t exist….yeah I know it doesn’t make sense to me either.
Okay, seriously, what in the heck is so difficult about the concept of changing one's mind??? Someone tell me.
Take the following proclamation: "I used to believe in Santa Claus, now I no longer believe."
Well? Can any grownup keep a straight face and tell me that they are actually stumped by that statement? Is anyone saying to themselves, "Hey, that just doesn't make sense!!"????
I seriously hope not. But just in case, let's back up and start from the beginning:
Once upon a time when I was wee-little child, my parents told me a story about a fat, bearded man in a red suit who went around in a reindeer-powered sleigh, leaving all sorts of wonderful toys for the children who behaved. The children who didn't behave wouldn't get any toys. To convince me that this story was true, one December 24th a long time ago when my brother and I had gone to bed for the night, my parents wrapped toys that they had purchased and stuck them under a tree that my mom had decorated. They also stuffed the two stockings that were hung on the mantel. When my brother and I woke up the next day, we were like, "Wow! This is awesome"[or a reaction very similar]
The "clues" had convinced my brother and me that Santa Claus was in fact real. We believed it with every fiber of our being.
For years, each time December rolled around, this went on. My mom would even get clever and put out cookies and milk for Santa, and lo and behold, when we'd wake up, the cookies and milk would be gone
and trail of cookie crumbs would lead straight to where else? Yes!... the chimney! Wow! I mean, what else could it be, right?
Wrong. See, these are the signs that had me, and millions more children too young to think for themselves, fooled into believing that Santa really existed and that he watches our every move.
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Fast foreword into adulthood and we recognize that the sane and intelligent among us know that Santa has no referent in reality. Santa doesn't exist. We know this. Being the gullible children that we were, we had been duped.
But who, here, would take serious the person who said, "Well, I've been having some dialogues with people, many claiming to have received toys in their stockings, but who now claim that they've been overlooked by a Santa that they no longer believe exists. Yeah, I know, it doesn't make sense to me, either"
Okay, let's get real, can we? Would you not think that the person who utters such things was slightly off his or her rocker?
It's a simple concept: There was once a time that we believed that Santa existed, and now we no longer do. We changed our minds on the proposition that Santa exists, similar to how former believers in "God" changed their minds on the proposition that "God" exists.
In the same way that I don't believe that Santa "abandoned" me, I don't feel that God "abandoned" me, albeit, at the time that I still believed that there was a "God" actually there, yes, I felt "abandoned".
Well, those feelings were misguided and built upon incomplete information. The "feelings" were real, yes; the basis of those "feelings" was not real.
Why don't Christians "get" this? By their "logic", an ex-wife was never really married, to which I can only say, 'Ho, Ho, Ho!'.
2 comments:
Those nasty, evil, vicious, elf-eating, Jack Frost worshiping, AClausists!!! How could they blaspheme the wondrous and mystical Santa CLAUS?!? Kill them ALL! Melt them like Frosty!
See, the problem here is, they think god is every bit as real as the black, Kenyan-born, Muslim, socialist, usurper, King Obama (tm) in the white house. AS real as that nightmare is to them, god is every bit as "real" ... you know, real-real like Saint Ronald Wilson Reagan - who was, after all, sent by their very real, flesh and blood Super Savior(tm).
Until they are even willing to entertain the thought that god doesn't exist - even if only as an academic exercise (which will never happen because even if they pretend that god does not exist, they fear that their god won't REALIZE that they are only doing it for pretend and might flambé them for all eternity) - there will be no way to get them to envision such logic.
"Until they are even willing to entertain the thought that god doesn't exist"
Which won't happen until/unless they get to the point that they'd rather know what's actually true, Vs what makes them comfortable. I admit that the finality of death is unacceptable in just about every conceivable way. But reality just doesn't care how we feel about it.
"See, the problem here is, they think god is every bit as real as the black, Kenyan-born, Muslim, socialist, usurper, King Obama (tm) in the white house"
Isn't it hilarious(in a pathetic way)? This is clear evidence that people are committed to making sure Obama fails and goes down as the "worst president in History". We've been seeing this sort of commitment a lot lately = /
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