Unfortunately, God said no:
Said Angela Schlosser, a day nurse who witnessed the Divine Manifestation: “An incredible, booming voice said to Timmy, ‘I am the Lord thy God, who created the rivers and the mountains, the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon and the stars. Before Me sits My beloved child, whose faith is that of the mustard seed from which grows mighty and powerful things. My child, Timmy Yu, I say unto you thus: I have heard your prayers, and now I shall answer them. No, you cannot get out of your wheelchair. Not ever.”
Paralyzed in a 1996 auto accident that also claimed the lives of both his parents, Timmy has served as a shining example to his fellow churchgoers at Lord In Heaven On High Church, inspiring others with his simple, heartfelt devotion. Now that Timmy has received an answer, Christians the world over are celebrating his story as a stirring testament to the power of faith.
that is… ouch
even worse, it’s plausible
glad it’s from The Onion
However, getting into the spirit of the thing… if he’s not allowed out of his wheelchair, I presume miraculous arrangements have been made regarding the evacuation of waste?
Luckily, that doesn’t take a miracle, just some good medical science ;)
Even though this particular story is ficticious…..this is typical fundie thinking. Everything is a blessing, that includes paralysis, sudden infant death syndrome, and childhood diabetes. It’s all part of god’s inscrutable plan. Who are we to question the will of god? I call bullshit!!!
Christians are allowed to question the will of God. I’m confused…
Sure, you can question it all right, but good and bad things will still happen, and christians will attribute it to the will of god. Instead of attributing every event to a mysterious genie in the sky, why not take the more reasonable approach of “Shit happens to everybody! It’s all about how you deal with it.”
Well, He healed that amputee, didn’t he? Oh wait…. Nevermind!
Jonboy does bring up something that I keep running into though. Yes, theitards are allowed to “question” their religion (as a cathoholic told me), but really how do they reconcile the stigma of questioning their faith with the devotion required of their faith?
OK, fair go! It is one thing to question the existence of a Creator, it is quite another to hold Him accountable for something he never promised to do.
Do we really think that if God eliminated every pain in our body, every sickness and every disease, every storm and tsunami, every war and every crime that all mankind would suddenly acknowledge it as the work of God? We would still be complaining that there isn’t enough foam on our latte or too much dryness in our martini.
We want the freedom to say, “no” but we certainly don’t want God to have that freedom. Amazing! God can’t survive our thinking even if he does everything right by us.
@Daddio: Hmm, how about he acts like he’s around and stops all the suffering, and we’ll see what happens? I would worship him if actually showed up and fixed things. (Though he better have a good excuse for where he’s been in the meantime!)
@Daniel: “Clean up on aisle 4!” So, when all the aisles are straight, the floor is mopped clean and the store is “Monk- approved,” then we’ll decide if there is an owner…or is it…the store should never get dirty regardless of what the customers do to it…then we’ll decide if there is a store owner (worthy of worship)? Just needing some clarification…
@Daddio: So god won’t “play nice” unless we al appreciate it – so much for all that bible teaching about selfless acts eh? I suppose it’s another reason to add to to the god works in mysterious ways lists.
@Jabster: are you running for office? That was a nice diversion but the question remains to be answered…do we decide god is not real because he didn’t create a human system that never makes a mess, or do we decide god is not real because he never cleans up our mess.
how is it our mess if he created us?
if I make an intelligent robot that then goes and destroys a city, do you think I’ll be able to say it wasn’t my fault?
@daddio: Nope we decide god doesn’t exist based on the evidence – evidence that god exists is precisely zero whereas evidence against the idea of a mainstream religion’s god is all about us. You own have to look at what you are putting forward in this thread to try and support your concept of god to see that it always comes down to god works in mysterious ways. The simply fact is god is only the answer to the evidence when it’s already been decided that god exists.
@wazza: it is ironic that you would compare man to an intelligent robot. The conclusion suggests that the only way God could have made us perfect (so as to not destroy a city) is to pre-program us without free will.
@jabster: I guess my question is unclear as I’m not getting a clear answer so allow me to suggest a different angle. Instead of assuming that God is the owner of the store with the mess…let’s assume the store has no owner. The customers own the store by default (and the mess that goes along with it) because they always have for all time. If god doesn’t own the store, why the rage against the god-who-isn’t-there? Likely it is not as much fun to blame ourselves for our situation. Since god isn’t there, this website should be titled reasonable humanism or something along those lines to call out the injustice in our store and the responsibility we have to help clean the mess made by things in our control and outside of our control (if for no other reason than “because we should”).
Why the need for a website like this one attacking those who follow the god-who-isn’t-there? Isn’t it pointless to call the god-who-isn’t-there on the carpet for the suffering that he obviously had nothing to do with because he isn’t there and never has been.
Now if the goal of the website is to convert people to the concept that god isn’t there and never was there, or to encourage people in their understanding that god isn’t there, it would seem to me that more attention would be paid to ideas regarding cleaning up the mess on aisle 4 and less on why the god-who-isn’t-there hasn’t cleaned up the mess. This is why I posed the choice in a question about who is responsible for the store mess.
Daddio:
Your argumentation strategy is threadbare. Either god is omnipotent and omniscient, in which case he is 100% responsible for all that occurs within his purview, or he ain’t, in which case he isn’t god at all. Period. You can’t have it both ways. Omnipotence and omniscience negate our free will, and put the ball solidly in the creator’s court.
The store analogy fails at so many levels … you really should use another metaphor.
Why a need for a website? Because the websites of those who follow the people who claim knowledge of the incredible, invisible, god have websites that would ostracize us, outlaw us, deliberately exclude us from participating in society in the name of the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the human race.
There are still places, many of them in otherwise enlightened nations, where to be accepted as a member of society you must still metaphorically rub blue mud in your navel in accordance with local custom. To do otherwise is to face death or lesser sanction.
Fortunately we believe most people will come to their senses in time, if someone is there to point out the sillinesses and incongruities of theism. Then maybe we might be able to get more mileage out of simply being humans, advanced animals with sunglasses and iPods, but animals nonetheless.
It’s not about attacking believers, apart from a few particular individuals who make themselves spectacular targets (And to accuse Daniel, particularly, of attacking people, rather than beliefs, is rather disingenuous).
Most theists are decent folk, just deluded. We invite them to question their beliefs and justify them logically.
As we invite you to do. Thus far you don’t seem to have done that. The impression I get is that you believe in an all-powerful, irresponsible, god who doesn’t respond to prayers.
So why bother with the whole worship thing? He’ll let you into heaven without your request, and damn you in spite of it, so what’s the point in even acknowledging him?
Especially when he himself refuses to prove he exists? At that point you may as well just try to live well as a rationalist.
@daddio: Well a couple of points – I’m really not sure where you think the “rage against the god-who-isn’t there?” is. The real point of of he posts is questioning the statements made by believers in conjunctions with the attributes they assign to their gods and the illogicality when compared with the evidence of the world that we live. Secondly “attacking” is far from the truth. Views may be questioned by it is very rare that this can ever be viewed as a personal attack I respect the right of someone to have beliefs but that doesn’t mean I have to respect the beliefs any more than I would expect you to say you respect the beliefs of someone who swears by astrology.
Daddio: An intelligent robot would have free will… but if it destroyed a city, I wouldn’t escape culpability, because I would have been responsible for creating the machine responsible for the mess.
Moreover, if I was a good programmer, I could give the robot, if not perfect free will, at least wide enough will to be able to choose its own path, without allowing it to cause untold death and suffering.