The Cartoon Universe
of Theism
After examining many arguments offered by presuppositional apologists and
considering the general view of the world that they want to defend and impart
to others, I cannot help but see the formidable parallels between, on the one
hand, the god they claim exists and the reality they say it created, and, on
the other, an illustrator and the cartoons he draws.
Christians imagine that the universe is the product of a devising mind, just as
a cartoon is the product of a devising illustrator. Just as the shapes we
perceive in a cartoon conform to the content of the mind of the illustrator,
the entities and their actions in the universe are thought to conform to the
content of a consciousness whose initial state is consciousness only of itself.
The illustrator, for purposes of entertainment, draws an imaginary realm where
fifty-ton boulders fall on Wile E. Coyote, crushing him flat as a pancake only
to have him crawl out from underneath it and shake himself off so he can
proceed with his pursuit of the Roadrunner. Likewise the theist imagines a
supernatural illustrator who wishes the universe into existence and controls it
just as ably as it controls its own thoughts. The contents of the universe
conform to the thoughts of the divine consciousness just as the scenes of a
cartoon conform to the imagination of the illustrator.
But beyond this, significant differences begin to emerge. Where the cartoon
illustrator is only seeking artful entertainment and whatever compensation the
market will bear for it, theists want to take their savagely more perverse
analogue very seriously, and they want you to take it seriously, too. And where
the cartoon illustrator understands that the realms he creates in his drawings
are just fantasy and play, theists have rendered themselves intellectually
incompetent when it comes to distinguishing between reality and their
imagination. And it is this blurring between fantasy and reality that inspires
the hideous ideas which give Christianity, like other religions, its lethal
nature as a worldview. It is this view of reality, the cartoon universe of theism, that presuppositionalists seek to defend. Only it's
not funny. What's more is that they tell us that we must presuppose that things
are this way – that the universe is essentially a cartoon realm created by a
boundless consciousness no one can perceive – in order to make sense of the
world and our experience in it.
But there is a distinction between reality and our fantasies. How could anyone
think that reason and rationality are based on the theist’s perverse confusion
of the two? The universe is not at all like a cartoon. An entity is itself, and
its actions have a necessary relationship to its nature. Facts do not change
because someone wants them to, and wishing doesn’t make it so. It is this hard
reality that the theist finds depressing and, unable to cope, he seeks to evade
it by retreating into a set of bizarre notions that disable his ability to make
very important distinctions.
If you should ever find yourself in a debate with a presuppositionalist, point
out to him that he is basically trying to defend the view that the universe is
essentially nothing more than a cartoon. Ask him how seriously he takes the
teachings of the bible, especially those attributed to Jesus in the gospel
stories. Many of these teachings unmistakably confer this cartoon-like quality
to the universe. For instance, Matthew 17:20 reads: "If ye have faith as a
grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder
place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you." Ask
him if he really believes that Mt. McKinley is going to do what he wishes, or
if he thinks such verses are to be taken as obvious hyperbole that no one
should take literally. If he says the former, that indeed his wish-laden
prayers can cause such devastation, his case is pathological, and there’s
probably nothing you can do for him. If he concedes that such bible passages
should be taken as figurative exaggeration, then ask him if the stories about
the creation of the earth and heaven, the talking snake in the Garden of Eden,
the worldwide flood, the seven plagues of
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The
Cartoon Universe of Christianity