give us a better straw man...

I enjoy reading thought provoking books, creatively written books, challenging books. It is customary in many books of a philosophical or theological bent to set up a straw man who articulates the view that you particularly find revolting, illogical, or devoid of lasting merit.

The straw man could make a point as simple or complex such as, Folgers coffee made at home over the stove is the best in the world; black and white TV with rabbit ears reception is good enough; or that Islamic radicals have a valid point. The next step for the author is to knock down the straw man that he has just set up. It's a pretty standard form of arranging for your ideas to win in the thought war going on in your book. It's your book after all, you're entitled.

My complaint is that straw men ain't what they used to be. I am almost sure that years ago straw men were smarter and more threatening. It seemed to me, in past reading, that the straw men sounded pretty good, and maybe he even had a shot at winning the argument. Of course he can't win the argument. If he won the argument the book you're reading wouldn't have been published.

It occurs to me that religious straw men are especially the pond scum of straw men. In fact they might not even be made of straw, maybe something more like a water soluble slime so they can be easily whooshed away.

I'll give you an example. I'm reading an interesting book that I believe is quite enjoyable, clever and fun but here is a cheap straw man:

"For many, Jesus was presented to them as the solution to a problem. In fact, this has been the dominant way of explaining the story of the Bible in Western culture for the past several hundred years. It's not that it is wrong; it's just that Jesus is so much more. The presentation often begins with sin and the condition of human beings, separated from God and without hope in the world. God then came up with a way to fix the problem by sending Jesus, who came to the world to give us a way out of the mess we find ourselves in. So if we were to draw a continuum of the story of the Bible, Jesus essentially shows up late in the game.

But the first Christians didn't see Jesus this way, as if God were somewhere else and then cooked up some way to solve the sin problem at the last minute by geting involved as Jesus..."

In my opinion, the straw man in the above quotation started out halfway decent but by the time the straw man says that "Jesus showed up late, God was somewhere else, and the sin problem fix had to be cooked up" the author lost me because I was thinking, "Oh come on, nobody is that stupid, your stab at humor has weakened your straw man and as a consequence, caused me to be impatient with you Mr. Author.

All I'm saying is, let's have some good straw men. If we have worthy arguments, they deserve strong straw, or maybe even a stick man.