Jan Heirtzler (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jan_andrea) wrote2006-09-27 12:53 pm
jan_andrea) wrote2006-09-27 12:53 pm
Entry tags:
Religious whatnot that makes me crazy
None of this is aimed at anyone in particular. It's just some stuff that's been bothering me for a while.
"God never gives us more than we can handle." First off, on what are you basing that? I mean, seriously? People who die of cancer... god figured they could handle that, or something? Chemo and radiation were going to make their lives better, for the few months or years they had left? Women who are raped? Children (children, for fuck's sake!) who are abused or molested... that's okay with God, because he figures they can handle it? And don't give me that "free will" bullshit. Either everything happens because of free will, in which God has *nothing* to do with it and can't possibly measure out exactly how much you can handle, or he's got a hand in EVIL THINGS happening to children. Because, damn it, no three-year-old can *handle* being sexually abused. No toddler can *handle* being beaten by his parents. Either bad shit happens because it just happens, or God has an immensely fucked-up sense of right and wrong and people's limits. Being abused as a child doesn't make someone a better person later -- if they happen to become better people, it's despite, and not because of, their abuse. Living in poverty doesn't teach valuable lessons; it's overwhelmingly likely to make your life nasty, brutish, and short. "God never gives us more than we can handle" to me sounds like code for "Suck it up, it's not getting any better and we're not going to help, either, because that would endanger our cushy lifestyle." That's just asinine. A corollary: "God never closes a door without opening a window". Yeah. Especially if the window is on the second floor. All the better to jump.
Tithing. I am all for giving to good causes. I do it myself. But if you're having to make the choice between a decent place to raise your children, feeding said children, and giving 10% of your income to your RICH CHURCH, where does the reasonable choice lie? Yes -- when your circumstances improve, give to your heart's content. But if you're below the poverty line, for fuck's sake, your children's health (and yours!) is more important than your church's hypothetical (and likely nonexistant) hold on your cash! If you want to, give until it hurts... but if it already hurts without giving, what on earth are you thinking?!
The persecution complex. Believe it or not, if you're a Christian in America, you are *not* being persecuted.
Persecution is:
- Being stopped from practicing your religion at church.
- Facing threats of death, injury, loss of housing or jobs, etc. for practicing your religion.
- Antipathy from the populus as a whole for your wacky beliefs.
- Being stopped from forcing your religion down other people's throats in public life.
- Threatening *other* people with the loss of their jobs, etc. for practicing their religion (or lack thereof).
- Antipathy from a very small, politically powerless portion of the populus.
- Having *your holidays* as default calendar holidays.
- Being the only religion whose adherents have ever been elected President
- And so forth.
"It's all part of God's plan." Seriously, you guys have to get your story straight. As far as I can tell, either God has a plan (in which case there is no room for free will), or God is one sick fuck (remember that Holocaust? Was that God's plan, or did he just stand aside and let it happen because oh well, free will?). It's that old problem of evil, and it's not going to go away as long as you guys claim that God is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient. Pick two, because you can't have all three.
Whew.
I think I'm done for now.
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Why do they assume that everyone is O.K. with that? What audacity.
(And I'm a total nitpicker, but when someone sneezes I say "Salud!" instead of "God Bless You" because who am I to assume they believe in god or whatever?)
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Audacity is an excellent word!
I say "gesundheit". "salud" is good, though -- and easier to say :)
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Mom: I don't want my daughter to have sex, because she will get pregnant because no contraceptive works efficiently (*throw in fake numbers like condoms failing 1 out of 6 times, compare it to rubber gloves, and don't care that condoms are better tested and have a much less tear-sensitive shape than a glove with 5 fingers*) and abortion WILL make you infertile.
Translation: I don't want my daughter to have sex because if she does, God will hit me about the ears. If I really cared about pregnancies, I would at least not deliberately misinform her.
Teacher: we ought to teach evolution together with Intelligent Design because kids deserve to see all sides of the debate.
Translation: I find the idea that my forefathers weren't all human beings disturbing and I am more than willing to overlook all flaws in and superfluous parts of nature for that. I'll make sure that when I have an appendicitis though, I'll go visit a medical expert who has practised operating on rats, even though rats were apparently created from zilch and human beings from dirt/ribs.
Et cetera, et cetera... I stopped replying to someone on my friends' page who keeps freaking me out with his whining about how persecuted and hated his poor, poor religion (Catholicism, people, the largest single religion in the freaking world) is, and how Christianity is the sole reason non-Christians can live in the Western world in peace; the Christians are tolerant enough to leave them be, so why oh why can't they let the Christians do what they like? UGH! Glad to have gotten that off my chest.
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Glad I could let you blow off some steam!
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Look at Africa. They deserve it because?
And then they talk about struggling with their faith. Well, that's because *by definition* their faith is something they believe for no good reason at all... and they have reasons to think that it's false.
Several people have recommended Francis Collins to me this week. I find this distressing -- the arguments in that book are so profoundly awful, and yet educated people are falling for them. As Sam Harris pointed out, there is nothing about a frozen waterfall, no matter how frozen, that gives any support for the idea that a God exists, or that Jesus was his Son, or any other claim so wholly unconnected...
Sorry to borrow your rant. Nothing makes me more furious than watching a woman who lost her triplet 25 weekers over the course of a week in NICU try to justify it as "God's will."
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Ugh, don't get me started on Collins. People want to fall for him, so they do -- he's like the placebo of scientist Christians.
I can understand why people want to believe things like that, though -- to think that we're all alone in a universe that doesn't give a fig about us is just too much for some. It doesn't have any emotional resonance to it, and people want to feel loved and cared for, especially by something gigantic like the creator of the universe. They want it to make sense. They don't want to have lost their babies for nothing. I can sympathize with the need. There's just no way to have it make rational sense, as opposed to emotional sense. In a very real way, we're all still apes in a tree, trying to figure out what the hell that giant white light and loud noise was all about.
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Oh man, that annoys the piss out of me as well; it reminds me of the couple who has 16 (at the moment) children and keep having them under that premise. (It's http://www.jimbob.info/ if you'd like to shake your head for a while...)
The tithing gets me as well, an ex-friend of mine attends a church where at least 10% is required, I belive they have a yearly printout passed around of what everyone has donated, as well as contacting your home if your donations are sparce. o_0?!?
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What a wonderful church that must be :P Reminds me of my favorite answer to WWJD? JWP -- Jesus would puke. I mean, really! Give if you want to and can afford to without starving your family, but surely Jesus understands if you need to feed them!!
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Oh I'm gonna cause trouble here (((wince))
Theme 1: "It's all part of God's plan." and "God never gives us more than we can handle."
Theme 2: Church politicking, and feelings of persecution by christians.
I'm leaving theme 2 completely alone. You guys got that under control. However, I'd like a crack at the first issue. I speak as a non-christian, not really about christianity, but about faith.
Generally, when a "god-fearing" person says something like "God never gives us more than we can handle," An appropriate translation for an atheist or agnostic is more like. "I'm still breathing. I don't know how, but I will manage this, somehow." I translate to this person "Has faith in themselves, but moves the focus of that faith to a point outside themselves.
"All part of God's Plan" is imho reserved for scarier, more painful tests of faith. This is the phrase reserved by most christians for untimely deaths, chronic diseases, Airline crashes, smallpox outbreaks. In short, all those things that the God-fearing and atheist alike have no control over whatsoever. For many of our species, (again imho) The randomness and inherent dangers of our world are overwhelming. You can't have faith in yourself when there is nothing to be done about suffering. Thus, instead of an "atheist" approach to the trouble, like "The world is dangerous. It works like this sometimes, and I have to be ok with the fact that I can't change it." the god fearing person says "There is a reason for this; I cannot and should not understand it yet. But, God does, and that makes it ok that I can't change it."
The trouble I think you are having with the "Free will" vs. God's Plan" dichotomy is pretty common. It has plagued theologians since before there was such a word as theologian. Here's my best attempt at a recap, from western judeo-christian perspective:
God created a world, and creatures to inhabit it. He set down all the rules for how the sky, water, and land behave. He gave the animals their shapes and their instincts. Save one, all creatures' decisions were made for them by those gifts and instincts. Humanity was given a special gift, awareness; awareness of self, awareness of right and wrong. God, in his perfection, already knows how his creations will act and what the consequences will be. However, such foreknowledge, such omniscience, is denied us. Thus, it is still up to each of us to determine right, and act right, rather than ignore right or wrong, or choose what is easy instead of what is right.
It does still leave a paradox, but not the brutal, illogical one described. The real question is. If we are the creations of something that already knows the outcome of our own free will, do we still call it free will?
If a man kills another in anger. He did not know he was going to do it. But he accepts the fact that he did swing the club, that he did mean to do harm. If the christian model were correct, God knew that he would swing, because he can see the whole future of his entire creation. Killer and victim had to guess at the consequences of their actions, and do the best they could with that information. In the original New Testament Gospels, The Killer is faced with the choice of repentance, honest learning from his mistake and acceptance of the consequences it brings. You and I cannot know if he will do that, and neither does he until he does so, or not. This is why God does not intervene directly in humans affairs, because it will devalue the unique gift of awareness and discovery that is humanity.
Sorry. I ramble. I also gave up on the "imho's" and model labels, just assume them in the second half for me. I am very fond of faith, and what it can do. I am not so enthusiastic about individual dogmas.
Re: Oh I'm gonna cause trouble here (((wince))