Thursday, February 23, 2006

The Losers Club

I see that Debunking Christianity has become a dumping ground for whiners and losers. It’s the virtual equivalent of the afternoon talk show in which a bunch of misfits sit around blaming on all their personal failings on what horrible parents they had. Or the cheatin’ boyfriend. Or the cheatin’ girlfriend.

Life is a winnowing process. Some people make a strong start, but stumble before the finish-line while others begin badly, but finish strong.

My mother is a P.K. She was the youngest of nine kids, growing up in the Great Depression.

I’m afraid that social conditioning would be hard put to explain the outcome.

Of the girls, Grace was pious from start to finish.

My mother drifted from the church for a time before returning to the faith.

Ruth is religious without being especially pious.

Vera died at the age of 3. Her dying words were: “Papa, kiss me, I’m going to Jesus.” She died a moment later.

Of the boys, Art was the most devout.

The rest were worldly to one degree or another.

Fred was a closet apostate who taught NT Greek at Anderson University.

If I were to talk about my cousins and my second cousins, the only pattern would be the same lack of a pattern.

There was a time, during in the Middle Ages, when you could be a Christian by default. When Christianity was the only wheel in town. When there was no dissenting voice.

But that age of innocence is long gone. Today, the Christian faith is a tested faith—just as it was before Constantine.

What objections have we not already heard? Infidelity has thrown everything it’s got at the Christian faith: Freud, Frazer, Bultmann, Darwin, Hume, Kant, Ayer, and Julius Wellhausen—not to mention William Rowe’s Hallmark Channel three-hanky about poor little Bambi perishing in the big bad forest fire.

It’s both odd and amusing to read the deconversion stories over at Debunking Christianity. You’d think they were Amish or something. Like something out of Shyamalan’s The Village. Had a fishbowl for a TV set. Read nothing but Little House on the Prairie growing up.

And then, when they leave the farm and see a horseless carriage for the first time in their adult lives, future shock sets in. For the very first time they discover that not everyone on the planet is Christian. Oh, the trauma! Oh, the betrayal! Oh, the disillusionment!

If only the village elders had warned us! If only we had known that there’s a whole other world out there! A world with indoor plumbing and electric lighting.

I haven’t had this much fun watching a bunch of country bumpkins since…well...it’s like The Beverley Hillbillies, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Li’l Abner all rolled into one.

They give a whole new meaning to the word “village atheist.”

Surely this isn't a real secular website. It's a spoof, right?

5 comments:

  1. For those of us who are up on our Stephen King, calling DC the Loser's Club kind of defeats the purpose.

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  2. In case anybody else was wondering an acronym finder says 'P.K.' stands for (highest probability in the context of this post) Pastor's Kid.

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  3. Why judge God, the Word of God, the Faith itself by what Steve Hays (or John Calvin or Dick Cavett) writes? Either you are effectually called by the Word and the Spirit and you ground your faith on the Rock foundation of the Word of God or you're not and you don't.

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  4. John:

    So Oliver is delusional over the fact that you never knew God? So you did know God? So he does exist? Boy, that was easy!

    In any case, I think it is safe to say that coming from both of our perspectives (atheistic and Reformed), you never knew God. So Oliver is not as delusional as you ridiculously assert, now is he?

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  5. what i just cant understand is why ahteists make a "career" out of attacking christianity.Why? Why not instead spend your time and resources actually feeding the hungry, healing the sick and solving palpable social problems?

    Sorry, but the truth hurts. For atehists to actually do this, they would have to get off their rear ends, let go of their keyboards and air ocnditioned dorm rooms, and leave their academic offices for awhile,they would have get off their barstools at the student tavern and actually make real sacrifices in their lives(give up their stash, their beer fund, their hedonism).

    no, far easier to shadowbox against the beleievers in a supposedly non existant God.

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