You may have noticed that their explanations are curiously devoid of facts and science. Instead of listening to medical experts, researchers or data, they are willing to entrust their health to their political allies or random Facebook memes. Their arguments also are all strangely similar. None of them have presented a unique viewpoint that they came up with; they’re all spouting stuff they heard on Parler or at whatever the white people’s version of a barbershop is (I’m pretty sure it’s antique shops). There’s no other fathomable reason for their positions except that they lack the ability to think critically.
This is brilliant and I am going to use this argument frequently going forward. Thank you!
It’s like these people never heard the old joke:
As the flood waters rose, a man was on the porch of his house and prayed that God would save him from drowning in the flood. Just then, another man came by in a row boat. The man in the boat invited the other man to get in, and he’d save him. The man on the porch said, "No, thanks, God will keep me safe.”
The water kept rising and the man had to go to the second floor of his house. As he looked out the window, he saw a man in a motor boat come by. The man in the boat invited him to get in because he had come to rescue him. The man in the house said, “No, thanks, God will protect me.”
The waters kept on rising. Soon the man was forced to climb up onto his roof. A helicopter flew by, and a man inside lowered a rope and shouted down for the stranded man to climb up the rope.
But the man still wouldn’t get in. He just said, “No, thanks, I trust in God to rescue me.”
Well, eventually, the flood waters rose above the house rooftop, and the man drowned. When he got to Heaven, he asked God why He didn’t rescue him from drowning when he had had perfect faith.
“What more do you want from me?” asked God. “I sent you two boats and a helicopter.”
Leviticus 13:45: "Anyone with such a defiling disease must wear torn clothes, let their hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of their face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’
I heard that a lot when I was young. It seemed valid when I anthropomorphized God as just a powerful, imperfect human. God is supposed to be perfect, though.
Being omniscient, it means “god” was watching his “child” not understanding the situation and just shrugged and let him drown, when he could have picked him up, dusted him off, and explained the situation as a learning moment, like any reasonable parent would.
Surely perfect would mean better than we are. We invented child protective services to take kids away from parents that would do crap like that.
It’s a stock photo probably made to show “friendship between faiths” and it was hijacked for a jokey meme. Don’t read too much into it.
(That said, I found your insight on Jesus in the Quran really interesting, so thank you for that.)
I don’t get it. I really don’t f$%king get it. Part of this is decades of conservative media sources promoting paranoia, further magnified by social media that becomes an echo-chamber for the average person, and it’s like some kind of religious hypnotism, “The Mark of the Beast” or something.
It makes more sense as an explanation of free will. If God saved us everytime we tried to make a mistake then we wouldn’t have free will. Any faith in God would be insincere as we wouldn’t be able to make the choice to not have faith in him. Free will also allows people to become doctors, nurses or emergency service workers, which are encouraged by the teachings of Jesus (thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself) and allows humans to intellectually grow as a species.
At least, that’s my formerly liberal Anglican/currently soft atheist understanding of it.
His analogy to “fireproof skin neighbourhoods” was great. I’m stealing that as well. It really helps explain how so many people consistently act against their own best interest in political matters.
One oddity- his example of GOPers raging against vaccine passports was actually a fringe Canadian politician. Bernier is a nut job who would be right at home in the mainstream GOP, but he’s not emblematic of the right in Canada generally.
I get that, but we spend a lot of time trying to help people who refuse help. EMTs don’t look the situation over and say “Well, it looks like they intended to do that to themselves”, or “They obviously knew better than to do that, so we will just leave things as they are.”
By the Christian Bible’s own definitions we are imperfect sinners and can be nothing other than imperfect sinners. We are going to screw up, no matter how hard we try or how well-intended we are. If we really can’t help it, is it free will?
So, that puts me back to the parent standing around watching the kids do what kids do, and just letting them destroy themselves (and the planet), and then most likely burning them in hell for eternity afterward. Crappy parent by any reasonable standard.
Edit:
Try this, substitute God with Superman. See what kind of vibe you get when Superman stands by and watches the guy on the roof drown just because he’s an idiot.
Superman isn’t “perfect” though. God wouldn’t have unforseen outcomes, being both omnipotent and omniscient. He already knows what will happen, can correct it, doesn’t,
The entire Bible can be summed up pretty quickly.
God creates imperfect beings.
God gives them a tree, and tells them not to eat from it, already knowing they will.
God punishes the entirety of creation (people, animals, everything) forever, except a select few that will spend eternity worshiping God.
That’s not in keeping with any human standard of goodness. If god is less perfect than we are, is it god?
And what if God has forseen all that could happen, and the least worst option for humanity is to leave the drowning person on the roof? What is the correct action to take then?
i think there’s arguments that our natural lifespan is somewhere about 60. agriculture and towns crashed that. medicine ( and soap ) started bringing the average back up again
( it’s pretty obvious god doesn’t want us using soap. i think it’s even one of the commandments or something. thou shalt not lye. )
Birth control? Why enact a reality that leads to the suffering of billions at all?
But really, if we are talking true omnipotence and omniscience, it wouldn’t be like Groundhog Day, where only outcomes were possible. All outcomes would be possible. If god set up the universe with rules that god can’t break, then he’s just playing a puzzle game based on the suffering of every living thing ever.
the other possiblity is that there’s a god, but no true evil. so he therefore can’t be malevolent. but im generally more ready to believe in the existence of evil than an anthropomorphized god
Not all Christians are Catholics or Evangelicals. The church I used to attend never had a problem with birth control. Chad Varah, Anglican vicar and the founder of The Samaritans, wrote columns for newspapers and magazines advocating birth control.
And now we are back to the Red Son scenario. You can’t take away free will and still have free will.
I think it is best we stop this discussion, we are going round in circles. This might be part of the reason why I bounced off the New Atheists hard years ago.
Well, there’s “lifespan” (in the sense of how old people could get) and “life expectancy” (how old people get on average). Life expectancy is lowered significantly by high child mortality rates in any society that doesn’t have vaccines and antibiotics. (So yeah, if you manage to survive childhood, you’re more likely to hit 60 or whatever rather than 30.)
