Thor, Elvis and Atheists

Today atheists are fond of bringing to light the fact that Christians reject the existence of all other gods of history. They articulate it in such a way as to make the Christian an atheist then use it against them. The challenge usually sounds something like this: you are atheistic regarding the millions of gods that others believe exist; why not just do away with the final one? This past weekend my wife and I went to see Thor: The Dark World (do not worry; there are no spoilers to come), and it got me thinking about this a bit, so I want to explore it. However, I want to begin, not with Thor but with...

...The King of Rock 'n' Roll
Elvis Presley was and still is so popular that there is an entire line of work dedicated to impersonating him. Some impersonators are really good; some are really bad. The challenge offered by the atheist appeals above to the Christian's (and broadly, society's) two understandings that many who have claimed to be or were understood to be God have been shown to be false. Let's start with the claims then move to the understandings.

🎃My Secular Celebration Of A Religious Holiday🎃

A Quick Review and Update
Two years ago I wrote a post that attempted to help Christians have a reasoned approach to whether or not to celebrate Halloween. When I wrote it I was coming out of a mindset that was completely against any expression of the holiday in the Christian's life. My writing the post was my way of trying to approach the issue from a logical point of view rather than a traditional (for me) point of view. I was attempting to test the tradition by logic, and I came to the conclusion that the tradition was wrong.

Even though I came to that conclusion, because of my uneasiness with Halloween it still seemed awkward for me to participate in celebrations. In the last couple of years I have become more accustom to it, though. My wife and I have foster kids in our home and have had so much fun helping them pick out their costumes to go trick-or-treating. And as strange as it did feel to hand out candy to people dressed as characters from horror films, it was just as enjoyable to provide the sweet reward to the little kids in their princess and super-hero costumes. I realized that next year I need to make sure I get full-sized candy bars for the truly creative costumes too. Its been fun and I can honestly say that I'm not as uncomfortable with Halloween as I was before, but I still have a way to go.