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Honest to goodness, our evangelizing internet atheists really need to get some new material. I am growing quite bored with the same old, same old, talking points. For those who don’t know, boring me is a unforgiveable sin. That is not in the bible by the way, that is declaration from my desktop.
The accusation of the ages that surely must have passed its expiration date by now and spoiled into a revolting liquid mass, goes something like this, “So IB, are you so delusional and indoctrinated that you believe in talking animals?”
Of course not, that would be downright nutty. Surreal. Defying the laws of nature. Cray-cray. Completely flies in the face of reality.
Obviously, like most sane people, I believe in a top-secret cult of hairless apes trying to indoctrinate me through an invisible wi/fi signal using all these strange letters and symbols to convey passive/aggressive rhetoric and hyperbole deliberately designed to influence my behavior.
The devil could not possibly have “made me do it” like Taylor Swift now sings, clearly the fault lies squarely at the feet of my cultian naked ape overlords who sprung up from random nothingness in a happy accident, and now having “evolved,” spend each morning downloading their old, tired talking points so they may send them through the invisible airways to an avatar sitting on the other side of a keyboard across the world somewhere, in the hopes of gaining a new deconvertee.
A deconvertee to what exactly? Apparently a deconvertee into the cult of hairless apes who visit the mothership each day to pick up the blue kool-aid they need in order to give value and meaning to their own existence, an existence that can only be proven by projecting the essence of themselves across the invisible airways in the form of this strange code that with any luck, will properly implant themselves in the unknown avatar’s brain somewhere.
Yes, I admit it! I am being stalked by a bunch of hairless apes attempting to implant things into my brain via invisible air waves using strange symbols and codes. I don’t know where they came from, they just sprung up from nothingness.
No seriously, I think I truly do believe in the more rational concept of talking animals, burning bushes, and disembodied hands writing on the wall. I’ve actually seen some things far more bizarre.
Like hairless rats, wrapped in ribbon, bearing chocolate.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
After hearing those grunts come from Colbert, Maher, Silverman, Behar, people have issues with the more intelligible offerings from the Baalam barn? Geez.
But I always knew your hairless apes were poor spellers………………. so the word of the week is deconnery eh? 😉 😉
Good stuff msb
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Ha! “Deconnery,” indeed.
I often kick myself for saying things like,”that’s the most depraved thing I’ve ever seen!” The world seems to take that as a challenge and is always sure to show me something even worse.
In case it hasn’t been said lately, it is totally depraved, ugly, self -absorbed, to spend all of one’s time attempting to relieve people of their faith and hope. Like, who does that? That’s not only really immoral,it’s illogical and pathetic in it’s transparency.
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Like……………who does that?
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For me, miracles have (largely, not entirely) fallen off because God prefers to work through man. That’s the overriding cry of the entire New Testament. And man has partially, if not perfectly, answered the call – hospitals can do some of the things Jesus did now, albeit slowly, awkwardly, and expensively. I read of miracles of kindness and love all the time. The God of the Bible is still at work.
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Somebody smart once said, “we can live as if everything is a miracle or as if nothing is.” Once I started seeing the miracle in simple things, seeing the miracle in bigger, more surreal things became much easier.
My theory is that modern people have become so jaded, so skeptical,that it’s not that miracles don’t happen anymore, but rather that we can’t see them and don’t believe in them when we do. I have caught myself many times, praying for someone’s health,for good results on a test, and then when they show up happy, beaming, I’m not like, “praise the Lord, He’s answered our prayers!” I’m more like “oh, so I guess this was just a false alarm.” Was it just a false alarm or was it the answer to prayers, was it a miracle?
I admit, talking animals would be dramatic, rock our world, but think about it, are we ourselves not “talking animals?”
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And it’s not like our own worldly fairy tales don’t have talking animals in them.
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This is why I dislike the term “miracle.” If we fervently believe all things are possible in God, then there’s nothing magical about it. In fact, there’s nothing occult or mystical in the Bible, just stuff our puny brains can’t grasp right now.
And that’s part of the fun of the learning journey through Earthsville, right? 🤙
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You make a really good point,in the modern world we tend to equate “miracles” with magic and the occult,or else con artists. So the very word “miracle” has taken on some negative baggage. It used to mean, “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of Divine agency.”
I like the term “Divine agency.” Out of our hands, beyond our understanding of natural laws. Because God felt like it 🙂
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I had a semester of quantum physics once, and every test I took felt like the answers could only be calculated by Divine agency, so I can relate 🤙
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LOL! Very funny. 🙂
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Atheists are desperate to tear God down because they are so fearful that he IS. The evidence is lessened somewhat by each voice they can silence. Poor souls. In convincing others, they are a little more convinced themselves. He fears that writing on the wall might mean he, himself is weighed in the balances and found wanting. A true atheist would have nothing to gain by de-converting a Christian. Love the post.
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Poor souls, indeed. I keep saying, “come in, the water’s fine!” You will find forgiveness, grace and love, not condemnation.
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I believe in donkeys that talk. Sometimes it takes a talking donkey to convince a prophet of their own madness. God can certainly use any medium He wants to in order to get our attention. Some men are beasts, though, as you suggest. The difference between us and the lower creation is we are made in God’s image and intended to better things, and the Spirit definitely separates us. Atheists make themselves animals because they deny the Divine.
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I’ve got a tin foil hat you can borrow if you promise to return it. It will block those wi fi signals.
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I think they refer to Balaam’s talking Donkey and the serpent in the Garden…
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Good stuff, IB. Not believing in miracles IS the blue Kool-Aid of the Western world, given to us to since the time of the “Enlightenment/” And how enlightened we are now! We went from Medieval superstition to myopic scientism (the belief that science gives us the only real knowledge there is), so anyone who believes in miracles is dismissed, ridiculed, and bullied into acquiescence. We drank this Kool-Aid when we, as a culture, accepted the circular reasoning of Hume (miracles violate natural law, therefore miracles are impossible). Now it’s so deeply embedded in our mindset that miracles are assumed to be completely irrational. Yet, it’s thought perfectly rational to believe that there was no designer or agency for this vastly complicated and beautiful universe. Of course, there can’t be because we can’t prove God…with science. Yeah, that’s not circular!
Yup, there’s still a lot of talking donkeys walking around. I run into them sometimes when talking about God. 🙂
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Exactly, Mel.
We’ve become convinced that miracles are irrational and to be irrational is bad, so we must carefully edit the miracles out of our lives, often without even being aware of it.
All the great scientists I know were big fans of art and music, and even of faith and love. Science only provides us one aspect of the truth.
To make matters even worse, scientism is often just about the best science money can buy. “Four out of five scientists choose this toothpaste.” I read it on the internet so it must be true. 🙂
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“I read it on the Internet so it must be true.”
LOL! That reminds of the movie, “Wag The Dog.” I have a marketing friend who once set a product he was promoting on top of his TV (when you could do that, before flat screens). And then he said, “Now I can say, ‘As seen on TV.'” 🙂 Of course, he was kidding, but it was funny, and about as genuine as some of our just so “facts.”
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You are either an animal, plant or mineral technically speaking correct? If you don’t believe in talking animals, explain people. 😂😂😂😂
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My math teacher in high school told my class this story once when he finished his lecture material early:
“A man is stranded in the middle of the ocean after a shipwreck. The man is a Christian, so he prays to God that he will be rescued. A minute later, a fishing boat arrives in his vicinity and one of the fishermen throw a net out onto the water. The fisherman calls to the man, “Grab on and I’ll pull you up!” The man says, “No thanks, God will save me!” The fisherman is confused and argues with him for a while, but the man is persistent and eventually the fisherman gives up and reels back his net. A few minutes after the fishing boat leaves, a much larger cruise boat passes by, and one of the workers throws a lifesaver out to the man, telling him to grab on. Again, the man says, “No thanks! God will save me.” The worker also argues with the man, along with a couple of passengers who happened to pass by to see the commotion. Eventually the cruise ship leaves according to its schedule, and the man is alone in the ocean once more. An hour later, the man is moved by the waves to a large rock jutting out of the ocean. This time, a helicopter arrives and hovers overhead, dropping a ladder down to the man. The pilot tells the man, “Grab onto the ladder!” But again the man yells, “No thanks! God will save me!”
Eventually the man is stranded for so long that he drowns and dies. When he gets to Heaven and comes face to face with his
Lord, he asks Him, “Lord, why didn’t you rescue me?” Then God tells him, “I sent you two boats and a helicopter. Why didn’t you accept them?”
As a culture, I think we have difficulty seeing the miracle in the mundane or the ordinary and are rarely ever grateful, so I think that makes us even more cynical when the miracle is even greater than that. If you think about it, there are people who are never found from the sea, and this man gets two boats and a helicopter and can’t see the miracle from God – which he asked for – in that. 😉
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GK Chesterton in Orthodoxy:
“If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant’s story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism — the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence — it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, “Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles,” they answer, “But mediaevals were superstitious”; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say “a peasant saw a ghost,” I am told, “But peasants are so credulous.” If I ask, “Why credulous?” the only answer is — that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland.”
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Love this.
Coming from someone who communicates with animals. The proof is in the pudding … you can’t make this stuff up.
JoanieMorrison.com
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