My House Did not have a Builder (or did it?)

[The Grand Nudger]

I was thinking about this this morning on the way to the job site. What Whateverist was saying, or asking. Is there any type of evidence that I think would count as adequate justification for his believing in God. And I had told him that I don't know what type of evidence would suffice for that.
But then I thought about it this way. If someone were to try to convince me that Santa Claus was real, and they took me to the mall at Christmas time and said, "See? Look over there on that big chair. It's Santa Claus!" That wouldn't do a single thing toward convincing me that Santa Claus is real. 

See, I'm in a similar boat with gods - for different reasons, but I think you'll understand.  Like The Real Santa™, people take me to see their Real Gods™.  In both cases, I wouldn't need to comment on or from any notions of whether or not there is a santa or a god to know that the broken wretch they're pointing at is neither.

So I'm thinking that trying to convince someone who doesn't believe in God that God is real is kind of like taking them to the mall at Christmas time to show them Santa Claus. If it's already in the person's mind that God isn't real, it really doesn't matter what evidence is shown, it won't convince you in the least. A completely neutral mind may be able to at least accept the possibility, but a mind already convinced otherwise is not going to be persuaded, just like I couldn't be persuaded about Santa Claus.

That's certainly not what the fishers of men and all the "I used to be an atheist but now I know the truth" stories we see peddled here day in and day out are telling us.....

I don't know. What does anybody else think of this?

I feel like, if the above were conceptually true, then one of my favorite songs, amazing grace...would sound even sillier than it already does.  I think it's more likely that there has been a failure to convince a person than for the person in questions mind to have been somehow specifically defective in this area - such that they're completely immune to compelling demonstrations. We know that's not true. We know that humans beings are, in point of fact and directly to the contrary, susceptible even to the most ludicrous and false "demonstrations" of x y or z. 

I'd spend more time working on my delivery, and less time blaming the audience...if I were an apologist. I definitely wouldn;t actively diminish the transformative nature and alleged power of coming to belief if I were a particularly christian apologist. It would seem wildly cross purpose. Rather than concede some shortcoming in my ability as an orator or educator, diminish the central event of the christian faith in a person's life? The day they became convinced that god was real and that god was christ? I'd have to be an awfully cynical believer.