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Yes, raeanna, I have a problem with what I see as manipulative emotionalism. But you summed up the thinking process behind the believer's position very well.
Now on to Lebell's statements.
I'll tell ya, man, it does strike me as a wildly irrational way to create conviction.
It's sort of like posing an outrageous situation and then brutally acting it out - as in a perverse self-fulfilling prophecy. Then using that in some sort of reverse way to demonstrate that since it didn't have to happen - it must be miraculous that it did.
These are the sorts of impressions I had as a child - I remember them well. I mean, people would go through this sort of convoluted reasoning - which just seemed convoluted for perverse reasons. And then they would say things like, "now you see why it is such a miracle and why it offers us salvation rather than despair, etc..."
Well honestly, not only does it make me feel sad that torture is a relatively common human behavior - it makes me feel even worse that some folks would use an instance of it to weave an "inspirational" tale that they would indoctrinate future generations with.
I'm not kidding here: to me, telling that sort of story to a child and then blowing it up to cosmic proportions is psychological abuse, pure and simple.
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