LAST year, 138 Muslim scholars published an open letter to religious leaders called A Common Word between Us and You that appealed for peace and reconciliation between Muslims and Christians.
Rowan “Dumbledore” Williams, who has yet to find a formula for peace and reconciliation between his very own warring Anglicans – currently hissing and spitting like cats in an alley – has only just managed to respond to it.
He welcomed the letter, of course. But he pointed out a thorny problem Muslims will always have with Christianity: the concept of the Holy Trinity, which is:
Difficult, sometimes offensive, to Muslims [but] I believe that for the sake of open and careful dialogue it is important to try and clarify what we do and what we do not mean by it.
As the report, from which we gleaned the Archbishop’s response, did not say whether “Dumbledore” planned to follow through his welcome with a simple explanation of the Trinity for his rug-butting chums, here – to save him time and a monumental headache – is the finest (and funniest) definition of the Holy Trinity ever written. Well, we think so, anyway.
Robert G Ingersoll (1833-1899) explained it thus:
Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity, the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost the third. Each of these persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son. The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both. The son was begotten by the father, but existed before he was begotten – just the same before as after.
So, it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, and that these three Gods make one God.
According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction, if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one, we have but one …
How is it possible to prove the existence of the Trinity? Is it possible for a human being, who has been born but once, to comprehend, or to imagine the existence of three beings, each of whom is equal to the three?
Think of one of these beings as the father of one, and think of that one as half human and all God, and think of the third as having proceeded from the other two, and then think of the three as one.
Think that after the father begot the son, the father was still alone, and after the Holy Ghost proceeded from the father and the son, the father was still alone - because there never was and never will be but one God. At this point, absurdity having reached its limit, nothing more can be said except: ‘Let us pray.’
More funny stuff about the dotty concept here.
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The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
July 30th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
That must have really cleared it up for them, eh?
August 4th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
That just confuses it more.
I think I can simplify all this.
Imagine that God is a 4-dimensional entity where the F, S, and HG are three 3-dimensional cross-sections, as He appears to humans…
August 5th, 2008 at 3:24 am
An egg is an egg. But is it a shell, a yolk or ebulem. Maybe that is too hard to grab ahold of..
A giant orb is in the sky, is it bright, is it hot, oh it is the Sun.
Possibly God is the Sun, Christ the Light, and the Holy Spirit is the heat. Three distinct attributes, and elements of one, but three. Regardless of multiplation, it still is a sun,
August 6th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Or perhaps we could think of he/she/it/them as a blueberry pancake, wherein the flour is… no, wait…
Maybe a stoplight! Yeah, that’s it! Where the green is the Father, and the yellow… or, no… the red is the Father and…
Never mind.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:31 am
A turd is a turd even if it has 3 heads…
August 15th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Proof the the fitst council of nicea didn’t have the best interests of modern christianity it is agenda. The nicean creed was a political compromise.
August 15th, 2008 at 3:07 am
St. Patrick could explain the concept adequately to illiterate Iron Age troglodytes with the metaphor of the shamrock, so that ought to be simple enough for us.
Deliberately misunderstanding Christian doctrine is one of the dumbest things that we atheists do. And we do it a l-l-lot.
We should at least take the fact that people believe in the Trinity seriously, even if we don’t accept it — because mocking people is counterproductive.
As far as I am concerned, it can be dismissed as yet another groundless claim, but that is the key point: it ought to be argued against based upon the fact that it is unsupported by any evidence of any kind, not argued against because we can find asinine ways to represent it as an internally incoherent idea.
August 15th, 2008 at 3:28 am
I always love it when someone tries to explain such a profoundly ridiculous concept. It is almost like you can see exactly when, in mid sentence, they realize how stupid it really sounds.