Tonight I had a short but progressive conversation with my TBM wife. Don't worry, I'm not going to badmouth her! I am, however, going to summarize our conversation. I think I might, just might, have made a slight impact.
We were discussing, of course, my disbelief in a supreme being. She stated to me that she believes because of all the times when god has been with her. Curious, I asked her to share so that we could analyze and see if god was really there.
The first experience that she related was when she, as a young child, was very sick. She prayed to god and eventually recovered.
My reply: So your immune system did nothing? Your immune system did all the work and god gets all the credit? Not impressed.
The next experience was when her and her sister were swimming and her sister, for whatever reason, was drowning. A nearby "good Samaratin" jumped into the water and saved her.
My reply: How disappointing... Now if an invisible hand had come out of the sky and pulled her out of the water, then I would be damn impressed. So, a passerby saved your sister and god gets the credit? Not impressed at all.
Her third experience was when her brother was in a motorcycle accident and was severely injured. She prayed and was comforted. Eventually her brother recovered.
My reply: God comforted you but left your brother in pain? First of all, that's just wrong. Secondly, the doctors and hospital staff that helped your brother deserve no credit at all for actually being there to care for him? God is amazingly absent from the scene and yet gets all the credit? Not impressed.
At this point I was asking my wife, "Is this seriously all that you have to base your faith on?"
As a young child myself, I lived in a heavily wooded area. Once, while playing in the woods, I lost a very small piece to a tool of my dads. Not knowing what else to do, I prayed that I would be able to find it. No sooner had I said the prayer, than I opened my eyes and there it was.
It was seriously as unlikely of being found as the "needle in a haystack".
Now looking back, I have to say that if god did help me find that little piece, then his priorities are really fucked up.
Seriously, he will help you find your lost keys but ignores the sincere pleas for help from starving children all over the world?
Score one for satan...
... my wife had to admit that I had a good point.
4 comments:
You know, I was just praying that my 401K would grow and what do you know??? It actually grew! I would like to thank God for all the effort and $$ he put into growing my retirement fund! Without God I don't think I would have one!! -- illogical and stupid isn't it? Really? GOD helped me? NOT, I did!
Exactly! That's what I'm trying to get people to see. Life happens. Some of it is good, some of it isn't. "God" didn't help me find a job... "God" didn't get a house for me. "God" doesn't make my car run.
Believers will try to argue that "God works through other people."
Really? First of all, if this all powerful being needs us mere humans in order to manifest himself then he sucks. Secondly, how do you know that the flying spaghetti monster isn't the real entity to give the credit to? Or Santa? Or Superman?
The fact that someone did something nice for you only proves one thing: that the person is nice. It does not prove that god exists any more than it proves Superman or Peter Pan! What if I believe in Tinker Bell? Does that mean that all of my good deeds prove that Tinker Bell is real? Of course not, and it is no different for "god".
So my point, that I hope I've made, is that everyone loves giving credit to god for all the good things that happen, when, in all reality, they are just events that happened. God wasn't there. Jesus wasn't there.
So you got healed? Whoopdedoo! Everyone heals so that proves nothing. So you got a job. Everyone has a job, so give credit to yourself for going out to find a job.
Okay, I'll stop now before this rant gets any longer.
Lots of good critique of religion here. I sadly agree about the mormon stuff being a hoax.
Before reading this post I was reading in Job where God allows Satan to decimate Job. Satan messed him up. But God gets the blame.
I think it's also true that many "athiests" blame God for things that really they were responsible for or humans were responsible for.
Job's response to calamity is striking: God gave us good things how can we not also accept the hard things.
As per your argument that God is lame per his use of others to orchestrate his will: this argument really breaks down. Most mighty men (and women) use others to accomplish their will. In fact this should be the norm we expect from God. To expect him to poke his invisible hand down everytime and hand you the lost tool makes a mockery of God. To expect such is to expect God to be your "step and fetch it slave." I think it makes complete sense that God would use means to accomplish his will.
Now you do raise a good point then as to determining the identity that is behind these supposed means.
To determine that requires miracles and revelation linked at the same time or from the same "source." in order to consider the revelation valid. This is as little and as much as it takes for me to believe. I don't need continuous "show me a sign" miracles that make a slave out of God. I just need some legit miracles to let me know who it was who was speaking.
This I am confident we have in the hebrew and christian scriptures. I do not have the same regard for the mormon or muslim scriptures. In part because they barely claim stuff on the same order of magnitude.
I think you misunderstood the point that I was trying to make. I said that if god needs other people to make his will happen, then he is a pathetic god. Either that or it's just an excuse for people to correlate good deeds with the existance of god.
For example, I strongly believe in service and I do so whenever I get the opportunity. Many people would claim that god is doing good works through me. They use my services as "proof" that god is real.
I would think that for a god of miracles, he could do a little better than that!
I'm also truly blown away by people who cling so desperately to the scriptures. The Bible is a book that is thousands of years old, written by people that obviously had no understanding of the world. No one really understands it and everyone disagrees about what it means. Why is the pure word of god so damn confusing?
How is the Bible any different than the Greek myths? In many ways they are very similar. They are all just stories that were written in order to explain, as best as possible given the knowledge of the time (which was minimal), the origins of the sun, earth, man, evil, etc.
When you start thinking and using your brain, you will realize that BOTH are myths and were written by people with a very limited understanding of the world. Our modern society has no need of such nonsense.
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