See, I told you so!

In contrasting himself from the "evil unbeliever" John Loftus of Debunking Christianity fame, Triabooger Steve Hays drew a remarkable analogy. He wrote:

You’re like a man who steps into a painting and then denies the existence of the painter because you can’t find the painter in the painting. From within the painting, you can’t see anything outside the painting. I’m like a man who steps into a painting and cannot deny the existence of the painter since he is evident in every brushstroke.

Give the man a cigar! Steve is finally starting to see the light! All he's missing now is a little action (perhaps he's not been getting enough lately). A painting is static. But a cartoon is animated and full of activity. With his blogging activity clocking at about 13.2 postings per day, Steve is a busy boy, not at all like the immobile figures in a painting. On the contrary, he's Superboy, trying to save the universe from the latest blitz of the evil atheist conspiracy. His painting analogy is lagging far behind the brimming liveliness of the cartoon universe analogy.

But it is a vast improvement over his earlier obduracy. For here Steve signs on the dotted line of his own worldview's commitment to the cartoon universe premise, cashing in on the legal tender of its vivid connotations. With scripture verses tucked under his arm like a security blanket, Steve is like a cartoon character who's pushed and pulled around a fabricated cartoon world, unable deny the existence of the cartoonist because the cartoonist has determined it to be. The cartoonist even makes him say that it's because of evidence that he knows of the cartoonist's existence. But even on his own worldview's terms, it's not really a matter of evidence. Evidence is decidedly trumped by foreordination. He's just a lump of clay in the potter's hands, a puppet dangling at the end of some strings. He has no idea who's manipulating the strings.

Steve writes:

What is more, the painter painted himself into his own painting 2000 years ago.

Exactly what I myself had stated. Observe:

Can the cartoonist be part of the cartoon? According to Christianity, the answer is YES: the cartoonist can and did play a role in his own cartoon universe. This is the role of Jesus, the god of the heavens who "took on flesh" (i.e., assumed a form like other characters in his cartoon) and intermingled with its creations.

The biblical figure of Jesus is precisely that: the Christian god-cartoonist inserting itself into its own cartoon. And ever since, the cartoon has been on auto-repeat as we see each generation of believers trying to validate their creeds and raise their own apostles. The cartoonist exited the cartoon long ago, but vowed to come back, saying "Behold, I come quickly" (Rev. 3:11). I guess in the cartoon universe of theism, 2,000 years and counting constitutes "quickly."

Stay tuned! There's more to come!

by Dawson Bethrick