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What are your thoughts when the believers say things like " it's in god's plan" or "it was meant to be"? So it was god's plan that 6 million jews were slaughtered, people were crushed by a bridge collaspe, people die of starvation and disease, etc. etc. Yeah , I could go on and on, but yiou get my point.

Specman 6 Mar 18
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27 comments

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9

Gods plan that small children get cancer and suffer? I don't want anything to do with that particular god.

6

I ask them was it god's plan that I was sexualy assaulted when I was a very young child and molested again at 11 by a church deacon? Was it god's plan I had no where safe to go as a kid? Did god want me to get so depressed I almost killed myself?

That's some god you got there. Who got all the good stuff? All I got was shit.

That usually shuts them up pretty quick. They look like a fish out of water.

sorry to hear that of course.I was going to say something close to your experiences, given the amounts of convictions that have arisen over the recent years. Even if I had any religious bone in my body, I'd never say that was gods plan, and I'd hope anyone you have spoke with understood that they must never condone(unsure if I'm using the correct word),vile actions by those entrusted as pillars of their community by ever saying "gods plan". Hope you are getting through things and living your life.

@Paddyola , I've accepted it. Nothing I can do about it now, the deacon is dead, the first I don't know who it was. I realized all this happened when the pieces fell together 12/15/17.
So now I might celebrate two birthdays 11/17 & 12/15. I know now that most of my problems are not my fault, they were formed in a deviant and malicious household.
I am stronger now and definitely more assertive. I am one of the lucky ones.

4

I think they are just as delusional as anyone who believes in any god.
They have zero credibility with me.
Their god, if it were real, is an asshole.

3

It pisses me off. It's the ultimate cop out. Let's all pray for world peace, an end to hunger and that our favorite sports team wins and my little Sally Sue gets selected to be a cheer leader. What gets me is the whole idea of heavan. It sounds terribly boring to me.

3

There's an endless list of reasons why that's bullshit.

3

Roger that Specman, it can really make me wickedly angry...its complete total bullshit. I have a close friend who recently lost her husband in a sudden freak accident and at his life celabration service where a woman walked up to my friend who was devastated and said " it was in gods plan" and I wanted to wring her neck.On the other hand I have to say I have experienced some VERY difficult situations that ended up leading me to some specatacular spaces and or people. Life is a mystery. We could get into the concept of "karma" Quantum physics or "shit happens".

3

Just respond with the Eichmann question:

Adolf Eichmann was one of the main architects of the Holocaust. He was also a Christian and confessed his sins before he died.

The 6 million Jews whose deaths he oversaw did not believe in Christ.

According to Christian theology< Eichmann would go to Heaven, and the people he had murdered would not. How is that fair, or right?

IIRC, and I am not a Christian of any strip, type, or sort, but if he was Catholic, how would have needed to be absolved. If he were Lutheran, he would have needed to be sincere. Two pretty tough hurdles. I give him a 70% chance of being in hell, by which I mean, his last thought was probably "What was I thinking, why didn't I just keep being an accountant?"

2

I speak my mind gently. Especially this last year, I watched two equally religious friends struggle with employment challenges. One made it through with success and attributed that to God's grace and I said to her, 'you know, ____ is also religious and her life is tanking, but she's a wonderful person, I don't understand why her prayers aren't answered.' I guess my approach is to gnaw away at their false sense of security. 🙂

I once worked with a woman who said she prayed before going to the dentist that she wouldn't have another cavity, and prayed before taking her car to the repair shop, etc. The level of logic is childlike. This woman was in her forties..

2

In the wake of the tsunami that killed over a quarter of a million people some one asked Billy Graham how God could let that happen. Graham said quietly " l don't know ." Pretty much says it all.

2

What kind of God would do such a thing and why believe in that kind of God?

2

when the Tsunami turned the Pacific Basin into a blender way back I remember thinking I guess we arent supposed to feel that being wiped from the face of the planet is a bad thing. Like the Ultimate GMan just looks at things in a different way

1

I questioned my god in Judaism when I learned of the Holocaust.If there was a god he wouldn't le t tit happen.

That was an event that I questioned also being raised in a Jewish household. The stock answer is god gAve man “free will”, so god gets a pass every time

1

It's a convenient, non-falsifiable, cheap justification for whatever occurs. It's essentially meaningless, and therefore dismissable. But as you indicated, it does tap into one of the major arguments against an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god, known as "The Problem of Suffering and Evil", the consideration of which, for a high proportion of former believers, is the primary cause of their loss of faith. I'm sure many of you are already familiar with the brilliant ancient quote on the matter by Epicurus, but here is an excellent, more recent commentary on it:

1

It's just aeasy bullshit statement that covers them from anything they may otherwise have to question.

1

This is how theists rationalise natural injustice. The world is random. Shit just happens. Some bad people have good luck and some good people have bad. Selfishness and greed are very often rewarded.

Abrahamic theists make this fair through the belief that such people will get their comeuppance in the afterlife, while righteous people will be rewarded. That justice will finally be served. That the wealthy man will go to the nasty place for not being able to drive their Bentley through the eye of a needle or something (though I think that's more about leaving your wealth to your successors rather than having it buried with you - "I'll become poor the moment I die, and still get into heaven" sort of thing.) That the kid born with terminal cancer was made that way by God as a blessing, so that they could get into heaven sooner.

Nicole, you sure did puzzle me. So, I looked up "Abrahamic theists" and this is what I found: "Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are the largest Abrahamic religions in terms of numbers of adherents.[4][5][6] Abrahamic religions with fewer adherents include the faiths descended from Yazdânism (the Yezidi, Yarsani and Alevi faiths), Samaritanism,[7] the Druze faith (often classified as a branch of Isma'ili Shi'i Islam),[8] Bábism,[9][self-published source] the Bahá'í Faith and Rastafari.[10][11]

As of 2005, estimates classified 54% (3.6 billion people) of the world's population as adherents of an Abrahamic religion, about 32% as adherents of other religions, and 16% as adherents of no organized religion. Christianity claims 33% of the world's population, Islam has 21%, Judaism has 0.2%[12][13] and the Bahá'í Faith represents around 0.1%" [en.wikipedia.org].

Is that really who you meant a shout out too? Interesting, really

@crazycurlz 99.7% follow either Christianity or Islam then. Both of which put a strong emphasis on reward/punishment in an afterlife. Having done a bit of Googling, it turns out that Judaism doesn't, which comes as something of a surprise to me. I always thought heaven and hell were very much Old Testament, which is the common ground between Judaism and Christianity.

@NicoleCadmium thanks for reply. Having grown up in a Jewish community, I am impressed with the misconceptions people have about Judaism. Judaism is not focused on conversion, either, and this lends itself to tolerance (although clearly in every religion there are extremists). At the inception of Christianity (until Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of power), the first Christians were Jews. Jews, Christians, pagans shared and worshipped together. There's so much to learn about religion and sociology. You certainly seem curious and here to learn and grow, as am I. I hope you feel flattered that I will follow your posts and see what mayhem you get into in your journey! 🙂 I will be careful not to hover. 🙂 Have a good Tuesday

1

That their god is an arsehole!

1

I once was told by a pastor's son that some people die young because God is preventing them from committing a sin in their future. Makes absolutely no sense.

1

Same old bullshit

1

Some of the religious are so brainwashed they don’t even think about the ramifications of what they say. Hell religion in general just doesn’t make any sense but you’d be hard pressed to convince most of the religious people of that. In spite of that a lot of the religious people are better people than the liberal Trump bashing idiots on the mainstream part of this website!

Wow, you just had to stick your Liberal bashing in with a question about god's plan. So you think bashing Trump makes you a bad person and an idiot? Perhaps they are just people who do not agree with you.

Trajan61 That’s true,These Trump bashers are full of hate and constantly spew obscenities

0

This is god's plan? god sucks.

0

This is not something that a sane, empathetic person who has been through any signifciant amount of personal suffering / loss / grief can possibly bloviate. Unless, that is, they have spent their entire life having their mind bent around the notion that god is "in control" of an existence that is plainly not piloted or directed in any way other than by cause and effect and the laws of physics.

All you have to do is open our eyes and have a little compassion. But if your operant conditioning is that people who suffer are somehow, at some level, at fault or in need of "chastisement" or "testing" then it bleeds the compassion right out of you.

It took seeing good people suffer and die, more than once, for me to admit that, no, god is NOT in control. At. All. Once that was known, it couldn't be un-known.

0

I have these conversations with my mom, a devout catholic and her response is always that she doesn’t know she just trusts in her faith. I know she wishes I believed but I trust more in my belief that we just don’t know. There’s no proof that there is or isn’t a god but there is proof that organized religion causes war, hate, fear and human suffering.

0

Its calvinism at its best, either to describe terrible events that are based upon someones sins or sins of their fathers(lets add mothers),or to justify ones own desire/need/perversion- by using god(lets call him fear in this case) as the tool to control.

0

when religous belivers say that sort of thing,..........

0

I just roll my eyes and move on. People have to wake up out of religion on their own I don’t think it does any good to discuss religion with believers. You can’t wake them up.

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