emur

In going back and forth recently with Epitome on this board, she argued for an interventionist God using pretty much the same argument - illustrations about how God provided direction in some life event.

I will admit, being a believer in a non-interventionist God, that such illustrations are difficult for me to explain. I'm not convinced they are God, but I am not convinced they are not God either.

Here's the question: if God is interventionist, in what kinds of situations does he intervene? He certainly doesn't when it comes to doctrine, whether Christian or other religions. He doesn't convey to us humans his "truth". If God does intervene as per your illustrations, apparently doctrine or which religion you follow has no bearing on it, because Christians of all stripes and followers of other religions have similar stories. So if God is interventionist, he doesn't care what sect of Christianity you belong to or what other religion you follow.

Illustrations then argue only for a God that intervenes. They have no bearing whatsoever on the truth of any particular view of God, and thus have no bearing on the truth of any particular religion.

I look forward to your comments.

Mel

seebs

I'm never entirely sure, either. It does seem interesting to me that I rarely hear people saying "I think God is telling me to ...", and then find out that it's irrelevant. I've seen it happen, but *less often*. So, what is it about peoples' feeling that God is telling them to do something that makes it tend to be relevant?

It's hard to say, because we only see some examples. I have gotten the impression that interventions that you will recognize as such are occasional, just enough to remind you.

As to the favoritism thing, it does appear that these things happen all over. Specific people seem to get specific patterns of interventions; not sure why. I hypothesize that it may have to do with what you are going to be able to accept; if you have horrible experiences associated with a given church, you won't accept it anyway, so better to guide you to something else that you can handle.

Indeed. I consider them only evidence for an interventionist God; beyond that, I don't make much of 'em. My belief in Christianity in particular is based more on moral codes and my ever-changing opinions of the Bible than it is on "miracles".

Proxima Centauri

I'm sorry for those who live austere religious lives in the hope of heaven hereafter. At least if there's no afterlife they don't find out and don't get disappointed.

seebs

I'm not sorry for them; why should I be? I have no particular reason to believe that it makes them unhappy.

Oxymoron

...or alternatively, absolutely none at all would be a great start

(no genocide implied).

seebs

I don't think it'd help. The inevitable death of religion has been predicted for a long long time; I think humans will always reach for something, and will always find it. Whether it's there or not is academic, in this context; empirically, rational people will continue to become convinced of things like this, so the best thing we can do is try to favor polite belief systems that play well with others.

THE_LEGENDARY_HQB

The following are circumstances were the God of Christianity has ignored prayers for 2000 years:

1. Natural disaters {tidal waves, earthquakes, tornados, etc.}
2. dozens of instances of genocide.
3. Millions killed in His name.
4. Horrific diseases that kill millions, and cause untold suffering and misery to millions more.
5. Untold millions who have begged God to show Himself, with no reply.

Now, courtesy of Seebs, we have an example of where God's priorities really are:

"A friend of mine has a much better testimony; he kept finding guitar picks in his house, and he has no idea why, and he kept thinking "hey, maybe God's telling me to learn guitar", so finally, he said "I'm not sure what you're telling me. If You want me to learn guitar, get me a good hollowbody vinyl-stringed acoustic guitar with the hookup for connecting it to an amp."

About three weeks later, there were some musicians at church, and one of them came up to him and said "hey, I don't know if you play guitar or anything, but I feel like God's telling me to give you my guitar". Perfect match, including the amp hookup. "
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Seebs, in my conversations with you on this board, you have struck me as someone who defies, in a very positive way, many of the negative stereotypes about Christians here.

I assume you have a strong sense of morals.
Therefore, allow me to ask you this simple question:

How can you reconcile your empathy for humanity with worship of a God who shows such frankly warped priorites?

How can you possibly hold Jesus in any esteem, when the best example you an give of "answered prayers" is some story about God helping your friend learn to play guitar, while ignoring far weightier pleas from untold millions {including members of your own family, I'd wager}?

If you really have the searching mind you claim, I expect you to seriously consider this point, if you haven't allready. If you can't come up with an answer that even remotely satisfies you, does it not stand to reason that you have built your faith on a foundation of sand?

Respect,
HQB

seebs

Well, consider: The guy who gave my friend a guitar did it because he thought God was leading him to do this... but he wouldn't have, unless he was willing and ready to be lead.

You show me great evil wrought by humans, and I will show you people who are not ready to listen. Many people act in God's name because they're totally sure they know what He wants... but if they're wrong, they're too certain to *listen*.

That one prayer answered gave my friend an assurance which will likely be with him always that he is loved, and that God hears his prayers. That seems like a fairly big deal to me.

As to weightier pleas... I don't know that God ignores them. Sometimes, the answer is "no". Sometimes, the answer is "you can fix this any time you want".

Let's just take a nice concrete example: Some guy harassing gay people because he thinks God hates fags. Nice, simple, concrete. Why doesn't God stop him? Because the guy has a God-given (quite literally!) right to make his own moral choices, right or wrong.

If this man stopped saying "God, show me how You approve of my holy works", and started saying "Hey, God, should I really be doing this?", I suspect God would intervene.

But He doesn't, generally, answer a prayer not yet prayed.

Not really; that'd be like saying "if you can't say where the universe came from, your belief system must be wrong". Unanswered questions are not anathema to me; they are a sign that there is yet more to learn.

I agree that there's clearly something going on I don't understand - however, I am not particularly convinced that it means that my beliefs are wrong, only that there's something up I'm not aware of.

I expect I'll find out eventually, and I certainly do look at this at some length.

In a thread on CF, someone was demanding that people tell him how many of their prayers are answered, and said that he personally had way more prayers answered than all the people who had yet responded. I think he was missing the point. If I ask for my cat to be given wings a hundred times, should I chalk that up as a hundred prayers answered - all of them in the negative?

Keep in mind, though, Christianity teaches a personal God. He's more concerned with the salvation of individuals, and will not sacrifice the freedom of a single individual to achieve other ends. Whether this is good or bad is certainly debatable, but I think it is probably morally right and necessary. Without freedom, why bother?

THE_LEGENDARY_HQB

Originally posted by Seebs:
"That one prayer answered gave my friend an assurance which will likely be with him always that he is loved, and that God hears his prayers. That seems like a fairly big deal to me.

As to weightier pleas... I don't know that God ignores them. Sometimes, the answer is "no". Sometimes, the answer is "you can fix this any time you want".

Let's just take a nice concrete example: Some guy harassing gay people because he thinks God hates fags. Nice, simple, concrete. Why doesn't God stop him? Because the guy has a God-given (quite literally!) right to make his own moral choices, right or wrong.

If this man stopped saying "God, show me how You approve of my holy works", and started saying "Hey, God, should I really be doing this?", I suspect God would intervene.

But He doesn't, generally, answer a prayer not yet prayed."
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First off, in reference to your analogy to the homophobe who bashes gays in the name of God, why would God be less likely to answer the first prayer than the second? Do you really believe God allows such trivial semantics to affect how He responds?
In other words, if the homophobe prays the wrong style of prayer, any gay man he bumps into is screwed, because God didn't like the way the gay basher prayed?

Second, you didn't adress my main question. Why, in your opinion, would God even think of intervening in such a trivial {compared to other issues} matter, and either ignore or say no to real concrete examples of human suffering?

See, as a theist, IMHO, you are forced to either think up convoluted explanations to explain this God of yours who steadfastly refuses to explain Himself, or simply say "I dunno, guess I'll just have to chalk that one up to my finite mind". I, as an atheist recognize, {since I once did it myself}, that people tend to look for anything that can butress their faith, including chalking up coincidences to answered prayers. Remember the old saying "everyone remembers the prayers that were answered, and everyone would like to forget all those that weren't".

Orignally posted by Seebs:
"Not really; that'd be like saying "if you can't say where the universe came from, your belief system must be wrong". Unanswered questions are not anathema to me; they are a sign that there is yet more to learn"
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Ah, but you forget one key difference, Seebs. Modern physics, as I understand it, does not posit the neccesity of a sentient Creator for the universe. Therefore, I see no contradiction between calling myself an atheist and admitting that I don't know how the Universe began.

Christianity, however, posits a God with very specific characteristics.

If these characteristics can be shown to be inconsistent with the reality around us {"If any 2 ask in my name, it shall be done"-vs. unanswered or ignored prayers}, than you have a serious challenge to that God, or more specifically, that concept of God.

I contend that my question regarding Gods' priorities, when examined with the countless other questions raised by skeptics here and elsewhere, renders the idea of the God of Christianity absurd and utterly illogical, unless we completely redefine words such as "good", "evil", "love", and "benevolence" in such a way as to render them meaningless.

A God that values guitar playing over cancer patients is not worthy of anything but derision and scorn assuming {and that is a huge assertion} that He even exists.

HQB

seebs

Because the first prayer is not actually a request for information or guidance, it's a request for a rubber stamp. God's answer - no rubber stamp provided - is likely to be ignored.

I would guess that suggests that different things are important to Him than to us. He may also have information we don't.

Sometimes, that one "trivial" change makes a huge difference. The guy who wrote _Amazing Grace_ had a substantial effect on ending the slave trade, for instance.

So... I'm not sure which kinds of "suffering" are the most important, or anything like that. So, I don't have enough information to judge. In many cases, though, the "irrelevant" prayer has substantial and important effects.

Heh. Yeah; I am aware of the process, and it's one of the reasons that I am not 100% certain of my beliefs, but merely think them a good working hypothesis which appears to be true.

I think the process of trying to explain is itself useful to me.

My point is, the existance of a phenomenon does not imply that I need an explanation for it. It may be sufficient to say "yes, that's there".

Yes. And this is one of the reasons I think that most Biblical inerrantists are confused; I don't think they recognize hyperbole and other related forms of speech.

I dunno about that. After all, we don't know how much He values cancer patients, only that He doesn't think most of them need to be cured. (I can't say whether the occasional miraculous remissions we see are truly miracles or not. I don't care much.)

I don't mind particularly the idea that my understanding is pretty much irrelevant. I know that my cats cannot understand my decisions about how I interact with them; there is a recurring cruelty involving a box, a strange-smelling place, loud noises, and then a mean person who pokes with sharp things.

I have no particular reason to believe that I have attained such a level of understanding and awareness that I can rule out the possibility of things which seem harmful or cruel to me, but which aren't really.