Originally Posted By DAR Today I had a birthday party to attend to for my niece. It was about 45 minutes from where I live. I rode out with my parents and other sister. It was 80 and sunny when a storm came through. Potential tornado sightings and then some flash flood warnings. We leave on the freeway to go home. As we're driving this car going about 85 miles, way too fast, cuts in front of us. The car then starts to hydroplane, the back tires go up in the air and proceeds to do a 720 degree spin one way and then a 360 the other narrowly missing us and slamming into the wall. The biggest problem was that we couldn't stop because of the traffic coming, but we called 911 to get someone out there. The person in the care was able to move the car. Hopefully this person is all right but I tell you someone or something was looking out for us today.
Originally Posted By ecdc Glad you're ok, DAR. I'll admit, I never quite know what to make of stories like this. I even debated posting this - I don't want to seem insensitive to your experience. I'd never deny someone the opportunity to feel touched by God or whomever they might believe in. But I always can't help but wonder, what of those people God presumably wasn't watching out for? Well, we're told God was looking out for them, and they're in a better place. Or if they survive but are permanently disabled, then it's a test. Here in Salt Lake, while everyone was calling Elizabeth Smart's return a miracle and that God answered prayers, another couple whose daughter was kidnapped and murdered wondered if people didn't think they'd prayed just as hard and wanted their daughter returned just as badly. Like I said, I don't want to deny someone the opportunity to believe as they'd wish, and to believe that God was watching out for them. But sometimes they can be insensitive in their claims of being protected or having prayers answered. Another obvious example was on 9/11. A filmmaker who documented post-9/11 faith experiences said she marveled at how many people could not grasp that the plan they said God had for them also was God's plan for incinerating thousands of other people. I'm genuinely glad you felt watched over, DAR. But I can understand why plenty of people might not, or why they might want different answers.
Originally Posted By EighthDwarf I'm also glad you are okay DAR, so don't take this the wrong way. When the Cubs win the Wold Series this year and Aramis Ramirez goes on TV and gives the credit to god for winning the big game, does that mean god is a Cubs fan?? Why would he save you from a car accident while letting a two year old drown in a swimming pool?? So my opinion is to be glad that you're okay but don't attribute it to god. I know this sounds weird, but thanking him for stuff like that makes him out to be a jerk.
Originally Posted By X-san I can appreciate people feeling such spiritual feelings given such a near death experience...some may attribute it to "God watching over them" or whatever, and that's fine I think. I don't necessarily believe it that way specifically, BUT I do believe that having such a profound experience can put you that much closer to "the truth of the universe" as it were. So, I sort of disagree in a sense with posts 2 and 3 though I appreciate the logic behind it. What drives ME nuts is when people attribute every little bit of luck or good fortune to the fact that they are so close to god (as though people that pray more deserve stuff). Watching Big Brother is a great way to see that idiocy in action, I swear they purposefully cast the show to include at least a handful of religious nuts (who are usually also complete jerks, but I think that's a prerequisite for the show lol). Every time they win a competition or oust an opponent, you cut to their "personal commentary" and it's all "God wanted me to win" and "God is on my side" and all that crap. Barf. But, again, that's different from what Dar is talking about and I do believe that sort of thing does occur. I believe I've experienced it myself, in fact, though in a much more negative way. I was at work one day, not particularly under the weather or anything, when suddenly I had to lie down. I honestly felt, somehow, that I was dying. I can't explain it beyond that (nothing "hurt" or anything). Anyway, I was so "ill" I had to leave work and go home. Hours later I received the news that the most important person in my life, my Grandmother, had passed away. And strangely, it was right around the same time I had to lie down thinking I was going to die. Never felt that way before or since. Can't explain it. Could've been some sort of weird coincidence, I dunno. I had no real reason to suspect she would die on that particular day, she'd been in poor health for a long time but no better or worse recently. Just something I thought I'd share.
Originally Posted By dshyates See, Mr. X, I have experience very similar things and I don't believethey have anything to do with God. At least the classical christian God. Back in the 80s, when my Grandmother died all the grandkids, myself included, woke up at 7:15 on a Sat. morning and we all called home to find out what was going on. It was really odd to have 9 grandkids, most of which were quite hungover, call and check in before 8am on a Sat. morning, to be told that she had died. I wasn't even particularly close to her. She kinda scared me as a child. She looked like Endora from Bewitched. Another experience I had was my Mom and I were sitting alone watching TV at about 10pm one night. She sat bolt upright and said, "Jamie (my brother) had a wreck! He is in Kansas and he hit an overpass." I looked at her like she lost her mind. I knew my brother was in Colorado, not Kansas. Well, the next day, Jamie rolls down the driveway here in WV in a smashed up truck. Of course, he was blown off the road in Kansas, into an overpass. My Mom just looked at me and smiled. I am not a religious person at all, and these experiences don't gel with Christian teachings. So as an agnostic I keep them in a mental box labeled "WTFs".
Originally Posted By dshyates My mom has gone on the describe her mental connection to my Brother and I. She says she pretty much can connect anytime she wants to with my brother. She knows how he is doing all the time. She says I won't let her in, but she always knows when I'm OK. When I'm OK I sort of "ping" her regularly with no particular "emotion" attached. But when I am not OK, the "ping" stops, and she knows its time to call. She's crazy.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip There is definitely a God. And he doesn’t really give a crap what happens to us on a daily basis. He is a "big picture" kind of guy. The world blows up tomorrow? God is trying to tell us something.
Originally Posted By dshyates Not really, if he blows up the planet tomorrow, he just want us gone. As there will be no one left to comprehend the message.
Originally Posted By jdub >>My mom has gone on the describe her mental connection to my Brother and (me). She says she pretty much can connect anytime she wants to with my brother. She knows how he is doing all the time. She says I won't let her in...<<< Eeeek--I couldn't live with this stuff--I love my privacy! Glad no one I know has any claim to psychic phenomenon-do-DOO-do-do-do!
Originally Posted By X-san Maybe it'd be a message to the "next" planet. ***There is definitely a God. And he doesn’t really give a crap what happens to us on a daily basis. He is a "big picture" kind of guy.*** Yeah, well I would never presume to be so definitive, but I used to feel the same way. I don't anymore though. If there is a "god" in the terms that people seem to think he might exist, of COURSE he would be interested and involved with all his creations. Why wouldn't he? He's god, after all. He can do anything he wants. And the whole "all knowing, all good" part sort of negates the idea that he could possibly "not give a crap" about anything that goes on, big or small. Great assumptions there though! (I assume stuff too...very human failing, I guess)
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<He's god, after all. He can do anything he wants. And the whole "all knowing, all good" part sort of negates the idea that he could possibly "not give a crap" about anything that goes on, big or small. Great assumptions there though! (I assume stuff too...very human failing, I guess)>> Well, if I had 4-6 children scattered across the United States I'm sure I would make an effort to see them all. If I had dozens I'd probably see the ones I liked the best and the heck with the rest of them. I'm God for goodness sake... why would I hang out with a bunch of losers? ;-)
Originally Posted By X-san If you were god, it would be no effort to see them all, any time you felt like it. ;-) That whole assumption that in order to be around us would require some sort of "effort" is very human. And this from a guy that doesn't even BELIEVE in a god (one that RoadTrip seems pretty convinced of, right down to his personality it seems!).
Originally Posted By X-san I guess the gist of what I'm trying to say is that *if* there is such a thing as "god", then by very definition he/she/it could do whatever the heck he/she/it wants to with no effort required whatsoever. He/she/it could sit back and do the "big picture" thing, if that's what he/she/it desired. OR, he/she/it could go ahead and be intimately involved in everyone's life too, if that's what he/she/it wanted. It could even come down to, assuming there is a god, such a being only choosing to pay attention to those who worship the most (or the best), and damn the rest. That's certainly feasible too. In whichever case, it would require exactly the same amount of "effort", meaning *none*, since to be a god by definition means that anything desired is effortless.
Originally Posted By DVC_dad As Christians, we are taught that there is in fact an all-mighty God that does in fact love us. The real question that drives our human logic is some form of, "If there is God then why do bad things happen to good people?" This is a logical and human question that should be asked and must be answered. According to our mainstream Christian teaching, God did in fact create the Earth, the universe, mankind, and everything else. Most of you know the story of Adam and Eve so I won't bore you with it. Suffice to say that, once sin entered the garden, just like the serpent claimed, man did in fact become like God in the sense of knowing good from evil and having the free will to choose between the two. As for asking what that has to do with my friend DAR being spared, and the other guy killing himself, well its like this: When Adam (not Eve, that's an entirely different topic) chose to eat of the tree of knowledge, he knowingly chose disobiedenc , for which he and Eve were cast out of the garden, made to work and were no longer perfect or blameless. The original sin as it were; you all know this stuff. Since that day no one has been blameless, we all sin, and WE, not God, exist in a society that either directly or subconciously assign degrees of severity to various "sins." For example, a rapist murderer would be seen as far more deserving of jail time or death than say an angry father that lies to his wife about his mistress. Ofcourse according to the mainstream Protestant tradition, we are taught that ALL SINS are equal in God's eyes, which makes logical sense as anything less than perfection is equally imperfect. Stay with me, I'm almost there... So getting back on track, when Lucifer was booted from Heaven, he was given Earth, in which he controls to kill steal and destroy. Man is sinful, and separated from God, lives in this world, the world of sin, controlled by Satan and his minions, and the big reason for bad things happening to good people is this: Because man is sinful, and lives in a sinful world, that is given over to Lucifer, all people are subject to the CONSEQUENCES of the actions of others sins or bad decisions. Sometimes, as we are taught in the Bible, what we Christians believe is God's only Word (sorry LDS) God does spare some people what ALL people deserve, for reasons we don't know. Afterall, He is God, and he is bound only by His own word. I've said it before, here it is again. From one of my favorite movies, Unforgiven starring Clint Eastwoord: Schofield Kid: I killed him. William Munny: (Clint Eastwood) Its a hell of a thing killing a man. You take away all he's got and everything he's ever gonna have. Schofield Kid: Yeah? Well he had it comin! William Munny: We all got it coming kid. Its just a movie, but in the grand scheme of things, we are all fallen short of perfection, and without Christ we cannot attain salvation, therefore we are all equally deserving of the wages of sin, death. Again... I'll skip the whole role of Christ as 98% of us all know what Protestant Christianity teaches. In conclusion: -We are all equally sinners. -We are all living in a world given over to Lucifer. -We all are subject to be effected by the consequences of other peoples sins and bad decisions. -In scripture we see examples of our god sparing some people from these consequences, perhaps because He has something planned for said individual to do. -It isn't illogical to accept that some people are spared some horrible ends while others are not, when one also adds in the concept of eternal life/living forever/an afterlife and the big picture of that. Many who believe that this is it; what you see is what you get, also sometimes feel that to believe in any god is a sign of mental weakness, acceptance of ignorance, denial of the laws of science, or even naivety. I personally think every individual must work out what he believes on his own. I laugh sometimes at those who seem to be enlightened or want to think they are "too smart, too logical" to believe in a god. I don't think Im right and they are wrong. But there are many super intelligent people around who are Catholic, Mormon, Baptist, Athiest, Agnostic, Muslim, Shintoists, and on and on. Take for example the list of Nobel Prize winners, how many are Jews that truly believe their faith? Who knows? But there are a lot of Jews on that list, and I'm sure that atleast one believe whole heartedly in God. I once had a Sunday School teacher that was an accomplished Nuclear Physicist PhD, working for Lockheed Martin. He lead many of our youth to Christ. I'm sure the guy had an IQ that was at least slightly above 100. ;-p. Bottom line: DAR, its certainly your right to believe anything you like. I agree, it could well have been Providence.
Originally Posted By X-san **disobiedenc** Meant all in good fun, but DVD I've just GOT to put that down for "spelling distortion of the year".
Originally Posted By DVC_dad ^^^So, bad things happening to good people fits in with a religion that also teqches of man's freedom to choose between good and evil / right and wrong.
Originally Posted By DVC_dad Hey LOLOL. cut me SOME slack, I just typed all this out on an iPhone and didn't review any of it.
Originally Posted By X-san Very interesting comments, anyway. I don't know if I can agree with some of the "logic" conclusions there, but I can understand the faith based rationality if that makes any sense. Thing is, there really ARE things that are unexplainable in this world. And sometimes those things suck. To try and explain the "why" of it, however logically it seems to be explained, doesn't take the "suck" part out of it for the people who are affected. And I'm talking families who have suffered tragedy after tragedy, or the good person who experiences nothing in life but pain, and all that sort of stuff that really IS reality. To try and explain that away, however sincere you might be in doing so, is to trivialize their pain. Sometimes life isn't fair. Sometimes life sucks. There's no explanation that can make things okay in those cases, and certainly no religious doctrine that can make it feel any better.
Originally Posted By X-san Also, in looking at those "explainations" they do absolutely *nothing* to explain away the suffering we see in the starving toddler in Africa, soon to die, or the cancer riddled child in a hospital who is wracked with pain and terror, or the infant who is abandoned and left to die in the cold. SINLESS creatures, all. Original sin be damned, that's nothing but a load of garbage in these cases. If THAT is really part of "gods plan", then you have to take into consideration the possibility that he's got some evil and horrible ways of bringing his plan to fruition. And if it is in fact the work of the devil, then you have to wonder if god isn't either impotent, or ambivalent. Personally, I see it as absolute proof that "god", at least in the judeo-christian sense, doesn't exist at all. But I do leave room for the possibility that there is something more (Hindu springs to mind as the most logical, universal truth if you take such innocent pain and suffering into account).
Originally Posted By dshyates So let me get this straight, you believe the "Adam and Eve" story? 2 perfect people chose to sup from the "tree of knowledge" and we are ALL now punished for eternity because Adam was seeking knowledge? This sounds logical to you? And even on to the Lucifer story. That stuff is wacked. Its not even a good fairy tale. The world must really, really be a scary place for those that believe it. Ooooohhhhhh, God gave Earth to Satan and his minions to rule. And because Adam proved humans are sinful, our race is forced into daily fights in the battle of good and evil with "Satan and his Minions". Oooohhh, look out, they're right behind you.
