day after xmas.. 15,000 people dead..

[toddzilla]

"god's will"


:eyes:

[arwalden]

1. Why Does God Hate Those People?

[toddzilla]

2. sorry, now it's 59,000

Damn non-christians.. serves em right!

[fshrink]

3. god works in mysterious ways,

final answer to anything!

[progressoid]

4. Isn't someone supposed to be building an ark

and collecting two of all the heterosexual animals right about now?

[Biased Liberal Media]

5. It's up to 77,000 now

:(

God's will, my ass.

[Walt Starr]

6. Now 117,000 officially

Indonesia is estimating there total alone will exceed 400,000.

But have a "Merry Christmas" instead of having a Happy Holiday, anyway, because that is just sooooo important.

:eyes:

Friggin fundies sure have their priorities straight.

[Kolesar]

7. I googled "Pat Robertson" to see if it was because they are pantheistic

I found squat. Believe me, I would have posted it here.

[jonnyblitz]

8. "he works in mysterious ways"

even if he DID exist(which, of course I don't believe) he appears to be TOO EVIL to worship if he controls all that happens.

[onager]

9. It doesn't seem all that mysterious to me

The ways of any god you can name always seem to correlate almost exactly with the ways of random chance.

I bet there's a good reason for that. ;)

It always annoys me to hear the "miracle from God" nonsense after a tragedy, when hundreds of people have been killed and they find one person alive.

The whooping and hollering about "God's will" must make all the people with dead spouses, parents and children feel really good. What, the Big Man In The Sky just didn't LIKE those people enough to save their lives?

On a similar note, I was once subjected to the worst proselytizing I ever heard, in a business setting.

A Fundie asshat told me a story about how his little boy fell down a flight of basement stairs and didn't get hurt. Miracle from God!

If he had stopped there, it wouldn't have been so bad. But he went on to say that a neighbor's little girl had taken some kind of tumble and suffered permanent brain damage.

Then he felt the need to add that maybe the neighbors weren't "close enough to God" or some such BS.

I just said "Excuse me" and left the room. It was either that or knock that clueless fool into next week.

What kind of sadist turns an injury to a helpless little child into an example of what a good Christian he is?

I drank a lot that night.

[Philostopher]

10. It always bothered me, even when I did go to church ...

the attitude toward 'giving yourself over to God' and praying about things -- I came to a conclusion similar to what you said, about random circumstance.

Most churches of any kind encourage their members to pray -- for guidance, for good outcomes in their lives, etc. When things turn out crappy anyway, the answer from the people who encouraged you to pray is this:

"Sometimes, God says no."

Now, I eventually figured I might as well just 'skip the middle man' and let the law of averages determine what was going to happen to me. I'm a fairly pessimistic person by nature -- I'd even go so far as to say it might be a genetic predisposition, since my maternal grandmother was of a very similar temperament -- and hate nothing more than being disappointed. So I just started hoping for the best but expecting the worst and skipping the prayers altogether.

I didn't feel any worse about the way things worked out in my life. In fact, I felt less depressed over losses when I didn't think some higher power was supposed to be intervening on my behalf and just decided I wasn't good enough for the 'better outcomes.'

I don't know -- I guess I just never really believed, even when I attended church regularly, that an omniscient and omnipotent being who was looking out for (what was at the time) four or five billion other human beings really wanted to help me score well on a test or get into a good college. I came around to thinking even if there was a supreme being, he probably had more urgent work to do than that.

[Gelliebeans]

18. I came to the law of averages conclusion myself

and I find that works the best for me also. It's kind of like a lottery to be simplistic, at least that is how I have looked upon my life. Ten years ago I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, so I figure I have escaped anything bad because of the law of averages at least for a while. lol. I have heard many people tell me that "god" decided that he would challenge me to make me stronger. I just roll my eyes and tell them that "shit happens" period.

[Gelliebeans]

11. Forces of nature aren't rational

and since "God" is the fundies excuse they attempt to rationalize it
by using that excuse that it is Gods will....
just pathetic
:eyes:

[onager]

12. Gellie, you remind me of an argument on another board...

Where some Christians were saying that we get things like tsunamis because "God doesn't intervene in nature."

Huh? That ain't what I learned about the Old Testament in Baptist Sunday School. That Old Testament god-critter was always mucking about with nature: Noah's flood, the nuking of Sodom & Gomorrah, the 10 plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea.

And he always had time to light up a convenient Pillar Of Fire as a guidepost for a bunch of wandering goat-herders. Of course, it STILL took them 40 years to get across a fairly small piece of real estate.

Anyhow, I agree with you. Nature just showed us, once again, how insignificant we really are.

[Gelliebeans]

17. It is just pure convenience

that they "throw" around these excuses for nature. When it works for them it is fine and dandy and it furthers their cause, when it doesn't, there is an underlying message for us all and that is "god" does these terrible things for a reason".---------pish pure pish

As you pointed out we are so insignificant to nature. It is still heartbreaking nonetheless.

We can't explain "why" just "how" these things happen. This is precisely why the religious community fights so hard to keep science out of our lives. Science has no ulterior motive unlike religion.

[leftofthedial]

13. no, 120,000+ people did not die

the tragedy is that 120,000+ EXTRA people died

lots of people di every day.

[porkrind]

14. I decided I was an athiest in the mid 90's

when 24 kids died in a burning orphanage in the phillipines. This was the last straw for me. It just made perfect sense to me that such a tragedy couldn't occur with a powerful god on watch, and if it could, well fuck him/her/it.

These religious idiots think that they can pray and god will help them find their car keys, and then rationalize that 120,000+ people can die in a freak accident of nature? WTF?

[JNelson6563]

15. Excellent point

These religious idiots think that they can pray and god will help them find their car keys, and then rationalize that 120,000+ people can die in a freak accident of nature? WTF?

I have often wondered about such rationalization. I do not believe the truly intellectually honest could achieve it frankly.

Julie

[GOPFighter]

16. Let's not forget the thousands of children...

...who were sexually abused by Catholic Priests. To true believers, Priests are agents of God. I find it inconceivable that a God would allow men who claim to represent "him" to sexually abuse children with impunity. It boggles my mind that religious people never question why the God they hold in such high regard allows things like this to happen. When I've confronted them with this question, most react in horror that I would dare blaspheme God like that.