Originally Posted by rant
awesome allegory snip
I really like this analogy and will use it to describe Christianity... God communicates telephatically, he shows himself - and those with faith are those who don't just ignore the telephatic voice, eventually filter other voices out to hear the voice better, and build a relationship with the person behind the voice, and later on, trust the voice, and follow it, and get to the ice cream.
On the other hand - unbelievers are those who hear the voice, filter it out, or "have doubts" to trust the voice and don't follow the instructions. They rationalize, they find other things, and find out that they can understand the world better than this telapathic voice they managed to drone out ages ago. They question those who follow the voice - "You're stupid, why are you following it? There is no proof" - and they would be right - there is no "proof"...except for those who tasted the ice cream, and came back to tell the other kids about it. Until of course, the kids who *think* they got the ice cream too come rushing and start telling other kids about it too!
Of course, the point was initially made about "how about those kids who never find out where the voice is coming from"? They don't have the understanding behind it to "get to the ice cream", so to speak, to learn and filter out "is this really the voice". It is the job of those found the ice cream to go back and tell them... but sadly, that doesn't happen. Is it "unfair"? Yes. So what do you do about it? You go around the world, and you tell them about how to get there.
Whether this is "fair" or "unfair" is hard to judge - since we as humans hav no idea "who gets into heaven and who gets into hell". Of course - this is avoiding the question and throwing it to uncertainity - but I think it is better than assuming and judging what will happen.