Religions

[TheGame]

Yup, pre game praying for the best hoping that you have no regrets and play to your full potential.

After the game, thanking god for another oppertunity to play and for making it through it. And when someone gets seriously injured, or there are world events, or someone is lost it puts things even more in perspective.

Win or lose, that's the routine.

[Typhoid]

More specifically, it's thanking God for their athletic ability and recognizing that without God they would not be in a place to play xyz sports game.

Doesn't praying to God for the things you're good at/the things humans have accomplished sort of take away a lot of the magnificent capabilities of human beings in the first place?


If I thank God for (let's say my athletic capabilities), I'm assuming I was simply born better than non-athletic people. As if somehow if I didn't play Soccer or Hockey my whole life, I'd still be just as good at them as if I had never played. Praying to a God for my ability to be good at sports diminishes my own role in practice, determination, studying, and general knowledge of those sports. In my mind God didn't make me good at sports. I made me good at sports. I didn't need any type of 'force' inside of me, making me better than everyone else from the day I was born. I was not 'chosen' to be good at sports. I have midi-chlorians inside of me who boost my performance if I just slow down and listen to my own body.



I mean, I'm sure some people have thanked God once or twice that there's a cure for (some) cancer. But wait...God created Cancer. Humans created a way to beat it. God also created polio. Humans created the polio vaccine.

It seems like God is in a constant struggle to create things in order to kill us, which then makes a (usually a scientist, and assume-ish-ly a non-religious person) create some type of antidote, to which someone will say "Thank God for this antidote."


Personally, I thank God for the Hydrogen Bomb, and Napalm. I'm glad he gave us the technology in order to create Nuclear Fusion and release massive amounts of energy in order to destroy massive amounts of humans in a split-second. I'm glad he decided to let us discover how to incinerate the people we don't like from above. I'm glad he decides to let countless tornadoes rip through the homes of poor people, and sends in massive tsunamis and floods to destroy the homes and lives of more poor people. And Hurricane Katrina? Don't get me started on how much of an act of God that was. I thank god for Earthquakes and asteroid impacts. I thank God for supernovas which can destroy us and we won't have any idea. I thank God for creating a sun with a finite life, so that we only have 4 billion years of possible existence on this planet - the planet he created for us to live on.

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If we succeed at anything, it's "Act of God", "God's will". You "Thank God" you were able to pass your test, as if you didn't study for it, or take X years of schooling. Yet when something goes wrong, it's the fault of a human. It seems to me that we only ever fuck up, and every time anything goes correct in anyone's life it's (to someone else) an 'Act of God'. "Congratulations to the _______ Olympic team of _______ in the sport of ______. God chose you to be better than these other people this year. Come back in 4 years to see who God likes more, then!"

"And tonight the final score is: The Steelers 14, and the Lions 45."
"Yeah, Tom. Clearly they had God on their side tonight. Maybe the Steelers just didn't pray enough. Hopefully God decides for them to win next week."

"And in other news, a little girl whom God decided to give polio to has survived in defiance as doctors administered a vaccine in order to allow her to live a long, healthy life. Let's see what God has to say about that."

Thanking God for my accomplishments seems so soul-crushing. I'm aware someone will say "well if it wasn't for God you wouldn't have been put in that situation anyways!". To which I will say now; phfff.

If God is in charge of my accomplishments, and what I succeed at - why am I in charge of my failures? Clearly I cannot succeed without God's help, so why does he occasionally refuse to help me? if he puts me in a death-defying situation and I get out of it, considering I was about to die but lived - that's an act of God. But if I actually do die, then it's because a stupid human did something stupid.

God seems like that douche in your workgroup who tries to take credit for everything you email to your boss, yet when your boss doesn't like it God's like "Oh, I don't know man. I took that day off. That was all Steve's fault."


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I had an old lady once tell me that proof of God is in the fact we die. She said "well we all die. God takes us all someday. when he decides it, we'll go."
I wanted to shout at her "Buuuuuuuuuullllllllshit to that, old lady."

If I walk into traffic right now, and get hit by a car. Is that an act of God? If I die by jumping off of a cliff, did God decide that was my time? What if I do get cancer, and some human-invented-thing cures me; would God be pissed, and try to kill me in Final Destination-esque ways until I'm finally finished? And besides, if God wants you dead, wouldn't he just kill you on the spot? He's God. he (allegedly) created time and space itself, yet I can find a loophole around a disease he made to kill me?

I don't believe that us having a finite life is any proof of God. Imagine a world where not a single person believes in a higher power; people would still die. Life would go on. The world would still turn. Natural disasters would still happen. Scientific progress would still take place. Wars would still happen. Bad political decisions would still be made. People would still be assholes. Dogs would still chase cars.


----Edit: And I'm not talking about the people who just say "Thank God" under their breath after they find out they don't have a baby, or after a big save or something. I say that all the time for non-things. I'll take a big poop and think "Thank God that didn't tear me open", but I don't mean 'Thank God', it's a bullshit phrase for a lot of people. I'm only referring to the people who literally mean "Thank God" every time they say it.

[Bond]

Originally Posted by Typhoid

Doesn't praying to God for the things you're good at/the things humans have accomplished sort of take away a lot of the magnificent capabilities of human beings in the first place?

No. How would it do this at all?

It seems like God is in a constant struggle to create things in order to kill us, which then makes a (usually a scientist, and assume-ish-ly a non-religious person) create some type of antidote, to which someone will say "Thank God for this antidote."

Are you supposing that God has interjected Himself into history to create diseases, or are you saying that God created the universe, and hence created the environment in which diseases have the ability to form? These are two completely different things.

[Typhoid]

No. How would it do this at all?

Well like I said before - if I thank God that I am able to do well at sports, I'm relatively diminishing my own role in practicing, and devoting __ days a week to practice, and __ day a week to a game. I wasn't born good at Soccer and Hockey. I practiced. I made myself better at the games, I trained by playing and studied by reading and watching. And if you break that down to "Well God gave you the abilities in the first place", that just completely diminishes the human aspect from it entirely. Because, again, if God made me naturally good at soccer/hockey, that means I personally haven't really done anything at all to be good at those sports, aside from like them or play them. Now if I am born pre-disposed to be better at something than someone, that is different. Because God didn't make me better than everyone else in the area of ______. I wasn't selected to be who I am. I was made this way by random genetics. My own ability to learn, grow, study, and train in a specific area is what made me good at that area, opposed to an intelligent higher power delegating my traits, selecting who I am and what I am good at before I'm who I am or am good at anything.

That's the one part of religion I have a really hard time trying to justify.
because like I said, if I say "Thank God he made me really intelligent", that's like insinuating I never had to study my whole life, like I never had to read or attempt to constantly learn. It removes my role of working hard for being what I am.

It's like the first rule of AA [Don't talk about AA]. Say you're powerless to a higher power. As soon as they do that, they remove the fact they're 'not responsible' for becoming an alcoholic, and that 'God made them that way', and that they never had a choice in 'the disease they have'.

Are you supposing that God has interjected Himself into history to create diseases, or are you saying that God created the universe, and hence created the environment in which diseases have the ability to form? These are two completely different things.

Well now I guess it comes down to what extactly did God create?

Did God create the Universe, and everything in it, or did God create the Universe, and simply humans and only humans?

Insinuating God didn't create viruses seems to go against the belief of creationism itself. if God didn't create viruses, and viruses are technically living things, that means there was life before god, or life aside from God. So then if not God, what created those viruses? They must have evolved from something. They couldn't have just popped up out of nothingness, unless of course, God willed it.

[Bond]

Originally Posted by Typhoid

Well like I said before - if I thank God that I am able to do well at sports, I'm relatively diminishing my own role in practicing, and devoting __ days a week to practice, and __ day a week to a game. I wasn't born good at Soccer and Hockey. I practiced. I made myself better at the games, I trained by playing and studied by reading and watching. And if you break that down to "Well God gave you the abilities in the first place", that just completely diminishes the human aspect from it entirely.

I think you're confusing two different concepts. Your analogy is basically a derivative of the intelligent and / or accomplished issue that I'll address below. Having the ability to do something and practicing, studying, etc. at it are two different things. The first is inherent, the second takes practice and repetition. I don't see how thanking God for the first detracts at all from human endeavors at the second.

That's the one part of religion I have a really hard time trying to justify.
because like I said, if I say "Thank God he made me really intelligent", that's like insinuating I never had to study my whole life, like I never had to read or attempt to constantly learn. It removes my role of working hard for being what I am.

Again, being inherently intelligent and being accomplished at something are two different things. The first does not necessitate the second.

Well now I guess it comes down to what extactly did God create?

Did God create the Universe, and everything in it, or did God create the Universe, and simply humans and only humans?

Insinuating God didn't create viruses seems to go against the belief of creationism itself. if God didn't create viruses, and viruses are technically living things, that means there was life before god, or life aside from God. So then if not God, what created those viruses? They must have evolved from something. They couldn't have just popped up out of nothingness, unless of course, God willed it.

That's not what I'm trying to get at. What I said previously:

Are you supposing that God has interjected Himself into history to create diseases, or are you saying that God created the universe, and hence created the environment in which diseases have the ability to form? These are two completely different things.

In the first option, God has purposefully interjected Himself into human history to create diseases (a parallel of creationism in which God interjects himself into world history to create humans). In the second option, God merely created a universe that has the potential to breed diseases such as cancer, polio, etc. The first is an active form of creation, and the second is a passive form of creation. I think they entail very different scenarios, very different morals, and very different ways in which to judge God.

So, depending upon which scenario you're talking about, we can evaluate further.