(Patheos::Godless in Dixie) – Neil Carter:
Defenders of the Christian faith have a really bad habit of switching gods on us in midstream. When we say we need evidence before we will accept their claims, they often respond first by telling us that no such evidence will be given because God cannot be observed like some test subject in a lab. He is a completely different kind of thing—a no-thing, in fact, since all things owe their existence to him. His existence cannot be proved in the same sense that the existence of anything else can be proved, since all other things derive their existence from him.
But wait a second. Is that really the case?
According to the Christian worldview, this particular playwright interacts constantly with the characters within the story he is writing. The Bible is filled with dialogues between God and man—in fact the Bible itself is supposed to be “the word of God,” which means that in this particular play, the writer keeps leaving notes for the characters which somehow indicate what he wants from them. But more than that, he speaks directly to his own characters and often writes plot twists into the script which make no sense at all apart from the existence of a third-person omniscient writer.
In other words, the God of Christianity breaks the “fourth wall” all the time. Like Daffy Duck and the mischievous cartoonist in one of my favorite Looney Tunes vignettes of all time.
Whether they realize it or not, they are “fair weather interventionists,” ready to jettison the Christian framework the moment a non-believer enters the conversation. When they are around other believers, they speak of a god who keeps showing up everywhere. But then when they speak to us, suddenly God disappears, and will not be found no matter how hard we look. And shame on us for wanting to find him!
Make up your minds, folks. Which one do you want us to believe? …
jf 