“Christianity is wrong because…” POOF! June 17, 2013
In one ofmy favorite stories from the classic cartoon strip Calvin and Hobbes,the ever-mischievous Calvin creates an exact duplicate of himself. Using an“ethicator” dial on his duplicator machine, however, Calvin is able to ensurethat the duplicate possesses only Calvin’s good qualities. The amusing resultis a “Calvin” who works hard in school, is excessively nice to girls, and goesthe extra mile in helping out at home—nothing at all like the real Calvin. Thestory comes to its ridiculous conclusion when the real Calvin angers hisduplicate so much that the all-good “Calvin” tries to attack him and, in abizarre metaphysical twist, poofs out of existence just in time. Calvinexplains what happened in the next strip. Hobbes remarks, “You’re the onlyperson I know whose good side is prone to badness.” Calvin responds:“That’s why he evaporated. He could only be perfectly good as an abstraction.In his human manifestation, he wanted to throttle me. He spectralized just intime!” Classic.
This cartoonstory illustrates what happens when non-Christians try to argue against theChristian worldview. Even though they don’t realize it is happening, as soon asthey begin to argue for their view, they actually destroy it. Just like theall-good Calvin “poofed” out of existence when he had an evil thought,non-Christian worldviews collapse under their own weight and have to borrowpresuppositions from Christianity for support.
Takerationality as an example. Both Christians and non-Christians assume that humansare capable of rational thought—logical, coherent, valid reasoning. But if yourfriend believes in Darwinian naturalism, she gets herself into real trouble. Ifeverything is one big cosmic accident with no intentional design, then wheredid logical, trustworthy, systematic thought come from? Why should we trustminds whose powers emerged by disordered randomness? So when your friend usesan apparently rational argument against Christianity, she’s actually proving bythe logical, coherent way she argues that she can’t live by what she believes.If she were in a cartoon strip, she’d poof out of existence!
Or take thefree-living relativist who doesn’t believe in any moral absolutes. As soon ashe says, “There are no absolutes,” his statement collapses under its ownweight! Why? Because that very statement is an absolute. It’s like saying, “Idon’t believe in using words to communicate. Whoops. Did I just say that?”Poof! Gone.