Belief in the supernatural doesn’t make the bullet more bite-able; it denies the bullet’s existence.
I’d be all, “Hey you, don’t give up!”.
When they aren’t saying it’s all part of God’s Plan, or that it’s no big deal because of the afterlife, or that the victims obviously deserved it because otherwise God wouldn’t have inflicted such suffering on them, or they aren’t the ones doing the horrible things in the first place.
I’m sorry it happened?
It’s certainly better than screaming at her that she’s a slut who should have kept her legs shut, or that she should have submitted to her rapist as God demands, or telling her it’s punishment for her sinful thoughts or her actions in a previous life, or executing her for fornication, or forcing her to marry her rapist, or all the other nasty things that religion tends to inspire.
Neither God nor religion is “just” in the first place, much less a “universal hand of justice”. I certainly wouldn’t try to “comfort” someone by telling them the universe is controlled by a supernatural all-powerful megalomaniac who likes to inflict eternal torture on people and who planned her rape at the beginning of time.
I agree with the phrase “I’m so sorry this happened to you and I will do what I can to help you recover”.
Now you tell me - what do you say to such a victim if your “god” is the type that accepts death-bed confessions from the rapist or allows the rapist to be “reborn” so that the one who did the evil is given a free pass to heaven. Isn’t that what a good christian should do? Pray for the soul of the sinner so that may see the light and become “saved”. Is that what you tell the victim who has been raped - pray for the rapist so they will get to be saved and go to heaven?
I’m sorry, but getting to the core of things, what’s the point? I don’t believe in the supernatural, but I hardly think this is a good way to sway me (or anyone else). The fact that reality is often horrible, and almost never fair does not justify the existence of the supernatural. If you believe something because you know that without it, reality doesn’t seem quite as pleasant… Well, that’s a terrible reason to believe in anything. If there’s no God, then that rapist got off without the threat of eternal punishment. But the fact that some would consider it to be nice if he did get eternal punishment (as a side note: this concept is infinitely immoral and absolutely disgusting) does not mean that their preference dictates reality. Without actual evidence, there’s nothing to be said.
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What would you say to the people who had family in the concentration camps and nothing came to the people who committed the crimes?
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My grandfather was religious until he served in Europe during WWII, at which point he concluded that God wouldn’t have stood by and let the Holocaust happen – figuring it’s simply absurd to imagine an entity who could help, but doesn’t, but will punish the evildoers later, which is an odd thing to postulate about Someone Who Pointedly Isn’t Punishing The Wicked, Exactly As If He (a) Doesn’t Care About That, or (b) Isn’t There.
So his atheism ensued, because, honestly, what could he say to a concentration-camp survivor? “If there is a God, the one thing we know from events hereabouts is that he doesn’t give a crap about justice, and so maybe he’ll keep rewarding evildoers in the afterlife, and maybe you’re in for yet more injustice in the afterlife too, because, hey, all evidence is that God is cool with that, amirite?”
I don’t understand why you think saying “the perpetrators will get punished in the afterlife” has any more effect on the victim(s) than anything anyone else says. It’s only comforting (only potentially comforting, I should say) if the victim believes you, which is certainly not a given and does not seem to be a precondition of your OP.
Why do you feel like choosing someone’s most vulnerable moment to talk about the social superorganism* whose ends you serve is an appropriate response, or that it will help that person?
*According to David Sloan Wilson’s Darwin’s Cathedral, religions are best explained as ‘superorganisms’ adapted to succeed in competition against others.
This here is really just a small part of your problems, but it really shows how little experience you have with honestly considering how other people think.
Blake,
Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t think I’d have the heart to say it the way you would say it. I kind of feel it lacks compassion. But if you don’t believe in what comes around goes around, I guess you have no choice.
I feel a person who has been wronged wants justice.
Worm. . . .
Perhaps, but that’s no reason to lie to them.
I’d say the greedy polluting money hungry slavemasters known as White men are the virus on the planet.
Karma?
That’s putting it lightly. Everything about Ameirca and Europe is backwards.
A THING oriented society is psychopathic. Which is why governments down to thugs are stealing/mugging/people/countries for THINGS.
The CONTROLLERS are holding onto a DYING ideology. Money. oil. (central banks).
Will white people pay for their depravities?
They are paying now. But as we all know, some virus’ must enjoy the deluge of fire.
so be it.
This thread has taken an unexpected turn.
Enter the Black Mamba…
Does that sound anything like Enter Sandman?
And I feel that promising that person justice when there’s no reason to believe that said justice is forthcoming is dishonest.
Curiouser and nuttiouser.
Do you beleive there is such a thing as bigotry?
If so, would you classify yourself as a bigot?
If not, why not?
Name the part of the world that you would hold up as the ideal society that us backward, thing-obsessed westerners should be striving to emulate.
Versus the Controllers!
But OP, what IS heartless about acknowledging facts and deciding that we’d rather talk about what we can do to help or comfort rather than what we’d hope or wish? Hell, sometimes the wronged party themselves already know there is not going to be any sort of payback collected and will be quite peeved that you promise them some sort of cosmic correction in the hereafter, when their suffering was here and now.
(And sorry, here’s another vote that your first post WAS excessively minimalist)
And then the winner goes up against the winner of UHOJ vs BKFOR? Or is it a round-robin?