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?