I just found this article by Heather Mac Donald in Slate, Send a Message to God: He has gone too far this time. She published it two years ago, and somehow I missed it!
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tags: nocturnal landscape, horse artwork,
Over at my other blog 10 questions fo Heather Mac Donald.
Yesterday, I wrote about how anti-science pro-"intelligent design" kook extraordinaire Dave Springer (a.k.a.
In some ways, I'm kinda jealous of the research Heather does. I love my macrophages, but studying the bugs that live in the extreme environment of deep sea hydrothermal vents has always fascinated me.
Love that! I never understood how believers can be so blind. Every good thing is a miracle. 2 people die, 2 survive. Its a miracle the 2 survived. Well if its a miracle the 2 survived, did god kill the other 2? weird!
Seems similar to the theology of Julian the Apostate and Fight Club. "You've won, Galilean!" combined with "You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you."
Dear Heather,
I have given the managers, the coaches, and the players the freedom to make their individual tactical decisions. I made strategic decisions that would seem incomprehensible to you, even if I tried to explain. I umpire, you play, have as much fun as you can. Your alloted innings will end soon enough.
-God
As a non-predeterminism Christian, my question to you is why is God supposed to make the world a perfect and perfectly safe place? Maybe we should be smart enough not to build under teh eaves of a snow covered mountain and therefore avoid teh issue of avalanche completely, or perhaps the earth is simply an uncontrollable whimsical thing which occasionally has tsunamis. There is never a guarantee in the Bible that he'll make baby-proof the world for us and keep us from natural harm. It even states clearly that we will suffer at the hands of other humans.
Non-believers love to say if He exists, why do bad things happen, and that solves the problem for them. For a believer who wasn't raised in any kind of religious environment and came to it later in life, my question to you is why do you think he would prevent the natural world from being exactly what it is (dangerous at times without malice) or mankind from causing suffering to itself?
Love that! I never understood how believers can be so blind. Every good thing is a miracle. 2 people die, 2 survive. Its a miracle the 2 survived. Well if its a miracle the 2 survived, did god kill the other 2? weird!
Expand your horizons, not all believers will say that anything is a miracle, much less that everything is a miracle. However, if it makes our life better to be thankful that the 2 survived, don't try to make me feel bad about it. Miracle or not that it happened, relief and happiness that someone survived is a much better reaction in my opinion than the view that there is no meaning to life or the specifics of what happens.
If God is what Christians say he is, showing up in church or not showing up would make no difference. Christianity at its core is not a democracy with opinion polls and changeagble policies. Misused, misdirected, and misunderstood? Yes, that is all possible, but it is just as possible that those words describe the agnostics and athiest as well.