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April 23, 2012 at 6:35 am (This post was last modified: April 23, 2012 at 6:36 am by NoMoreFaith.)
(April 23, 2012 at 6:22 am)genkaus Wrote: It reminds me of the story about when the town flooded and the guy is traped on his roof and a lifeboat comes to save him and he refuses help and tells the crew that God will take care of it and the man drowns. In reality god sent the lifeboat.
But then stuck his middle finger up at all those who drown in flood desperately praying for a lifeboat.
The argument from incomplete devastation hasn't reared its head in a while.
God is the ultimate plagiarist, accepting with no grace the achievements of mankind, yet refusing to offer the knowledge he "gives" to mankind in the fields of medicine to the thousands of generations that preceded those whom did invent it.
It was man who made the lifeboat, our empathy which manned it, and our social responsibility which funded it.
Accepting all the good in the world, and pretending the suffering has nothing to do with him, is NOT gods most endearing trait you realise.
If God is responsible for sending the lifeboat, then he must also accept responsibility for the flood in the first place.
Self-authenticating private evidence is useless, because it is indistinguishable from the illusion of it. ― Kel, Kelosophy Blog
If you’re going to watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo. That show was so cool because every time there’s a church with a ghoul, or a ghost in a school. They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?
The f**king janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide. Throughout history every mystery. Ever solved has turned out to be. Not Magic. ― Tim Minchin, Storm
OK, So. . . I have been thinking about some serious consequences of religion, and more so, specific churches. I have a couple of examples in mind. This thread is open to all.
Some people would sooner neglect or let a family member die than agree to a medication or blood transfusion. Do these people actually believe it is for the best? If they do, even so, how could one live knowing that a child or such died because of their actions, or lack of?
I have been thinking and two events came to mind:
A few months back, I was visiting a city and went out with my second cousins' wife and granddaughter for the day. We bought the girl some chocolate from the store, and she looked as if she'd never seen chocolate before. I asked if she did not like chocolate, and she said, "I do. I am just never given chocolate or candy at home; we also are not allowed to watch TV or go play with regular kids." At this point my eyebrow almost flew off into orbit. I asked her why not, and she replied that a couple of years ago her mother decided that her family would go to a Jehovah's witness church. I asked her what she thought of that, and she didn't say much for a moment, but a few minutes later, she said sometimes she worried. She said she learned in church that if she were in a car accident and lost blood, she would die and it scared her. She said she heard in church that blood transfusions were not allowed, and her mother told her it's because giving away blood is like accepting/giving part of a soul. She's a 10-year-old child and should not have to worry about things like that.
Then, in school several years ago, I knew a girl that was always sick. I told her she should go to the doctor, and she said her family did not allow that; they didn't believe in doctors, surgery, or medication because of their religious rules. I believe they were Christian Scientists, if I remember correctly.
So, these are my examples.
You always hear about these things to some extent, but speaking to people that it applies to - especially children - it really brings it to life and makes you think.
What is everyone's take on this? It is something I can't fathom, personally.
What do I think?? What is my opinion??
I am of the opinion that religion is the biggest con job, hell bent on making it's congregations suffer to serve it's ever increasing ego. I think that any parent who would deny their child medical treatment should be shot...slowly, or used for medical science. I think the religious are nothing but criminals, no worse than criminals for their beliefs on this topic. ... Sorry but getting rather angry now Poetess so I will leave it there.
"The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest." G'Kar-B5
(April 22, 2012 at 5:09 pm)deciple Wrote: In my opinion the people who will not allow blood transfusions especially for children because of so called "faith" are nothing more than idiots.
We agree!
Quote: I believe that prayer is always a good thing but so is medicine and medical attention.
Prayer has never been proven to be effective. At best, it has nothing more than a placebo effect.
Quote:God has given mankind the power to heal themselves.
Really? Where are those cures for cerebral palsy, Parkinson's Disease, muscular dystrophy, macular degeneration, diabetes, epilepsy, etc, etc....?
Quote:When man is unable to heal himself sometimes God will intervene.
Can you prove this statement? Otherwise, it's just unsubstantiated bullshit.
Quote:He gave us the knowledge on how to to blood transfusions, kidney transplants and the like.
Total crap. "God" did not come down from the sky and demonstrate how to perform a kidney transplant or blood transfusion. People had to figure this out for themselves. And this wasn't done until very recently.
Quote:It reminds me of the story about when the town flooded and the guy is traped on his roof and a lifeboat comes to save him and he refuses help and tells the crew that God will take care of it and the man drowns. In reality god sent the lifeboat.
Really? Where were the "lifeboats" for all the people who prayed for deliverance from Nazi death camps? Where were the "lifeboats" for all the people who were trapped on the upper floors of the World Trade Center? Where were the "lifeboats" for all the people who died in the Black Plague? I could go on and on....
Science flies us to the moon and stars. Religion flies us into buildings.
God allowed 200,000 people to die in an earthquake. So what makes you think he cares about YOUR problems?
(April 22, 2012 at 5:09 pm)deciple Wrote: In my opinion the people who will not allow blood transfusions especially for children because of so called "faith" are nothing more than idiots.
Ave, deciple! Like everyone else, I agree with you here. Unfortunately, and I'm not trying to be funny, you go skidding off the rails after this point.
(April 22, 2012 at 5:09 pm)deciple Wrote: I believe that prayer is always a good thing but so is medicine and medical attention.
Funny thing is, when prayer is actually tested, it is indistinguishable from blind chance. Pray for something non-specific - a nice day, or someone's health - and it either works (answered prayer) or it doesn't (God's will). Pray for something unambiguous - let's say, turn Ozzy, my parents' dog, into a naked woman - and it never works.
Plus, if you're advocating medical attention, and quite right too, what place prayer anyway?
(April 22, 2012 at 5:09 pm)deciple Wrote: He gave us the knowledge on how to to blood transfusions, kidney transplants and the like.
Yes... try saying that, face to face, to a doctor with all his/her years of medical training and dedicated service. They may just forget their Hippocratic Oath and rip your nads off.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
Ah, you see, this is exactlly why I came here. You people have caused me to think about why I believe in what I believe. And as a bonus most of you do it respectfully.
Im not sure which famous dead guy said it but what he said was something to the effect of "if there be a God surely he would pefer honest questioning over blindfolded fear" and I share those sentiments.
There is a lot to reply to here and Ill try to cover all of it in this one post. To no more faith. That story is merely an illiustration of how its possible to overlook an act of god simply because it comes in the form of ordinary everyday people. if you can add to the story that he sticks his middle fingers up at everybody else, then i can scratch out your ending to the story and add my own. So he already saved all the other flood victims and that was the last guy on the roof In my belief all good things come from God, this includes all cures for diseases and sickness. I know it may seem like a generic answer but we live in a broken world.. a world that we broke. we as in mankind. This is the reason for sickness, natural disasters nazi death camps terrorist attacks and the black plague. It would be nice to have a cure for HIV, muscular dystrophy and everything you listed. I happend to lose my brother to MD so yeah, it would have been nice to already have had the cure for it but as ive already said in my other post as well, this world and this life are not the end. The spirit of man is eternal. In the grand scheme of things the time we had on this earth will be nothing when compared to a billion years later.
to thor... actually yes i can prove that God heals man when man cannot heal himself. Go to pubmed.gov and there are many case studies of just that. Where medicine failed and for some "unexplainable" reason the person in question recovered.
Stimbo.. yes sometimes, especially studies where there have been two groups where one was prayed over to achieve a specific result it is barely indistinguishable from blind chance. Sometimes the one looking at it wants to be skeptical and nothing will suffice.
I will go ahead and say right now, no matter how much anybody prays, ozzy the dog will not ever turn into a naked chick. thats just not how it works. ozzy osbourne did dress up like a chick and piss on the alamo is that good enough? And as far as going up to a doctor and telling him the experiance he has gained as a result of years of training and dedication were for nothing.. of course I wouldnt do that. Im not a disrespectful person. He aquired his skills because of hard work and many many hours of study. Then why do i say its a gift from God then? Because larry the bum down on 5th street couldnt be a doctor if he tried. why not? because he isnt "gifted" in that way. larry the bum however, is here for a reason and has his own "gifts" Peace.
Islam has killed millions in the last decade, lets focus all attention on Christianity!
Oh dear, I'd love to quote most of your sentences and destroy them one by one, but I can't be bothered.
Just a couple of points, mans spirit is eternal and the time we have on this planet will be nothing compared to a billion years later - why bother having your 80 years or so in the first place?
Why is mankind breaking the world a reason for natural disasters?
You say how its possible to overlook an act of god simply because it comes in the form of ordinary everyday people, I'd say it is usually the case that an impressive act from ordinary people is often credited to god. Most often the opposite of what you were trying to illustrate is what happens.
You are currently experiencing a lucky and very brief window of awareness, sandwiched in between two periods of timeless and utter nothingness. So why not make the most of it, and stop wasting your life away trying to convince other people that there is something else? The reality is obvious.
(April 23, 2012 at 6:26 pm)deciple Wrote: Stimbo.. yes sometimes, especially studies where there have been two groups where one was prayed over to achieve a specific result it is barely indistinguishable from blind chance. Sometimes the one looking at it wants to be skeptical and nothing will suffice.
Actually it's worse than that. A well-known study by the John Templeton Foundation some years ago into the effects of prayer in heart surgery recovery returned that not only do prayers have no positive effect, patients who knew they were being prayed for actually fared worse than their fellows.
(April 23, 2012 at 6:26 pm)deciple Wrote: I will go ahead and say right now, no matter how much anybody prays, ozzy the dog will not ever turn into a naked chick. thats just not how it works.
Precisely. It's something unambiguous, that is can only have one result if prayer is meant to work as promised many times in that big book of multiple choice, the bible. Of course, there is always the old escape-hatch of "sometimes the answer's no" but apart from that being a blatant volte face from the biblical text, it also raises interesting questions about the god's honesty. So how do we recognise an 'answered' prayer from chance? I pray for money, and next week I find a fiver out in the street, is that an aswered prayer? In other words, did my praying cause me to find the money, or would I have found it anyway? There's no way to know unless we remove the ambiguity. When we do that, when we pray for a result that can only have one interpretation if prayer is supposed to work, prayer never works.
There may be something to be said for the whole praying-to-find-car-keys thing, when someone finds some item after offering up a prayer for its return. Mainly that the act of praying in such a situation may focus the mind on the problem and jog the memory. In this case, the actual ritual is irrelevant; taking five minutes to stand and think is all it takes.
(April 23, 2012 at 6:26 pm)deciple Wrote: ozzy osbourne did dress up like a chick and piss on the alamo is that good enough?
As delightfully absurd as the image is, it's so very wrong on many, many levels in this context. Even I'm more vanilla than that. Besides, he's a Brummie.
(April 23, 2012 at 6:26 pm)deciple Wrote: And as far as going up to a doctor and telling him the experiance he has gained as a result of years of training and dedication were for nothing.. of course I wouldnt do that. Im not a disrespectful person. He aquired his skills because of hard work and many many hours of study. Then why do i say its a gift from God then? Because larry the bum down on 5th street couldnt be a doctor if he tried. why not? because he isnt "gifted" in that way. larry the bum however, is here for a reason and has his own "gifts" Peace.
Or it could be that Larry the bum hasn't had the hard work and many hours (actually years) of study that you conceded two sentences before he came in are necessary to acquire the skills to be a doctor. Look, I like you and I enjoy these little discourses, but I get travel sick when someone switches gears without warning.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
April 23, 2012 at 7:31 pm (This post was last modified: April 23, 2012 at 7:33 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Yesterday god was saving people with heavenly lifeboats, today it's just a story? You can add anything you like to a story, just how do you think we ended up with this whole "god" business to begin with?
We do not live in a broken world, we did not break this world, see the above.
Death is the end of life, as to whatever you wish to propose comes after, see the above.
No, you clearly cannot prove this, no one has ever done such a thing, and you have done no such thing here. See.... the.... above.
"Magic works until we look", unconvincing. I don't have to say it again do I?
Why doesn't it work that way, and since you've invoked it, just how does prayer "work"? [insert fairy tale comment here]
Larry the Bum, in all likelihood, could be a doctor. Given tuition, a few grueling years of education and training, and a desire to be so. What was that about being disrespectful again? Not only would you call someones hard earned knowledge and skill a "gift", you would propose that for some cosmic reason bums could not possess this "gift".
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
And as far as going up to a doctor and telling him the experiance he has gained as a result of years of training and dedication were for nothing.. of course I wouldnt do that. Im not a disrespectful person. He aquired his skills because of hard work and many many hours of study. Then why do i say its a gift from God then? Because larry the bum down on 5th street couldnt be a doctor if he tried. why not? because he isnt "gifted" in that way. larry the bum however, is here for a reason and has his own "gifts" Peace.
