God can’t lose.
Talk to a religious person about good things and bad things, and you’ll see a very interesting phenomenon. When something good happens, it’s a blessing from their god. When something bad happens, it happened for a reason and is all as it should be. See the problem here? They are interpreting everything in a way that allows them to justify anything.
If someone prays for a promotion and gets it, then it was divine intervention. Never mind that on the same morning, a child was killed crossing the street. Can you possibly justify celebrating your promotion because you think your god felt it was more important than the life of that child?
The insane thing is that so many people can. They let “God’s will” allow them to be intellectually lazy, and just go on with life without thinking too hard about the world around them. How convenient that their god has a perfect plan, and no matter what happens around them, they see it as evidence of that plan.
This is just one illustration of how beliefs lead to actions (or not taking action). When people ask me why I can’t just let people believe whatever they want, this is one of the reasons. Most religious people aren’t slaughtering believers in other religions, but they do take comfort in superstitious nonsense instead of being outraged at the atrocities of others.
When people believe that everything that happens is according to a perfect plan, they have little reason to find fault in war, genocide, and the whittling away of the freedom in their own country. Many welcome these things as positive signs that their savior is going to be stopping by soon, to take them away to paradise. Why worry about global warming when you’re not going to be around for much longer?
Never mind that the end of the world has been predicted many, many, many times already. All the dates have come and gone, yet the fools who believed it simply make excuses and mark a new date on the calendar. How much good could be done if these people tried to help make this world a better place instead of preparing for the next? How many times do the things they believe because of their religion have to be proven wrong before they realize what the real problem is?
