I have my own horrible metaphor, using Justin’s example:
That I know I’m in a sports car, but it’s one only I can see, no one else can see it. So horribly, I have to prove that my invisible sportscar is there to get people to avoid a beating they also don’t believe in, and no one will believe me. I feel like Cassandra. I feel exactly like Cassandra.

I have nothing but good will towards you, man, take care of yourself.

Grab the full “data sheet” aka, Bible and you’ll find that you can turn the Honda you currently own INTO the Ferrari with a few tweaks.

Good story, btw

I think you may have missed some of the point of my analogy concerning the sports car. I agree that some people do turn their lives around in some way after being “saved,” and benefit from the new community they find themselves in. (One of the things I miss about not being a Christian any more is the social aspect of belonging to a church congregation, for example.) But the main thrust of the article isn’t that some people are presenting a false or twisted version of some underlying truth about salvation, it’s to illustrate that it is all smoke and mirrors. There is no way to get at the underlying truth, even if it exists in the first place.

As I said at the end of comment #3, there is a simple solution to all this confusion. God could simply present you with his sales pitch, first hand, after you die. That way, whether you were brought up in a devout Muslim family in deepest Saudi Arabia, or raised by an abusive Baptist pastor, or were an aborigine living in the time before Captain Cook landed in Australia, it wouldn’t matter. You would be given a fair and equal chance to accept God’s offer of salvation, with all the facts available to you.

If you believe in something like that, then I have no quarrel with you. I don’t happen to believe in any form of heavenly salvation, since I don’t believe in god, but I’m certainly not out to deliberately try and destroy the faith of others.

1. I was using the young women who walks on by without noticing the salesman as the metaphor for “those who haven’t heard”. Not a perfect analogy, I grant you, but the idea is that she passes on by with no idea that there is an offer available to her.

2. Yes, the brochure is supposed to be the sacred texts. I was thinking mainly of the Bible, but also of the Koran (along with the hadiths, if you like). I would dispute your assertion that these texts should not considered to be instruction manuals—the Religious Right would argue very forcefully that that is *exactly* what they are. Yes, the texts have much within them that is poetry and narrative, but the millions of theologians around the world are doing more than literary criticism when they study their texts.

3. I agree that the overall analogy isn’t a perfect one. Being able to buy the car on the cheap and then sell it again for a profit the next day is one hole (though I guess you could equate that to the many superficial conversions that don’t stick). Also, given that when you are “saved” you don’t immediately get any tangible reward, so if I were to extend the analogy beyond the moment of sale, the customer would find out that they don’t actually gain possession of the sports car until some undefined point in the future! But given that likely opens up more issues with the metaphor, perhaps that’s a step too far.

My main thrust was to illustrate the irrationality of doctrine of salvation. You’re buying into something completely sight unseen, something that no two salespeople can agree upon the details of, and something you only have unreliable second or third hand evidence for.

Of course, all this mess and confusion could be avoided if God just presented you with his sales pitch himself once you’re dead, and I hope to go into that in more detail in a future post.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

RD.

to maybe add a more biblical model to your story, what if a good friend of yours came along and said, “hey, I just got a new car and I love it!” and a bunch of his friends came along and were actually driving their new cars. and instead of working off a brochure, they were actually comparing the brochure with the actual product because they were experiencing the product.

you are right in your story that a large majority of prostelatizing (sp?) Christians are not experiencing the Christ of the Bible. Paul said, “I count it all (having worldly status and success) as dung to the all surpassing greatness of knowing Christ and Him crucified.” He obviously had something that your typical American Christian is completely naive of. I just want to personally apologize for the hypocracy that you have experienced within the church and ask for your forgiveness. I am at least one person out there that doesn’t want to “sell” a product that I am not personally sold on and experiencing.

thanks for the fresh insights.

An interesting analogy, to be sure. In the interest of accuracy I thought I would make a few suggestions:

1. In the last section about the bad circumstances for those who reject the author, you limit it to people who _walk up to the booth_ instead of everyone everywhere. The difference is crucial since, weighing the difference between buying a bargain-priced sports car and getting tortured, the most ethical option would be not to offer the deal at all. But if the bad consequences happen to everyone who doesn’t take the deal (whether they hear about it or not), the salesmen can be highly motivated from a kind of pure regard for your safety – both in trying to persuade you to take the deal but also in offering it in the first place.

2. I take it the long technical brochure is meant to be a stand in for a sacred text of some kind. While it is true that some religious texts could be roughly analogous to a brochure/technical manual, many are not. Characterizing a book full of poetry and narrative (like the Vedas or Koran, for example) as though it were an instruction manual is not very instructive. It injects superficiality into your analogy.

3. In the analogy, the people walking past the booth all seem to be happy enough without a luxury sports car/yacht/house. The offer is, mostly, superfluous. It is right for the person to be skeptical, even if they saw behind the curtain. My own transportation needs being so modest, I doubt I would take the Ferrari, even at $100k, unless I intended to sell it immediately afterward. But making a decision (even a momentous one) based on imperfect evidence can happen in many other ways as well. If I’m hiking and start to slide toward a precipice, I will follow my guide’s instructions even if I just met her. Heck, I would do what she said even if I thought there was only a slightly lower chance of her trying to kill me. The odds are much greater, and in a way, that helps motivate me to take the advice of the person trying to help me. Examples like these are everywhere, though. If I do not have the resources to defend myself in court, I will _still_ take the legal counsel of a court-appointed attorney, even if I suspect that he just wants to get the case off his list so he can get paid.

But other than those minor points, this was an interesting read. I look forward to further installments.