Polly Arminius

Debates with Arminians typically make no headway. Arminians raise objections. You respond to their objections. They repeat the same objections, as if you said nothing by way of response.

There’s a reason for this lack of progress. Many Arminians aren’t even human.

What are they, you ask?

Parakeets.

And being parakeets, the prospects for rational dialogue are decidedly limited.

Once of the limitations of the Internet is that you can’t see your opponent. So you don’t know, at first, that you’ve gotten into a debate with Polly Arminius.

There are, however, certain telltale signs that you’re talking to an Arminian parakeet. One sure sign is the repetitious and uncomprehending use of the phrase “author of sin.”

As a birdbrain, Polly Arminius has a very limited repertoire. That’s why it can never advance the argument beyond the rote intonation of the vocable.

Since “author of sin” is a metaphor, it needs to be defined. But, of course, a parakeet doesn’t know the difference between a metaphor and Fermat’s Last Theorem. So the poor thing can never define its terms. All it can to is to parrot the vocable which the bird-trainer taught it to intone.

It takes a lot of patience, and a lot of crackers, to teach a parakeet to memorize “author of sin.” But once you drill that phrase into its little birdbrain, it never forgets.

It utters that phrase at all times of the day or night. The only way to make Polly shut up is to drape its cage with a play-top or dome-top cover. But, unfortunately, that’s’ not something you can do from the other side of your computer screen.

However, we mustn’t blame the parakeet. It’s doing the best it can with what it’s got–which isn’t much.