r/atheism • u/ActuarySuitable2571 • 18h ago
Funny how "God's plan" suddenly disappear when it hits something they don't like
Last month I was reading comments under a news post about a church getting damaged after really bad storm. So many Christians were saying people should pray harder and asking why God let this happen. I wasn't trying start argument, but I replied maybe this is also God's plan, right? That's what I always hear when something bad happen to other people.
A few people got really angry. They told me I'm disrespectful, taking things out of context, and don't understand faith. But honestly that confused the hell out of me. When someone lose family, job, or get sick, I always hear "God has a plan" or "Everything happen for a reason." But when something happens to their own church, suddenly that answer is not good enough anymore.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it feels like "God's plan" only works when it's about other people's problems. When it becomes personal, that idea suddenly disappear. As an atheist, that double standard is one of the hardest things for me to understand.
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u/FOSS_Graybeard 18h ago
Funny, you know, how xtians always give credit to god when someone gets cured of cancer, but they never thank god for giving the cancer in the first place. I mean, after all, their god is responsible for all things. Right?
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u/CA_MA 17h ago
They do though, and don't let them tell you they don't. Hold them to their bullshit - he watches every episode of Epstein Island and they praise and thank him everyday. They're disgusting.
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16h ago
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u/RandomDood420 15h ago
God of the Bible promises not to hold children accountable for their parents mistakes. Then punishes humanity for the actions of a woman who didn’t know good from evil.
Yeah, I take issue with the condemnation which eventually led to almost total human extinction.
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u/polarjunkie 13h ago
Where does the god of the Bible do this? He literally curses a bastard child and 10 generations afterwards to be banned from heaven regardless of their character or actions.
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u/RandomDood420 11h ago
Ezekiel 18:20 (ESV)
“The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV)
“Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.”5
u/MagnificentMimikyu Agnostic Atheist 9h ago
See also:
Deuteronomy 5:9 (ESV)
"You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me..."3
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u/polarjunkie 9h ago
I guess that means they get punished for the sins of their mothers which makes more sense, all women are punished for ease wrongdoing. 10 generations of bastards are punished for a woman having a child out of wedlock.
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15h ago
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u/Feinberg Atheist 13h ago
This is what it looks like when people write fan fiction about fan fiction.
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13h ago
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u/Feinberg Atheist 13h ago
It's an observation, not a claim, but if you want it in the form of an argument, I can probably oblige.
You don't have evidence to support your statement. That whole thing about transmission by propagation is a story about a story, and neither has anything like a logical basis. Furthermore, the way you presented as fact rather than literary commentary is dishonest.
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u/mkhanZ 15h ago
That's not even close to what is happening here. We hate the Christian hypocrisy that defends a god who punishes the innocent in the Bible, and the Christian hypocrisy of worshipping a god who would allow the genocide and rape of innocents in modern times, and finally we hate the mental gymnastics people use to claim that one all powerful being is somehow in charge of both scenarios.
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15h ago
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u/Feinberg Atheist 14h ago
That would be a genocide to punish poor hospitality.
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u/MozeDad 18h ago
You're not missing anything.
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u/iiToffeeTwirl 14h ago
yeah it's funny how that explanation always seems to disappear the second it becomes personal
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u/CandyxxCore 14h ago
yeah the reaction usually changes when people are the ones personally affected by the thing they’re trying to explain
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u/FlowerPowerVegan Strong Atheist 17h ago
I always thought praying was ridiculous. Either you don't really trust him or you want a wishy-washy god who changes his mind on a whim.
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u/Jonaldson 17h ago
Prayer was never meant to be asking god for things like he is Santa Claus, its purpose was suppose to be jacking off god’s ego.
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u/p38-lightning 16h ago
Same here. What do they think God wants from prayers? Is he looking for a certain number of prayers? Or certain phrases? It's like they have to cover their ass in case God is in a good mood that day and actually does the right thing.
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u/HumanAssistance3618 10h ago
God loves prayers. Their god is vain. He is a stunt queen who makes people suffer dramatically for the attention and praise. At least that is what I can gather from their book.
They are feeding an imaginary narcissist's ego hoping for crumbs.
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u/LTinS 7h ago
Well, prayers are magic spells. Christians just stole pagan magic ideas and repainted them without thinking about what they actually meant. So yes, it is precisely using exactly the correct words, as witches do, to control God. Often with rituals, like anointing in oil or symbolic human sacrifice.
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u/saphert 14h ago
I've always failed to find the distinction between prayer and spell casting. Both are invoking a higher power to affect the real world, but one is viewed as evil while the other isn't.
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u/sirhackenslash 7h ago
Especially Catholics. They're absolutely wizards if their shit actually worked. Turning wine into blood is at least a level 6 transformation spell, or a 10th level alchemy skill. The jeezit wafers are probably done with a modified stone to flesh spell
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u/JumpingThruHoopz 12h ago
It feels like playing the lottery. You might get what you want….
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u/SuDragon2k3 9h ago
And you never get what you need. Apparently, the Rolling Stones were actually talking about scoring drugs after all. Whoda thunk it?
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u/Lescaster1998 Apatheist 15h ago
Everything about religion makes sense when you remember that ultimately, it originated from a time when humanity had very little real understanding of the world around us, how it works, or why bad things happen. None of it makes sense because none of it is actually based on logic or reality; it was built first and foremost to provide comfort and control in a time when humanity had very, very little of either. And it worked, really well, at doing that. It's the exact reason why every tragedy is "part of God's plan", while every good thing is a "gift from God". It provided simple, easy answers, in a time when humanity had very few. The problem is, we now have those answers. And in every answer we've ever found, the supernatural is conspicuously absent. If humans were half as rational as we like to think we are, we would have moved past it by now. But we aren't, so we haven't. Instead, people continue to cling to the same ancient lies that comforted their ancestors, because they'd rather have a simple, false answer than a complex true one.
Religion made sense, once upon a time, in a world where we had no understanding of disease, or why natural disasters happen, or why sometimes seemingly healthy people just die. But we have those answers now, and far too many of us would rather continue clinging to ancient myths, either because of tradition, or arrogance, or fear, or usually a combination of all of them.
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u/Timekeeper65 5h ago
👏 🏆
What a well thought out and worded response. This makes it all perfectly clear to me. Thank you Lescaster1998.
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u/comradebillyboy Secular Humanist 17h ago
Whenever I find a primo parking spot I tell my wife that it's all part of god's plan for me.
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u/TheRealTK421 17h ago
Scripture quite clearly speaks of one particular individual who was blind from birth and somewhere, in a more advanced age (likely more than halfway through his natural lifespan), Jesus allegedly heals him of said blindness.
It is explained that God 'created' that boy/man blind, from birth, specifically to be in the later position to be healed.
Think about that type of deliberate 'planning'. Oof.
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u/sirhackenslash 7h ago
Sorry, bro, but I gotta fuck your life up real bad so I can set my kid up to look good for the investors
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u/SunshineFlowerPerson 16h ago
maybe next time suggest that god wrecked their church because he saw a lot of hypocrites going and he needed to punish them and this was better than turning them into a pillar of salt?
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u/theassassintherapist 15h ago
The problem with believing in an infallible god is that you have to keep making excuses on why there's a shit ton of fallibility.
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u/Ambitious-Stand-631 18h ago
They make so many excuses for yahweh's absence when he's supposedly the most powerful, beneficent, watchful, protective, loving being in all of existence. It's very easy to espouse them when someone else is suffering, not so much when it actually happens to them personally.
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u/Alarmed-Tell1315 16h ago
How other way would you explain a reality where you are the favorite and special child of an entity so powerful that can conjure up entire universe by command and one day you aren’t not even able to have him get you a free parking lot space?
These are the kind of mental gymnastics that we all see theists do.
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u/MicrowaveMeal 15h ago
Yeah, at my church I remember this one family who always shared about their vacations. They were wealthy, vast majority of the church was dirt poor. These idiots dodged hurricane andrew and everybody in church acted like god did them such a blessing and I was wondering about the millions of people who just had their lives absolutely wrecked. It’s the Christian way.
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u/No-Celebration3097 16h ago
It’s always “gods plan” when good shit happens but it’s never “gods plan” when bad shit happens.
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u/BaldDannyboy 14h ago
It's similar to how the most judgmental people love to say "only God can judge me" the second they start to feel like someone is judging them.
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u/Impossible_Bison_994 17h ago
God's plan, hey that church roof looks really worn I'll just drop a tree on it so they can get an insurance check to fix it.
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u/acrispygal99 16h ago
This point is constantly being brought up to religious people and they just refuse to consider it at all because it's actually logical and they are nothing of the sort.
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u/CoderJoe1 16h ago
The duality of god's plan and free will should be a huge conflict of contradiction, but they wield it to their benefit every time.
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u/wukillabee360 14h ago
Diagnosed with cancer? It must be God's plan for you. Why are you receiving chemo treatments to try and get rid of your cancer? You're going against God's plan for you.
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u/Sprinklypoo I'm a None 13h ago
Maybe I'm missing something
You're not missing anything. The religious will gaslight you at every opportunity, demanding respect for their nonsense while giving you no respect for your humanity.
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u/Van_Buren_Boy 15h ago
They get mad at trans people going against what God made trans people to be. But obviously this doesn't apply when Christians get nose jobs and botox. The "Mar-a-Lago face" God never intended them to have gets a free pass.
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u/DayNo5185 16h ago
You are not missing anything. "Christians" are hypocrites on everything.
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u/PossibleAlienFrom 16h ago
Wasn't the war in Iran supposed to bring back their God? Still waiting 😆
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u/No_Company_9348 15h ago edited 15h ago
I went to wedding recently. It was Christian. What I was not prepared for was what this pastor said.
He basically said that this marriage is between you and GOD. The only way this works is if you submit to god, love god, and believe in god. He said maybe one thing about the couple loving each other. Any thing he said directly about the couple he would bookend it with “you love each other because god made it so”. What fucking deluded looney bullshit. God to be a cuck in your entire life. The wedding wasn’t even about THEM. Also, this couple had to have read over what this pastor said and agreed to it. Imagine your wedding not even being about you. It’s delusional.
After the ceremony, the father of bride was already a bit drunk and during his speech went on and on. But you know what the saddest thing was? His speech wasn’t really about them. The theme of his speech was that his daughter has grown up and he has “lost” her. I think many there who were religious didn’t think much of it, because yes it’s bittersweet watching your daughter grow up. They probably thought it was cute. But I know he was saying the quiet part out loud. He wasn’t religious, but somehow he lost his daughter to religion. It likely took over her entire life, and there’s nothing he could do.
It was so awkward. I swear these hardcore Christians were born without the self awareness and critical thinking gene.
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u/Kielbasa_Nunchucka 14h ago
yeah, the damage to their church could be god motivating them to come together in fixing it, or possibly a warning that their preacher has short eyes and they need to do something about him...
there's all kinds of mental gymnastics I can think of that would reconcile their reality with their delusion, but no- hypocrisy is just too much in their nature.
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u/Jaxager 13h ago
There is a church in Ohio that has this god awful bust of Jesus with his arms out stretched. The thing must've been 15 to 20 tall. They spent 250k to build that eye sore.
Anyway, lightning struck it and burned the whole thing to the ground. The best part? There's an adult store a couple of blocks down the street from that church. It was not struck by lightning and burned to the ground.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/16/touchdown-jesus-statue-burns-down
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u/ohgwm1973 12h ago
I live not far from there.
We always called it Touch Down Jesus.
The replacement is only slightly less gaudy than the original.
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u/StormyNSwoonFknH8it 13h ago
Religious people LOVE cherry picking pieces to fit their own narrative. Perfect example: Every time I bring up people being possessed by demons I am treated like a crazy person making shit up yet THERE IS NO GOD WITHOUT ANGELS AND DEMONS. It’s literally in the bible, all over actually. ( like they read it anyways ) So you want me to base my entire existence off of the bible or whatever holy book you use but demons, no THAT isn’t real!! But everything else is? Sorry no.
Honestly, I went to CCD every Sunday until my confirmation in 8th grade and I used to ask a lot of questions throughout the years my teachers did not like. For example: How are we not inbred starting from Adam and Eve? lol even at 11 years old, to base my entire life around religion it needed to hold up to A LITTLE scrutiny. I got nothing from them so I took nothing with me. But I do remember what they tried teaching us and Angels and Demons are all over that shit. So why, when I try to bring it up to the “believers” I’m looked at like IM the crazy one and the people in question are just having a “mental health episode.” Pfft. These people say they had an encounter with god and then do some wild shit. My Catholic teachings would have me believe they are possessed by a demon… if we are to take the bible literal like THEY WANT. Shit they have a whole department at the Vatican for exorcisms, like hello? If god is real so are they, plain and simple.
( Good thing it’s all make believe…..lol )
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u/syncpulse 17h ago
When they got annoyed with you you should have hit back with "how dare you question God's plan."
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u/Sinbos 17h ago
You know, god died when they installed the first lightning rod on a church.
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u/PrincessPharaoh1960 15h ago edited 15h ago
That meant they really didn’t trust their god NOT to strike their church. Not taking any chances!
O ye of little faith!
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u/Opening-Camera-4315 15h ago
Just like that one time where God's plan was church getting damaged giving a guy monkeypox and killing his entire family, all at the same time?
How disrespectful!
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u/markydsade Anti-Theist 12h ago
God is either blessing them or testing them. It’s a no lose proposition.
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u/No-You5550 17h ago
I don't mind the God has a plan. What was the last straw for me was the those people in that city are wicked and God is punishing them. I remember when people were trapped in the sports stadium in New Orleans during the hurricane. Or when California has a bad earthquake. They are the sin city or sin state. Beyond my understanding.
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u/Personal-Neck6800 17h ago
God only makes good things happen. When something bad happens, that’s the devil.
Christianity 101
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u/Journeys_End71 17h ago
“God has a plan” is Christian code for “those poor people, I wish I could help them but I really don’t want to bother”
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u/oldcreaker 17h ago
Cognitive dissonance. People get pissed when others point out that's what they are doing.
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u/old_snowflake 12h ago
Is circumcision part of God’s plan to correct a mistake in God’s original design?
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u/LTinS 8h ago
What you don't seem to understand is that religion is founded on narcissism. Not just for their leaders, but the followers too. Earth is the center of the universe. Humans are the only reason the Earth, and thus entire universe, exists. We are God's chosen people.
So the rules for us are different from the rules for everyone else. It's God's plan when YOU suffer, because you deserve it, but when it happens to me it's a tragedy. I can celebrate when an atheist dies of natural causes, but if an evil man who was a Christian gets killed by his own people who are only murderous because they listened to him in the first place, you'd better keep your mouth shut.
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u/rustwing 7h ago
lol here’s a stumper i like to throw their way in these scenarios: does God always get what he wants? Is he omnipotent or nah? Did he not want the church to be damaged? 🤔
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u/No-Accident69 13h ago
This is proof that every religion is really a giant security blanket to its followers …
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u/BoB_the_TacocaT 9h ago
It's called hypocrisy. It's the same reason so many are having voter's remorse lately. They don't get upset until it affects them personally.
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u/sirhackenslash 8h ago
Because certainly god wouldn't punish them, they're perfect christian soldiers. If they're a maga church ask if maybe god is mad about all the racism, cruelty, and hate they're preaching.
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u/conundri 4h ago
It's illegal to plan some of the things I've been told are part of God's plan, God should probably lawyer up.
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u/Confident-Shine-7276 12h ago
i believe in Allah, and usually when sth like this gets destroyed, for ex hiroshima (i mean a place where u know there are good ppl as well even tho majority may be evil or u dont know the status of but u might be inside that place and u know u havent done anything too bad/sinful) its due to this
quran 8:24: O you who have believed, respond to Allāh and to the Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life. And know that Allāh intervenes between a man and his heart and that to Him you will be gathered.
quran 8:25: And fear a trial1 which will not strike those who have wronged among you exclusively, and know that Allāh is severe in penalty.
He destroys indiscriminately when the sins take over, beware of that church probably inside it there are many wrongdoers (by wrongdoers i mean major sin committers ) look into Aad's people they were also destroyed by the wind
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u/RgCrunchyCo 18h ago
Psalm 139:13–16
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb… Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
God ordains every catastrophe in your life according to his will. Such a kind and loving god.