Has anyone looked around lately and wondered of God only looks after his own? Our local churchy people don't seem to be struggling as much as some others. Or is it that they're just 'waiting'...I got told ages ago by a bible-basher that we were in "the last days" - you reckon this might be it? With all the shootings, lawlessness etc going on, the plagues and pestilence, the floods or droughts, the starvation.... Is"God"(or the aliens, the men-in-black, Krishna, Papatuanuku, Bhudda, Mohammed, Zeus or whomever) fed up now and had enough?
When everyone waits for the end of the world every current event is confirmation.
Especially when they're dead wrong.
The people of Jesus' time thought we were in the "last days" and they were as wrong as the people who decry that today, and have decried it for hundreds of years.
The world has always been filled with everything you mentioned. In reality, things are better now than they have been historically...except for the current threats to us due to climate change that is exacerbated by human behavior.
If we are in the last days for humanity, it has nothing to do with any gods and everything to do with nature and human behavior. The earth does not care if humans are on it or not- it will survive; as a species, we may not.
religion is a death cult...they welcome, they feed on, death and destruction.
A god isn't necessary to destroy us. It is the culmination of fear, selfishness, hated, tribalism and racism, stubbornness, and ignorance, with no accountability over the centuries that has brought us to this point.
As for believers, they fit right in and ignorance is bliss.
No. That doesn't even make sense.
I think you'll find that most God-botherers do indeed look after their own kind BUT it comes with a often hefty cost in that they pay their tithes even when they can't really afford them.
I once had the luck to over-hear a local Pastor explaining how tithings work.
He said, quite openly and candidly, that out of every $500 of tithings he puts aside 10% for the running costs of the Church or whatever building they use for meetings, 40% for assisting his congregation members who may be in need of financial assistance from time time, the remainder goes to cover his expenses like fuel for his OWN vehicle/s, clothing, etc, etc, and what is left over from the average 5-7,000 dollars per Sunday is put into HIS Bank Accounts.
So, I wonder just what exactly happens to the 'extra' 50% each week, why does it NOT go to helping the Homeless, the Poor, the Destitute, etc, who are NOT members of his Congregation?
THIS!!!! 0%... which is why there is no God, but there IS man and man often sucks. That's why I dislike 'religion' so much - it's all about themselves and bugger anyone else.(literally, rather than metaphorically)
It’s called the way of things. Nature doesn’t care if you build a house of straw. There have always been dramas. If anything Enola Gay’s little jaunt over Hiroshima was the end times. It proved how fucked mankind is. You don’t need gods to do that shit. Just need god as your scapegoat!
Read below, lots of good answers, especially on the god front.
What evidence y'all got for shootings and lawlessness that surpasses anything from a hundred years ago? Violent crime is down in the US.
There are more climate happenings, which can easily be explained - Man-fucking-made Climate change.
Wake the fuck up and do some reading.
Everything that is and has happened was and is done by us humans. There is no God/s involved here. All natural disasters are just the planets way of processing itself. God has always been only in people's minds never out here in our tangible reality.
God doesn't take care of anybody. Prayers never get answered because they fall on deaf ears. God never existed. Jesus never walked the earth. There is no magic, it's an an illusion. When you die, there is nothing. Total void. Fade to black. Still feel brave?
Bible-basher? What are you a troll? There is no god and the church people are in the same situation as everyone else as far as i can see, except that they are stuck in their delusions and think that praying will change things. People in a community will have help from that community. The church people do it because they want a reward in the afterlife -not all- and they pray to an imaginary made up being that lives in the sky.
I take this that the OP is English. What they call a Bible-basher, we in the US call a Bible Thumper.
@Joanne no, a babble thumper is an Evangelical, a loud one.. A babble-basher is a non-believer!
@AnneWimsey My ex is from England and New Zealand. He called a person, who I would call a bible-thumper, a bible- basher. I thought it weird because to me it sounds like someone bashing the bible, to him it was someone aggressively pushing it on others.
What objective evidence do you have that any god exist? What do you mean about the last days?
in the Bible, Revelations talks of the last days. I think I have one somewhere - I can look it up.(Might take a while to find though....Think I last saw it being used as a doorstop...
Christian church-goers are viral incubators. Plague-ridden vermin. It is almost certain if the Christian is also a Trump supporter.
What is happening today is very plain really. It involved people losing their fear of crime and punishment in both political and religious realms. This makes the believers of (whatever) just keep on making it up.
As for the "last days," Jesus told his followers that they were in the last days and some of them would live to see him coming back in glory. Anyone seen any 2000 year old men lately?
Many churches provide a support system and that enables like thinking people to feel reassured. Worrying about end times is as much a waste of our time as worrying about rapture. I am a Practicing Stoic, and recommend picking up a copy of Epictetus. Don't worry about things you can neither control or influence. Rather, we can live more happily if we worry less about those things that we can't impact and focus more on doing whatever the universe actually places in front of us. Do that as well as we can, accept people for what they are, and focus ourselves on how to do better and be more effective. Don't sweat the small stuff, and most of what we worry about is small stuff.
Some chuches more than other's I'd say. Certain believe in "divine providence." Rather than giving money to the poor in Christian charity they believe their wealth is a gift from God, a reward for being so good and holy. Conversely that poor people probably deserve their fate....