And comparing thanking Jesus for giving you strength to win a golf touranament is being upgraded to the equivalent of a religious war?
Okay, it’s clear I made a mistake here. I was under the impression that you might be interested in understanding the logic behind the guy’s statements. Apparently, you just want to yell at people who are different than you. My apologies for interupting.
I am applying logic to his statement, not religion. In this thread, I have no quarrel with religion, just the statements of one of it’s practitioners, and his ilk.
I understand that the matter seems unworthy of discussion to you; you have made the point more than once. But isn’t that rather like popping in to a thread and saying “Ya’ll sure do talk about some silly stuff?” One man’s meat, and all that. Obviously, it does matter to the folks who think it matters, and telling them that the topic is pointless is pointless itself. It just comes off as scolding.
How is claiming that Jesus gave you strength morally superior to claiming that steroids did ? It seems to me that someone who claims God/Jesus/whatever helped them win a sport event is claiming to have cheated. Like saying “I couldn’t have won except for these steroids !”, or “I couldn’t have won except Bob kept kicking the balls into the holes after I missed !”
I mean, whether it’s God or a plain old human, third parties aren’t supposed to influence the game like that.
No. Not at all. You are the one who compared religion to lucky pennies. I was simply pointing out how weak such a comparison is. If it makes it easier to understand, substitute “the miracle of life” for “war.”
C’mon, Miller. You’re better than that. You call that yelling? You make a point, I respond. You employ logic, I yell? My response was yelling? Where, exactly, did the logic break down? Is giving everyone equal help not a rising tide? Does that then not render the help moot?
I never said I thought it mattered. I just said I thought he sounded pompous.
No way to respond to such a finely crafted argument as this.
That makes no sense.
I never said it was unworthy of discussion. In fact, I think several posters have made an honest effort to explain what exactly is going on in Zach’s head and why he probably said what he said. But if you want to discuss it, you should open a GD thread. The purpose of opening a thread in this forum is to shit on someone. This just seems like a very mean spirited thing to shit on someone for.
I can read, I really can :smack:
I know a guy who was praying about the time of the US Open that his premature child would live, and she didn’t- maybe Zach shouldn’t be so selfish.
Except by, you know, responding to it. Instead of pseudo non-responses like yours.
I think I make a perfectly good point. If his god is helping him, it’s cheating. If his god is not, he’s deluded. And either way, as others have said, he’s arrogant.
Much as I hate to take the side of religion, your argument makes no sense. There are plenty of perfectly legitimate non-cheating things that give one an “edge” in golf, or any other competition. I might have better clubs, or might have exercised more, or might have gotten more playing time on this particular course. All of those are “unfair”, but are perfectly legitimate.
Other things, such as steroids, or a sniper shooting my opponents full of tiny darts full of bad-coordination-gas, are not allowed.
If Jesus does in fact exist, there is no rule against gaining support from him.
If Jesus did in fact exist and was intervening in a directly supernatural sense, ie, reaching out with his invisible god-hand and putting a ball into the hole in contravention of physics, that might be an issue worth debating at least for fun, but that doesn’t seem to be the claim being made.
Honestly, speaking as an agnostic/atheist, this thread is making me uncomfortable, as it’s full of people who share my general wordview who are being (a) totally illogical in their arguments, and/or (b) assholes.
Contrapuntal: Your whole argument is just plain wrong. I don’t believe in God, but if I did, it would be entirely logical for me to feel that I was generally gaining strength from God, and to thank him for my successes in whatever endeavors I might pursue, without that implying that God had consciously chosen me over others. It’s also entirely reasonable for “Jesus was walking behind me” to mean something vague and supportive like that, rather than “there was this supernatural being who is the son of the creator of the universe and he was physically located a few feet away from me, in a literal physical sense”.
There are so many legitimate gripes about religion… why are we wasting time on this?
Eh, I couldn’t give a shit when a sportsman says it. What bugs me is when some Christian recovers from a long bout with cancer, it’s always because God blessed them. It never has anything to with the doctors and nurses who worked their balls off to diagnose and treat the cancer, nor the medical technology and science that are developing constantly at a breakneck pace to elucidate the molecular mechanisms and possible treatments of cancer.
Nope. It’s God. Uh huh.
Have you not engaged in discussions about religion? Did you employ logic? Why, if religion is illogical?
Religions profess to an internal logic. Cause and effect, for example. “I am standing here today as the Masters Champion thanks, at least in part, to Jesus.” That requires a causal relationship between winning, and Jesus. Granting that relationship, asserted by an adherent, opens the discussion to other causal relationships. Simply countering with “religion is irrational” is pointless, and disrespectful.
One purpose. Surely not the only purpose. And even granting that, so what? Have Pit threads never enlightened anyone? Are serious arguments never made? Is debate forsworn here? You yourself state otherwise, in this thread.
If shitting on someone is the sole purpose of the Pit, and shitting on someone is a bad thing to do, what are you even doing here?
Goddamn it, I have quoted Johnson enough. I am not going to do it again. That is not what he said.
There can only be one winner. If Johnson won because of Jesus’ intervention, then everyone else lost because of Jesus’ intervention. It really could not be any more simple. It does not mean that Jesus actively made the other guys fuck up. No one is claiming that. It does mean that without Jesus’ help, Johnson could not have won. There can only be one winner.
God is not intervening to help the competitor out.
Faith acts as a center. If I want to say, “I couldn’t have done it without Jesus” I don’t mean that Jesus came down, aided me, screwed my opponent, or somehow did something.
If I thank God for my win, I am NOT saying, “God loves me more than you,” I am NOT saying, “My superior faith is the reason why I won over these heathens,” and I am NOT saying “It is through direct intervention from my God that I won.”
Until one can understand these points, there is no way to understand the Christian athlete’s point of view enough to debate it.
Der Trihs, Contrapuntal, Hentor: I’m sure that you’re all quite secure in your beliefs that God ought not or is not cheating for His followers. But it’s not that it’s more complicated than that- it isn’t that at all.
Please, PLEASE stop ascribing it to INTERVENTION. Jesus didn’t intervene in the game.
I hate to say it, but I’m done here. I cannot think of more willful ignorance and self-righteous bigotry than I’m seeing here. And I’ve seen anti-abortion rallies. This beats those.
I AM, though, halfway of a mind to start an “ask the international-class athlete who thanks God for his wins” thread, just so people can stop playing “parse the sound bite” with ZJ’s quote.
I’m happy to do that if people are of a mind to actually trade ideas on the topic.
If Jesus gave Zach power and guidance, which he says was the case, then he intervened.
Wow. You get the hyperbole award so far. Way to go. Nice win!
I didn’t say you were yelling at me. It’s just that it seems clear that your primary purpose in this thread is to make fun of someone for publically expressing their faith, with little or no interest in the ideas that actually constitute that faith.
Which is sad because (to borrow a phrase) you’re better than that.
So far I have been told that A) People who have more faith or pray harder get success B) God gives support to everyone equally, and C) God doesn’t really give support at all.
Kind of hard to figure out exactly what the ideas are that constitute faith.
My sole purpose is not to make fun of someone. I do think that people who believe that God helped them win golf tournaments are arrogant. I think I have stated my case. I have no problem with public expressions of faith. Giving God credit for the win is a bit more than that. Perhaps that is our sticking point.
As I have noted, losers don’t thank God. First round leaders don’t thank God. Only winners do. If it were simply expressing faith, there would be a lot more of it.
Yet that is *exactly *what Johnson did say, absent the screwing the opponent part. There were about 60 odd losers last Sunday. You tell me if they were screwed.
Yes, I have. But eventually I stop myself when I realize what I’m doing.
The main purpose. If you’re not mainly shitting on someone, you shouldn’t be opening a Pit thread. Note that the OP is specifically calling for sportsman to stop invoking religion.
I didn’t say shitting on people was always a bad thing. Sometimes people deserve to be shat upon-- when they do something to hurt other people. Who is being hurt in any way by what ZJ did? This is no different than Pitting a gay couple for kissing in public. Because you might personally find what Zach did bothersome, that’s your problem. As I said earlier, if he was aggressively trying to convert people, or if he literally said Jesus loved him more than the other players, then he’d deserve to to be Pitted. But all he said was that he personally finds strength in Jesus. Well, good for him… and I say that as an atheist.