Oh for the love of crumbcake, yosemitebabe. I didn’t say ‘dangerous’; you did! All I’m saying is that, if someone’s impressionable enough to take the incident of finding a book that wasn’t lost to begin with as a sign, they can (not will) be led to believe other things.
I simply have high skepticism for people who interpret everything that happens to them as either god’s doing or satan’s, whichever happens to suit their book.
So why don’t you answer my question. So many people spend their last minutes praying, but they die anyway. Why is that? No miracles for murder victims, but as long as you pray, you’ll never lose your bible?
No, actually, czarcasm was the first person to introduce that term, if memory serves. And since you didn’t seem to refute him, I assumed that you didn’t have a problem with his statements. I apologize for misunderstanding your intent on this matter, then.
You don’t have enough evidence to assume that. Let’s look at what this girl actually said (as paraphrased by the OP):
See, while it is entirely possible that she just placed it there and forgot about it, it is also possible that she either was certain that she HADN’T placed it there before, or that she was certain that she had looked in that drawer before (“we looked and looked”) and it wasn’t there before. Now mind, I am not saying that she didn’t put the book there before, I am saying that she thought she hadn’t put the book there before. And if she thought she didn’t, she obviously would think it was pretty nifty to find it there later. A non-religious person would think it was “freaky” or “weird” if they found a book in an unexpected place. A young naive Christian might consider this a happy answer to prayer. A more mature Christian might also consider this an answer to prayer, but they might also figure that they probably put the Bible there, and forgot - and are happy that they now found it. Because, the premise for many Christans is - if you pray for a solution to a problem, and the problem is solved, then you assume your prayer was answered. Why pray at all, if you are only going to question the methods in which your problem is solved?
I can’t seem to get this through to you - A LOT of Christians do this. They lose their keys, or a book, or their shoes, and they “look and look” and they find it in some unexpected place. So they look up to the Heavens and say “Thank you God”. It’s not like they think that God sent an angel down to find their keys - they just know that they found the thing, and they are grateful. And that “God was involved”.
But - that’s how a lot of religious people see the world! Sheesh? Where have you been? For many Christians, they believe that God is all-seeing. He sees everything. He doesn’t take away our free choice, but if we ask Him to help us find our keys - He just might do it. Why not? It isn’t like God has a finite amount of resources or time, and can only take care of the “big” problems. He counts the hair on our heads, and He notices when the sparrow falls. This is what many Christians believe.
What do you want? For no one to die, ever? People have to die sometime. Not all prayers will be answered in the way we prefer, or understand. God’s ways can be mysterious, no one will ever deny that.
But you know - it is not necessarily my inclination to continue to discuss personal Christian beliefs with you. Particularly since I suspect strongly that you have discussed this exact issue with MANY other Christians before, and you probably know what answers to expect. Forgive me if I am assuming incorrectly. But either way, I assure you, many more able Christian minds (like Poly) will be far more capable of discussing such issues with you, and will be able to give far more coherent answers than I am able. No doubt they will be more than happy to discuss these things with you in a sincere and serious manner, if you so desire.
What I believe is that if she hadn’t wasted her time with a group prayer and spent it finishing the book hunt, she would have found it that much sooner. The only thing the prayer did was delay the finding of the book.
“Personal miracles”? Happens about as often for those don’t pray as for those who do. If I flip a coin, is it a “personal miracle” every time it comes up the way I want it? BTW, that is NOT sarcasm. I am actually trying to find out how high the odds have to be against something happening before you declare an event to be a personal miracle, and not chance, luck or the breaks.
might just as well be trying to simultaneously measure the velocity and position of an elementary particle; you are trying to measure something (faith) that, by definition, cannot be objectively measured.
Revtim. Just in case you are still reading this thread from your cross you put yourself on, please indulge me. Just so I can avoid any possible problems interpreting your posts, you think it is reasonable to have faith in God. You just think it’s stupid and inane to have faith in the value of prayer or that God may act in this world? Have I got it now? This girl is a complete bint because she has faith that God may answer her prayer?
If so, you’re still mocking her for her faith. You still can’t disprove anything she had said, hell, you even said it was possible. Yet, instead of treating her with a modicum of respect, you just go ahead and mock her and call her faith stupid and dumb. And that is still an arrogant, intolerant thing to do.
If you’re asking whether I personally believe in Young-Earth Creationism, no I don’t. As you point out, there is quite a bit of evidence that Young Earth Creationism is not so reasonable.
From the rest of your post, I’m guessing you too think faith in the value of prayer or an active God is idiotic and inane? I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it seems a fair conclusion based on your post. So, I’ll rephrase the question I asked earlier, Where the fuck do you get off telling somebody else that a matter of their faith is idiotic and inane? Perhaps I just haven’t seen your badge declaring you the Arbiter of All Truths. Is that why it is so hard for you to not mock somebody else’s faith? This girl, the much-more-patient-than-me yosemitebabe, myself, and (I would venture to guess) others, have faith that God listens to our prayers and may take actions in our lives. To have that faith disparaged as inane, stupid, and idiotic is a tremendous insult, and I don’t take it too lightly. Be skeptical all you want. Hell, I don’t care what you believe. But please, have enough respect for people to not call their reasonable faith names.
Okay, if “miracle” means “event occurring contrary to the laws of nature” then there’s no such thing as a miracle – the laws of nature won’t permit it. (However, the Lawmaker might have written those laws with exclusionary clauses – e.g., if you’re participating in a particular teaching session on the Sea of Galilee, you can walk on water, the surface tension locally and temporarily increasing to support you.)
If it’s “something rare and extraordinary” then there is no reason to doubt anything described as a miracle in the Bible, because they are by definition “rare and extraordinary” events.
Neither of those definitions seem to work particularly well, I think.
Most believers tend to use a (tacitly held) definition of “occurrence which demonstrates the intentional intervention of God in a special way” with no reference to the violation of natural law or, directly, the rarity or extraordinariness of the event – although “in a special way” implies the latter.
One thing not taken into consideration is that the girl in question prayed that she would be able to find her Bible. Obviously, her prayer was answered – in the very mundane fact that she did in fact find it. Whether this is a miracle in any sense that most posters would buy into, or whether there was any act of God involved, is a separate question – He may have just used the time of concentration involved with the prayer to make the presumably scatterbrained little twit (based on the characterization implied in the narrative in the OP) think and remember where it was that she left her Bible!
So she looked for the book, stopped to pray about finding the book, continued looking for the book, and found the book.
Now, if “…her prayer was answered…” means “the thing most likely to happen, happened” then I will agree that her prayer was answered. Now, if it makes her feel better to pray that likely things will happen, more power to her. I think I’ll just try to muddle through life without the praying, and save a bit of time.
Ah, a final dollop of one of those smug “zingers” that is supposed to mortally wound all us Christians. :yawn:
Sigh. I’m glad this thread is winding down. Thank you, Poly, for your clear and simple explanations. And thanks, Hamlet, for being far more consice than I could have been.
So sorry to have bored you with my difference of opinion about the nature of miracles and the depth of some peoples’ religious beliefs. So sorry that you felt as if you were being personally attacked, also,but try to remember on thing, please. No matter how closely you identify with your religion, if someone “attacks” or criticises your religion, they are NOT “attacking” or criticising you. This train of thought tends to stifle critical thinking, which is not healthy for anyones’ well being.
The little smug line about “I think I’ll just try to muddle through life without the praying, and save a bit of time.” was just a little too transparent. That wasn’t about “critical thinking” and “a difference of opinion”. Not. Buying. It.
This whole thread has been full of condescending crap like that. And if Christians had displayed the same attitude about atheism, you’d be totally OK with it? Oh, sure… :rolleyes:
She’s a stupid bint.
Just in case I didn’t make myself clear- she’s a stupid bint.
Here’s why- she is looking for objective proof of a matter of faith. And she’s never going to find that. It doesn’t exist. People have searched for it for millenia upon millenia, and no one’s ever found it.
Yosemitebabe, you can believe whatever you want about God leading your hands to your car keys. I’m willing to bet- in fact, I’ll bet $100 cash, call it the mini-Randi challenge- that if you and Czarcasm had repeated races to find missing car keys, in the end you’d both find them in the same amount of time.
Now, you can be thankful to God for feeling that he helped you, that he may have guided your hand to the car keys. I don’t decry that as ‘stupid’, or ‘dangerous’- because you don’t accept that as “proof of God”. You don’t tell people “Come to my Church, where you will find God, and you will know you’ve found God because he helps you find your car keys 5.26 minutes faster on average.”
Re-read what the OP said stupid bint said. It is obvious to me that stupid bint accepts having found her Bible as proof that God exists and listens to her prayers. And that’s stupid- there are any number of reasons other than a merciful, Bible-finding God that could have produced her Bible, not the least cynical of which would be the camp counselor who hid it in the first place putting it back while the kids were off praying to find it.
But it’s also dangerous. Why? Because she now believes that God will perform miracles for her. Which means that she may not take care in her actions, believing that God will suddenly pull her away from the brink due to her faith. Because she may not question the teachings she is given, or pull out any personal understanding, because if her church can do miracles, they must be right. And likewise, she’ll jump from religion to religion as she sees bigger miracles that others perform (“Yeah, sure, the Bible-finding Protestants were okay, but now I’m with Pentacostals whose faith allows them to handle poisonous snakes! Isn’t that amazing?”)
Finally, and as a Christian, a response I’m amazed you haven’t seen as the true danger to her- she may associate any faith with said miracle. And when camp is over, and Betty Sue says to her, “Oh, by the way, I’m sorry I had to borrow your Bible for an hour while you were off at prayer meeting- I did put it back in the right place, right?”, everything will collapse. And she’ll reject it all because the ‘miracle’ she saw wasn’t truly that.
Quite frankly, were I a Christian, I’d be horrified by the thought of people believing their faith could somehow be proven- for that makes their faith very, very brittle indeed.
Sorry, I just appreciate the irony in these two statements. Don’t attack the person, attack the idea. Nice thought, Czarcasm, too bad the world is filled with people like Corrado to give great examples that that isn’t how the world really acts.
Not a contradiction at all. I was refering to direct conversations on this board with people who believe that criticism of their religious beliefs constitute a personal attack on them, and Corrado was describing his personal opinion of the young girl in the story, who is not here and will not read his opinion, and thus is not effected by it.
Took me a while to catch up with this, didn’t it …
Yeah, I know how you feel.
How respectful of you.
I am polite out in the world when someone says something like, “Hey I’m a Christian, and I’m going to pray for you.” Believe it or not I don’t go screaming at people just because of their faith. But in the context of the OP, which is what everybody has been addressing, and to which you’ve been accusing everybody of attacking (no duh), you’re damn right I’m going to call a spade a spade.
How’s that double edge sword you’re toting. You don’t think I find the idea of a big boat with two of every kind of animal on it - crack-pot? Or how about that goofy little story about some guy being executed, and then waking up out of death three days later to float up in the sky? Hoo boy, that gets me to giggling every time.
Then I put it to you that most Christians who think this way, that God or Jesus helps them out with mundane tasks on a daily basis, knows fuck-all about Christ’s teaching. I’m not as ignorant on the subject as you probably think I am. Christ was all about love, and not taking the authority of man as a given. I don’t know anywhere in any writings on the man where it says, “Ask me for help and I’ll show you where your lost wallet is.”
I acknowledge it, I just say that it is misguided. Christianity isn’t about looking out for number one. Personal miracles? Bullshit. That isn’t what life and religion is about.
That’s just a fucking ignorant, insulting statement, and that’s as far as I’d like to address it. Way to whip out that WTC card. Nice little trump play you got there, huh?
In summary – yes, atheist are adressing/attacking the girl in the OP. Why? Because she was mentioned in the OP. Why not address it?
I’ve said on these boards many times that I do respect other’s faith, and despite my harsh words in this post, that remains true. I have a great deal of respect for Jesus Christ and his teachings. And I feel that far, far too many Christians are all too willing to put that on the back burner in favor of “personal miracles” and searching for proof of things that were written as parables over hundreds of year, by hundreds of different people, in languages that barely exist anymore.
I got no beef with anyone who wants to model his life on Christ’s teaching. I just don’t run into too many people like that these days.
So go ahead and call me intolerant, or disrespectful or accuse me of equating you with terrorists. I can take it. I know where I stand, and I am just peachy-fucking-keen with my faith, belief and morals.
Sigh. Re-read my posts. I agree this girl is silly. Not because she feels that God helped her out, but because she yapped about it in the way she did. But, if she wants to think that “God was involved” in her everyday trials and travails, she is not alone. I’ve already explained this. So has Poly. We are going over old ground here.
What? A mighty big leap you make there. Sure, there are people who do make that assumption, but I see no reason to believe (from the meagre evidence provided in the OP) that this girl is one of them. She was just excited by this personal event that she interpreted as “God helping her”. If she has half a brain (or even less than that) it will not take too long for her to realize that not all problems are automatically solved, like waving a magic wand. Other more mature minds will make sure she understands that Life Does Not Work That Way.
I often refer to myself as “crackpot”. I completely understand why my beliefs sound weird to others who do not share them. Growing up, some of my best friends (and neighbors) were athiests. They are part of the family still, almost. I learned a lot from them, and they learned a lot from me. One of the things I learned is that if you want to get respect, you have to give it out. And that just because something seems OK and normal to you, it doesn’t mean that it won’t seem loopy to someone else. All I ask is to be treated with common decency, and a minimal amount of contempt and condescension. Which, apparently, many of you here are unable to manage.
One of the folks on your side brought the WTC up, remember. As an example of “dangerous”, another word that one of the folks on your side have also brought up. So why exactly are you ragging on me for “whipping out the WTC card”? I was merely offering a rebuttal to it being “whipped out” by someone else.
You know, I’ve already explained and discussed this ad nauseum. And Poly has given his take on it too, though I cannot know what all of his opinions might be on this. I think that if you want to keep covering the same ground, a more knowledgeable mind (i.e. Poly) would be a better choice. I’m sure that he would be willing to discuss these issues with you in a serious and sincere manner, if you so desire.
You know, the more I think of it, the more I think Polycarp was onto something before.
If you want to debate what is or is not a “miracle”, and what is or is not considered appropriate or common (or whatever) for Christians to believe (as far as God’s interaction in our lives) then perhaps it’s best to take it to Great Debates.
Seriously. If you want to discuss this particular issue further, take it to Great Debates.