Todd Kohlhepp just confessed to killing 7 people and burying their bodies on his property. The local sheriff was baffled until a woman was found chained up in a storage container, which broke open the case. The Washington Post said:
God answered our prayers. What kind of God permits killing 7 people but is praised for revealing the killer (13 years later)? That’s a god we should have nothing but contempt for, but the Sheriff worships Him. See you in church next Sunday, Chuck.
Belief in prayer is roughly analogous to keeping your spouse’s desiccated corpse in your house and rubbing it periodically, hoping it will come back to life and grant you wishes.
It is clearly insane, but there’s no talking the insane person out of it.
It’s so nice to be insane,
No one asks you to explain…
– Alan O’Day
It’s so nice to be insane,
No one asks you to explain…
– Alan O’Day
God is a busy guy – he’s got the whole universe to deal with, and not a lot of help. You take what you can get, I guess. He may not have been watching when those seven people were killed, but then again, the same day he saved 28 zxilytes in the Epsilon Cassiopeiae system when their Illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator malfunctioned. Can’t be everywhere at once. It’s the same reason hurricanes sometimes head directly for conservatives instead of the gays they’re intended for.
Sorry about the dupe post. According to isitdownrightnow.com, the Dope was down for a few minutes and I kept getting server errors. Let’s see if this post will work.
I thought that gays caused them.
No, we’re just the targets. Get your facts straight.
So obviously this guy who had a woman chained up in a shipping container for two months is a serial killer, right? But what … you know what, never mind, I can’t think about this.
I’m an atheist. I find this an uncharitable view of human psychology. Language is full of metaphors and anthropomorphism. You most likely engage in similar magical thinking, just with different euphemisms, such as saying “thank goodness,” or considering yourself lucky at one point or another. If you want to mock bad religious ideas I’d think there are better targets out there.
So if you lost a child or spouse to cancer, you’d say, “God answers our prayers” and everyone would know that this was just a metaphor? What would you say if you won the lottery – “God is a cruel bastard”?
I’m never entirely sure I understand Tom Waits lyrics, but this one seems appropriate. “God’s Away On Business”.
When I was a kid, I asked god to make my brother sober again. And only 35 years later, god answered my prayer. Of course, now my brother is dying a slow and painful death as cancer eats his face from the inside out. Maybe I should have asked god to make him quit smoking instead. God’s not a mind reader after all. Oh, no, I know! We’re still dealing with the Old Testament god, and the cancer is punishment for my brother’s sins. That makes sense now. Whew! For a minute there I started to doubt my faith.
So, it is your belief that the Sheriff (and his neighbors) literally made prayers unto their God that they would be able to solve that case? Perhaps on their knees by their bed with their hands folded, just before going to bed?
Or, perhaps the phrase, “God answered our prayers” is a just a figure of speech used to mean “What we were all hoping for has finally happened”.
I’m with marshmallow. If you want to poke fun at people for their beliefs, go ahead, but this is pretty lame. Kind of like getting upset at someone saying “God bless you” when you sneeze.
So you’re conceding that straight facts are better? The family values people will all over this muddled gay propaganda.
Meh, this sounds similar to the criticism of Dawkins’ book that people are too sophisticated to believe in that kind of god, so it’s all attacking a straw man. The majority or mainstream Christians believe in the literal power of prayer. At the fringe, some believe in it so deeply that they withhold life-saving medical treatment from their children. It’s not a metaphor for most Christians, and it deserves ridicule until it becomes one.
Apropos of this, Sam Harris on Dubya:
Riemann, you seem to be a worthwhile addition to the board. Welcome.
What, you didn’t know there was a one-year tryout period?
(Bolding mine.)
No, you can’t be everywhere at once. Unless you’re omnipresent or something. But who would expect that out of a mere god?
God has to be in the bathtub once in a while, doesn’t he?
I lurked for several years, mainly reading interesting GQ stuff, before I finally decided to join, so I don’t feel like a newcomer. Eventually, somebody was so wrong on the internet that I had no alternative but to de-lurk. I forget my first post, now, so it can’t have been so important. In any event, I don’t regret it - there aren’t too many places with civilized ROE on the interwebs.
It’s worrying to look back at zombies and see the number of seemingly sane and calm posters who somehow got banned. So my ambition is simply to accept the challenge of remaining unbanned for the next decade. Seriously, I think it would be a positive process for me to learn when to back off from unproductive and frustrating conversations - which I’m certainly not naturally good at.
My trigger was somebody being wrong about The Simpsons.