BoimB son of BoB wrote:as for the 'mysterious ways of god'. i think, if god has a hand in everything you see around you... i mean, why on earth would something so cruel and hearthshattering like the holocaust be allowed. what was god's intention with that, what lessons did he want you to learn from that...
In private Hitler did use the excuse that he was "avenging Jesus". Once again conveniently forgetting Jesus was a jew.
Though this has always been an interesting point to me, if a person prays to god and the prayers were answered, it is seen as grace or divine intervention. Conversely if god does nothing, and things turn out horribly against the person praying, it is also seen as "gods will". This little question of grace, and the lack of consistency in which grace is meted out, is actually one of my major gripes with the religious. Why on earth would any rational, thinking person believe in divine intervention? especially considering this?
This inconsistency brings me back around to the belief that religion was, and is, a tool used by the ruling class to keep people in their place. Every good or bad thing that happens to you is because god wanted it that way, if you are blessed with good luck, it's divine providence, and if poverty and famine are your lot, then it's also god's will. You are being tested in your faith etc.
My only contention with the religious is this question of grace. I simply see it as the one thing in religious thinking in general that has no redeeming moral or ethical value whatsoever. Buddhism gets this right in my opinion, but the rest fail miserably.
I think of your friend the surgeon shtreimel, and while I understand that our egos are so fragile, and the work of a doctor is so impacting in every sense in the quality of life a patient has, and that reaching out to this divine parent figure for guidance is emotionally stabilizing for him, it still scares me that we cannot admit our own power and grace, that we search outside ourselves for that to a god that admittedly mets out grace in a seemingly random way.
I personally have been given a mental capacity that seems to be lacking in others. I can forgive myself for merely being human, and making mistakes, I realize I'm not a god like creature, and I can only try to do the best that I can.
You asked why atheists are angry, well conversely why are the religious so emotionally torn with pride, fear, guilt, and redemption? feelings of persecution, and a slave mentality?
In response to the question you asked. Atheists are angry because it's not a sin to be angry to an atheist. Plus, living in a world where 85% of the people believe in things like divine intervention and constantly attack your ethics as invalid, because you don't believe the unprovable story they tell of creation etc.........
Seriously this is how that reads to an atheist, "How can you know what is right and wrong without assigning a parental father like god figure to the universe?"
It just seems so insane to us that it probably does come off as anger, but it's more about frustration.
And once again, despite the occasional low brow antics in this thread, it has been fairly civil.
