Do you have compassion for every single person in the whole world who has cancer?
I’ll admit, I don’t care what happens to this guy’s pastor. Fuck his pastor. Having said that, it’s not like the willingness to accept the efficacy of magical chanting as a cure for cancer is the measure of compassion for cancer vicims.
You crack me up. It’s like you have a manual, “How to Make a Thread go to 20 Pages And More, Without Even Trying.”
I just think the “have you no compassion” thing is akin to “somebody please think of the children.” It’s a cheap and irrelevant appeal to sentiment, and it really has no bearing on the questions posed by the OP.
Also, I’m just being honest in admitting that I’m not being tormented at night by worry and grief for some internet poster’s facebook friend’s pastor’s medical problems.
No.
But if someone that I considered a friend was worried about someone close to them, my first thought would not be to call them an idiot. That’s not the act of a friend.
A few years back I was dating someone whose mother was experiencing a protracted and painful death. It was really hard on everyone. GF’s only comfort was that her mother would soon be in heaven, and that in a few decades, they would be together again. I could have railed on about how a belief in heaven was childish and irrational, but really, what purpose would that have served? I would have been right, but I also would have been a grade-A jackass.
Sometimes you just have to let it go and let people find whatever comfort they can.
No, no, I’m with you. You can’t be wracked with emotional turmoil for everyone in the world who has problems. On the other hand, I am not sure that I would go with yelling, “SCREW YOU, CANCER BOY!” either. But that is just me, I can’t speak for the rest of the world.
Where did the OP say he called this person an idiot? I mean, he called him an idiot here, but there’s no indication that he was rude to the person directly. I see the specific circumstance as simply a jumping of point for a general rant about the practice of asking people for prayers anyway, which is a practice worthy of criticism.
The OP never claimed that he ridiculed or insulted this person directly.
A person you’re personally involved with is not the same as a facebook friend that you barely have a relationship with.
Losing a pastor is not on the same level of emotional intensity as losing a parent.
That part was more of a sarcastic way to dismiss the whole line of argument than literally as an insult to the pastor.
I lost a friend to cancer recently. And while I didn’t update my own facebook with the news, other mutual friends did, and the outpouring of sympathy was comforting. To Christians, praying for someone is comforting. Its often an act of sympathy. Your friend, someone you care enough about that you don’t want to unfriend him, cares about his pastor enough to tell his friends - which on facebook is a wide circle of people, some who DO care. Some who know his pastor peripherally and wouldn’t find out about it otherwise. It isn’t all about YOU.
Its likely that the intent of the post is not witnessing, or even a firm belief that praying will ensure a miraculous intervention. I always translate these sorts of things as “my friend has cancer, I really hope its all OK.” And since I care about the person posting, I can extend my “hope” beyond my immediate circle to say “I hope its OK, too” in an effort to provide comfort.
Which doesn’t mean you have to post that you’ll contribute your prayers. But “I’m so sorry to hear that, I sincerely hope he recovers quickly” is comforting to your friend. And if you don’t want to distress him by unfriending him, why wouldn’t you comfort him when he is sincerely distressed?
True, true, and true. It just seems in really bad form to lambast this friend, even indirectly, when the friend is in pain.
I didn’t call them an idiot, that’s why I posted my rant here rather than venting on Facebook where said friend would likely be offended.
It seems childish and silly to sit here on earth and delude yourself into thinking that when you die, you’re going to float above earth into a big cloud and be with all your dead relatives. Comforting? Maybe. Realistic? Absolutely not. I had a friend whose father died and it took her quite a while to get over it because she was constantly thinking that her dad was sitting there with her, watching over her. It’s a crutch. Sure you can grieve over lost relatives, but to believe in mythical fables for the sake of them making you feel better is not something rational people do, and it shows when such people ask for prayers when bad things happen to them (which clearly God intended in the first place).
That said, as stupid as I think religion is, I don’t go out of my way to openly criticize it unless their belief A.) directly impacts me or B.) they start criticizing my beliefs first.
Well, I’m glad you didn’t call your friend an idiot directly.
I, too, wish that people would be more rational about religion. But we live in the world we live in, and a lot of people pray because it’s the way they know to cope.
Dude, they are just grasping at hope where ever they can find it - I really don’t see the problem when my religious friends post stuff like this. They aren’t trying to make a statement about God in the sense you are trying to make. They are simply reaching out for any kind of hope.
I admit, the constant prayers about seemingly trivial stuff is annoying. However, so are the constant braggings and ‘I’m bored’ that I see posted by some face book denizens.
I don’t question why they are your FB friend. I question why this stuff bothers you.
I get bothered by FB friends who post unevidenced and unsupported rants about X or Y, that are obviously biased points of view. So I feel your pain to some degree, but I don’t get being upset about someone praying out of hope for change.
Yes, I agree that it seems childish to believe that. I would say it’s even a point of contention that should be brought up between two reasoning adults.
That said, bringing it up when people are in obvious emotional pain and agony about it just doesn’t seem right to me. Let them have their crutch for the moment.
That’s fine.
I never said that petitionary prayer is nonsense. In fact, I believe that it is just about the most sensible thing that a person can do. (Just ask Rita Klaus.) What I said (very clearly) in my first post was that the reasons Brandon posted for dismissing prayer are nonsense, which they manifestly are. For example, Brandon said, “By your Christian logic, God wanted him to have that tumor”. This bears no relationship whatsoever to any Christian doctrine, so assuming the misrepresentation was not deliberate, Brandon was posting on a topic where he doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about. Similarly for the rest of the OP.
Christians believe their life is in God’s hands. A pastor would especially believe this. No action goes unseen or unapproved by God. So just the fact that he got a brain tumor in the first place should be sufficient proof that God wanted him to have it, at which point, why pray? To make God change his mind? Are you questioning God? HEATHEN!!!
Your anecdotal blog is pretty worthless by the way. For every one of these “miracles” I can find dozens of religious people who end up dying from their illnesses, despite lots of hard prayer and asking God to heal them. What about them? Were they not worthy of God’s time? Modern day miracles are nothing more than cherry picking the rare stories of people’s illnesses going into remission and attributing them to God.
Petitionary prayer is irrational nonsense regardless of how many people delude themselves into thinking it had something to with their medical recoveries. Does God love Rita Klaus more than all the other people who pray to be cured and get ignored? If Miss Klaus had not prayed, would God have refused to heal her? Can God be persuaded to change his mind? How is that consistent with his omniscience? I can go on all day. I’m actually kind of amazed that you could think that this kind of anecdotal BS would have the slightest credibility as a cite around here.
This is not a misrepresentation, it’s an unavoidable conclusion which must be drawn from the qualities typically assigned to God. Nothing can logically happen contrary to the will of an omnimax God. This is very much one of the leading problems with Christian theology. It’s not misinformed at all. It’s a problem which has never been resolved in the history of Christianity.
Actually, us (apparently imbecilic, based on the rest of the thread) Christians believe:
Because we DO have free will (does the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ring any bells for ya) and we DO have control over our lives, we DO sin. So, not everything is in God’s hands, da?
SOME Christians believe that prayer can solve things like tumors. Some of us are just trying to be good people day to day until we get to be in heaven with our Lord and Saviour.
And goodness, the guy is a Christian and his pastor (probably someone pretty close to him) is sick. Yeah, he is asking you to do something that goes against your beliefs but you must be surrounded by that all the time. Just show your sympathy in some sort of normal human way and see that he is a damn person not just some sort of walking sheep in Christian clothing.
Intolerant, much?
Not necessarily true. There are LOTS of shades of Christian. Its possible that your friend is the type that needs God to guide his every action - you know your friend. But the brush you are painting with can paint the entire barn in a single swipe - unfortunately for you, with 75 different denominations of Baptists alone, you really need a detail brush to talk about “Christians.”
I have a Friend who is a fanatic Athiest. It is equally as annoying as my fanatically religious aunt (who I unfriended recently).
The notion of free will is logical hash all by itself (and God already knows everything everybody will do before he creates them, so he’s still the one that’s ultimately responsible for their behavior. He didn’t have to create them), but tumors have nothing to do with free will anyway.
And this is a nonsensical belief.
True, but not relevant to the issue of petitionary prayer.