Quote:
Originally Posted by Missy
She, and most of her/my family, so firmly believe that if it's God's will, he'll provide the way... to the extent that they seem to have forgotten that God helps those who help themselves, and may not hand them everything they need, but will hand them opportunities that will allow them to work and earn what they need.
This is a very sensitive subject for me. It's all about brainwashing.
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Kind of like the brainwashing that so waters down any kind of divine intervention as to make "the ways" god works indistinguishable from the person's own efforts but still attributes this to god?
How is a blind faith in a miracle healing any different from a blind faith that god orchestrated a boat or a helicopter during a flood to save believers? What kind of faith does it take to water god's power down to that of the local disaster authority?
Why is it any different for your family to think god will take care of them financially, and for you to think that he's busy setting up opportunities for them if they get out there and try to find work? Which is the more god-like belief? The god of the bible and creator of all things providing for his adherents.. or the slacker god that after your family have taken it upon themselves to do nightclasses.. and after they've excelled in whatever further study your family might have done.. and after they've crafted a great resume and sent it out to 100 people.. the god that er... kinda stands around and says "You go girl!" and waits for inevitable random chance to ensure that at least 1% of the resumes get accepted? Oh yes, thats right.. god "inspired" them on the path that led them to do nightclasses and so on.. yeah?
He's pretty amazing.. about as great as the 29 other people in the class that just decided to do it of their own volition..
Even though it is a joke, that modern day parable is very distressing in it's irrational nature. It goes something like this:
1. God creates a flood. He's a mysterious guy and loves playing these kind of practical jokes that kill people.
2. The local disaster authority swings into action, over long and tedious decades the local people and bit by bit perfected their operations through trial and error to have a plan to save the most amount of people as possible. They do this because no one else is going to help or intervene to save their fellow humans.
3. Line by line the plan is followed, they do grid searches of the town. Nothing guides them in certain areas except their own skill and training because humans have free will, and can't be co-erced by supernatural forces - they are just doing what they've been trained to do.
4. They find all the people except for some idiots who refused to be saved.
5. People imagine these people going to an afterlife and god saying "I very specifically tried to kill you directly with my awesome flood powers, not only that but I am all powerful and all knowing so I knew i'd kill you.. people often call this 'My Divine Plan' but I'm going to take this opportunity to rub your nose in the fact that I killed you because you could also say I tried to save you by sending so many floods previously trying to kill you guys that I've forced humans to develop flood disaster plans in reaction to me, like antibodies to a virus (
hey theres some handy info I left out of the bible!) which could have saved you if you'd taken any of the several rescue options that I knew you wouldn't take. Here have a cookie"
Oh yeah.. those blind faith people are WAY crazier than the "Mysterious Ways" watered down, suspiciously-and-co-indidentally-no-more-powerful-than-humans god people that kind of deny him any real glory but still try and slip him into the smallest of Occam's cracks like a thief in the night. The kind that in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, recieve all the benefits that man has provided but still spit in the face of reason and human achievement by ascribing these efforts away to a higher power without a second thought.
Where were god's helicopters saving flood victims 100 years ago? Records show he didn't keep his floods a house floor lower until "He" guided us to invent them.. I suppose we can know the will of god was to kill more of us back then and less now even though there are times more of us.
Why is it that at every step in human history it is a human achievement, the development of penicillin.. chemotherapy.. airbags.. that keeps the capricious foot of god off our throats? And yet there are people at every step praising the lord and not the doctors? At least the doctor cures patients.. he doesn't make them ill in the first place and ask someone else to clean up the mess..
It's all so superfluous as to be amusing. So yes chide away at the fundamentalists. The reality is Post enlightment/liberal christians are just as irrational, but because they've reduced got to being a god of the gaps they're very rarely if ever called on it.