Okay, you don’t think people should put religious crap up on their wall. That’s a perfectly valid opinion. But your friend obviously thinks prayer requests are okay on Facebook. And, most likely she has a lot of churchy Christian facebook friends who are interested in her churchy Christian prayer requests. So from their perspective religion and prayer are acceptable public topics. Sure, it would be nice if all these Christian people would just go find some other forum to go pray and be Christian – but wait! You can hide/unfriend them, and from your perspective it will look like they all disappeared.
First, you can think someone is nice and sweet and still find them annoying. Which basically sounds like what’s going on here, she puts up a post about someone she know having a brain tumor and you get annoyed by her Jesus-speak. Have you considered that if she knew this then she would tell you to just stop reading her posts?
Because sometimes (albeit not in the example given by the OP), they’re people you have to actually deal with IRL occasionally.
Brandon, just hide him. I’ve hidden the updates of everyone whose facebook activity annoys, angers, or just plain bores the everloving fuck out of me, and it makes facebook much more enjoyable.
Just do your friend a favor and pray for the pastor. Pray for him to die if you must. Eventually, God will answer your prayer, and then you’ll look dumb.
Have you seen the Julia Sweeney special that is on one of the premium channels? I believe the name of it is Saying Goodbye to God. She was a Catholic and is now an atheist. Her journey began with a visit from two Mormons. She is so funny and so real. I expect her to have a greater influence than Dawkins.
I am not religious by any means today. I was raised to be a Christian, and decided that wasn’t my future, in practice at least. I don’t have a church now (nor do I want one) and my belief in God is up in the air as far as I’m concerned.
My best friend happens to be the son of a Lutheran Pastor. We have been friends for many years, and have never had anything that might cause us to rethink our friendship. He has always seen my questions about his faith as being legitimate, and has always answered in kind.
He is not Fred Phelps, thankfully, because then I’d possibly have to well…
My own mother thinks that Sarah Palin is fit for the White House. I still love her.
If people’s views on FB make you mad, hide their comments. If they ask why, tell them you’d rather hear about people’s kids inane comments, rather than their latest prayer of the week.
The great theologian Garth Brooks addressed the question of Unanswered Prayers, if anyone is interested. I know this song because I was, in a former life, a radio DJ who did, among other things, a country music call-in show. I escaped from that life quite a while ago, please don’t hold it against me
The chorus of the song gives the nutshell argument for the purpose of prayer. If you pray and get what you want, God answered your prayer. If you don’t get it, he listened, but didn’t give you what you asked for because it wasn’t in your best interest.
What is it with people who have the crappiest lives always saying how God is in control of it all? Am I the only one who thinks that it means SOMEONE is napping on the job?
He seems to be preoccupied with helping athletes if you take their word for it. It’s true though, starving kids, the homeless, the diseased, and battered women really need to step up their game.
:rolleyes: Let’s not get into what God gets credit for, and what he’s not to blame for, let alone free will.
… I’ve been told that i needed to pray more for God to help me but the way i see it; he keeps sending jerks across my path so i have to marry some douche and be a housewife to please him?
Why to i have to pray to let him know what a wretched sinner i’m supposed to be and bother him constantly?
A truly alert and semihelpful god would at least let me get a job stocking shelves at a grocery so that i wouldn’t have to badger him, and he would smile upon my efforts to get an education that i could get a job, therefore being able to tithe more at church to help them do good works.
Yes, it’s the ultimately self-fulfilling prophecy. I’ve never understood how people can delude themselves to that degree and cherry pick the good things from their life and credit God, but when bad things happen, God wasn’t involved and they should instead pray. If God is controlling everything regardless, why bother praying?
While we’re at it, why wear a seatbelt while driving? God is in control. If he doesn’t want you to die, you won’t have any wrecks and you certainly won’t die if you have one. And if Heaven is really this eternal paradise, why not get there ASAP?
BrandonR, let me get this straight. Someone close to your friend has a brain tumor, and your friend is asking for acts of compassion. And your response is to get pissed and start a religious debate?
I suggest that you seriously rethink your priorities.
First, religion is not necessarily a private matter. Second, what people put on Facebook is not necessarily a public matter. Third, no one has made you the supreme dictator of Facebook.
So does your experience involve having direct access to the inner thoughts of religious people? If not, then you have no way of knowing whether other people have considered certain issues or not. I’m in full agreement with what Shmendrik said. Everybody has considered the nonsense that you brought up in the OP, and that remains a fact even if you refuse to acknowledge it. This is a really lame rant, even by atheist standards.
My friend might as well be asking for unicorn feces to help heal the tumor, the point is it’s not going to make any difference. I’m pissed about how irrational their thinking is, and how much it has hurt mankind over the years. There is nothing wrong with my priorities.
I just hide posts from people who incessantly post that shit. And I’m with the OP: They’re always so thankful when God answered their prayers for little Billy’s brain cancer to be cured. So apparently God just didn’t give a shit about little Johnny, who did die of brain cancer. Right.
ETA: In the case of someone who actually had brain cancer, of course I would feel compassion for them, and I might even post that they’re in my thoughts. I’m not going to post that I’m praying for them, because I think “the power of prayer” is bogus and stupid, for reasons mentioned earlier in my post and in this thread. If someone is posting nonstop about how they are praying for this, that, and the other thing, and we need to pray for their husband to get a new job, and we need to pray for some people they read about in the newspaper who were in a car accident, and we need to pray for Obama to see the light and stop with this health-care nonsense, then I delete them, or hide them, whichever is most appropriate.
If they’ve considered the nonsense (and I’m glad you agree that peitionary prayer is nonsense), then why can’t they recognize it as nonsense? They couldn’t have considered it very deeply.
