I have less and less patience with magical thinking and all the nonsense it leads to the older I get. However, my limited understanding of any concept of “God’s plan” is that humans have no idea what that plan is, nor how complex and multi-layered it is, and that absolute trusting faith in the rightness (for lack of a better word) of “God” and everything that “God” does is critical to most sects of Christianity. Anything that seems contradictory to anyone is because that person does not know the mind of “God.” Anyone supposing that “God” is evil because people died clearly does not have the faith in the rightness of “God’s plan” that is required.
In this particular case, the occurrence of a flash flood in a part of Texas that is apparently prone to such events, insofar as it was not caused by any immediate human actions, seems to meet the very definition of “act of God.” No person or persons were to blame for the event. Lacking “God” I might say that the event was morally neutral (note that I am leaving climate change out of this discussion because of how much it would, you should forgive the expression, muddy the waters).
The actual deaths and injuries, of course, certainly involved human actions or failures, and those should be considered as separate from the flood.
I was going to say, the question of theodicy goes back millennia. Many minds have spent plenty of time considering and discussing the issue, trying to find an acceptable answer. But I suppose it’s easier just to build and attack a strawman of what someone assumes someone else must believe.
People are expected to look after themselves. God isn’t going to feed or clothe them. God isn’t going to push them out of the way of a speeding car. And if people don’t implement proper warning systems and emergency response, more people will die when a natural disaster hits. That doesn’t contradict any religious doctrine I’ve ever heard of, Christian or otherwise.
“In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”
Thessalonians 5:18
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
Romans 8:28
I spent my childhood and early adulthood subjected to being in a Southern Baptist church Wednesday nights and twice on Sunday. Thousands of sermons. You may call me a bigot, but you will not (accurately) call me ignorant of what the brainwashed cultists may think.
May I refer you to “Mating” by Norman Rush? It is an amazing book in which the narrator ridicules a person who believed in god until someone she cared about died. The narrator is furious that anyone could be so narcissistic as to think god protects them, but allows others to suffer … then has the audacity to doubt god once someone they actually cared about died. It’s sublime writing and I recommend it to anyone who cares about the morality of believing in god.
I love that part of the book (the entire book, actually) … but it is an indictment of people who don’t think. Not an indictment of intellectual exploration and honesty.
My point is that there ARE people who think, and they come up with nuanced, heartfelt explanations of the fact that “God’s Plan” involves pain, loss, rejection, and unknowable reasons for suffering. Do I agree with their justifications? Hell no. I think they are wrong. Do I automatically dismiss people who disagree with me as stupid assholes, refusing to credit them for their soul-searching, philosophically thought out explanations for why God’s Plan includes the suffering of good people?
Nope. People do not have to have lockstep agreement with my own views in order to be compassionate, moral, humans.
You seem to think that a belief in God’s Plan makes someone a bad person. Sorry. My tent is bigger than that.
Not a legitimate ask, IMHO. I doubt that all of your own beliefs would necessarily pass some people’s standard of “minimally internally consistent” (I’m sure mine wouldn’t, and I’m a lifelong atheist), so I don’t see why you get to demand that from other people’s beliefs.
ISTM that the principle of “stadium rules” applies in a society that respects freedom of religion. That is, when we’re all in the same stadium for the same game (whether the “game” is religiously neutral government policy, scientific research according to standardized concepts of evidentiary testing and hypothesis construction, etc.), then we’ve all got to abide by the same internally consistent set of universal rules for making decisions and resolving disputes. That’s reasonable.
But when people are off in their own personal playing fields of sussing out what they consider some kind of ultimate truth, the stadium rules don’t apply. And people who come around jeering at others for not following the stadium rules in their own personal beliefs are just being assholes.
Meh, everybody’s sadly deluded about something or other: look at all the people who sneer at various religious dietary laws but still think it’s disgusting to eat insects, for example.
ISTM that if other people’s cognitive “delusions” are not preventing them from being a significantly better person than I am—and I know quite a few religious people whose beliefs I would call “delusional” according to the “stadium rules” who in fact are significantly better persons than I am, or than you either, I’d bet—then I have some work to do before I’m entitled to look down my nose at them about how “sad” they are.
There are at least some Christians who consider taking any action to help yourself is sinful because it demonstrates a lack of faith in God. I recall reading an article years ago where some like that were trying to get The Wizard of Oz banned from a school library because of the plot point that Dorothy could send herself back to Kansas with the magic slippers, instead of having to pray to God to send her back.
I suspect they aren’t that common though, it seems like a dogma prone to self-elimination via literal Darwinian selection.
You can state any opinion you want, with zero support. Others can then ask for further illumination as to what you base your opinions on. And you can ignore them, if you like.
Anyone who wants to ask WTF my opinions are based on is welcome to ask. I also feel I can ask others where they got their ideas.
A supposedly all-powerful god that supposedly loves innocent children supposedly just let a bunch of them die a horrible death, and this isn’t the first time.
My ideas? They come from reality.
A perfectly reasonable point of view. My objection is assuming that anyone who disagrees with you is an asshole. What if THEY thought long and hard about their views, studied religious texts, talked to counselors/rabbis/ministers/philosophers, and arrived at a different conclusion?
I don’t think we should hate, ridicule, or demean people who thoughtfully have a different, spirtually-infused view about what this (theoretical, non-existent, in my view) god might have intended.
We live in a big world. Let’s allow different viewpoints as long as certain fundamental values - compassion, tolerance, love, humanity - are recognized by us all.
I may respect the rights of others to have opinions, but that in no possible way obligates me to actually respect that opinion itself, no matter how “spiritually-infused” it happens to be.
Then they are wrong, because they started their reasoning process with a basis of falsehood.
I’ll also point out that this faith based worldview is anything but harmless; we are sliding into fascism because of it. Because of people who believe, in the face of all evidence that they are right; people who actively disdain evidence and logic and science in favor of faith and dogma.
Sure. I didn’t think I was putting words into your mouth, but since I apparently was, I’m happy to reach right in there and pull them out. I’m happy to say “Czarcasm doesn’t think anyone who disagrees with them is an asshole.”
That makes you a better person than me, actually. There are times when I think people who disagree with me are indeed assholes. Just not universally.