4 ms·
What I find interesting is that most actual people with cancer don't feel that way. They find meaning in their life, however short, and are glad to have gotten
by tsol 4y ago
What I find interesting is that most actual people with cancer don't feel that way. They find meaning in their life, however short, and are glad to have gotten experienced it. It's only cynical people online that think life would be so unredeemably awful that it's better to have never existed. Similarly, you'll often see people on the internet say they don't believe God could possibly exist because there are many people starving around the world. Yet most of the starving poor in the world is religious, often very much so.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoMany religious people are born into it. Converting educated adults is an uphill battle. Church planters will admit as much. So not sure asking starving masses is the best evidence that atheism based on the problem of evil is somehow illegitimate. All that said, once people are born they deserve the digity to decide themselves whether they live or die. With a lot of help and emotional support before making any permanent choices. Before people are born parent's likewise should have as much information as possible before they have to make a permanent choice for someone else. IMO that should include the option to abort a pregnancy very likely to lead to a lifetime of suffering.
- irrational 4y agoWhat is a church planter? I’m imagining a flower planter out in front of a church, but that can’t be what you mean.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoIt's a worker/missionary whose explicit goal is to create a church where there wasn't one before.
- irrational 4y agoIn the USA? Everywhere I’ve ever lived in the USA already has a plethora of churches. Why are they making more?
- paulryanrogers 4y agoIME many churches, even of the same faith, are trying to win over people who don't believe at all and those who don't believe the same way. So people who don't X, Y, Z as they do are doing it wrong or not truly A, B, C. Rise of agnosticism and atheism also motivates them to action. After all these are eternal souls bound to suffer forever in flames and darkness.
- irrational 4y ago> these are eternal souls bound to suffer forever in flames and darkness. This doesn’t make any sense to me (assuming you are not being sarcastic). Does it make sense that Joseph Stalin and Random Joe (who was a good person, but wasn’t truly A, B, C) would both suffer equal fates? What about a person who lived thousands of years ago deep in a jungle and didn’t even have an opportunity? It doesn’t make any sense.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoSome churches will interpret certain scriptures as saying the ignorant will hear their gospel after death and before final judgement. IMO it's a lot of hoop jumping nonsense.
- tsol 4y ago>Many religious people are born into it. So are many atheists, I grew up with some myself. >Converting educated adults is an uphill battle I'm assuming by educated adults, you mean atheists. Converting educated religious adults to atheism is also an uphill battle. Perhaps that, like my previous post, says more about the nature of people than about atheism/ theism.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoVery few educated adults I know have changed faiths, except to leave the faith of their parents. It appears to me that evidence based education is an obstacle to religion.