It’s Monday morning, so let’s have some deep thought to start the week. This deep thought is courtesy of the Huffington Post and typed by Debbie Davis, a “writer, communicator, journalist.” (All three of those? Wow, she wear many hats.)
I have a strong faith in God. I believe He is our Creator, and made us in His image. I pray for His guidance and wisdom daily.
To say it is “foreign” to me to consider that not all people feel this way, is not a very broad-minded view, and is not realistic in today’s world.
Wait what? Who’s the accused here? Who said it’s foreign to her, who took this not very broad-minded view? Why’s she fuming at this unknown person right at the start of her article? She’s a writer and a communicator and a journalist, so you’d think she could be clearer and tidier than that.
I realize there are those who have never experienced or tried to understand the relationship between God and mankind.
Ah, no. Stacking the deck there, deep thinker. Assumes facts not in evidence. We don’t know there is any “relationship” between god and humans because we don’t know there is god.
Without judgment, each person must decide where their faith is, or isn’t.
But how can they do that without judgment? You need judgment to decide things.
No, she doesn’t mean it that way, she means something like “each person must decide and people shouldn’t judge each other.” But she’s such an inept writer, communicator, journalist that she couldn’t manage to word that comprehensibly.
So I’ll spare you much more of her clumsy writing…well except this one more bit of clumsy:
However, it was not until the day at the luggage store that I was confronted with how to respond to someone who called himself an atheist.
It was near Christmas time, and I, along with one of my teenage sons at the time, went to the local mall to find a present in the luggage store.
One of her sons at the time. Now he’s her uncle.
So anyhow – the way she was “confronted with how to respond to someone who called himself an atheist” is like this: the guy on the till was a grumpy old geezer (like me only a guy), and when she said “Merry Christmas!” at him he said he was an atheist, at which point her world teetered on its axis. She expressed incredulity at him, he was unmoved, and it looked for awhile as if Christmas might be over for good. Then she realized what she had to say. She asked him if he’d ever pondered a bird (emphasis hers), and he said no.
“Well, will you do me a favor, do yourself a favor, and next time you are at a park, sit down on a bench, and wait until a bird perches nearby. Then take a close look, a really close look, and watch the bird’s chest, where you see its heartbeat. Watch the bird’s chest go in and out, breathing, and you can see its tiny heartbeat. Even if it’s a tiny hummingbird,” I said, “you can see its heartbeat beating up and down.”
The man said nothing. Then he said, “So?”
I responded “When you gaze upon that bird’s heartbeat, you will see how wonderful a creation there is, and I hope you will ponder that bird, along with Creation. Ponder the bird’s heart beating, its beak, its feathers, its amazing beauty, and know that no human, no man or woman, could ever create such beauty. Only something much much bigger than ourselves could do that.”
Notice she didn’t tell him to ponder a rat, or a slug, or a slide of bacteria under a miscroscope, or a rotting corpse, or an earthquake, or the genocides of the past several decades, or anything else that doesn’t fall under the heading “beauty.”
I say this as someone who loves hummingbirds and ponders them every chance she gets.
Not only was he one of her sons at the time, he was one of her sons one day at the luggage store when they went to the luggage store.
Funny, my reading of the Bible lead me to conclude that God indeed wants us to “ponder” birds, just as long as we immediately wring their necks and burn their still-warm bodies as sin-offerings…
Give her some credit. She very likely encouraged the man in the shop not to identify himself as an athiest to any other customers. A spiel like that is a powerful disincentive.
Barf. On top of the glurge and the deepities, it’s just, as you say, crummy, clunky writing.
Ooh! Am I supposed to do that?
When someone says “merry Christmas” to me, I just say that back to them. I never thought it was worth getting into an argument.
I always thought that the “merry” part was anti-Christian anyway.
Or much smaller than ourselves. I mean, hummingbirds are pretty tiny. Assembling them would require some slender fingers, completely different ones than the kind of ham-fists you need to wrench a rib from a man and use it as a scaffold to make a woman. (And just imagine the hands required to forge Saturn’s rings. No way those are the same hands that shoved a festering bolus into my appendix back in ’98.) It’s pretty clear it’s impossible that the same god made all of these things.
So I thank YHummingWH for those birds. Remember, don’t mix your nectars or you’ll go to hummingell to burn in a small pond of fire for eternity!
Argumentum ad Humming Bird.
You know, despite the path being faulty, I can’t say she’s arrived at a wrong conclusion. It’s true that we don’t yet have the capability of synthesizing living organisms, and evolutionary history is much larger than any human.
Neil – heh, no. It was an asshole move. I’ve never thought of “merry xmas” as at all goddy, and Bill O’Reilly isn’t going to make me start now.
My response:
“Next time you sit on the toilet, consider poop. Seriously, consider it. Why would some sort of divine creator make his creations do something so unsanitary and, yes, pretty gross. Poop. Where is your god now?”
😉
From the KJB, “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?”
Now consider that most hatchling birds die before they ever even learn to fly. Those that do get that far are prey for all sorts of predators and most don’t make it through even one year of life. As for the heavenly Father feeding them – a helluva lot of birds starve every winter due to insufficient food sources – hence why so many of us humans put up bird feeders.
Then consider how many humans also die from starvation, disease and natural disaster – nope, we are in just as shitty a situation as the birds are.
This might actually be a compelling argument for god to someone who is severely constipated.
Oh yeah? Why didn’t god make a gut that doesn’t get constipated? Eh?
And don’t get me started on Crohn’s.
busterggi @ 10 – good point. Or just think of those flamingos in North Africa that do a post-hatch migration every year that kills almost all of the chicks in a horrible slow agonizing way. Some years it kills every last one. I saw a documentary on it once. [shudder]
Because a severe enough case will cause even the strongest atheist to cry out in prayer?
Both the article and the ham-fisted way it’s written remind me of just-so stories from the “Kool Kids for Khrist”-type comics they used to hand out at youth group (and which used to get handed to me in my hospital bed by pastors who were allowed to prowl the wards at will *shudder*). Yet, with a teenage son who was a teenager at the same time she was his son, this writer/communicator/CV-padder is apparently an adult.
I take comfort in the fact that, as it’s the Puffington Piece, our erstwhile defender of the omnipotent creator of Hell probably didn’t get paid for this.
Debbie Davis has adopted the standard smug, patronising attitude of believers towards unbelievers, actually it’s religious people who really haven’t contemplated nature, not atheists.
The Christian “God” must be either, not omnipotent, or a complete psychopath.
What’s the problem with atheists wishing people “Merry Christmas”, how many Westerners actually celebrate a Christian Christmas? The salutation “Io Saturnalia!” seems more appropriate.
Thank you, Ms. Benson, for using the most appropriate verb in describing Ms. Davis’s utterances: “typed.” ‘Cos that sure as shootin’ ain’t writing. But as to her episode in the luggage store, really in a luggage store, may I suggest other language, such as…
“confabulated by Debbie Davis”
“created ex nihilo by Debbie Davis”
“spun from the less-than-gossamer threads emitting from her nether regions by Debbie Davis”
Maybe this incident happened, really happened, but it does bear the hallmarks of, well, not happening, really not happening.
Ah yes, the pathetic fallacy. On the bright side, Monty Python had fun with it. And do people really say that they’re atheist when wished merry Xmas? It’s not a declaration of faith, Xmas is much more culturally than a religious festival, it’s a gorging/drinking/wasting resources festival first and foremost.
I have never contemplated a hummingbird, but I have stood in awe on my front porch and watched a spider create its web (after reading one of Richard Dawkins’ books, indeed). The experience somehow failed to teach me about God.
With all those titles, Debbie Davis apparently needs to reassure herself that she can write. I’m not surprised.
All things foul and gangrenous
All creatures short and squat…
And that son’s name was Albert Einstein.
Now you know… the rest of the story.
Brian E:
It’s a big world and takes all kinds, so I suppose there must be some atheists out there who do. But yeah, it seems unlikely that this woman actually ran into one of the few people in the U.S. who (1) is an atheist; (2) doesn’t celebrate Xmas even in a secular sense; (3) actually feels the need to correct people on this point; and (4) is willing to risk his job or business to do so by contradicting a Christian customer.
The only time I’ve heard someone “correct” a “merry Xmas” is to say “well, actually, I’m Jewish.” Interestingly, I never hear Christian glurge stories or righteous indignation about this — I guess they realize that bashing Jews doesn’t go over as well as bashing atheists.
clamboy @17:
No kidding. And if anything, Ophelia is being charitable in her characterization. There’s a ton of deck-stacking involved in this little “story.” The luggage store clerk isn’t just “grumpy” in the sense of a male Ophelia Benson — according to the oh-so-reliable narrator, he is “stooped as if he were burdened by life, and with no smile,” “a scowl on his face. He seemed so unhappy and burdened” and “irritated.”
So much amusement in this piece of dreck. She declares that she
which is a new one for me — usually it’s atheists who want to quibble about how they’re not really an “atheist,” you see, they’re an ignostic/agnostic/some other thing they just made up because they’re a special snowflake… but I digress. Back to Our Brave Christian Hero, who, after describing her response about the bird, declares:
Yes, Dear Reader, it could only have been the Holy Spirit! For my words were truly a devastating piece of rhetoric for which the poor atheist had no response, but I am far too modest to take credit for such brilliance myself, so if I say the Holy Spirit said it, then I can praise the genius of my own words and it isn’t bragging!
And I didn’t even mention the part about the birds collecting on the roof of her car…
By the toll of a billion deaths, the hummingbird has bought it’s birthright of the earth, its beating heart, its beak, its feathers, its amazing body.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Do all these Christians get their stories from the exact same source? That sounds very much like the dude who showed up at my door one day (and yes, when they are standing on my porch inviting me to their church, because I can’t be saved anywhere else, I DO tell them I’m an atheist). All the stories of being saved from [fill in favorite sin here – alcoholism and drugs the usual] sound so much alike I’m always tempted to ask them to show me evidence that they were once an alcoholic, a drug user, or whatever.
I found a book in a local used book store that provided “arguments” for Christians to use against anyone who had the gall to think for themselves. The arguments (stories) sounded just like the ones I always here from porch proselytizers. And they usually end with “and the atheist was left staring amazed” as if that is somehow indication that the atheist is buying into their little story and not that the atheist is thinking “wow! Did someone actually say that! Get me out of here!” This book seemed to think elevators were a very good conversion zone, because your pray (oops, Freudian slip – prey) is trapped and can’t go anywhere. Strange what they’ll admit when they think they’re talking to themselves. I guess it never occurs to them that atheists can read? Or maybe they just assume we’re too busy reading porn to look into a book that has the word Christian right on the cover.
For me, it’s the latest kitten casserole cookbook. But the point still stands, I bought a few Christian apologists books back in the day and after a cursory glance was stunned how guys (always guys) who were supposed to slay atheists with their logic were just using special pleading, question begging and equivocation and it wouldn’t convince anyone who didn’t already accept the doubtful premises. Cat provencal tonight, mmm, here puss.
I’m going to stick my neck out here and suggest that this simply didn’t happen.
The first thing that came to my mind was, “Consider the Shrike.“
Ophelia,
I was a little disappointed in the ending myself. I was expecting that, dumbfounded by the profound irrefutability of the Argument From Pretty Birds, the luggage store clerk dropped to his knees to praise Jesus so quickly that he knocked over a row of suitcases. One of them burst open and out flew a bald eagle clutching an American flag in its talons. A U.S. Marine who had been waiting in line (ready to punch the clerk if necessary) was so inspired by this miracle that he realized that he must do his duty; he promptly rounded up ten of his Marine buddies and marched into the White House to arrest the Kenyan imposter atheist Muslim president. Newly installed President Rush Limbaugh appointed Chuck Norris as Secretary of Ass-Kicking, and Chuck led a group of Texas Rangers into the Middle East to round up all the leaders of ISIS and kick them in the head. And America cheered as one, and the gay men and the lesbians admitted that they had just been sinning to defy God and look cool all this time, and fell into each other’s arms and vowed to marry each other and make lots of straight Christian babies so that America would never again weaken. Black Americans heeded the advice of Vice-President Ben “See, We Like Some Black Guys” Carson and pulled up their pants and stopped complaining about the nice police officers just trying to do their jobs. Scientists confessed that global warming was all a hoax that Obama had forced them to go along with, but now they could reveal that fracking for oil actually cures cancer, and everybody lived happily ever after. Amen.
You forgot the part where Jesus himself floated down from the sky, winked at her, then returned to whence he came.
UnknownEric,
Yes, the ending did need a little certain something like that. I was also not satisfied with having the new president be Limbaugh, but I felt that a resurrected-by-Jesus Ronald Reagan would be overdoing it.
I heard you ponder butterflies
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so I posted butterflies on your Butterflies & Wheels.