Gods plan that small children get cancer and suffer? I don't want anything to do with that particular god.

I ask them was it god's plan that I was sexualy assaulted when I was a very young child and molested again at 11 by a church deacon? Was it god's plan I had no where safe to go as a kid? Did god want me to get so depressed I almost killed myself?

That's some god you got there. Who got all the good stuff? All I got was shit.

That usually shuts them up pretty quick. They look like a fish out of water.

I think they are just as delusional as anyone who believes in any god.
They have zero credibility with me.
Their god, if it were real, is an asshole.

It pisses me off. It's the ultimate cop out. Let's all pray for world peace, an end to hunger and that our favorite sports team wins and my little Sally Sue gets selected to be a cheer leader. What gets me is the whole idea of heavan. It sounds terribly boring to me.

There's an endless list of reasons why that's bullshit.

Roger that Specman, it can really make me wickedly angry...its complete total bullshit. I have a close friend who recently lost her husband in a sudden freak accident and at his life celabration service where a woman walked up to my friend who was devastated and said " it was in gods plan" and I wanted to wring her neck.On the other hand I have to say I have experienced some VERY difficult situations that ended up leading me to some specatacular spaces and or people. Life is a mystery. We could get into the concept of "karma" Quantum physics or "shit happens".

Just respond with the Eichmann question:

Adolf Eichmann was one of the main architects of the Holocaust. He was also a Christian and confessed his sins before he died.

The 6 million Jews whose deaths he oversaw did not believe in Christ.

According to Christian theology< Eichmann would go to Heaven, and the people he had murdered would not. How is that fair, or right?

I speak my mind gently. Especially this last year, I watched two equally religious friends struggle with employment challenges. One made it through with success and attributed that to God's grace and I said to her, 'you know, ____ is also religious and her life is tanking, but she's a wonderful person, I don't understand why her prayers aren't answered.' I guess my approach is to gnaw away at their false sense of security.

In the wake of the tsunami that killed over a quarter of a million people some one asked Billy Graham how God could let that happen. Graham said quietly " l don't know ." Pretty much says it all.

What kind of God would do such a thing and why believe in that kind of God?

when the Tsunami turned the Pacific Basin into a blender way back I remember thinking I guess we arent supposed to feel that being wiped from the face of the planet is a bad thing. Like the Ultimate GMan just looks at things in a different way

I questioned my god in Judaism when I learned of the Holocaust.If there was a god he wouldn't le t tit happen.

It's a convenient, non-falsifiable, cheap justification for whatever occurs. It's essentially meaningless, and therefore dismissable. But as you indicated, it does tap into one of the major arguments against an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god, known as "The Problem of Suffering and Evil", the consideration of which, for a high proportion of former believers, is the primary cause of their loss of faith. I'm sure many of you are already familiar with the brilliant ancient quote on the matter by Epicurus, but here is an excellent, more recent commentary on it:

It's just aeasy bullshit statement that covers them from anything they may otherwise have to question.

This is how theists rationalise natural injustice. The world is random. Shit just happens. Some bad people have good luck and some good people have bad. Selfishness and greed are very often rewarded.

Abrahamic theists make this fair through the belief that such people will get their comeuppance in the afterlife, while righteous people will be rewarded. That justice will finally be served. That the wealthy man will go to the nasty place for not being able to drive their Bentley through the eye of a needle or something (though I think that's more about leaving your wealth to your successors rather than having it buried with you - "I'll become poor the moment I die, and still get into heaven" sort of thing.) That the kid born with terminal cancer was made that way by God as a blessing, so that they could get into heaven sooner.

That their god is an arsehole!

I once was told by a pastor's son that some people die young because God is preventing them from committing a sin in their future. Makes absolutely no sense.

Same old bullshit

Some of the religious are so brainwashed they don’t even think about the ramifications of what they say. Hell religion in general just doesn’t make any sense but you’d be hard pressed to convince most of the religious people of that. In spite of that a lot of the religious people are better people than the liberal Trump bashing idiots on the mainstream part of this website!

This is god's plan? god sucks.

This is not something that a sane, empathetic person who has been through any signifciant amount of personal suffering / loss / grief can possibly bloviate. Unless, that is, they have spent their entire life having their mind bent around the notion that god is "in control" of an existence that is plainly not piloted or directed in any way other than by cause and effect and the laws of physics.

All you have to do is open our eyes and have a little compassion. But if your operant conditioning is that people who suffer are somehow, at some level, at fault or in need of "chastisement" or "testing" then it bleeds the compassion right out of you.

It took seeing good people suffer and die, more than once, for me to admit that, no, god is NOT in control. At. All. Once that was known, it couldn't be un-known.

I have these conversations with my mom, a devout catholic and her response is always that she doesn’t know she just trusts in her faith. I know she wishes I believed but I trust more in my belief that we just don’t know. There’s no proof that there is or isn’t a god but there is proof that organized religion causes war, hate, fear and human suffering.

Its calvinism at its best, either to describe terrible events that are based upon someones sins or sins of their fathers(lets add mothers),or to justify ones own desire/need/perversion- by using god(lets call him fear in this case) as the tool to control.

when religous belivers say that sort of thing,..........

I just roll my eyes and move on. People have to wake up out of religion on their own I don’t think it does any good to discuss religion with believers. You can’t wake them up.