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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[origamiscienceguy]

Happy new year! (If you live on the west coast, sorry)

When Jesus taught the disciples to pray, "Thy will be done" comes before "give us this day our daily bread."

*brain fart* I am sure I had something smart to say after that, but I can't remember it. Probably a good sign that I need sleep.

[Ghills]

... though, re: flashy miracles, it did just occur to me that the bible wasn't very big on flashy positive ones. I can't recall many towns being cured en masse or anything like that -- jesus tended to do pretty small scale stuff, and he was about the only thing worth a shit in the text insofar as that kind of thing went. It was mostly mass slaughters and curses and plagues and whatnot when divine intervention occurred. Lotta' nasty stuff, but about the largest scale nice thing I can recall of note was the ark, and that was less god doing anything (except maybe fitting all that stuff in the box) and more it warning a few people who actually did all the work. Plus it was alongside what was purported by the text as global scale genocide. Most of the other vaguely nice acts were also accomplished/accompanied by mass infanticide, murder, rape, etc., etc., etc. There's maybe a promised mass resurrection, but it's again alongside great horrors inflicted for roughly no apparent reason but to be a colossal jackass.

Maybe the biblical god can't help people out in regards to healing and whatnot to any substantial degree, which could be why prayers to help people just don't really seem to work. It would kinda' seem to follow the available evidence...

Healings tend to happen one at a time to individual people, and so probably aren't nearly as likely to be noted in the historical record.  I mean, what historian is going to even be able to track all the people a prophet healed? They'd have to practically glue themselves to him.  Plus, how many times does someone want to read/write 'And then Isaiah healed Jonas of SomeTown of his piles'?  Whereas an earthquake splitting the ground or a plague is going to be written down.  Scriptures were written by people and suffer from the human tendency to focus on dramatic stuff and not the smaller but important events.

[TD1]

The point is that they are small. Ten thousand people cured over a lifetime of one prophet - and that's being more than exceedingly generous. A few hundred is probably generous -can't compare to even one colossal bad event, e.g. the ark.

[penguinofhonor]

I wasn't saying God did those miracles to be flashy - they obviously had other purposes. I was just saying that they were flashy. God did these things with no intention of hiding his actions or obfuscating proof of the divine.

I'll continue with the example of the feeding of the 5000. There are millions of hungry people in the world, but God would never feed them this way today. If he takes any action, it will be indistinguishable from those people getting food through their own means. Why the change?

[origamiscienceguy]

He sort of told us to care for each other, he definitely gave humanity all the resources to end world hunger if only humans weren't so selfish.

[Graknorke]

So what are the people who do try supposed to do about the people who don't? I can't think of much you could do short of stealing everything from them.

[origamiscienceguy]

Just do their best.

[Frumple]

So what are the people who do try supposed to do about the people who don't? I can't think of much you could do short of stealing everything from them.

Critter was pretty big on murdering people that acted like that (and great swaths of uninvolved innocents, o'course) and janking their stuff, though. Maybe that's what it wants to happen. The plagues and unfettered rapine orgies will come when the proletariat rise up en masse and start fervently killing the scions of Gomorrah.

Then again, that kinda' doesn't make the most sense, either. Critter was noted to personally get up and shitkick folks that did that, no jewish impetus needed. Not the most consistent subject, I guess.

[Graknorke]

Won't feed everyone by doing your best. And that's a prayer unanswered. Which means that according to what Ghills said and you haven't objected to, having billions of people barely able to feed themselves is part of god's plan.

[Rolepgeek]

He sort of told us to care for each other, he definitely gave humanity all the resources to end world hunger if only humans weren't so selfish.

It's not even necessarily selfishness. It's just difficulty coordinating. I mean, there's aspects of selfishness in it, and from what I've read the biofuel industry is basically the 'road to hell paved with good intentions' thing, but a lot of it's just that systems becomes self-perpetuating, and if you do things in a capitalist system that don't make money to spend to get more money, the people who do will eventually outcompete you. Which sucks, and is something I really hope we can change at some point, probably via hopefully competent governments. ANYWAY THAT WASn'T RELEVANT SORRY.

Look at this way, Graknorke. Suffering causes people to turn to religion for comfort more often, yes? So if you are barely able to feed yourself, which causes you to become closer to God, which means you get into Heaven, it's a net gain in God's eyes.

I might have found an interesting discussion piece?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Alternatively...

[origamiscienceguy]

Well, there is only one Jesus who exactly matched the hundreds of prophesies.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's not really the point of it. If you're a fake Jesus you know what the prophecies are, because your delusions are all after the fact. Your delusions will conform themselves to any and all requirements you care about fulfilling. It actually doesn't have a lot to do with religion, but it was the same author.

[origamiscienceguy]

I meant for other people. Because I'm sure it will be easy to know if someone who thinks they are Jesus was: born in Bethlaham, came out of egypt, then was raised in Nazaeth.

[Adragis]

Bethlaham

Bethany la Ham?