There is a distinction between a “Belief” and an ‘Assertion.’ A very good example was the most recent case of Sherlock who asserted his bullshit beliefs all over the place. It is one thing to have a belief and make inquiries. Even maintaining the belief after it has been challenged is not so much a problem as asserting the belief to be true and evidence to the contrary false. (As our friend Sherlock was fond of doing.)
Currently, I just responded to a post where the OP asserted a voice over the radio was supernatural. LOL How anyone could ever, in a million years, arrive at this conclusion is beyond me. The idiot thing to do is to maintain the voice was supernatural no matter what. Just keep insisting on it. As if one’s insistence has any influence, at all, over the reality of the situation.
So, have your belief. Go believe the earth is flat, that vapor trails are making people stupid, that water fluoridation causes cancer, or that COVID-19 inoculation is a form of population control. Believe what you want to believe but do not assert it as truth without solid evidentiary support.
People are rarely ‘upset’ by idiotic beliefs. They get upset when you assert those beliefs as some kind of truth. A truth is a claim that we should all take seriously. It is true that if you jump from the fifth floor of a five-story building, you may not survive. This is a truth, and it should be taken seriously. It is a truth that if you drink 8oz of bleach you are probably going to die. Bleach is acidic, and it will eat through your stomach and dissolve the rest of your insides as well. This is TRUE. ‘God is real,’ is a belief, and we have no reason at all to believe it is a truth. It most certainly is not true in the same way jumping from a five-story building or drinking 8 oz of bleach is true. Exactly how it is true? No one has yet explained sufficiently, to make me believe it is worth considering as true. So when someone insists, by asserting, ‘I believe such a claim,’ I can only say “bullshit!” so many times, before getting a bit louder and eventually telling the person to ‘go fuck off.’
Reflecting on the tragic story of Emily, it’s clear that life’s unpredictability challenges the notion of a divine plan. How do we reconcile such random, heartbreaking events with the idea of a benevolent deity?"
In the face of Emily’s untimely demise, we see a community grappling with grief and questioning the existence of a ‘perfect plan’. This tragedy underscores the human need for rational explanations in times of loss.
These sentences encapsulate the essence of the discussion, addressing the broader themes of the debate without delving into specific details.
Why is surely a far more pertinent question than how. Why would we bother to reconcile contradictory claims in order to preserve a belief those claims demonstrate is irrational?
In my experience most people are relentlessly irrational, and absolutely unaware of it, while tacking the word rational onto their superstitious beliefs as if this makes them so. Just like the comical way people capitalise and ambolden the word fact after a subjective unevidenced claim, as if that makes it so, one is irresistibly reminded of a petulant child stamping its foot.
The essence of this discussion is to highlight the absurdity of claiming that an omniscient omnipotent and perfectly moral deity exists, and created a world with ubiquitous and unimaginable suffering. .
Epicurus summed the contradiction up long before humans created the Abrahamic religions.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
Theists worm their way out of anything. FIRST REBUTTAL
ISA. 45, " I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. Evil was allowed to test. You don’t have to like it. God is above you and you don’t get to understand his ways.
SECOND REBUTTAL
Sin came into the world through one man, and evil through sin, and so spread to all men because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of the god thing. God gave you free will, and it is your own nature to be born sinful. It is only through the grace of God that salvation from this world can be found in an afterlife. (In short, you fucked up this world, now live with it. If you believe in God, there is still hope for you in the next life.)
I really like the quote myself but have never found it useful when speaking with theists. I much prefer an argument from divine hiddenness, and the ‘FACT’ that absence of evidence ‘IS’ evidence of absence. When reasonable expectations of evidence should be manifest.
That’s my second favorite quote from their holy book(yeah right). It’s also what I wrote on the first page of the journal that I’ve kept for almost 10 years now.
No one gets to see it until after I’m dead.
