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(EDIT December 30, 2022) This post used to be restricted/friend-locked/whatever (and still is on the original LiveJournal version, I guess), but enough time has passed that I feel it's safe to make public. Also, I don't even have a Facebook account anymore, so the likelihood that the specific people I'm directly referencing here will see it is rather low. And also, more importantly, I don't rightly give a flying fuck at this point in time if they do happen across it somehow. (/EDIT)
Not letting this one go to Facebook because, well, it's a general response to a certain kind of post I've seen on Facebook (and elsewhere) on more than a few occasions, and I'm seriously not trying to start some shit with this (and if you're on my LJ list and this offends you, well, I'm sorry... but, it's not like I forced you to click the cut down there, you know). Also, I acknowledge that this is nothing new, really, just a random musing that I (and many others before me) have had off and on for a while now. For me, right now at this particular moment, this is a sort of "kettle boiling over" thing here.
Okay, it's very simple. I occasionally see someone post some story about some incredibly horrible thing that happened to them. Maybe they got in a car wreck. Or maybe they got sick or injured and had to go to the hospital for an extended amount of time. Anything like that.
And always, at the end, they say something like "But I survived it, praise Jesus!" or "It's a miracle that I'm still alive, GOD IS GREAT!" or some such thing.
Here's what I don't get. Let's just assume for a moment that, yes, God really does exist (the Christian God, for the sake of simplicity, but this can be applied to any religion with similar beliefs I guess). Okay, let's go from there. How can one give credit to God for letting them live through some terrible experience like this, but not at the same time also blame God for letting said terrible experience happen to them in the first place? If God is so all-powerful that he can just magically make it better, then why did he let it happen at all? If God isn't so all-powerful that he could have stopped it, then he is, quite simply, not God. If God could have stopped it but didn't, then God is an asshole, so why should one thank him or praise him just for letting them make it through whatever it was without dying or otherwise ending up worse off? And what about the people that have terrible experiences like this but don't survive them? Are those people somehow lesser people in that they didn't receive or deserve God's so-called mercy? Did God actively fuck them over (e.g. Pat Robertson saying Haitians made a pact with the devil and deserved their earthquake) or was he just being lazy? In either case, God was just being an even bigger dick than usual on that day, apparently (which is pretty much every day, since people die from terrible things like this all the time). Or if it really is just part of some huge, unknowable plan that God supposedly has, then what makes God better than some sufficiently advanced starfish alien or eldritch abomination performing anal probes on us or whatever? If we don't know what the hell he's doing (and don't tell me some crap such as we supposedly do know because The Bible says so or whatever), and if these horrifc things are "all part of God's plan" I still say that makes God a giant evil asshole, or else a really shitty planner. I don't have to fathom God's great mysteries to know that if I lose my arm in a wood chipper, that's not a good thing no matter how you look at it, even if I happen to survive it, so I'm certainly not going to be thanking God that he only took my arm as part of his mysterious Chessmaster bullshit. It just seems like cognitive dissonance to me to, for example, praise God for "miraculously" curing your cancer or AIDS or whatever, without also asking why in the fuck did God even make that shit in the first place and let you get afflicted with it (or, perhaps, actively inflict it upon you, you never know)? And why does he let so many other people just straight up die from it?
Essentially, the gist is: Why and how can God be praised for the good (or at least less shitty) stuff that happens, yet not be blamed for the bad (or more shitty) stuff that happens? If God is truly and purely benevolent, as very many religious people apparently believe, then why does he let (or maybe even actively cause) the more shitty stuff (to) happen at all? Why does he only step in and fix things some of the time but not all of the time? What is the justification/rationalization for this, aside from just blind "faith" that God supposedly knows what he's doing? It's not so much "why does God let bad things happen" as it is "why does God let bad things happen but then sometimes (supposedly) steps in and magics that shit all fine and dandy again"?
Anyway, as I said, these are questions that are as old as religion itself. Just consider this post as me rambling out loud to myself, if you wish (assuming you even clicked the cut and then actually read down this far). It's just that when I see posts like (exact quote, corrected for typos) "My praise report is greater than I thought. I almost died this weekend. My hemoglobin went down to 4, and my blood pressure bottomed out. I was bleeding internally and they told <name redacted> that it was a miracle I am alive." which then gets responses like (again, exact quote) "omg...glad that you are better...GOD is GREAT isn't he." it just makes me gnash my teeth at the... well... seeming idiocy of such statements. YES, GOD IS TOTALLY GREAT FOR LETTING YOU SUFFER INTERNAL BLEEDING AND THEN DEIGNING TO LET YOU SURVIVE AFTER ALMOST DYING THIS WEEKEND! GLORY HALLELUJAH! Because if God can magic away the internal bleeding, he could have magically stopped it from ever occurring to begin with. Or, hell, maybe he even magically made it happen just so he could then magically make it go away so that they'd deem it to be a miracle and say how great he is. Maybe God is just a needy, narcissistic douchehbag and has to do that shit just so people will stroke his ego, I have no idea. Seriously, the more I think about it, the less I understand how people can believe in a God like that. As I said, I'm not trying to raise a big shitstorm or anything with this. It's just that it frustrates and confuses me a little bit more every time I see stuff like that.
Not letting this one go to Facebook because, well, it's a general response to a certain kind of post I've seen on Facebook (and elsewhere) on more than a few occasions, and I'm seriously not trying to start some shit with this (and if you're on my LJ list and this offends you, well, I'm sorry... but, it's not like I forced you to click the cut down there, you know). Also, I acknowledge that this is nothing new, really, just a random musing that I (and many others before me) have had off and on for a while now. For me, right now at this particular moment, this is a sort of "kettle boiling over" thing here.
Okay, it's very simple. I occasionally see someone post some story about some incredibly horrible thing that happened to them. Maybe they got in a car wreck. Or maybe they got sick or injured and had to go to the hospital for an extended amount of time. Anything like that.
And always, at the end, they say something like "But I survived it, praise Jesus!" or "It's a miracle that I'm still alive, GOD IS GREAT!" or some such thing.
Here's what I don't get. Let's just assume for a moment that, yes, God really does exist (the Christian God, for the sake of simplicity, but this can be applied to any religion with similar beliefs I guess). Okay, let's go from there. How can one give credit to God for letting them live through some terrible experience like this, but not at the same time also blame God for letting said terrible experience happen to them in the first place? If God is so all-powerful that he can just magically make it better, then why did he let it happen at all? If God isn't so all-powerful that he could have stopped it, then he is, quite simply, not God. If God could have stopped it but didn't, then God is an asshole, so why should one thank him or praise him just for letting them make it through whatever it was without dying or otherwise ending up worse off? And what about the people that have terrible experiences like this but don't survive them? Are those people somehow lesser people in that they didn't receive or deserve God's so-called mercy? Did God actively fuck them over (e.g. Pat Robertson saying Haitians made a pact with the devil and deserved their earthquake) or was he just being lazy? In either case, God was just being an even bigger dick than usual on that day, apparently (which is pretty much every day, since people die from terrible things like this all the time). Or if it really is just part of some huge, unknowable plan that God supposedly has, then what makes God better than some sufficiently advanced starfish alien or eldritch abomination performing anal probes on us or whatever? If we don't know what the hell he's doing (and don't tell me some crap such as we supposedly do know because The Bible says so or whatever), and if these horrifc things are "all part of God's plan" I still say that makes God a giant evil asshole, or else a really shitty planner. I don't have to fathom God's great mysteries to know that if I lose my arm in a wood chipper, that's not a good thing no matter how you look at it, even if I happen to survive it, so I'm certainly not going to be thanking God that he only took my arm as part of his mysterious Chessmaster bullshit. It just seems like cognitive dissonance to me to, for example, praise God for "miraculously" curing your cancer or AIDS or whatever, without also asking why in the fuck did God even make that shit in the first place and let you get afflicted with it (or, perhaps, actively inflict it upon you, you never know)? And why does he let so many other people just straight up die from it?
Essentially, the gist is: Why and how can God be praised for the good (or at least less shitty) stuff that happens, yet not be blamed for the bad (or more shitty) stuff that happens? If God is truly and purely benevolent, as very many religious people apparently believe, then why does he let (or maybe even actively cause) the more shitty stuff (to) happen at all? Why does he only step in and fix things some of the time but not all of the time? What is the justification/rationalization for this, aside from just blind "faith" that God supposedly knows what he's doing? It's not so much "why does God let bad things happen" as it is "why does God let bad things happen but then sometimes (supposedly) steps in and magics that shit all fine and dandy again"?
Anyway, as I said, these are questions that are as old as religion itself. Just consider this post as me rambling out loud to myself, if you wish (assuming you even clicked the cut and then actually read down this far). It's just that when I see posts like (exact quote, corrected for typos) "My praise report is greater than I thought. I almost died this weekend. My hemoglobin went down to 4, and my blood pressure bottomed out. I was bleeding internally and they told <name redacted> that it was a miracle I am alive." which then gets responses like (again, exact quote) "omg...glad that you are better...GOD is GREAT isn't he." it just makes me gnash my teeth at the... well... seeming idiocy of such statements. YES, GOD IS TOTALLY GREAT FOR LETTING YOU SUFFER INTERNAL BLEEDING AND THEN DEIGNING TO LET YOU SURVIVE AFTER ALMOST DYING THIS WEEKEND! GLORY HALLELUJAH! Because if God can magic away the internal bleeding, he could have magically stopped it from ever occurring to begin with. Or, hell, maybe he even magically made it happen just so he could then magically make it go away so that they'd deem it to be a miracle and say how great he is. Maybe God is just a needy, narcissistic douchehbag and has to do that shit just so people will stroke his ego, I have no idea. Seriously, the more I think about it, the less I understand how people can believe in a God like that. As I said, I'm not trying to raise a big shitstorm or anything with this. It's just that it frustrates and confuses me a little bit more every time I see stuff like that.
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 04:47 am (UTC)From:1.) You have stumbled on to "The Problem of Evil." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil) Theologians and philosophers have pondered this for centuries. They have yet to come up with an answer. Perhaps none exists. But, addressing this matter has been the subject of such study that there is actually a word for it: "theodicy." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy)
2.) There are many people who do, in fact, blame the Almighty when bad stuff happens. There are also those who consider him a "a needy, narcissistic douchebag" for doing exactly what you describe. Assuming the existence of the Supreme Being, He may well be neglectful or even out-and-out malevolent, in direct conflict with prevailing belief.
[And also:]
3.) If belief in the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or, in my case, the Frog That Will Not Dance When Other People Are Watching (a long story I don't care to tell) brings comfort to people, I would ponder what harm it actually does to you. Does it really warrant the figurative gnashing of teeth? It's not like they're burning books or stoning people to death. If it makes them feel better and is no skin off your nose, who does it hurt?
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 06:03 am (UTC)From:No it doesn't warrant it, really, but it's still a kind of visceral response that I can't really control (and this post is the result of a very slow, years long, perhaps even decades long burn, and the post itself is a kind of letting off of steam). Seeing that kind of stuff has far less of a teeth-gnashing quotient than hearing things like "Obama is not American" or "national health care will lead to death panels" or "the Bible predicted the BP oil spill (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/343391.html)" or "hurr hurr Psalm 109:8 (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/394784.html) should totally apply to Obama derp" or "we should turn the Middle East into a parking lot (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/325009.html)" or whatever. It's mostly just a "This doesn't make sense to me. How can people believe this stuff?! Argh!" kind of thing, the teeth-gnashing more at my own inability to "get it", even as a devil's advocate, rather than the simple fact of them believing these weird (to me) things. But, that said, these particular people who I am referring to here would like nothing more than to see their religious dogma directly codified into the law of the land (as I have heard and seen them implicitly, and even on occasion explicitly, say and post). I don't think that would be a very good thing, on the whole. Not that that has much directly to do with them praising God for curing a hangnail or whatever, but even so, it just seems like a total package kind of a thing.
But, still, as Thomas Jefferson said in part of a quote that I have in my LJ profile and which I strive (but very often fail) to live by: "When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion?" Of course, he was talking about politics, but I suppose it can apply to religion just as well. Too bad others often don't feel the same way and try to impose their religions (and/or politics) on everyone else, often loudly, and sometimes forcefully and violently. But that's an entirely different rant for another time, and one which I've probably already made more than once, at least in part.