Atheists on MFP

Join

The 1,000-plus who weren't saved

mahanaibu
mahanaibu Posts: 505 Member
in Social Groups
This is stuff that drives me nuts. It's wonderful that after 17 days, they managed to find a woman alive and well in the rubble of the Bangladeshi garment factory. But the news story talks about how during the rescue they had someone on loudspeaker praying, and it was stuff like "Allah, you are the greatest, you can do anything. Help us recue this woman." Right, so great that more than 1,000 people died horrible deaths making clothes for bg-name companies that can't be bothered to provide people with working environments that aren't death traps. See this stuff from almost all religions, all the time. "Oh, yes, God heard my prayers and saved me from the cancer." Incapabale of hearing the prayers of millions of others? Or you were just that special?

Replies

  • soldier4242
    soldier4242 Posts: 1,368 Member
    This is what is known as confirmation bias. It is when you have an answer that you want to be true so you look at evidence that confirms the answer while ignoring any and all evidence to the contrary. The people praying know that they want to be able to say that their prayers work. So they pray for the life of this women. They know that if the women dies that they can just say God took her to heaven but if she lives they will say that prayer works.

    I drive past a church on my way to and from work. On the side of the building right now it says:

    Pray. Don't give God instructions.

    Even when I was a believer I never thought of prayer as instructions to God. I thought of prayer as a way of making requests to God. Now if God is real and prayer actually works then it seems to me that we deduce the priorities of God by looking at which requests he chose to meet and which requests he chose to ignore. The problem is it appears that he case more about Tim Tebow then he does about the starving Christian on the street.
  • gypsylouiseporter
    gypsylouiseporter Posts: 22
    I must say I find the whole thing sad. yeah some bloke sitting up on a cloud will save you?? really!! at least Santa clause was a real person!!! why the need for some imaginary higher being? seems to me religion is for people who cant face the fact they are no different than a cow, spider, crab or turkey we all live then die facts of life, deal with it and move on. as far as the sweat shops go well that is human greed and no religion is against that!!!!!!!!!!!

Categories