Marcuse wrote:OK everyone, I've sort of let this slide because the thread got a little out of steam...
JugularNotch wrote:If anything, what I mean to say with all this isn't to move people to believe one thing or the other, but rather to take each scenario one at a time. I've heard it said that Christians can't pick and choose who another Christian is; if a person claims to be one, they are and there's nothing anyone can do about it. That seems misleading, as Jenny McCarthy could call herself a "leading voice in the fight for autism" and, like, actual autism researchers couldn't promptly dismiss her anti-vaccination rants as not true science
"Well, all things happen for a reason," it infuriates me, quite literally.
Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
aviel wrote:JugularNotch wrote: "Well, all things happen for a reason," it infuriates me, quite literally.
This phrase also bothers me, though for a different reason: I don't like the implication that human suffering is good.
Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
aviel wrote:I agree with your point about people who are sure that you believe something you don't. It's famously a problem with atheists.
aviel wrote:Fundamentalists often think we affirmatively deny the existence of a god (and very few of us do), or that we worship ourselves, or most hilariously that we worship Satan.
JugularNotch wrote:Wait, when did you stop offering allegiances to the Dark Lord?
Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
JugularNotch wrote:Yeah, that's a good clarification both Maxy and Avi. Although the expression is "Everything happens for a reason", what's really being said is "Everything has a purpose for happening". Which, in a way, is sort of true too: even the Holocaust had a purpose, albeit a horrific and very misguided one. It's really more about knowing what the other person is actually saying when that expression or ones similar to it are used.
...52xMax wrote:If people use that phrase to tiptoe around the fact that they believe that reason has to be some kind of cosmic or supernatural force (sentient or not, etc, etc) well just say so.
I'm not entirely sure that's what even the most fundamentalist believers mean by that, though.
Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
Dr. Ambiguous wrote: The church that I was raised in made it very explicitly clear that everything happened because of God as a part of his plan, (and they made it explicitly clear that that included the Holocaust and 9/11).
D-LOGAN wrote:Jaysus we'd all run of peanut butter and Penguins would be extinct within a week, and that would just be my influence!!!!
Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
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