MortalWombat

Well, that just proves that SUVs aren't dangerous after all.
Maybe God knew that the fifth time would have killed her. Remember, God only gives you what you can handle, and by golly, if a little girl can handle being run over 4 times, then who are we to judge?

openeyes

From coas:With such planning, makes me glad that I feel that I've been left out of it. (A variation on the thought: "With friends like that, who needs enemies?")

Eric Starnes

What pisses me off more then anything is people who after being saved by the heroic efforts and dedication of rescue workers the turn arround and thank god for saving them.



It would be nice to see someone on the news thank the actual people responsible for their survival once in a while.

http://www.secularhumanism.org/libra...ries_23_1.html

joedad

My humble opinion is that people "pray" because it makes them feel better. That's its appeal. It allows them to cope, to feel empowered, helpful, engaged, caring, thankful, to dissipate guilt, etc. But whatever the reason, the person feels like he or she is somehow helping a situation.

I personally think it is a very primitive and superstitious ritual, something to be outgrown, but the argument can be made that it apparently does help some people simply because they still continue to "believe in" it.

They obvious key to understanding the "power of prayer" is knowing that the person doing the praying feels somehow empowered. Trying to make the point to a believer that this is where the "power" of the "power of prayer" stops, is not an easy sell.

joe

Mediancat

Exactly the cartoon I was thinking of. This kind of thing bothers me too . . . and I often do wonder what the rescue workers who risk life and limb think when the saved and their families turn around and thank god and not them.

Rob aka Mediancat

Shake

Awww... man! That's what I was gonna say!

Oh well, I've got another one that I'll just summarize real quick here (I've posted this on another thread some time ago): living in Charleston, SC for 7 years while I was in the service, I saw my share of hurricane warnings. One that had looked particularly menacing suddenly changed course and started moving more towards the north about half a day or so before we were due to be hit. Wilmington, NC (about 1 hr north of Myrtle Beach, SC) got hit pretty hard, and we spared all but some strong winds and a little rain. The next week in our paper there's a letter to the editor implying that the storm turned away from us because people were in church praying at that time! I read this letter aloud to my wife, who commented, "I guess the people in Wilmington weren't praying hard enough."
(that's why I love her!)

beth

I used to have that logic, Shake. Every year, Tampa would avoid the cataclysmic storm that is predicted every year. I would tell my brother how God spared us and how hard I had been praying. Then my brother would point out the absurdity of my statement, stating that God obviously didn't care about Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, or Mexico. It started to make me think after a few years of such statements. I started to wonder why God would spare an area that has thousands of millionaires, but would let impoverished third-world countries be struck by the same hurricane that threatened our bay. I quit praying for it to avoid us and started to pray that God would protect those caught in the storm. Now, I am not sure that I won't pray if we get caught in a hurricane because I am deathly afraid of the tornadoes that spawn from hurricanes, and I do have superstitious Sicilian and Irish blood in my veins.

openeyes

joedad stated:I second what you're saying, but that's a big problem with praying. People think they're helping others, that they have fulfilled some sort of obligation, but they're only helping themselves when there's probably something much more useful they could be doing. Plus others aren't allowed to show them the uselessness of their ways.

Albion

Trouble is, when the little girl's body is found or the puppy doesn't recover or a tornado hits a school, and nobody's blaming God. what can you do? If you ask, "so where was God this time, then?" you just get a response along the line of what a typically unpleasant and unfeeling remark, just what we'd expect from an atheist. why aren't you praying for the bereaved families, etc etc etc. There never seems to be an appropriate time to ask the question about why God gets the credit for everything good but the bad things are met by dead silence on the subject.

Vicar Philip

Yep, how many times have I heard that crap. Why does glorious ol' god get the credit for a beautiful sunset, but nobody says shit when you see a nasty old interstate pond covered in green slime? Hell, the slime is beautiful to pond critters!

How selfish of certain humans to think their god created things of beauty only for them to see.