EchoPneuma #fundie

EchoPneuma #fundie christianforums.com

Does a canary who is hatched from an egg in a cage and lives it's whole life in the cage, know that it is in a cage?

If someone asked that bird "why are you living in a cage"?...would the bird say "what is a cage? I'm not in a cage"?

and if someone said to it...."look at those bars, feel them...that is a cage"....then the bird would say "no, that's not. That's just the nature of my world. I'm not in a cage".

Could anyone ever convince that bird that he was living and existing inside a cage? or would that bird always believe that those bars were just "nature" and the way his world was supposed to be?

When we feel the "bars" of our cage, that is God....do we just continue to believe that it's just "nature" and the way the world is supposed to be?...or do we see the cage for what it is?

The bird lived it's whole life inside the cage, and therefore couldn't see the cage...and when it was forced to see the cage....interpreted it to be just the nature of things.

we live our whole lives inside of God...and therefore can't see God, but when forced to see....interpret Him to be just the nature of things.

39 comments

old comment by NotMe

The bird lived it's whole life inside the cage, and therefore couldn't see the cage...and when it was forced to see the cage....interpreted it to be just the nature of things.

Now we substitute for humans. Did you ever notice how humans are curious about what's just beyond their reach? That's why we made spaceships, so we can comfortably leave our earth at some time in the future, if need or desire dictates so. Or how people placed in cages take an effor tat getting out of it? There is a reason why prison breakouts happen, we don't like to be in a cage. Even peopl who lived their whole life in one will eventually want to know what's outside and make an attempt at getting into that outside. Your logic is a bit flawed. Every creature will pick the more desireable of 2 places where they can be at any moment. Even the hamster we used to have years ago managed to escape from his cage every once in a while, which he wouldn't do if he accepted the cage to be his whole world.

old comment by Star Cluster

"Does a canary who is hatched from an egg in a cage and lives it's whole life in the cage, know that it is in a cage?"
Quite simply, yes. As others have pointed out, given the chance to escape, the canary will leave that cage in a heartbeat. They know they have wings and are unable to use them properly in a cage. Humans are vastly superior to canaries in cognitive thought and reasoning skills. Why did Columbus and many others leave Europe searching for other lands? Because they had the idea there was someplace beyond where they could see. And in order to look beyond what we can see from our "cage", we have built telescopes and spacecraft to explore and gain more knowledge of our universe. Again, as others have pointed out, this is a very bad analogy. If God is a cage to us, no wonder so many of us are fighting to get out.

old comment by Sarah in Chicago

I don't think the other commenters are completely getting what the fundie is meaning ... what he/she is saying is that those of us that don't believe in God are the ones in a cage, because of our lack of perception of God. An awareness of God is what is supposed to be the outside world.
ie science keeps us caged because we can't perceive the reality of what is outside observable nature, ie God ... it's the fundies that truely see things as they are and see the world outside the cage; they are the ones that are free. It's twisted logic of the most bizarre type, with no actual grasp of reality in the slightest, but it's internally coherent, but then, most insane people make sense to themselves, it's just that reality doesn't support such in the slightest. Not to mention the cage analogy is coming with a HUGE, MAMMOTH, TRUCK-LOAD of irony. I mean, I shouldn't be surprised by the projection these people engage in (witness how much they say we want to abolish xtianity), but the AMOUNT of that projection always surprises the SHITE out of me.

old comment by Plinket

Ignoring the God-as-jailer and caged bird analogy for a moment, I *think* what EchoPneuma means is this:
God is hidden *in plain view*. We see him all around us, all the time. Not as a guy on a cloud or burning bush or floating pyramid, naturally - he's more like a fundamental property of the universe as we know it... something we're perfectly used to - something we take for granted and therefore mistake for mundane when it is, in fact, God. What exactly this is I don't know either. It could be the simple fact that the world doesn't fly apart at the seams. It could be morality or free will or self-awareness. I don't think it's all that horrible an analogy, actually. Maybe we shouldn't get so hung up on that "cage" thing. It might just mean "something incredibly special that's all around us, only we don't realise it because we've come to accept it as a perfectly ordinary fact of life". Then again, doesn't that sound more like something a Wiccan would say? Heck, I dunno. Just had to add my interpretation.