“Thank you, Eve, for sneering at this ‘widdle’ kid.”
—Hey, anytime, Rufus! It’s my pleasure.
I think that you either are doing selective reading or else are a touch sensitive on the subject. Where did I ridicule the child in the OP?
Because God is all-knowing, and everything he does is for my own good, even if the reason is not apparent to me.
Hmmm, I don’t recall saying the kid should be PC in his thanks - he’s free to say whatever he likes about it. As are we.
Additionally, while the child might have been the jumping off point (and, no, I don’t think he should have his old theological world view sorted out by age 13 given the indoctrination I’m betting he has received) - there’s the broader issue of adults who do the same thing, presenting the same problems - and our little 13 year old friend seems to be well on his way to being one of those adults.
OK, everyone come back in 5 years and let’s try this again when he’s fair game.
Arnold wrote:
Presumptuous? Assuming facts not in evidence? Has anyone told you that he’s thirteen? What did you expect? Thomas Aquinas? 
But you’re equating “everything He does” and “He does everything”. He didn’t shoot the boy. It seems to me that you’re being presumptuous and assuming facts not in evidence. 
Nobody expects Thomas Aquinas! His chief weapons are surprise . . .
Actually, I believe that his age was previously mentioned in the thread. But I think I am in my rights to say that a statement is showing poor logic even if it’s by a 13-year-old, and if the 13-year-old were making an erroneous statement at the SDMB, I would correct him despite his tender age. I would not, however, tell him “how could you not know better than that?”
By that logic, he didn’t save the boy either.
Jar: we don’t know what the kid said because lets face it, have a report write that the child thanks god for surviving will sound the best to readers. Which sounds better: Small child credits recovery to god. Or small child credits skilled doctors who saved his life with his recovery.
The first one sounds better. But damnit, the doctors did all the work. And I still think we need to throw some kudos to the people who donate blood.
Jodi: It’s just how I’d like the world to run. You give your heartfelt thanks to those who try to do something for you. And it’s how I’d try to raise children. Someone saves your life, you make sure you express your thanks to them.
And if you say how rude in a jarjarbinks voice it’s even funnier
It’s even funnier if you picture JarJarBinks as an angel comming into the child’s room and smacking him with a Chick Tract then saying it.
PC? Where the hell did you get “PC?”
You or anyone else is perfectly welcome to say anything you want to about God, but I’m certainly able to state my belief as well.
And that belief is that God had nothing to do with his recovery. It had everything, however, to do with skilled surgery, medical technology, the considered application of pharmaceuticals, and steady oversight by skilled medical personnel.
Precisely. We here in the human world tend to hold someone responsible for those things that person had direct ability to change or prevent. Should we not hold God up to that standard as well?
He could have prevented the kid from being shot. Why didn’t he? He could have instantaneously healed the kid. Why didn’t he? Seems to me, by all logic, even if the child recovers AND God had a direct hand in it, he’s STILL responsible for the terror, pain, and difficult recovery period of the child, to say nothing of deep, lasting psychological damage.
Not so! Not having done X does not imply not having done Y.
What about ET? Could have been that alien, what with his glowing finger and heartlight and whatnot.
Damn it, Eve! Here I am enjoying this righteous indignation fest and you have to go and drop one the finest non-sequiturs I’ve ever seen right into the middle of it.
I hope you’re happy with yourself.
Quite honestly, Arnold, I think that your reasoning here is far below exemplary and even below par. He has made no “erroneous statement”. Frankly, the OP of this thread is more like a Christian bashing rant, though a weak one to be sure.
So Libertarian, you are claiming that:
- boy surviving shooting: act of God
- boy being shot: not an act of God
How do you know that?
While I have no problem with the boy saying what he said, the media coverage of the “miracle” is extremely offensive. It belittles the work of the people who saved the boys life, and it implies that he is somehow more “Worthy” than those who died.
But Libertarian - won’t you excuse me because I’ve never studied logic formally? How rude of you to point my deficiencies! 
Saying “thank you, X, for performing action Y”, though a worthy expression of gratitude, is in my estimate an erroneous statement if X has not performed action Y, or if it is impossible to know wheter or not X performed action Y.
Don’t put your words in my mouth. I’m not claiming anything except that you cannot ascribe either one. It is you who established the metaphysical assertion. What I said was that not doing X doesn’t imply not doing Y.