Worse. It’s “attempting to understand this might cause me to question my faith, so I’m not going to even try.”
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
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I think is more like: "I dont have any explanation that wouldn't prove that god doesn't exist"
It's generally directed at the person doing the questioning so I think it's more: "STFU you little twerp, how dare you attack me and my fairy stories"
The last time my in-laws said that to me I asked them what their gods plan was when he gave their daughter leukemia.
"to test us"
"Well I'm glad you're comfortable devoting your lives to someone who gives a 2 year old cancer, that's beyond my capabilities."
Juuuuust enough to sound like it could be a compliment but with a clear backhand because honestly.... Wtf is that logic.
"to test US"
us. not her. us. fuck her, it's for us.
i'm surprised you didn't smack someone.
Meh. I think of this (and similar sentiments in other religions) as the equivalent of an aknowledgement of the butterfly effect, unforseen circumstances and the reality that we as humans have little control over the world and can't see into the future.
TLDR: maybe the baby needed to die.
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Toilets work in mysterious ways
Toilets are different though. If you've ever tried to fix one you'd eventually figure it out.
Most people would call a plumber and pay the bill for swapping the feces-capacitor-unit or whatever is billed, and that's how toilets work to them. They don't think it's magic, they think it works because the plumber was paid.
To anyone who has tried to fix one, it also isn't magic. It's just a really clever design consisting of several valves controlling the input and output of water in different pipes. I won't try to explain as there are several different designs, but the main idea is that valves work just like logical gates. On/off. Just like a computer has bits and booelean operations, toilets work by manipulating the gates(valves) either by user input (pressing the flush buttons) or by conditions changing (the pressure of water at certain levels).
Toilets are logical. You can run Doom on toilets. Try to run Doom using the bible.
Kinda funny that rather than explaining how toilets work you try to compare it to circuits, which I’d take a guess and say that a majority of people don’t know how they work, lol.
This is on Lemmy, where every second post is about Linux. The users here know electric circuits better than plumbing.
"pipes? why are you transferring data between commands in the bathroom?"
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One time at baseball camp I was an outfielder because I was always too busy thinking about more interesting stuff than baseball. Eventually the ball ended up near me somehow, and the whole crowd was yelling at me as I came out of my reverie. So I threw the ball in the opposite direction by accident. The other team ran everyone around the bases while laughing at me.
Anyway cool reply, have fun with your Doom toilet.
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They surely do in Tokyo...
That thing was smarter than my smart TV.
"It's all part of God's plan."
"Yeah, well God's plan fucking sucks. If I was God, I'd just snap my fingers and skip to the end of the damn plan, instead of scheduling little kids to be molested by my clergymen."
Honestly, if I was a God, I would create the universe, then just watch how it unfolds, why would I interfere to save what is the equivalent of ants to me?
I think that you are overlooking a lot of things here. If you are God in the traditional modern sense then you would already know how the universe will unfold. You would be gaining nothing by having the "ants" live and suffer. As the creator of the universe you would also have a responsibility for the lives you put in it and you would be responsible if you chose to not intervene in their suffering as well. As the creator it would have been within your power to create a universe without suffering. When we start to consider those points it paints morbid picture. That's not to attribute that kind of callous cruelty to you, the implications of such a hypothetical are probably not something we've spent much time sorting out.
I dunno' I like to view that part as many do eith their creations. Does a builder not like to see their project standing at the end? Does a programmer not like to see their program work?
Both should know exactly what will happen (especially the programmer), but there is both satisfaction and a necessity to get it actually running.
Of course, that's anthropomorphizing God and projecting, but then that's 99% of religion, so...
Well to borrow a bit from the rest of the threads here, just how much baby cancer is in the builder's project or the programmer's code? The difference in perspective between an all powerful all knowing being knowing fully what the entirety of the outcome of their creation vs our speculation of the outcome of our works is probably incomparable. Would there even be a difference between experiencing the spectacle of the universe verses perfectly knowing it as an all knowing being? That might be an interesting philosophical question.
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The universe is God's elaborate game of falling dominoes with added suffering.
God DOES work in mysterious ways.
Mysteriously similar to random chance.
HEY! every once in a while it feels, like, kinda special and directed at me. so doesn't that mean that - aside from all the times it doesn't - the world was created just for me, in "my image"?
And there we have it. The world was made for toy boats. No wonder humans are so messed up.
it's made for many. say it a few times, friar tuck fire truck
"My external locus of control comforts me and I'd prefer it not be challenged thank you very much."
That's an interesting line of thought - see, standard human religions involve actors with often inhuman motivations who often react emotionally... It's not necessarily locus of control. It's a powerful actor changing the environment, and as your own actor you can choose to attempt to influence them (through anything from appeasement to outside intercession to trickery), you can adapt your own actions (like changing to more drought resistant crops), or you can throw up your hands and say "times is tough, it's not my fault - it's because the gods are fighting"
Then you have the Roman Catholic God (aka the Roman religion deliberately engineered to make for good subjects to an empire and using Jesus's name).
Almost all religions, including Judaism, have this idea of a creator (translated as master of the universe for Jews, the yawning void ginnugagap for the Norse, etc), but the Creator isn't really an agent - it's beyond understanding for even the gods. They're the source, and living in harmony with their design brings good things and going against it brings misfortune. The creator only interacts indirectly, mostly through creation or emergent properties of systems
Then you have gods - like the God of the Israelites. They have power, agency, have limits (great as their power might be), and can be influenced by individual or group actions of humans.
But then you have the Roman Catholic God - it combines the omnipotence and omniscience of the creator with the agency and motivations of a god, and it is the only supernatural agent, the others are just constructs serving its will
My point being - if you have this one agent creating everything, who cares about you individually and shaped reality based in part on your actions as an individual - is that not an absolute internal locus of control? If your reality is being personally tailored by an all-powerful, perfect agent, then your actions become absolute... You don't have the power yourself, but your actions and experience become able to shape everything based on the judgement of this all-powerful God
It's interesting to think about
Any time spent trying to puzzle out "God's plan" is wasted effort.
Just be good to yourself and others.
If God isn't happy with that, we were all doomed to begin with.
"Don't fear the gods; don't worry about death; what is good is easy to achieve, and what is bad is easy to avoid." -- Epicurus
my unemployment, anxienty, depression, and alcoholism need to have a chat with Epicurus..
Have a waffle!
God heals, but always within the exact parameters of what is possible by the modern medicine of that exact era.
Amputees unfortunately can still go fuck themselves.
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God is a scapegoat for actions you don't want to claim responsibility for.
The sentiment appears really early on in the book of Job which has the character Elihu jumping in to what was effectively an adaptation of the earlier dialogue on the injustice of suffering in the Babylonian Theodicy to claim that God's purpose and motivations are unknowable because why it rains and where snow comes from is beyond human understanding.
Now that why it rains is literally a nursery rhyme, maybe we should really adjust our thinking about just how undecipherable a potential creator of the universe is.
For example, religious traditions that believe God is light (1 John 1:5) and believe it was an intelligent designer of the universe might want to think a bit more on the design detail that light when unobserved can be more than one thing at once, and can even be different things to different eventual observers. At very least, you'd think that would give them pause in their commitment to the idea of absolutely defining who or what their God is for everyone else.
It’s some sort of cognitive dissonance that also gives credence to coincidence.
"A quantum collapsed to an unfavorable state"
Story of my life.
What it really means is “Despite how horrible this situation is, I’m not going to close myself of from recognizing good things that also happen, possibly even as a result of this”.
When people are badly hurt they tend to filter out perception of positive things, which is bad because life goes on even after (and during) a tragedy, and if you can’t perceive good things you starve.
Another way to put it is: “I’m not going to let this ruin my life”.
Or I can put it yet another way. What is the ethical value of an event? Is it the sum total of all the pleasure, minus all the pain, that the event causes? How could this be measured? Even if you can quantify it in the present, there’s also the future to think about.
Like, breaking your foot is a bad event. But if it means you’re in the hospital getting it cast the day you otherwise would have been hit by a drunk driver, then it’s actually good.
That’s “God” working in a mysterious (unpredictable, unknown) way. You won’t ever know that the broken foot saved you from the drunk driver. That’s the mysterious part. You don’t actually know what’s going on.
God being the omniscient meta person whose viewpoint isn’t constrained, who does take everything into consideration. That point of view is necessary to know with whether something was good or bad, but is unattainable to the human mind.
It’s very loosely similar to the saying “This too shall pass”. That saying will temper one’s judgment of existence. If you’re currently scared or sad, “This too shall pass” means that will end. Same if you’re happy.
If your judgment of a situation is coming up 100% terrible, ie you’re looking around you and see nothing but badness, a friend might temper your conclusion with a reminder that there is information beyond what you know: “God works in mysterious ways”.
Getting back to a tragedy situation, it means don’t give up hope, because your hopelessness is based on a limited point of view.
I mean, your given example isn't actually an example of your previous points. Its not a "every cloud has a silver linings" statement, it's a "I still believe in God even when bad things happen. This isn't proof of neither his non-existence or his non-caring." Eve your example is a poor thought experiment because it assumes a limited power god who can only break your foot, but can't actually prevent the drink driving accident in any less painful way.
It's a "I'm going to pretend this was supposed to happen and is a good thing regardless of whether good things come from it."
It's the response to "earthquake kills 1000s".
The other, less religious reasoning you provided is much more clear and less stretches with a lot better phrases. Even your descriptions would work better than providing the phrase itself to someone who is currently hurting. This phrase ultimately defends the bad thing as a good thing instead of telling the person shit happens, play the cards you were dealt, you can still win even when you're coming from behind.
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I don't believe in god. However, I can see this argument having some merit. Think of all the stuff we do to and for our pets that probably confuses the crap out of them, like putting them in a car and taking them to the vet.
True, but I bet you'd communicate that to your pet if that was within your power to do so. In fact, if you could magically cure your pet you'd do that too.
We aren't omnipotent and omnicient though, taking merely a thought to make all the bad things go away.
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God of the Gaps..
You would go mad otherwise
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