Tell us all about the totally PC volunteer work YOU do, Slow Moving Vehicle. Then it can be decided if you have the right to criticize.
Can you show any evidence that your god steps in and helps at all, whether people help themselves or not? I can’t seem to find any stats that show such a thing.
Nope, I’ll be upfront and say I have no stats to show you, none that would satisfy a non-believer. It’s all anecdotal, which most people, including you, I assume, don’t put stock in.
Want one anecdote to mock? I will take that as a yes.
In 1987, while living and working in East Lansing Michigan, I attended a church I won’t name here. It was the first time I’d ever been a member of a congregation of which the minister was younger than me.
In a study group he told the story of the summer when he was nineteen, after his first year in college. He was working as a truck driver, and was in a bad accident. His lower left leg had been cut severely(He showed us the scars.) The wound became gangrenous, and he was scheduled for surgery to amputate his lower leg. He asked us “Do you know what it’s like for a nineteen year old to sign papers like that?” He spoke by phone with his father, a minister, and asked that he be listed on their prayer chain. “All I wanted was courage” he told us. The next day, during surgery, the doctor’s said the infection had retreated, and that they’d never seen such a thing. His leg wasn’t amputated after all, although he had bad scarring and lost part of the function, maybe 20%.
Now, we can trade stories back and forth. I know that the above tale has ways it can be picked apart and rationalized. Maybe I even made it up, one could say. But let me ask YOU something.
Do you have evidence to show that God/Allah/Yahweh/Whoever, doesn’t exist, or act in this world?
Does God get credit for the healing, while ducking blame for the injury and infection?
I cannot prove that they do not exist. But I also cannot prove that Odin, Zeus, Poseidon, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and/or Santa Claus do not exist either. How much effort do you put out pondering their existence?
Why did God stop short of 100% cure? Why go to the bother of a miracle, and then only deliver a part of one? Why is God such a cheap shit as to leave the guy’s leg maimed?
Actually, a little, although it is indirect.
I have evidence that Tsingzak the Deliverer doesn’t exist…because I just now made him up. I have evidence that Elbereth, the Star-Kindler, doesn’t exist, because J.R.R. Tolkien made her up, 80 years ago, give or take. I have evidence that the Fenris Wolf doesn’t exist, but writers created him some 800 years ago, give or take. I have evidence that Hermes and Apollo don’t exist, as Hesiod and his friends made them up, some 2400 years ago, plus or minus.
You, yourself, would probably accept this reasoning in dismissal of Islam’s Allah, as well as some of the figures that come along in Islamic writings. They were made up.
And…so were Moses, Jacob, Adam, Joseph, and Jehovah. They are all literary figures, invented by human writers.
Did he mention the massive doses of antibiotics he was on?
You left out a very obvious choice: You could be gullible when it comes to stories like these.
Hesiod did not make up Hermes and Apollo, they were pre-existing myths. Similar is probably true for the Fenris Wolf.
Regards,
Tsingzak the Deliverer
Fair enough. Jehovah, Moses, and Jacob were also probably pre-existing myth.
Some of the details of Norse Myth, Greek Myth, and Biblical Myth were created by the writers of the texts we know today.
The business about many thousands of Israelites wandering in the desert for decades is known to be a fable.
You say that as if you’ve offered some proof that god does exist. You have not. How do you know you shouldn’t be thanking satan for the 80% working leg of the guy you knew one time?
You also dismissed trading stories, but I’ll offer this. When I was 11, my dad had a recurrence of cancer. I prayed he would recover. Our minister came by to tell us that the congregation was praying for him. Not only did he die, but while he was wasting away in the hospital, someone was stealing meds, and he got a dose of saline instead of painkillers. So, I have the memory of him calling out in agony for a while as my last experience of him being conscious.
So, why is my dad’s agonizing death worth less than 20% of some guy’s leg? I suspect you’ll tell me that you don’t know why but it must be. I would suggest that until you know for sure, you should remember that pretty much every person you tell that fun little anecdote will make the same calculation. “Part of some guy’s leg was worth more than [insert personal suffering here].” The nice thing for you is that some people will blame themselves for not praying hard enough.
The rest of us will just be wishing for this brainless gullible moron to get the fuck away from us with his godbothering.
Well I could be all 21rst century PC and insert “handicapped” or “differently abled” or something like that but I was quoting the Bible and Dickens so they changing it would be wrong plus it would lose its effectiveness.
Did you even have a clue on what my point was? Maybe you cannot read so let me help you. I was saying the Bible says that dealing with persons with disabilities gives us as Christians an opportunity to serve.
Now we could be like the various groups who simply killed off any infant deemed “defective”. Would you prefer that?
Oh and by the way, when I look at someone in a wheelchair I keep in mind that I’m just one car accident (or in the case of Christopher Reeves, a horse riding accident) from being right there.
Having a non-falsifiable null hypothesis is bad practice.
So is stating that You Know Who does not exist, without a cite to prove it!
:dubious: It has nothing to do with being “PC”. It has to do with the fact that “cripple” hasn’t been used since what, the 1950s? Hey why not use the word “mongo” to refer to the mentally retarded, or call them gimps? :rolleyes:
Dumbass.
Did anyone here do that?
He said “crippled,” not “cripple.”
I don’t know how much of a distinction that is, but it isn’t characterizing the person as a label, only as possessing a description.
Sort of like the difference between “Jack is a drunk” and “Jack is drunk,” or “Jack is an illegal” and “Jack is an illegal immigrant.”
You two fucksticks are being retarded just to be retarded. Which part of cripple being part of a quote are you two mongos being gimpish about?
The “persistent vegetative state” segment of the populace has just managed to make a chaotic utterance which a naive person might mistake for speech.
Lame.