my standard response to standard Christian theology:
TRIAL
You awaken to find yourself lying alone on the Astroturf of the New Orleans Superdome, with no memory of any life prior to that point, stark naked and bound by a length of chain, attached hobble-like to both of your ankles, to a very large and ominous looking machine. The chain enters the bowels of this machine through an inch wide gap between two ten-foot long, three-foot diameter, toothed steel rollers. These rollers are idle at the moment, but the machine is humming with malevolent promise.
You remember no particulars of your life prior to awakening.
You look about, and notice that each of the 50,000 seats in the stadium is occupied by some sort of speaker or radio. All are silent at the moment. Indeed, the silence in the giant arena is stifling.
You roll to your feet, and test the strength of the chain. It is invulnerable to your efforts, resists all attempts to detach it from your legs, and is only long enough to permit you to move twenty feet from the humming ominous machine.
A voice speaks over the Public Address System. It says:
“You are being tried. You are required to identify, memorize, and adopt as your core principle of life The Message. Your time limit is the length of your chain. Most of its length shall be drawn into the machine in slow increments, but there is a randomizer chip in its control module which will at times speed up the rate, and might in fact cause the machine to draw in the entire remaining length all at once. You have approximately 24 hours to accomplish your task, but it may very well turn out to be far less time than that, so do not get comfortable. If you succeed, you will be set free. If you fail, you will be slowly crushed to death between the toothed rollers in excruciating torment. Your trial begins NOW.”
At the moment that last word shivers out of the air, the rolling press grinds into motion, and every one of those fifty thousands of radios wakes to cacophonous life.
Each of these radios or speakers is tuned to a different station, each plays at a different volume, many are in unknown languages, some are filled with static, and most are inaudible due to distance and the bedlam of the competition of its fellows. None that can be heard and deciphered say anything which clearly marks it as carrying The Message, except for unsupported claims of doing so, which they all seem to say, each with equal verification and support – in other words: None.
The chain begins to feed into the machine through the toothed rollers. You are already quite certainly running out of time.
*****
You are limited to the Given in any answer you give, or you demonstrate a failure in logic.
I want you to answer this question and ONLY this question:
Do you consider what is described above to be a fair test?
Do you get the impression that I have given the matter too much thought for childish word games to have any value in my eyes?