? Posts a response in the comment section @cnn.com about the Aurora Shooting.

God-I_Am_Ether
God-I_Am_Ether Members Posts: 3,409
edited July 2012 in R & R (Religion and Race)
Reading an article By a Pastors giving his take on where was ? during the shooting. This was the 1st comment after the article.

Article: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/28/my-take-this-is-where-? -was-in-aurora/comment-page-1/

I thought it was pretty dope.

Dear Christians:

? here. I thought I would take the time to personally explain my absence in the Aurora shootings. While I was at it, I thought I would also explain my absence during every murder, massacre and crime that has ever taken place in World history, and in every war, in every famine, drought and flood.

You see, I do not exist. I never have. Did it really make sense to you that I would create an entire Universe with billions of billions of planets and wait about 13,700,000,000 years just so I could focus on a few Jews from Palestine about 2,000 years ago while ignoring the rest of the 200,000,000 people on the planet at the time? Did I make those few Jews or did those few Jews make me?

Further, do you really think I would sit back and do nothing while Nazis killed 6 million of my “chosen people,” but find it important enough to intervene and turn water into wine to stop some hosts being embarrassed at a wedding in Cana? Why did I seem to be so active in the Middle East for a brief period about 2,000 years ago, but totally absent everywhere else on the planet and for the rest of recorded history? Did I make the Jews or did the Jews make me?

So, you really think my periodic miracles prove my existence hey? Then why not something inarguable and unambiguous, like a huge crucifix in the sky, or my face on the moon? Why is it always that believers have to construct my miracles out of perfectly explicable natural events?

This happens every time there is a tragedy or near tragedy of any kind, anywhere in the world and in all cultures. Captain “Sully” Sullenberger pilots a distressed plane to land safely on the Hudson River in New York City with no deaths, and it’s a miracle from ? ; a young girl is found in India, totally terrorized, but alive after being abducted and ra.ped for a week, and it’s a miracle from my competi.tor Rama (or Vishnu or Shiva) that she is returned to her parents; or a family in Northern Pakistan survives an errant American missile attack, and it’s a miracle from Allah.

What all these self-serving proclamations of miraculous intervention always ignore is the downside of the incidents. The fact that the passengers and crew of Flight 1549 were terrorized and the plane destroyed, that 11 innocent people are dead in Aurora, that the girl was held for seven days, ra.ped and sod.omized and will be traumatized for the rest of her life, or that a number of innocent civilians were killed by the missile.

Of course, none of these incidents really are “miracles.” When the totality of facts are taken into account, “miracles” turn out to be nothing more than believers who are desperate for some sign of my existence ignoring the downside of a set of facts, focusing solely on the upside and calling the quarantined “good” a miracle from me or one of the other sky-fairies. A CEO might as well ignore the liability side of his balance sheet and declare it a “miracle” that his company just doubled in value.

Another annoying habit my “miracles” seem to have is that they always seem to tag along, just behind medical science, like an annoying kid brother who won’t go away. Until the mid nineties, those with AIDS who prayed for a miracle were never granted one. Medical science finds a way to permanently suppress the disease, and all of a sudden I start to perform miracles with AIDS patients. No polio patient ever received a miracle until the Salk vaccine and I routinely ignored cancer patients until chemotherapy and radiation treatments were developed. Suddenly, prayers to me from cancer patients are regularly “answered.”

Why is it that I still seem deaf to the pleadings of amputees who would like their fingers, arms or legs back, to those who have physically lost eyes or ears, to the horribly burned and to all others who ail from patently visible and currently incurable maladies? Why is it that, at the very same time, I am very receptive to the prayers of those whose condition is uncertain, internal and vulnerable to miraculous claims?

Take five minutes to make two lists; one of those ailments I will miraculously cure and the other of those I will not. You will quickly find it coincides perfectly with those conditions medical science (or the human body itself) can defeat and those we cannot. Why do you think that is? It is almost as my miracles are created out of medical ambiguity isn’t it?

No, my human friends. I am afraid I do not exist. I do not read your minds (or “hear your prayers” as you like to call it) and you are not going to achieve immortality (or “eternal life” as you like to call it) no matter how many commandments from Iron Age Palestine you choose to “keep”. Move on and enjoy the few years you have. You were all dead for the last 13,700,000,000 years and it wasn’t that least bit uncomfortable now, was it?

?

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Comments

  • huey
    huey Members Posts: 11,743 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I tried to read it all...i really did
  • loch121
    loch121 Members Posts: 12,884 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Nobody knows either way
  • MARIO_DRO
    MARIO_DRO Members Posts: 14,425 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I READ LIKE 2 SENTENCES AND SAID ? IT
  • 5th Letter
    5th Letter Members, Moderators, Writer Posts: 37,068 Regulator
    Interesting read.
  • VIBE
    VIBE Members Posts: 54,384 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I speak for Bambu, "horseshit!"

    Now I say, LOL.

    Good read.
  • bambu
    bambu Members Posts: 3,529 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2012
    LOLz.....

    I was actually gonna drop a "did not read" gif, but horseshit is equally effective.....
  • BlackxChild
    BlackxChild Members Posts: 2,916 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Bambu only wants to argue evolution and nothing more. Outaide of that he can only say horseshit.
  • whar
    whar Members Posts: 347 ✭✭✭
    Now that would be a ? worth worshiping :)
  • alissowack
    alissowack Members Posts: 1,930 ✭✭✭
    edited July 2012
    This "? " sure has a lot to say given he announces his own non-existence around the beginning...unless that is just some crude way of not accepting responsibility for anything that happened to mankind like..."Oh, you can't put that on me...I was never there".
  • whar
    whar Members Posts: 347 ✭✭✭
    Alissowack you have exactly hit upon the central issue of the post.

    ? is not responsible for anything mankind does because he was never there.
  • alissowack
    alissowack Members Posts: 1,930 ✭✭✭
    ...but, it is posts like this that suggest that "? " has something to say as opposed to not saying anything at all...or doing anything at all. Would this deity have to exist first? Sure, this is suppose to be humorous, but if taken seriously...this could just as well thrown is the stack of delusional thinking that many "religious" people are accused of having (assuming it wasn't a religious person that wrote it).
  • VIBE
    VIBE Members Posts: 54,384 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Why do we see, biblically, ? intervene in almost everything it seems? Someone at least spoke to ? before something happened. ? ordered something to be done. ? did things. These were announced. Where do we get this today? Christians today even hate the fact that a mother says, "well, ? told me to ? my babies", when it's not even off-the-wall. ? asked this of Abraham, he also told others to ? the unborn, children and women.

    So where is ? at today then? When there was prayers for the cure or help, no answer was given. Millions died because nothing was done by "? ". When medical science had an answer, they helped. They are the answer, not ? .

    The point is, there is no ? to give credit to for anything.
  • alissowack
    alissowack Members Posts: 1,930 ✭✭✭
    edited July 2012
    VIBE wrote: »
    Why do we see, biblically, ? intervene in almost everything it seems? Someone at least spoke to ? before something happened. ? ordered something to be done. ? did things. These were announced. Where do we get this today? Christians today even hate the fact that a mother says, "well, ? told me to ? my babies", when it's not even off-the-wall. ? asked this of Abraham, he also told others to ? the unborn, children and women.

    So where is ? at today then? When there was prayers for the cure or help, no answer was given. Millions died because nothing was done by "? ". When medical science had an answer, they helped. They are the answer, not ? .

    The point is, there is no ? to give credit to for anything.

    I could be wrong, but the problem I see is that people think that if ? exist, then He must support our perspectives or meet our expectations. People who read the Bible and come up with the "? told me" stuff already have in their minds that is what they are going to do anyway. They just wanted to feel as if it was "OK" to do it. So what Abraham was told by ? to do something? These events were "unique" to his circumstance. But there is the expectation that if ? talked to Abraham (and the others that He chose), then He will talk to everybody else.
  • VIBE
    VIBE Members Posts: 54,384 ✭✭✭✭✭
    We don't see ? how we want to, from an outside the box point of view, we see ? based on how he is biblically. It seems he did all sorts of ? in the bible but does nothing now.
  • alissowack
    alissowack Members Posts: 1,930 ✭✭✭
    edited August 2012
    VIBE wrote: »
    We don't see ? how we want to, from an outside the box point of view, we see ? based on how he is biblically. It seems he did all sorts of ? in the bible but does nothing now.

    But, is that reason enough to say ? doesn't exist because He is not doing what we expect Him to do from the Bible? The problem exists on both fronts. We want to read the Bible and it meets up with everything we think we know about the possibility. We all have these presuppositions going into reading the Bible and so if they are not "correct", it should be our presuppositions that take the hit. It is possible that the world is mistaken about who ? is. But it shouldn't downplay the possibility of ? 's Existence.
  • bambu
    bambu Members Posts: 3,529 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Bambu only wants to argue evolution and nothing more. Outaide of that he can only say horseshit.

    Not exactly........

    Horseshit typically arises in conversations that are based on feelings and opinions......
  • waterproof
    waterproof Members Posts: 9,412 ✭✭✭✭✭
    i read about a half of the sentence of that ?
  • VIBE
    VIBE Members Posts: 54,384 ✭✭✭✭✭
    LOL @ believers "oh, it's dissing ? ? Let me read.. Oh ? it, ? this article"

    Can't handle ether and truth lol
  • jono
    jono Members Posts: 30,280 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I read it, perfectly logical. Especially the part about creating billions of people but choosing to focus on a few in one particular section of the world at one particular point in time.

  • Bodhi
    Bodhi Members Posts: 7,932 ✭✭✭✭✭
    waterproof wrote: »
    i read about a half of the sentence of that ?

    was that by choice or are you just not able to?
  • bambu
    bambu Members Posts: 3,529 ✭✭✭✭✭
    @Vibe....

    Here we go.....

    Much better than horseshit in this situation.......

    13979351did_not_read.gif
  • Gold_Certificate
    Gold_Certificate Members Posts: 13,228 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Why is "? " named "Colin" though?

    uEN9j.png
  • whar
    whar Members Posts: 347 ✭✭✭
    alissowack wrote: »
    But, is that reason enough to say ? doesn't exist because He is not doing what we expect Him to do from the Bible?

    It is certainly enough to show the Bible is false. Simple observation of our world tells us that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving personal ? is impossible.

  • alissowack
    alissowack Members Posts: 1,930 ✭✭✭
    edited August 2012
    whar wrote: »
    alissowack wrote: »
    But, is that reason enough to say ? doesn't exist because He is not doing what we expect Him to do from the Bible?

    It is certainly enough to show the Bible is false. Simple observation of our world tells us that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving personal ? is impossible.

    But is simple observation "enough"? It's one thing to see with the eye and another to see through the eye. I doubt that every person who has come to the conclusion that the Bible is false was applying logic or the scientific method to find out. They have experienced the wrongs, the broken promises, the abuse...and that has more to say than saying...after a rigorous series of tests, I've concluded that the Bible is false. If that's the case, then this whole idea of ? existing should have ended way before it got started. And though I can't say I'm some scholar, I don't believe those who are critics of Christianity are really putting forth a non-biased effort. You could say the same about the religious, but it is to say that we are a lot more willing to go to sources we can trust than to see both sides of the story; or to venture into "enemy" territory.
  • ChromaStoned
    ChromaStoned Members Posts: 938 ✭✭✭
    iGod online-repenting made easy