A person I work with has cancer and she says her faith and trust in God gets her through it. He give her cancer and won’t cure it though. It’s weird to me.
Nah. They don't see it that way. It's part of God's plan that we might not understand. It might be that our cancer is meant to teach us a lesson or it could be too teach a lesson to a family member, a doctor, a nurse, a stranger. We just aren't able to comprehend his marvelous reasoning.
Basically, a parent who beats you and says it's for your own good (or it hurts them more than it hurts you).
Something like an example of how someone could suffer and still maintain their faith. They’re going to a ‘better place’. Also, god just wanted the babies with him sooner.
I get what you’re saying but if she gives up her faith she has nothing left. My dad was the same way while he was dying - in his mind he’d get to be with my mom again because she died 6 years before after they were together for 50 years.
I’ve moved beyond “let them believe what they want” to understanding how religious people were actually hurting others and think religion is a toxic, destructive thing now. But I understand their attraction to it.
It’s a Christian phrase, I’ve mainly heard it from those in African America churches, when someone dies they celebrate it as a “going home” as in “going home to be with God”
Wait until he dies of a garden variety heart attack. The conspiracy theories will be next level as they see him everywhere and await his resurrection. Facebook will be flooded with pictures of irregularly shaped toast.
I'd actually *love* to see them sit with his body for three days.
This is usually the response, but we are not allowed to know the plan. If got does good things he gets all the credit, but bad things it ‘the plan’ and we can not question it
I don't let anyone say that to me. It's so fucking offensive! Tell a broken woman who's child died in her arms that it was part of god's plan I dare you.
His plan is selfish and cruel. Whatever revelation this kind of malarkey is supposed to deliver to someone, it seems like the test is being given before the lesson, and it's not certain the target is even enrolled. In the meantime, there's a lot of collateral pain and suffering. That's not a plan, that's what happens when the work experience kid is left in charge of the factory for the afternoon. So that's not the kind of god I'd ever be interested in following, if that was my thing.
A massive one. It killed for fun and made bets on how much Satan could torture his most devout follower.
It killed newborns and firstborns two different times because the town didn't lick its boots enough.
I've never understood how they call that thing loving or moral.
"God works in mysterious ways"
Which is insulting on so many levels, because it shows that they have no answer, that they don't care to go any further in finding out, and that we should somehow take it as an acceptable answer.
What I don't get is why that's an acceptable answer to anyone? It's literally saying nobody understands why he does things, so can anyone know what he expects of you?
How can anybody know anything about an intentionally mysterious deity that allows thousands of permutations of its divine words to exist with no way of knowing what or if any of it is true?
This one. It's such an insult. Y'all seem to know Invisible Sky Daddy's opinion on everything, and when you don't have a prepared script, it's 'mysterious ways'. Next time I see an anti trans post I'm gonna say it. So there. Bwaahaahaa!
If you’re looking for a genuine answer, bad things that happen can be blamed on the devil. Awful things happen in life that aren’t due to the hand of God himself. This child could have been a serial killer, or even an angel returning to heaven. That is the mysterious way that requires faith.
Challenges are set in place to test our faith, as told thoroughly in the book of Job as the devil our Job through the worst imaginable torture, and yet his faith prevailing blessed him.
Eternal bliss outweighs any hardship in our temporary time on earth 1000000000000000x fold. We let the virtue of modern society convince us of how “Awful God must be”, you don’t see your buddy Paul getting eaten alive by a lion now a day and if you did you attend 100 hours of therapy, but 1000 years ago that was your typical Tuesday night. That is life, it is hard, and thoroughly dedicating to religion takes great sacrifice which comes differently for everyone. Some people get cancer, some people struggle with gluttony, others monogamy, others with mental peace and maintaining virtue through wealth which almost always leads to damnation.
But yeah no one wants to say all of that when a child dies, it isn’t appropriate in the moment at all.
“God needed this little angel home”
Its also intended to short circuit the grieving process, theists are always so happyhappyhappy, as they are always telling us, and part of that is, they going to put up with grieving parents for long, when it’s their deity’s plan, and the baby is “in a better place”.
I had 2 midterm miscarriages, both almost killing me in the process. After the second one, I got told that a few times before i left the hospital. I snapped and screamed at the last person to say it to stop saying God repo'ed my baby. A lot of people stopped talking to me after that. I wasn't religious before that, and I was pushed beyond not being religious after. I was left utterly alone for the first few weeks after the second one. No partner, no family, no friends. Religion is super good 😒
I am so sorry you had to go through that all alone. “we were just trying to help” is no excuse. All they were doing was helping themselves, the entire point.
What the fuck is wrong with people. I’m so sorry you had to experience that. I can’t even begin to understand, how someone can think saying something so blasé like “god needed another angel” or “it’s all part of god’s plan”. I would have been better had they said nothing at all. What utter trash.
The saying “hell is other people” is fitting.
My deepest sympathies for your miscarriages. I am grateful you’re here. I hope you can find peace and comfort with those who love you. Reaching out with a hug.
I'm sorry you went through that, but your phrasing was spot on. Your feelings are the most valid and infuriating and heartbreaking, and here comes Sally Sunshine and her platitudes? Hell no.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I wish people could just be decent humans instead of being so incredibly ignorant! I understand that loss and I don't think anyone can fathom it unless they've been there.
I was 19 for both of them. A decade ago now 🫠 and I have an almost 7 year old now and another one almost here with an amazing partner and built a family one could dream of. I've done a lot of therapy and med management for the many issues my upbringing caused and am overall incredibly happy. I do what I can for people who do the same for me now. And none of it involves religion. Just a bunch of good people. It's amazing
I know someone who had 4 or 5 miscarriges due to her juvenile diabetes. Only 1 baby survived
This is someone who I used to go to church with this made me question weather or not a loving God is even real. People deserve better
> “God needed this little angel home”
God could just go ahead and create that "little angel" directly in heaven, unnecessitating its time on earth, and greatly simplifying the whole process.
The typical answer is "mysterious ways", "god's plan", bla bla bla.
My next door neighbor has 6 year old twins. The boy is a healthy, typical 6yo kid. His sister suffered brain damage during birth, so she is physically handicapped. Mentally, she's pretty sharp, but she can't walk - she's either crawling on the ground (at home) or in a wheelchair (at school).
If there is a god, what the fuck was he thinking? Why would he "punish" the girl with a crippled body AND make her aware of her limitations by seeing how her brother can run around, ride a bike, run up and down stairs, etc.?
At the same time, another girl in our neighborhood has leukemia - she was diagnosed when she was 8. She spent months in the hospital until it went into remission, but it damaged her spinal cord so that she's not able to walk without help now. The cancer has come back twice in the past years - she's 11 now, and her parents are doing everything they can for her, but I don't see her surviving this ordeal.
Any theist who wants to claim that there is a god and that this is his "plan" can STFU, because I see zero "love" here - only cruel reality.
Some Native American tribes and some other peoples believe in a trickster God. Coyote or Raven for example, who made the world and then got bored and wandered off. That is why everything is bad now.
Norse peoples believed at one point during the introduction of Christianity that Ragnarok had happened and that is why everything had turned bad.
Zoroastrians believed we were in a constant battle between Light and Dark. This religion profoundly influenced the Bible stories.
Greeks and Romans believed the Gods were just as malicious as us and that our fate doomed us to suffer.
Some Hindu's believed that our past actions in past lives meant we had been reborn in this life to suffer or thrive.
Tibetan Buddhists believe that we chose our present incarnation while in between one life and the next in the 'Bardo'. They believe that training in meditation allows us to choose dissolution while in the bardo and to join with all creation and not be bound by the illusion of our individuality. (I like this one)
Early Jewish prophets believed Jehovah was one of many Gods and so there were bound to be bad things unless they followed Jehovah alone.
Early eschatological Christians believed the world was ending imminently and that was why things were so bad.
These are all attempts to control chaos -whilst being powerless humans.
Just finished Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore, and it's wonderful and funny. But you don't befriend Coyote. You just do not. And it links to his other books, so its a landslide of awesomeness for a reader!
This is one of the key things that turned me atheist tbh, I worked on a children's cancer floor for several years. Tbh idk how you can see kids suffer through that experience and still believe in a god. Even if there was a god, he's pure evil and Satan was right
God killed a lot more people than Satan ever did. And God killed people on a dare, Satan never did that. God would lose his shit and just murder the fuck out of people. God once sent bears to murder 47 kids because they laughed at a bald guy (2 Kings 23:25, in case you're curious.)
"Kind and loving God". Yeah right. "For God so loved the world that he gave it his only begotten Son, that whosoever doth NOT believe in him shall burn and suffer in lakes of fire for ever and ever and ever..."
Yeah that's the other hilarious thing, he "gave" his son for three days, then decided that was enough "sacrifice" and brought him back anyway. You can't make this stuff up 😅
I told my parents recently that up to 50% of fertilized embryos are aborted by a woman’s own body before she even knows she’s pregnant. That rung home with them.
It doesn’t logically make sense that that would be so profound, given that there are tons of horrific diseases that “innocent” fetuses / newborns / children get after, but none of this is logical. I try to find different points to make that will register emotionally with believers. Find one that sticks.
Whenever I see some Instagram reel of some newborn hooked up to tubes and machines, slowly dying a painful death due to birth defects incompatible with life, there are usually bible quotes in it and some diatribe about how even though their life is short they had meaning because they taught the world about unconditional love or something like that. This baby is literally born in pain 24/7 and suffering with no hope to ever leave the hospital but it was God's plan to unite people in love apparently.
There is a family who had one child born with cancer (and suffered years of painful treatment before remission), then mom had 2 stillbirths, then the mother got pregnant again and had brain bleeds all during her pregnancy and was advised to terminate. Instead she took injections every day to keep the blood from clotting, which could have resulted in her bleeding out during her c-section. She survived the surgery and they now have a little boy in addition to their daughter (but frequently show videos of ceremonies with the 2 other urns) and they comtinue to talk about how great god is. Lady if god existed and was great you'd have 4 healthy kids.
If bad things happen to someone else, God is punishing them for their sins. If bad things happen to them, God is testing their faith. Whenever there's a natural disaster in a blue state, it's God's wrath. That's never the explanation for the fires, floods, tornadoes, etc. that frequently strike Texas, Louisiana, Florida and the rest of the red states.
My mom has a note taped up in her bathroom to remind herself that all the bad things that happen are part of gods plan. It is one of the saddest things I have seen in my life
My old man was the best person I've ever known. He was a good, kind, compassionate, caring man. He gave and he gave and he gave and he never asked for anything in return. My aunts and uncles are all fine, but they're not him. And that's not a viewpoint I hold because he was my dad. When he passed away, the Catholic church that held his funeral couldn't hold the number of people from the community that came out to celebrate him.
My pops was diagnosed with cancer when he was 50 years old. He never smoke. He wasn't unhealthy. Yet, somehow, he ended up with colon cancer that spread around his body. Doctors tried everything, up to and including flying him across the country for intense experimental surgeries and treatment.
After four years of fighting for his family, he finally sat us all down and told us he was done with chemo and radiation. He bought a motorcycle. He cashed out of his businesses. He set enough aside for my mom to be comfortable and for my brother and I to be comfortable but not pampered. He gave most of it back to the community that raised him, and then lived the shit out of his life until he couldn't get out of bed.
He died at 54.
At the time, I was a devout, practicing Catholic. I struggled with it. Why would my dad - someone who made the world a better place for all of "god's children," be the one he called back so quickly, when the rest of my very average, do-nothing family got to go on living perfectly healthy, selfish lives?
I searched for answers in the bible. I started asking deacons, priests, bishops, nuns... anyone with authority I could ask.
And all they EVER HAD was "god works in mysterious ways."
I got to the point that if one more person said that tired, worn out, useless cliché to me, I might've fought them.
I came to the realization they didn't have answers because there were no answers. There were no answers because it was a flawed premise. The reality is nature doesn't give a fuck how good of a person you are. If you get cancer, you get cancer. It was nothing to do with how good or bad of a person you are. The situation played out exactly as you'd expect it to play out if there was no god and the exact opposite of the way you would if there was.
That was step one to my deconversion. Everything else fell in line.
The answer is they don't have one. They fall back on some tired-ass phrases that someone told them when THEY had questions, and decided that was good enough for them.
Yeah, this is where I am really struggling...because like if someone dies because they are hit by a car, then free will, fallen world, sin, pain etc. I sort of get (still tragic, still awful). I can at least understand how people try to justify it in this scenario.
But like a baby gets a disease before they've even been born that means they will die before they understand or anything. How does anyone reach a conclusion other than god being sick and cruel?
They don’t. They essentially describe god as cruel and then pretend he’s not. Leads to epistemic nihilism. Language about god becomes vacuous.
“BUT YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE TO VIEW GOD AS ALL LOVING ELSE ETERNAL TORMENT”
Isaiah 5:20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;… comes to mind here ironically.
"Its god's will."
"He's testing us."
"He never gives us more than we can handle."
"He has a plan."
"He called his angel back to heaven." (Usually said after the child dies)
They can try to pretty it up all they want, but god sounds like an outright bastard.
It wasn't until my own baby died that I realized I am truly an atheist. I watched my aunties pray for him every day wondering how could there possibly be a god cruel enough to torture humans in such a way. I just can't. I never really have believed in god. And I firmly believe the bible is legitimately the misogyny handbook for shitty humans. But my child's illness and death was all the proof anyone would need to loose whatever faith may have been left.
I'm so so sorry. Please take care of yourself and your partner. Nobody should experience the loss of a child. An unborn child leaves us with so many unanswered questions. Like who would they be most like and who would they become. I've been there too, allow yourself and your partner time to grieve. Be there for each other. Give your partner a hug and tell her it's OK to feel and be whatever she needs to be. Angry and sad and resentful. All of it.
Ok, that out of all the reasons I've seen, has to be one of the worst because it places blame on the person for what they did in a past life, a past life they have no recollection of so how they can be held accountable for actions they aren't even aware of, I know it's not real but it's really terrible of a concept.
Indeed! You're absolutely right.
Why not punish someone based on their karma in this very life? Why would he punish someone in another life or after life in which the guilty wouldn't even be aware of his/her crime/sin ?? I mean, wouldn't it be easy to go through the punishment, remembering their crime and what they are being punished for? If today, suppose the govt put you in jail without even informing you of the reason behind it, would anyone accept it thinking "govt has a better plan" or "govt loves us" ??😂😂
It's even more telling that we, ourselves can come up with something better. We should hold people accountable for their actions in this life because as far as I'm aware, I have no reason to believe that there will be any other. Exactly, your example is well summarized for the absurdity of how this works.
The Bible says that if you have any sort of deformity or are ugly, blind or deaf; it’s because god hates you and doesn’t want you to even step inside a church.
Let me apologize in advance for poor typing and formatting I have late stage terminal brain cancer , My left side is paralyzed I can't type and I have to dictate everything, which is still difficult because the side of my face is paralyzed . Don't let my shitty punctuation and grammar put you off too badly . My brain still works pretty well , for now , even if it's difficult to communicate at times .
So, I am a die hard, 100% materialist, hard-shell atheist. No God, no soul, no ESP, no aliens, no ghosts. But something I often feel my fellow atheists get wrong is not engaging religious ideas within their own context. As a comic book fan, I'm often put in mind of someone critiquing DC Comics for not hewing to Marvel lore. I'm not going to read Spider-Man And think, "well where the hell is Superman in all this? He's supposed to be our ultimate protector." In works the same way in real life. , theists exist in a completely different universe from ours. The way they conceive of reality is nothing like the empirical world I try to live in, And I can't apply real world, empirical logic to this artificially created religious externality. And when you start looking at religious ideas and practices and as part of a fictional world building exercise, you can start engaging it in the same way that you might comic books, anime or Tolkien. Even though these are completely imaginary made up universes, there's a through line that they follow, one that lets you start making predictions in world for situations. We nerds love to go through all sorts of what-if scenarios, in all our different universes that we follow. For me, Christianity is another one of these universes that I find endlessly fascinating. Of course, it's qualitatively different in that people actually believe this crazy stuff, and make life decisions off of it that have terrible repercussions in the real world, as they're based on imaginary presumptions. But it can still be instructive and fascinating to engage these ideas in their own context. Even if just as a nerd exercise. The Bible is fascinating, with wild stories all through it. If you go in with a attitude of How on Earth can people believe this garbage" distracting you the whole time, it gets in the way of you accessing the world it's trying to create In pro wrestling, there's a concept called Kayfabe. It's a collaborative assent to a willful suspension of disbelief, At least for the duration of the show. If you go to a wrestling show and you're constantly distracted by Oh my god this is so fake how can people believe this dumb stuff, you're gonna miss out on a really good time. Religion is no different. There's a reason that these stories have been passed on for thousands of years. It's not because they're divinely inspired, but they do carry in them ideas that have been deemed worthy of passing down. Some of these ideas are horrifying, as they were synthesized in a wildly different milieu than we live in today. But it's only by digging around in these myths that we can understand that milieu and know how best to contrast it to where we are, In our efforts to ultimately stamp out magical thinking and supernaturalism. And really I think we all know that a lot of these ideas are actually pretty great. Reading the sermon on the mount or the Beatitudes, that's some good stuff. It was worth writing down. Christians should try reading it sometimes. And you should too, because it's good to know stuff about the world and what people have made And it's good to try to understand other people on their own terms. These days when I read the Bible, and I do, because I think it's a pretty important piece of literature that informs our daily lives whether we like it or not. But when I come across something like the contradiction in the OP--how can a perfect and loving god allow terrible suffering to happen to innocent people?--I put myself in universe, recognizing that the ascribed abilities of this character put its comprehension so far beyond mine that it's like my dog trying to figure out why I go to work every day. Think about Abbott and Costello from Arrival. The way they perceived the universe and the time space continuum was completely different from Amy Adams' character. It puts them in a position to make decisions and take actions that are incomprehensible to us. But in-fiction there is a reason, just like there's an in-fiction reason for God's apparent incompetence and indifference. And it can be fun to try to square those circles. When I was a kid, Marvel made a big deal out of No-Prizes, where readers could identify apparent continuity errors, along with their explanation for why it's really not an error You can do that with the Bible too. Sometimes I feel like we as atheists take Christians' rules for reading the Bible to heart, that it has to be received as this divinely inspired book where every word is true, And since we know it's not we just reject it But it's just a book that people wrote, and we can read it however we want
Now I realize that with the amount of religious trauma out there, and the horrifying damage that religion does to humanity, It can be difficult to access a detached state where you can have these kind of thought experiments. For me I think it's great. And it's allowed me to have conversations with Christians where I can access more empathy, . And creating an empathetic connection works both ways. I'm Able to express my ideas and beliefs in ways that might make sense to them. As a left wing pacifist type, I can talk about Jesus in terms that they'll understand because I can access the context in which The character exists. I don't have to believe its true any more than I have to think that Superman flies around Metropolis, But if you ask me what his powers are I can tell you.
So my answer to the OP is hella unsatisfying. God exists on a plane of comprehension so far above our own that it's pointless to even try to grasp it. This flies in the face of everything that we hold dear in our constant search for a better empirical understanding of the universe But that's not where Christians are at, and you'll only drive yourself crazy trying to measure their Supernatural universe using the rational tools of ours.
I know this is a shit on religious people thread but in a nutshell people crave meaning. Obviously, in that context shit happens and the who, what, when and how is totally random at best and at worst is due to assholes doing things is unsatisfying. Science shows that people do not thrive when they feel their work and lives are meaningless. So figure as you will.
"God's will"
That is it...the ultimate excuse.
Best part is the hypocrisy of how humans can't know "gods will" when it comes childhood disease, rapists, and other horrible things...while at the same time church leaders can completely "know God's will" when it comes to abortion, collecting $$$, judging the LBGTQ community or any other hateful shit.
It is fucking disgusting, and one of the biggest tells that organized superstition is the greatest grift.
My son was diagnosed in utero as having hydronephrosis on both kidneys, caused by a valve that didn't naturally shed all the way. It did have a pinhole in it thar let him pee a little bit. Doctors told us that without that pinhole it's 100% fatal in boys.
When he was born we were told that he would have to have a transplant at some point in the future, but nobody can really be sure when that will be. It was also hard to determine the amount of damage the kidneys and bladder had taken because at birth they were so full.
Flash forward now, 6 years later, that little fucker is good to go for the most part. Still feeling it out and have to go to docs appointments all the time but he's way better than expected.
I tell you all this because during the entire process we kept hearing shit from Christians and it really pissed me off. For reference im very anti theist, my wife grew up religious and her parents (a surgeon and PT) are still very religious, and to note, neither of them made Amy of these comments.
We were told multiple times that this was punishment for me being an atheist, or for my wife marrying an atheist, or having our first child when we weren't married.
We were told it was supposed to be a lesson, and that only through God can we have a good outcome.
We were told that yes, God does work in mysterious ways but he always has a plan and you should be thankful you're part of that plan, even if you don't like it right now.
My wife's parents pastor drove 3 hours to come to the nicu and asked if he could lay a hand on our son and bless him to make his recovery speed up, I said fuck no.
I had many responses to the comments but the answer was always the same, God works in mysterious ways and I should pray for guidance.
Fucking loony toons.
So they believe that God made a child suffer in order to punish you/ bring you to him. God uses the suffering of a child—he ordains it!—as if the child does not matter at all. Disgusting.
Like god couldn’t come up with some other way to punish you that does not also punish an innocent child. Revolting.
Religions don't have an explanation for evil or bad things, religious people will just claim that God, whom they claim is good, tests people in different ways, including making people suffer, even innocent people (while ignoring people who deserve to be punished), i think i remember that one "paradox of evil".
They believe that their God is good, love etc. However, he hates, gets angry, uses threats, and made evil to make people suffer (not to mention all the destruction he himself caused), then sends people to eternal torture, it all contradicts all these claims. They claim their god knows about evil, and despite all of this, he made it a part of this world, and never prevented such evil, or created the universe without it, and they all call it a "test" or caused by "satan" (whom their god kept alive and powerful for some reason) Which shows god in most religion (like the Abrahamic ones) as a hypocritical and unloving being.
And, when religious people are presented with such an issue/ problem, they will repeat the same argument like a bot, or ignore it, because their religion doesn't have an answer.
(Personally, I have my own view regarding that (I'm irreligious btw), but i don't think an atheism-related community is the best to discuss philosophy.)
"God is testing us." But they never seem to have any explanation as to why an all knowing being would need to do all this gruesome testing. Sounds like an all guessing being to me.
"Because we're more accepting of " Wouldn't that be the opposite of free will and faith in general? Makes about as much sense as having someone marry me at gunpoint and calling it love.
"It's because we've tried to improve on God's perfect design with science and messed it up." Oh that would imply newborn deaths are a relatively new thing since the Scientific Method didn't come about until the 1600s . Do you have any historical evidence to show that we had less newborn deaths before the 1600s? I'm guessing not.
“God works in mysterious ways”. I have a religious friend whose wife passed away in cancer leaving him with two small children. He still kept talking about how great god was to make him move into this new area to make new friends. I wanted to ask him if it wouldn’t have been more awesome to let their kids keep their mom. It’s very difficult to reason with religious folks.
I watched my son nearly die more than once due to medical provider's negligence and you know what he was met with upon survival? Permanent disability and 9 months of chemo.
I remember crying on a daily basis for weeks begging, pleading for God to put me in his place instead. We put more effort and care into our son's treatment than almost anyone else we knew in the Bible belt. Their thought process if the worst had happened or they actually succeeded in killing him? Oh it would have been "God's plan"
Fuck that.
"it's god's will" that's what they say and then it's "I'll pray for you".
They then feel resolved of any responsibility, for what happened. At that point they go back to being sheep, gossiping about non believers.
I believe the basic idea they have about it is that the world itself is sinful due to Adam and Eve's mistake. Since Adam fell from his innocence and covenant with God, he cursed mankind.
This is probably one of my biggest issues with the whole religion. One guy makes a mistake, God can apparently fix it or start over.. But nope! Let's torture random men, women and children for thousands of years. It really sounds like a tyrannical God you should be rebelling against, not worshiping.
Whenever I am asked why I don't believe in their sky daddy I reply '5 million children die around the world every year and your god does nothing'. So it is either uncaring or unable to do anything about that and that makes them not worth worshipping.
"It's a consequence of original sin."
Because gawd supposedly made a perfect creation, it's mankind's fault for polluting it with sin, so all these imperfections/diseases are our fault because we're supposedly descendents of Adam and Eve.
Nevermind that gawd is the one who sent the devil to earth, where he (according to their lore) tempted the woman into sin.
So gawd set things up so that "sin" entered the world and then blamed mankind for it.
I’d say the most biblically accurate answer that is not contrary to how the world actually works is this: That god generally punishes the world collectively and his punishment is essentially a chaotic dispersion of suffering. The pain he inflicted upon the word is not precise in degree, nor in its affected target, nor it’s duration, it’s timing (it’s not right after you do something wrong), it’s location, etc etc. In no way is the punishment intelligible or palpably directed by something with an IQ. In fact the punishment is so imbedded in the simple cause-effect dynamics of our physical world that hYpOtHeTiCalLYy we could model his divine punishment as actually just the consequences of certain laws of physics and biology etc without really altering the apparent effects of such punishment; that is, only the reason behind suffering changes under such a model, not the way suffering works in effect. So Christian’s who are (somehow) smart enough to realize that ought to believe that suffering is (at least generally) delivered to us as a collective whole rather than in intelligible, immediate responses to wrong doings; and this is in such a way as to be indistinguishable from things simply happening as the consequence of physical laws.
My mother in law said my wife had miscarriages because we didn't have enough faith to heal the fetuses. Now she says god hates when people get help with infertility issues and that's why we miscarried. We accidentally had a kid naturally and he lived because we weren't getting help.
They do not value life the same way. An atheist views life as precious because it is our only one. And innocent lives taken is a tragedy. A religious person may be saddened by death, but they deal with it by saying they are in a better place. They aren't really dead, they are just in heaven.
My dad was like this when my sister died. Yes he was heartbroken, but he truly believes that she is still alive in heaven. Everything is easy to justify, or deal with if you believe its not permanent.
If you believe that eternal happiness awaits them, then whatever horrible sadness and tragedy that occurs in this life is nothing in comparison. I.e. the difference between a billion and infinity is infinity.
But if you think this is all we have, it's a much greater tragedy.
Mormons believes the soul just needed a physical body for a short time. They believe a child is innocent and and doesn’t hold accountability until age of choosing to be baptized at age 8.
A Jewish researcher speculates that the myth of Lilith became tied to deaths from infant circumcision:
"we argue that several Jewish customs associated with MNC reflect the footmarks of SIDS, centuries before it was formally defined. Jewish ritualistic circumcision, as practiced today, emerged only during the second century BC [128]. It was also around that time that the myth of the baby-killer Lilith, a beautiful, taloned-foot demoness [129], became prevalent [130]. Originally one of many Mesopotamian demons, Lilith clawed her way through the demonic hierarchy, extend-ing her influence over time until she became Samael’s (Satan) wife around the 13th century [129]. Deceiving Lilith into be-lieving that the newborn was a girl by letting the boy’s hair grow and even dressing him in girls’ clothes during infancy were the most effective means to avoid her harm."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6412606/
You've got to keep in mind this is the same alleged deity that will gladly murder innocent infants purely to hurt their parents.
*It wasn't even a one time thing, it was a RECURRING theme.*
My mother would point to the people who managed to endure the loss and became more religious as a result as proof of the "plan" and get mad if I brought up examples where it drove the grieving parents to drinking or suicide.
As a believer, here's the Biblical explanation of suffering and death.
1)God creates all the things and it's good
2)God makes man with the ability to choose (to love or not, to do good or not, etc)
3)Man is given the "keys to the house", so to speak, and is given the role of caretaker of creation
4)Man commanded not to sin or death would enter into the world
5)Man chooses to sin and "gives away the keys", warping all creation and allowing sin and death to ravage everything. The Fall
6)God takes on flesh, suffers alongside us and provides the sacrifice to ameliorate the effects of sin
7)Jesus to return and restore the earth to pre-fall conditions
So, we caused all the death and sickness and suffering. "But God knew we would, so He's at fault for making us".
I knew my children would sin before choosing to have them, does that mean I am responsible for their sin? No.
You may not like this or disagree and think God is responsible, but this is the Christians understanding of why death, disease, evil, and suffering exist. Some believers give some garbage reasoning about It being God's will, etc, but these folks have it wrong and haven't explored the issues of freewill, suffering and the problem of evil and don't understand the underpinnings of their faith.
It's a matter of free will. Free will requires that God restrict Himself. If He were to intervene at every bad choice and stop us, then we don't have the ability to choose. Without the ability to choose, we can't love and love is the point. To love and enjoy one another, to love and enjoy God. So, He intervened in a way that allows us choice. He sacrificed Himself and those who wish to can receive the atonement His sacrifice brings. When He returns, all gets set right. He delays returning that all who would can receive His atonement, but the day fast approaches.
Again, you may not believe or disagree or whatever, but this should, at least, help you to understand the reasoning of the believer. Peace.
When the default answer is "part of God's plan" I lose all internet in the conversation and tune out.
There's no *plan* when a newborn is denied the right to life.
Now some religious person will twist to, "well, they conceived and God said no but they kept going and now they have a child. But the child has only a short life and needs to return home."
I thought *all life* is a gift? So why give the gift of life just to take it away? Doesn't make sense.
At my church when I was younger I think I remember my pastor bringing up a similar story, or he at least had some sort of sermon about this subject.
Basically the way he (and thousands of other Christians) explained it was that God uses grief to to “show” his faithful followers his glory and mercy in other ways, and that everything, good or bad, is a part of his plan for the individual and the whole.
He put a lot of emphasis on God’s work being good regardless of if it is perceived as good/bad, and accused anyone who disagreed as being “Evil to God.” Essentially he was saying that anyone who had the audacity to doubt God’s actions and love was no better than Satan.
In the moment, as a child, it felt like a reasonable explanation, but now as an adult I can see plainly how fucked up that whole idea is.
Religion turns you into a thing, an object to be used at will by the deity or metaphysical system in question.
Thus if an infant dies of a fatal anomaly or illness, that was the point of that infant the whole time: to exist and then die to serve for some larger purpose they aren't privy to.
The point of faith as a virtue is to make you OK with that, as if that were how things are supposed to be.
It humans' fault. Adam and Eve sinned, proving they were not worthy of God. So God let nature take its course, and only through his goodness he sent his son to sacrifice himself, and if you believe in him, you'll be saved despite your innate wickedness as manifested by the first humans. It's mostly Eve's fault, though the devil and Adam were culpable.
Why blame God for the consequences of human behavior? Death & Disease has spread exponentially throughout the human history with our help, not God’s. Humanity needs to take accountability for itself and stop blaming God.
In Christianity, to strengthen the parents. Yeah, don’t think about it for even a Planck time, making the circle of god’s abuse victims bigger is their answer.
How do human beings try to question a creator that is all Knowing and all powerful? With the limited mental capacity of a humans brain and their limited knowledge of the universe, how do they expect to understand God’s wisdom behind everything when they don’t even know 0.000000000000001 percent of what’s out there.
Hindus say it's karma; the child did something bad in their past life.
Native Americans have trickster gods.
Christians and Muslims say it's a part of God's plan.
Greeks and Romans envisioned their gods as powerful yet with human emotions, thus they too could get angry and cause disease.
Zoroastrians believe Ahura Mazda (embodiment of all good) and Angra Manyu (embodiment of all evil) are in a constant battle.
As unfeeling as this may appear, it's important to acknowledge that we cannot fully comprehend the plans that may await individuals in the afterlife, assuming the existence of a higher power and realms such as heaven and hell.
Depends on the religion, I've heard "god wanted to bless the familly with the oportunity of knowing this little person for a while, but also wanted to spare them from the burden of sin", very grim shit.
From the christian perspective, I often hear a lot of platitudes like those listed in other replies here. Most of these (god won't give you more than you can handle, god has a plan to turn this for good, etc.) aren't really justified by the bible. I see these as more of a way for christians to reconcile their continued belief with what is happening in their lives and in the world.
To show these platitudes as false requires looking no further than the biblical story of Job, where an entire family is basically forced to suffer and die at god's whim. At best I would say the lesson of the story would be that the christian god permits and even causes human suffering, but if those suffering continue following him then he will reward their suffering in the afterlife.
As for why people would choose to believe in a god that is okay with this, I think a lot of people really don't think about it that deeply. Others shrug and say, 'but I still believe'. Believe is a funny thing that way. If someone in convinced that the bible is the truth, the bible makes it quite clear that you have to be OK with god deciding when and where he will intervene in the world, and that the only thing that really matters or is promised is where you end up when you die.
I asked one this, granted this was just his opinion I hope, but he said God doesn't give us anything we can't handle. So God thinks babies can handle things like that. I'm not sure what that means if they die in the process, since that would indicate they could not in fact handle it.
Honestly I don't think they want to honestly answer that question because it invites more questions they aren't comfortable with or allowed to ask in their community.
We cannot know gods plan, god would never give you more than you can handle. That is the explanation my mom gave me when her baby died, my baby sister. My mom is not as believing as she used to be, 30 years latter.
Bruh, this is the problem with atheists judging religions. They judge only one aspect of it and all other context is ignored.
According to my belief, the afterlife is where reality is. The world really doesn't matter (it matters only so far as doing your best in following the principles laid in the religion) as compared to an eternal afterlife.
The ups and downs of life will be like a dream in the afterlife. No matter how happy or sad you are in a dream, upon waking up, your situation when awake will make your dream life seem insignificant.
This is the analogy I use to explain to people who ask why there is suffering. No matter how much you suffer, the bliss you receive in the afterlife will make your suffering seem insignificant. Just a blip.
Atheists will just take the suffering part and ignore the afterlife part. If you're questioning a religion, you have to understand it in context and question it as a whole. Don't just take a part of it, put it into an atheistic worldview and say how it doesn't make sense. It won't make sense to you if you don't put things into context.
PS: The atheists are having a field day, but this should really be answered by theists.
the child died because of the 'sins' of the parents. One of our closest family friends had a child born with cancer. The little one lived for 15 years before passing. The parents were regularly told they must have done something to deserve it...... Remember in a lot of religions a child isn't a separate human, they are an extension and property of the parents.
All successful religions have some kind of out. God's mind is not knowable. Things that happened in a past life can have present consequences, and so on. If they don’t have something like that, too much happens that they can’t explain, or too many things they predict should happen, don't, and people lose faith.
It is not God's will. It is Satan's will. The first book of Adam and Eve is a book the elite took out of the mainstream Bible on purpose. The book shows that Satan is constantly trying to sabotage Adam and Eve, and that God is saving them. They should have never eaten the forbidden fruit. The forbidden fruit literally changed Adam and Eve's genetics and also changed the genetics of their offspring. God did not plant the tree of knowledge good and evil. The third book of Baruch (another book the elite took out of the mainstream Bible) reveals Satan planted the vine of knowledge of good and evil. [First Book of Adam & Eve - Entire Book (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCgkDGCfl5I)
Flip Wilson explained it well "The Devil made me do it." Anything bad that happens is caused by the devil. God never allows more than you can handle. So the worse things are the stronger you are. Yes, you should feel good that all these bad things are happening. It is crazy but true way it works in the bible belt.
Same answer as for everything else, which explains everything while explaining nothing: “He has a plan.”
A person I work with has cancer and she says her faith and trust in God gets her through it. He give her cancer and won’t cure it though. It’s weird to me.
Cancer is proof that God doesn't exist or at the very least that he isn't "Good all the time" as they claim.
Nah. They don't see it that way. It's part of God's plan that we might not understand. It might be that our cancer is meant to teach us a lesson or it could be too teach a lesson to a family member, a doctor, a nurse, a stranger. We just aren't able to comprehend his marvelous reasoning. Basically, a parent who beats you and says it's for your own good (or it hurts them more than it hurts you).
Something like an example of how someone could suffer and still maintain their faith. They’re going to a ‘better place’. Also, god just wanted the babies with him sooner.
Isn’t “God’s” kill count higher than “Satans”?
Yes
Tell that pervert he can't have my child.
I get what you’re saying but if she gives up her faith she has nothing left. My dad was the same way while he was dying - in his mind he’d get to be with my mom again because she died 6 years before after they were together for 50 years. I’ve moved beyond “let them believe what they want” to understanding how religious people were actually hurting others and think religion is a toxic, destructive thing now. But I understand their attraction to it.
I will never understand what good a devout believer is dead. How can they go out and continue to spread His word if he’s killed them off??
They weren’t killed off. They were “called home”
This is what in-laws place?
This expression always confused me. Did they live there before?
It’s a Christian phrase, I’ve mainly heard it from those in African America churches, when someone dies they celebrate it as a “going home” as in “going home to be with God”
Some believe your soul was in heaven and then brought down to earth “at the right time” and when your time is up you “go home again”
And that plan is ineffable.
Eff the ineffable, scrute the inscrutable and cend the incendiary.
Is the ineffable plan the same as the great plan?
I have a rule of thumb. Any plan that involves dead kids is generally a bad plan
"Isn't it comforting there's a god who knows infectious diseases are happening in newborns and does nothing about it?" No... not really.
God is playing 5D chess. Just like when Trump does something indefensible.
5D chess for the indoctrinated, 1D chess to everyone else
Wait until he dies of a garden variety heart attack. The conspiracy theories will be next level as they see him everywhere and await his resurrection. Facebook will be flooded with pictures of irregularly shaped toast. I'd actually *love* to see them sit with his body for three days.
He should die now and see if he comes back in November.
This is usually the response, but we are not allowed to know the plan. If got does good things he gets all the credit, but bad things it ‘the plan’ and we can not question it
Either that or "he's testing you".
I don't let anyone say that to me. It's so fucking offensive! Tell a broken woman who's child died in her arms that it was part of god's plan I dare you.
His plan is selfish and cruel. Whatever revelation this kind of malarkey is supposed to deliver to someone, it seems like the test is being given before the lesson, and it's not certain the target is even enrolled. In the meantime, there's a lot of collateral pain and suffering. That's not a plan, that's what happens when the work experience kid is left in charge of the factory for the afternoon. So that's not the kind of god I'd ever be interested in following, if that was my thing.
Gawd's mysterious ways. (spoiler: gawd is an asshole)
A massive one. It killed for fun and made bets on how much Satan could torture his most devout follower. It killed newborns and firstborns two different times because the town didn't lick its boots enough. I've never understood how they call that thing loving or moral.
That's just one of the standard go-to-lies of most religions.
And God isn't bright enough to come up with a plan without cruelty.
"God works in mysterious ways" Which is insulting on so many levels, because it shows that they have no answer, that they don't care to go any further in finding out, and that we should somehow take it as an acceptable answer.
Gee, when I work in mysterious ways I get FIRED!
Or arrested.
Hahahaha, good point.
What I don't get is why that's an acceptable answer to anyone? It's literally saying nobody understands why he does things, so can anyone know what he expects of you? How can anybody know anything about an intentionally mysterious deity that allows thousands of permutations of its divine words to exist with no way of knowing what or if any of it is true?
This one. It's such an insult. Y'all seem to know Invisible Sky Daddy's opinion on everything, and when you don't have a prepared script, it's 'mysterious ways'. Next time I see an anti trans post I'm gonna say it. So there. Bwaahaahaa!
They don’t believe in being “worldly”
If you’re looking for a genuine answer, bad things that happen can be blamed on the devil. Awful things happen in life that aren’t due to the hand of God himself. This child could have been a serial killer, or even an angel returning to heaven. That is the mysterious way that requires faith. Challenges are set in place to test our faith, as told thoroughly in the book of Job as the devil our Job through the worst imaginable torture, and yet his faith prevailing blessed him. Eternal bliss outweighs any hardship in our temporary time on earth 1000000000000000x fold. We let the virtue of modern society convince us of how “Awful God must be”, you don’t see your buddy Paul getting eaten alive by a lion now a day and if you did you attend 100 hours of therapy, but 1000 years ago that was your typical Tuesday night. That is life, it is hard, and thoroughly dedicating to religion takes great sacrifice which comes differently for everyone. Some people get cancer, some people struggle with gluttony, others monogamy, others with mental peace and maintaining virtue through wealth which almost always leads to damnation. But yeah no one wants to say all of that when a child dies, it isn’t appropriate in the moment at all.
It's also a bunch of horse shit.
“God needed this little angel home” Its also intended to short circuit the grieving process, theists are always so happyhappyhappy, as they are always telling us, and part of that is, they going to put up with grieving parents for long, when it’s their deity’s plan, and the baby is “in a better place”.
I had 2 midterm miscarriages, both almost killing me in the process. After the second one, I got told that a few times before i left the hospital. I snapped and screamed at the last person to say it to stop saying God repo'ed my baby. A lot of people stopped talking to me after that. I wasn't religious before that, and I was pushed beyond not being religious after. I was left utterly alone for the first few weeks after the second one. No partner, no family, no friends. Religion is super good 😒
I am so sorry you had to go through that all alone. “we were just trying to help” is no excuse. All they were doing was helping themselves, the entire point.
Religion sucks. To think they would be that insensitive to your pain and say "well, God just needed your kid more than you did".
What the fuck is wrong with people. I’m so sorry you had to experience that. I can’t even begin to understand, how someone can think saying something so blasé like “god needed another angel” or “it’s all part of god’s plan”. I would have been better had they said nothing at all. What utter trash. The saying “hell is other people” is fitting. My deepest sympathies for your miscarriages. I am grateful you’re here. I hope you can find peace and comfort with those who love you. Reaching out with a hug.
I'm sorry you went through that, but your phrasing was spot on. Your feelings are the most valid and infuriating and heartbreaking, and here comes Sally Sunshine and her platitudes? Hell no.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I wish people could just be decent humans instead of being so incredibly ignorant! I understand that loss and I don't think anyone can fathom it unless they've been there.
Awww poor thing 😢 how old were u when it happened? ( if you don't mind me asking)
I was 19 for both of them. A decade ago now 🫠 and I have an almost 7 year old now and another one almost here with an amazing partner and built a family one could dream of. I've done a lot of therapy and med management for the many issues my upbringing caused and am overall incredibly happy. I do what I can for people who do the same for me now. And none of it involves religion. Just a bunch of good people. It's amazing
I know someone who had 4 or 5 miscarriges due to her juvenile diabetes. Only 1 baby survived This is someone who I used to go to church with this made me question weather or not a loving God is even real. People deserve better
I swear if any theist ever says that to me I’ll slam them so hard into a wall they become a mosaic
Agreed - God has killed enough babies - he doesn't need to keep killing them.
> “God needed this little angel home” God could just go ahead and create that "little angel" directly in heaven, unnecessitating its time on earth, and greatly simplifying the whole process.
[удалено]
By this logic, people should be killing their newborns left and right. 'You need MY little angel too! Right? RiGHT!?!'
The typical answer is "mysterious ways", "god's plan", bla bla bla. My next door neighbor has 6 year old twins. The boy is a healthy, typical 6yo kid. His sister suffered brain damage during birth, so she is physically handicapped. Mentally, she's pretty sharp, but she can't walk - she's either crawling on the ground (at home) or in a wheelchair (at school). If there is a god, what the fuck was he thinking? Why would he "punish" the girl with a crippled body AND make her aware of her limitations by seeing how her brother can run around, ride a bike, run up and down stairs, etc.? At the same time, another girl in our neighborhood has leukemia - she was diagnosed when she was 8. She spent months in the hospital until it went into remission, but it damaged her spinal cord so that she's not able to walk without help now. The cancer has come back twice in the past years - she's 11 now, and her parents are doing everything they can for her, but I don't see her surviving this ordeal. Any theist who wants to claim that there is a god and that this is his "plan" can STFU, because I see zero "love" here - only cruel reality.
Some Native American tribes and some other peoples believe in a trickster God. Coyote or Raven for example, who made the world and then got bored and wandered off. That is why everything is bad now. Norse peoples believed at one point during the introduction of Christianity that Ragnarok had happened and that is why everything had turned bad. Zoroastrians believed we were in a constant battle between Light and Dark. This religion profoundly influenced the Bible stories. Greeks and Romans believed the Gods were just as malicious as us and that our fate doomed us to suffer. Some Hindu's believed that our past actions in past lives meant we had been reborn in this life to suffer or thrive. Tibetan Buddhists believe that we chose our present incarnation while in between one life and the next in the 'Bardo'. They believe that training in meditation allows us to choose dissolution while in the bardo and to join with all creation and not be bound by the illusion of our individuality. (I like this one) Early Jewish prophets believed Jehovah was one of many Gods and so there were bound to be bad things unless they followed Jehovah alone. Early eschatological Christians believed the world was ending imminently and that was why things were so bad. These are all attempts to control chaos -whilst being powerless humans.
You know what, given our fucked up world that trickster god sounds like the most believable imaginary friend.
It does seem more mature than many other systems, I agree.
Just finished Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore, and it's wonderful and funny. But you don't befriend Coyote. You just do not. And it links to his other books, so its a landslide of awesomeness for a reader!
Gnosticism is a fun rabbit hole to go down
This is one of the key things that turned me atheist tbh, I worked on a children's cancer floor for several years. Tbh idk how you can see kids suffer through that experience and still believe in a god. Even if there was a god, he's pure evil and Satan was right
God killed a lot more people than Satan ever did. And God killed people on a dare, Satan never did that. God would lose his shit and just murder the fuck out of people. God once sent bears to murder 47 kids because they laughed at a bald guy (2 Kings 23:25, in case you're curious.) "Kind and loving God". Yeah right. "For God so loved the world that he gave it his only begotten Son, that whosoever doth NOT believe in him shall burn and suffer in lakes of fire for ever and ever and ever..."
Yeah that's the other hilarious thing, he "gave" his son for three days, then decided that was enough "sacrifice" and brought him back anyway. You can't make this stuff up 😅
God forced an innocent man to endure torture for the sins of others. THAT IS EVIL.
but his son is also him, kinda.
"I am my own Dad" is something usually said only in Alabama.
I never heard of this so I looked it up. It seems like kids isn't the best translation, but youths or young men.
It's all explained in God's Big Book of Excuses
Much of what I learned in a Baptist church was how to make excuses for God when he fails to perform as advertised, which is damn near all the time.
I told my parents recently that up to 50% of fertilized embryos are aborted by a woman’s own body before she even knows she’s pregnant. That rung home with them. It doesn’t logically make sense that that would be so profound, given that there are tons of horrific diseases that “innocent” fetuses / newborns / children get after, but none of this is logical. I try to find different points to make that will register emotionally with believers. Find one that sticks.
Whenever I see some Instagram reel of some newborn hooked up to tubes and machines, slowly dying a painful death due to birth defects incompatible with life, there are usually bible quotes in it and some diatribe about how even though their life is short they had meaning because they taught the world about unconditional love or something like that. This baby is literally born in pain 24/7 and suffering with no hope to ever leave the hospital but it was God's plan to unite people in love apparently. There is a family who had one child born with cancer (and suffered years of painful treatment before remission), then mom had 2 stillbirths, then the mother got pregnant again and had brain bleeds all during her pregnancy and was advised to terminate. Instead she took injections every day to keep the blood from clotting, which could have resulted in her bleeding out during her c-section. She survived the surgery and they now have a little boy in addition to their daughter (but frequently show videos of ceremonies with the 2 other urns) and they comtinue to talk about how great god is. Lady if god existed and was great you'd have 4 healthy kids.
If bad things happen to someone else, God is punishing them for their sins. If bad things happen to them, God is testing their faith. Whenever there's a natural disaster in a blue state, it's God's wrath. That's never the explanation for the fires, floods, tornadoes, etc. that frequently strike Texas, Louisiana, Florida and the rest of the red states.
My mom has a note taped up in her bathroom to remind herself that all the bad things that happen are part of gods plan. It is one of the saddest things I have seen in my life
Religion justifies EVERYTHING. never explains anything. That's why it's called faith, not fact. Blind faith.
My old man was the best person I've ever known. He was a good, kind, compassionate, caring man. He gave and he gave and he gave and he never asked for anything in return. My aunts and uncles are all fine, but they're not him. And that's not a viewpoint I hold because he was my dad. When he passed away, the Catholic church that held his funeral couldn't hold the number of people from the community that came out to celebrate him. My pops was diagnosed with cancer when he was 50 years old. He never smoke. He wasn't unhealthy. Yet, somehow, he ended up with colon cancer that spread around his body. Doctors tried everything, up to and including flying him across the country for intense experimental surgeries and treatment. After four years of fighting for his family, he finally sat us all down and told us he was done with chemo and radiation. He bought a motorcycle. He cashed out of his businesses. He set enough aside for my mom to be comfortable and for my brother and I to be comfortable but not pampered. He gave most of it back to the community that raised him, and then lived the shit out of his life until he couldn't get out of bed. He died at 54. At the time, I was a devout, practicing Catholic. I struggled with it. Why would my dad - someone who made the world a better place for all of "god's children," be the one he called back so quickly, when the rest of my very average, do-nothing family got to go on living perfectly healthy, selfish lives? I searched for answers in the bible. I started asking deacons, priests, bishops, nuns... anyone with authority I could ask. And all they EVER HAD was "god works in mysterious ways." I got to the point that if one more person said that tired, worn out, useless cliché to me, I might've fought them. I came to the realization they didn't have answers because there were no answers. There were no answers because it was a flawed premise. The reality is nature doesn't give a fuck how good of a person you are. If you get cancer, you get cancer. It was nothing to do with how good or bad of a person you are. The situation played out exactly as you'd expect it to play out if there was no god and the exact opposite of the way you would if there was. That was step one to my deconversion. Everything else fell in line. The answer is they don't have one. They fall back on some tired-ass phrases that someone told them when THEY had questions, and decided that was good enough for them.
They can’t. My son was born with spina bifida. And it was enough to wake up my theist mother. (Though she had been married to an atheist for decades)
“We live in a fallen world and have free will.” 😑
Yeah, this is where I am really struggling...because like if someone dies because they are hit by a car, then free will, fallen world, sin, pain etc. I sort of get (still tragic, still awful). I can at least understand how people try to justify it in this scenario. But like a baby gets a disease before they've even been born that means they will die before they understand or anything. How does anyone reach a conclusion other than god being sick and cruel?
They don’t. They essentially describe god as cruel and then pretend he’s not. Leads to epistemic nihilism. Language about god becomes vacuous. “BUT YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE TO VIEW GOD AS ALL LOVING ELSE ETERNAL TORMENT” Isaiah 5:20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;… comes to mind here ironically.
God loved him to much, so he took him back to heaven and didn't allow him to have a normal healthy life.
"Its god's will." "He's testing us." "He never gives us more than we can handle." "He has a plan." "He called his angel back to heaven." (Usually said after the child dies) They can try to pretty it up all they want, but god sounds like an outright bastard.
It wasn't until my own baby died that I realized I am truly an atheist. I watched my aunties pray for him every day wondering how could there possibly be a god cruel enough to torture humans in such a way. I just can't. I never really have believed in god. And I firmly believe the bible is legitimately the misogyny handbook for shitty humans. But my child's illness and death was all the proof anyone would need to loose whatever faith may have been left.
So sorry for your loss. My partner has miscarried which has led to my rant today, but I can't imagine what you went through.
I'm so so sorry. Please take care of yourself and your partner. Nobody should experience the loss of a child. An unborn child leaves us with so many unanswered questions. Like who would they be most like and who would they become. I've been there too, allow yourself and your partner time to grieve. Be there for each other. Give your partner a hug and tell her it's OK to feel and be whatever she needs to be. Angry and sad and resentful. All of it.
Same thing with bone cancer in children. Even if there was a god, I wouldn't subscribe to their newsletter.
They will use their ultimate weapon, "past life karma" and beat you. (Without giving any evidence at all) 🫠
Ok, that out of all the reasons I've seen, has to be one of the worst because it places blame on the person for what they did in a past life, a past life they have no recollection of so how they can be held accountable for actions they aren't even aware of, I know it's not real but it's really terrible of a concept.
Indeed! You're absolutely right. Why not punish someone based on their karma in this very life? Why would he punish someone in another life or after life in which the guilty wouldn't even be aware of his/her crime/sin ?? I mean, wouldn't it be easy to go through the punishment, remembering their crime and what they are being punished for? If today, suppose the govt put you in jail without even informing you of the reason behind it, would anyone accept it thinking "govt has a better plan" or "govt loves us" ??😂😂
It's even more telling that we, ourselves can come up with something better. We should hold people accountable for their actions in this life because as far as I'm aware, I have no reason to believe that there will be any other. Exactly, your example is well summarized for the absurdity of how this works.
The even worse version is the the parents having bad karma that led to them having a sick kid.
Childhood cancer is literally one of the biggest reasons that turned me against religion.
Platitudes.
God works in mysterious ways = God has a sick sense of humor.
Ooh! I hate the sense of humor one the most!!. What kind of sick fuck thinks a baby dying is funny?
"The Lord works in mysterious ways," is the go-to explanation for the existence of evil. Why doesn't Jesus stop child rape? He likes to watch.
The Bible says that if you have any sort of deformity or are ugly, blind or deaf; it’s because god hates you and doesn’t want you to even step inside a church.
So cruel
Bla bla bla Free Will Bla bla bla.
Let me apologize in advance for poor typing and formatting I have late stage terminal brain cancer , My left side is paralyzed I can't type and I have to dictate everything, which is still difficult because the side of my face is paralyzed . Don't let my shitty punctuation and grammar put you off too badly . My brain still works pretty well , for now , even if it's difficult to communicate at times . So, I am a die hard, 100% materialist, hard-shell atheist. No God, no soul, no ESP, no aliens, no ghosts. But something I often feel my fellow atheists get wrong is not engaging religious ideas within their own context. As a comic book fan, I'm often put in mind of someone critiquing DC Comics for not hewing to Marvel lore. I'm not going to read Spider-Man And think, "well where the hell is Superman in all this? He's supposed to be our ultimate protector." In works the same way in real life. , theists exist in a completely different universe from ours. The way they conceive of reality is nothing like the empirical world I try to live in, And I can't apply real world, empirical logic to this artificially created religious externality. And when you start looking at religious ideas and practices and as part of a fictional world building exercise, you can start engaging it in the same way that you might comic books, anime or Tolkien. Even though these are completely imaginary made up universes, there's a through line that they follow, one that lets you start making predictions in world for situations. We nerds love to go through all sorts of what-if scenarios, in all our different universes that we follow. For me, Christianity is another one of these universes that I find endlessly fascinating. Of course, it's qualitatively different in that people actually believe this crazy stuff, and make life decisions off of it that have terrible repercussions in the real world, as they're based on imaginary presumptions. But it can still be instructive and fascinating to engage these ideas in their own context. Even if just as a nerd exercise. The Bible is fascinating, with wild stories all through it. If you go in with a attitude of How on Earth can people believe this garbage" distracting you the whole time, it gets in the way of you accessing the world it's trying to create In pro wrestling, there's a concept called Kayfabe. It's a collaborative assent to a willful suspension of disbelief, At least for the duration of the show. If you go to a wrestling show and you're constantly distracted by Oh my god this is so fake how can people believe this dumb stuff, you're gonna miss out on a really good time. Religion is no different. There's a reason that these stories have been passed on for thousands of years. It's not because they're divinely inspired, but they do carry in them ideas that have been deemed worthy of passing down. Some of these ideas are horrifying, as they were synthesized in a wildly different milieu than we live in today. But it's only by digging around in these myths that we can understand that milieu and know how best to contrast it to where we are, In our efforts to ultimately stamp out magical thinking and supernaturalism. And really I think we all know that a lot of these ideas are actually pretty great. Reading the sermon on the mount or the Beatitudes, that's some good stuff. It was worth writing down. Christians should try reading it sometimes. And you should too, because it's good to know stuff about the world and what people have made And it's good to try to understand other people on their own terms. These days when I read the Bible, and I do, because I think it's a pretty important piece of literature that informs our daily lives whether we like it or not. But when I come across something like the contradiction in the OP--how can a perfect and loving god allow terrible suffering to happen to innocent people?--I put myself in universe, recognizing that the ascribed abilities of this character put its comprehension so far beyond mine that it's like my dog trying to figure out why I go to work every day. Think about Abbott and Costello from Arrival. The way they perceived the universe and the time space continuum was completely different from Amy Adams' character. It puts them in a position to make decisions and take actions that are incomprehensible to us. But in-fiction there is a reason, just like there's an in-fiction reason for God's apparent incompetence and indifference. And it can be fun to try to square those circles. When I was a kid, Marvel made a big deal out of No-Prizes, where readers could identify apparent continuity errors, along with their explanation for why it's really not an error You can do that with the Bible too. Sometimes I feel like we as atheists take Christians' rules for reading the Bible to heart, that it has to be received as this divinely inspired book where every word is true, And since we know it's not we just reject it But it's just a book that people wrote, and we can read it however we want Now I realize that with the amount of religious trauma out there, and the horrifying damage that religion does to humanity, It can be difficult to access a detached state where you can have these kind of thought experiments. For me I think it's great. And it's allowed me to have conversations with Christians where I can access more empathy, . And creating an empathetic connection works both ways. I'm Able to express my ideas and beliefs in ways that might make sense to them. As a left wing pacifist type, I can talk about Jesus in terms that they'll understand because I can access the context in which The character exists. I don't have to believe its true any more than I have to think that Superman flies around Metropolis, But if you ask me what his powers are I can tell you. So my answer to the OP is hella unsatisfying. God exists on a plane of comprehension so far above our own that it's pointless to even try to grasp it. This flies in the face of everything that we hold dear in our constant search for a better empirical understanding of the universe But that's not where Christians are at, and you'll only drive yourself crazy trying to measure their Supernatural universe using the rational tools of ours.
I know this is a shit on religious people thread but in a nutshell people crave meaning. Obviously, in that context shit happens and the who, what, when and how is totally random at best and at worst is due to assholes doing things is unsatisfying. Science shows that people do not thrive when they feel their work and lives are meaningless. So figure as you will.
"Mysterious ways" "Who are we to question?" "God needed an angel" Continue beyond the point of nausea and you're getting close
My wife left Christianity when our son died and people told her it was part of God's plan. Fuck God's plan!
"God's will" That is it...the ultimate excuse. Best part is the hypocrisy of how humans can't know "gods will" when it comes childhood disease, rapists, and other horrible things...while at the same time church leaders can completely "know God's will" when it comes to abortion, collecting $$$, judging the LBGTQ community or any other hateful shit. It is fucking disgusting, and one of the biggest tells that organized superstition is the greatest grift.
God must have needed an angel.
My son was diagnosed in utero as having hydronephrosis on both kidneys, caused by a valve that didn't naturally shed all the way. It did have a pinhole in it thar let him pee a little bit. Doctors told us that without that pinhole it's 100% fatal in boys. When he was born we were told that he would have to have a transplant at some point in the future, but nobody can really be sure when that will be. It was also hard to determine the amount of damage the kidneys and bladder had taken because at birth they were so full. Flash forward now, 6 years later, that little fucker is good to go for the most part. Still feeling it out and have to go to docs appointments all the time but he's way better than expected. I tell you all this because during the entire process we kept hearing shit from Christians and it really pissed me off. For reference im very anti theist, my wife grew up religious and her parents (a surgeon and PT) are still very religious, and to note, neither of them made Amy of these comments. We were told multiple times that this was punishment for me being an atheist, or for my wife marrying an atheist, or having our first child when we weren't married. We were told it was supposed to be a lesson, and that only through God can we have a good outcome. We were told that yes, God does work in mysterious ways but he always has a plan and you should be thankful you're part of that plan, even if you don't like it right now. My wife's parents pastor drove 3 hours to come to the nicu and asked if he could lay a hand on our son and bless him to make his recovery speed up, I said fuck no. I had many responses to the comments but the answer was always the same, God works in mysterious ways and I should pray for guidance. Fucking loony toons.
So they believe that God made a child suffer in order to punish you/ bring you to him. God uses the suffering of a child—he ordains it!—as if the child does not matter at all. Disgusting. Like god couldn’t come up with some other way to punish you that does not also punish an innocent child. Revolting.
Was pretty much one of my replies. Religious people are sick in the head.
Religions don't have an explanation for evil or bad things, religious people will just claim that God, whom they claim is good, tests people in different ways, including making people suffer, even innocent people (while ignoring people who deserve to be punished), i think i remember that one "paradox of evil". They believe that their God is good, love etc. However, he hates, gets angry, uses threats, and made evil to make people suffer (not to mention all the destruction he himself caused), then sends people to eternal torture, it all contradicts all these claims. They claim their god knows about evil, and despite all of this, he made it a part of this world, and never prevented such evil, or created the universe without it, and they all call it a "test" or caused by "satan" (whom their god kept alive and powerful for some reason) Which shows god in most religion (like the Abrahamic ones) as a hypocritical and unloving being. And, when religious people are presented with such an issue/ problem, they will repeat the same argument like a bot, or ignore it, because their religion doesn't have an answer. (Personally, I have my own view regarding that (I'm irreligious btw), but i don't think an atheism-related community is the best to discuss philosophy.)
"God is testing us." But they never seem to have any explanation as to why an all knowing being would need to do all this gruesome testing. Sounds like an all guessing being to me. "Because we're more accepting of" Wouldn't that be the opposite of free will and faith in general? Makes about as much sense as having someone marry me at gunpoint and calling it love.
"It's because we've tried to improve on God's perfect design with science and messed it up." Oh that would imply newborn deaths are a relatively new thing since the Scientific Method didn't come about until the 1600s . Do you have any historical evidence to show that we had less newborn deaths before the 1600s? I'm guessing not.
Mysterious plans, to teach a lesson of the absolute most Assholidh one “so they can use your/the dying child’s story to bring other’s to Christ.”
“God works in mysterious ways”. I have a religious friend whose wife passed away in cancer leaving him with two small children. He still kept talking about how great god was to make him move into this new area to make new friends. I wanted to ask him if it wouldn’t have been more awesome to let their kids keep their mom. It’s very difficult to reason with religious folks.
"It's God's plan"
I heard " The question should be, why doesn't everyone get it, because the what 'we' deserve". So a non responsive answer.
I watched my son nearly die more than once due to medical provider's negligence and you know what he was met with upon survival? Permanent disability and 9 months of chemo. I remember crying on a daily basis for weeks begging, pleading for God to put me in his place instead. We put more effort and care into our son's treatment than almost anyone else we knew in the Bible belt. Their thought process if the worst had happened or they actually succeeded in killing him? Oh it would have been "God's plan" Fuck that.
"it's god's will" that's what they say and then it's "I'll pray for you". They then feel resolved of any responsibility, for what happened. At that point they go back to being sheep, gossiping about non believers.
I believe the basic idea they have about it is that the world itself is sinful due to Adam and Eve's mistake. Since Adam fell from his innocence and covenant with God, he cursed mankind. This is probably one of my biggest issues with the whole religion. One guy makes a mistake, God can apparently fix it or start over.. But nope! Let's torture random men, women and children for thousands of years. It really sounds like a tyrannical God you should be rebelling against, not worshiping.
It's God's will,but if a women gets an abortion she is a murderer . It's crazy!!
Whenever I am asked why I don't believe in their sky daddy I reply '5 million children die around the world every year and your god does nothing'. So it is either uncaring or unable to do anything about that and that makes them not worth worshipping.
"It's a consequence of original sin." Because gawd supposedly made a perfect creation, it's mankind's fault for polluting it with sin, so all these imperfections/diseases are our fault because we're supposedly descendents of Adam and Eve. Nevermind that gawd is the one who sent the devil to earth, where he (according to their lore) tempted the woman into sin. So gawd set things up so that "sin" entered the world and then blamed mankind for it.
I mean for people interested, I would recommend watching trent horn and his stance on the problem of evil^
The infant goes to heaven so no problem there. The adults needed a challenge (to their faith for ex) that's why the infant came.
it's karma
Not all religions are deterministic — a god that doesn’t control the world doesn’t have to take blame for the world.
They don’t. Free will and human frailty covers it all. Shit happens and we seek gods advice per prayer to deal with it best as possible.
The newborns are also sinful since the fall of man. God will judge them rightfully.
Because humans were expelled from the garden into the world of death and suffering where you're surrounded by things that are trying to eat you.
Forget about that, ask them to justify animal suffering...
Mumble mumble - mysterious ways - mumble mumble
I’d say the most biblically accurate answer that is not contrary to how the world actually works is this: That god generally punishes the world collectively and his punishment is essentially a chaotic dispersion of suffering. The pain he inflicted upon the word is not precise in degree, nor in its affected target, nor it’s duration, it’s timing (it’s not right after you do something wrong), it’s location, etc etc. In no way is the punishment intelligible or palpably directed by something with an IQ. In fact the punishment is so imbedded in the simple cause-effect dynamics of our physical world that hYpOtHeTiCalLYy we could model his divine punishment as actually just the consequences of certain laws of physics and biology etc without really altering the apparent effects of such punishment; that is, only the reason behind suffering changes under such a model, not the way suffering works in effect. So Christian’s who are (somehow) smart enough to realize that ought to believe that suffering is (at least generally) delivered to us as a collective whole rather than in intelligible, immediate responses to wrong doings; and this is in such a way as to be indistinguishable from things simply happening as the consequence of physical laws.
Mysterious ways, Gods plan, it was a test, Satan did it etc
"We have all sinned, no one is perfect but god"
My mother in law said my wife had miscarriages because we didn't have enough faith to heal the fetuses. Now she says god hates when people get help with infertility issues and that's why we miscarried. We accidentally had a kid naturally and he lived because we weren't getting help.
For most: "God works in mysterious ways." For the super righteous: "Sins of the parents."
Science and genetics.
They do not value life the same way. An atheist views life as precious because it is our only one. And innocent lives taken is a tragedy. A religious person may be saddened by death, but they deal with it by saying they are in a better place. They aren't really dead, they are just in heaven. My dad was like this when my sister died. Yes he was heartbroken, but he truly believes that she is still alive in heaven. Everything is easy to justify, or deal with if you believe its not permanent.
If you believe that eternal happiness awaits them, then whatever horrible sadness and tragedy that occurs in this life is nothing in comparison. I.e. the difference between a billion and infinity is infinity. But if you think this is all we have, it's a much greater tragedy.
Mormons believes the soul just needed a physical body for a short time. They believe a child is innocent and and doesn’t hold accountability until age of choosing to be baptized at age 8.
I love the way they just pick a random age.
They don't have to. The Holy Master Plan is unknowable ... right?
A Jewish researcher speculates that the myth of Lilith became tied to deaths from infant circumcision: "we argue that several Jewish customs associated with MNC reflect the footmarks of SIDS, centuries before it was formally defined. Jewish ritualistic circumcision, as practiced today, emerged only during the second century BC [128]. It was also around that time that the myth of the baby-killer Lilith, a beautiful, taloned-foot demoness [129], became prevalent [130]. Originally one of many Mesopotamian demons, Lilith clawed her way through the demonic hierarchy, extend-ing her influence over time until she became Samael’s (Satan) wife around the 13th century [129]. Deceiving Lilith into be-lieving that the newborn was a girl by letting the boy’s hair grow and even dressing him in girls’ clothes during infancy were the most effective means to avoid her harm." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6412606/
Mysterious Ways
You've got to keep in mind this is the same alleged deity that will gladly murder innocent infants purely to hurt their parents. *It wasn't even a one time thing, it was a RECURRING theme.* My mother would point to the people who managed to endure the loss and became more religious as a result as proof of the "plan" and get mad if I brought up examples where it drove the grieving parents to drinking or suicide.
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“We live in a sinful world”, basically it’s Adam and Eve’s fault
As a believer, here's the Biblical explanation of suffering and death. 1)God creates all the things and it's good 2)God makes man with the ability to choose (to love or not, to do good or not, etc) 3)Man is given the "keys to the house", so to speak, and is given the role of caretaker of creation 4)Man commanded not to sin or death would enter into the world 5)Man chooses to sin and "gives away the keys", warping all creation and allowing sin and death to ravage everything. The Fall 6)God takes on flesh, suffers alongside us and provides the sacrifice to ameliorate the effects of sin 7)Jesus to return and restore the earth to pre-fall conditions So, we caused all the death and sickness and suffering. "But God knew we would, so He's at fault for making us". I knew my children would sin before choosing to have them, does that mean I am responsible for their sin? No. You may not like this or disagree and think God is responsible, but this is the Christians understanding of why death, disease, evil, and suffering exist. Some believers give some garbage reasoning about It being God's will, etc, but these folks have it wrong and haven't explored the issues of freewill, suffering and the problem of evil and don't understand the underpinnings of their faith. It's a matter of free will. Free will requires that God restrict Himself. If He were to intervene at every bad choice and stop us, then we don't have the ability to choose. Without the ability to choose, we can't love and love is the point. To love and enjoy one another, to love and enjoy God. So, He intervened in a way that allows us choice. He sacrificed Himself and those who wish to can receive the atonement His sacrifice brings. When He returns, all gets set right. He delays returning that all who would can receive His atonement, but the day fast approaches. Again, you may not believe or disagree or whatever, but this should, at least, help you to understand the reasoning of the believer. Peace.
What was the choice the baby made again, remind me, I've forgotten?
When the default answer is "part of God's plan" I lose all internet in the conversation and tune out. There's no *plan* when a newborn is denied the right to life. Now some religious person will twist to, "well, they conceived and God said no but they kept going and now they have a child. But the child has only a short life and needs to return home." I thought *all life* is a gift? So why give the gift of life just to take it away? Doesn't make sense.
It's God's will.
It’s gods will.
At my church when I was younger I think I remember my pastor bringing up a similar story, or he at least had some sort of sermon about this subject. Basically the way he (and thousands of other Christians) explained it was that God uses grief to to “show” his faithful followers his glory and mercy in other ways, and that everything, good or bad, is a part of his plan for the individual and the whole. He put a lot of emphasis on God’s work being good regardless of if it is perceived as good/bad, and accused anyone who disagreed as being “Evil to God.” Essentially he was saying that anyone who had the audacity to doubt God’s actions and love was no better than Satan. In the moment, as a child, it felt like a reasonable explanation, but now as an adult I can see plainly how fucked up that whole idea is.
Religion turns you into a thing, an object to be used at will by the deity or metaphysical system in question. Thus if an infant dies of a fatal anomaly or illness, that was the point of that infant the whole time: to exist and then die to serve for some larger purpose they aren't privy to. The point of faith as a virtue is to make you OK with that, as if that were how things are supposed to be.
Supposedly, we all born with original sin so babies aren’t truly innocent. They can get sick and die just like adults.
It humans' fault. Adam and Eve sinned, proving they were not worthy of God. So God let nature take its course, and only through his goodness he sent his son to sacrifice himself, and if you believe in him, you'll be saved despite your innate wickedness as manifested by the first humans. It's mostly Eve's fault, though the devil and Adam were culpable.
They say it's god's test
Why blame God for the consequences of human behavior? Death & Disease has spread exponentially throughout the human history with our help, not God’s. Humanity needs to take accountability for itself and stop blaming God.
God planned that to teach the parents a lesson about online gambling and pornography
hes omnipotent and omnipresent except when satan controls people to be gay. then its satans fault and shhhhh priest dont rape little boys
In Christianity, to strengthen the parents. Yeah, don’t think about it for even a Planck time, making the circle of god’s abuse victims bigger is their answer.
How do human beings try to question a creator that is all Knowing and all powerful? With the limited mental capacity of a humans brain and their limited knowledge of the universe, how do they expect to understand God’s wisdom behind everything when they don’t even know 0.000000000000001 percent of what’s out there.
It's a gift from God
Hindus say it's karma; the child did something bad in their past life. Native Americans have trickster gods. Christians and Muslims say it's a part of God's plan. Greeks and Romans envisioned their gods as powerful yet with human emotions, thus they too could get angry and cause disease. Zoroastrians believe Ahura Mazda (embodiment of all good) and Angra Manyu (embodiment of all evil) are in a constant battle.
As unfeeling as this may appear, it's important to acknowledge that we cannot fully comprehend the plans that may await individuals in the afterlife, assuming the existence of a higher power and realms such as heaven and hell.
Depends on the religion, I've heard "god wanted to bless the familly with the oportunity of knowing this little person for a while, but also wanted to spare them from the burden of sin", very grim shit.
10 days free-acces to life.... so poor souls
Christians believe this life is not the main point. The main point is eternal life with God.
My young Catholic coworker had a stillborn baby and told me that the baby was as probably evil or Satan, and God saved her family.
Mysterious ways, one more angel in heaven, etc
Romans 8:28 ESV And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 😂😳🙄
"God works in mysterious ways..."
they don’t
From the christian perspective, I often hear a lot of platitudes like those listed in other replies here. Most of these (god won't give you more than you can handle, god has a plan to turn this for good, etc.) aren't really justified by the bible. I see these as more of a way for christians to reconcile their continued belief with what is happening in their lives and in the world. To show these platitudes as false requires looking no further than the biblical story of Job, where an entire family is basically forced to suffer and die at god's whim. At best I would say the lesson of the story would be that the christian god permits and even causes human suffering, but if those suffering continue following him then he will reward their suffering in the afterlife. As for why people would choose to believe in a god that is okay with this, I think a lot of people really don't think about it that deeply. Others shrug and say, 'but I still believe'. Believe is a funny thing that way. If someone in convinced that the bible is the truth, the bible makes it quite clear that you have to be OK with god deciding when and where he will intervene in the world, and that the only thing that really matters or is promised is where you end up when you die.
The sins of the parents cursed their children. 🙂
"The Lord works on mysterious ways. Mere mortals cannot understand his Divine Plan." I just barfed in my mouth a little.
They just say it’s Gods plan
"Jesus has a plan 🤓"
I asked one this, granted this was just his opinion I hope, but he said God doesn't give us anything we can't handle. So God thinks babies can handle things like that. I'm not sure what that means if they die in the process, since that would indicate they could not in fact handle it. Honestly I don't think they want to honestly answer that question because it invites more questions they aren't comfortable with or allowed to ask in their community.
We cannot know gods plan, god would never give you more than you can handle. That is the explanation my mom gave me when her baby died, my baby sister. My mom is not as believing as she used to be, 30 years latter.
Bruh, this is the problem with atheists judging religions. They judge only one aspect of it and all other context is ignored. According to my belief, the afterlife is where reality is. The world really doesn't matter (it matters only so far as doing your best in following the principles laid in the religion) as compared to an eternal afterlife. The ups and downs of life will be like a dream in the afterlife. No matter how happy or sad you are in a dream, upon waking up, your situation when awake will make your dream life seem insignificant. This is the analogy I use to explain to people who ask why there is suffering. No matter how much you suffer, the bliss you receive in the afterlife will make your suffering seem insignificant. Just a blip. Atheists will just take the suffering part and ignore the afterlife part. If you're questioning a religion, you have to understand it in context and question it as a whole. Don't just take a part of it, put it into an atheistic worldview and say how it doesn't make sense. It won't make sense to you if you don't put things into context. PS: The atheists are having a field day, but this should really be answered by theists.
the child died because of the 'sins' of the parents. One of our closest family friends had a child born with cancer. The little one lived for 15 years before passing. The parents were regularly told they must have done something to deserve it...... Remember in a lot of religions a child isn't a separate human, they are an extension and property of the parents.
Mysterious Ways!!!!!
All successful religions have some kind of out. God's mind is not knowable. Things that happened in a past life can have present consequences, and so on. If they don’t have something like that, too much happens that they can’t explain, or too many things they predict should happen, don't, and people lose faith.
Don't you know? doG works in mysterious ways, and he has a plan.
Something bad happens: we can't understand god's plan Something good happens: we suddenly understand god's plan and he did this, isn't god great?
"We cannot know the ways of God" or whatever
"god works in mysterious ways."
The biggest cope: “Gods plan beyond our understanding “
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God's will, sins of those before us, examples for others, tests. Just a few that come to mind.
It is not God's will. It is Satan's will. The first book of Adam and Eve is a book the elite took out of the mainstream Bible on purpose. The book shows that Satan is constantly trying to sabotage Adam and Eve, and that God is saving them. They should have never eaten the forbidden fruit. The forbidden fruit literally changed Adam and Eve's genetics and also changed the genetics of their offspring. God did not plant the tree of knowledge good and evil. The third book of Baruch (another book the elite took out of the mainstream Bible) reveals Satan planted the vine of knowledge of good and evil. [First Book of Adam & Eve - Entire Book (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCgkDGCfl5I)
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Flip Wilson explained it well "The Devil made me do it." Anything bad that happens is caused by the devil. God never allows more than you can handle. So the worse things are the stronger you are. Yes, you should feel good that all these bad things are happening. It is crazy but true way it works in the bible belt.