Do you think anybody does anything because they actually believe

[edhopper]

Last edited Sun Jun 26, 2016, 08:36 PM - Edit history (1)

that is what God explicitly wants them to do?

It sometimes seems believers don't think God is a prime motivating factor.





I guess I am going to have to explain this post.

[Warpy]

1. Oh, I know people who pray over every little thing and wait for "god" to tell them what to do

Even though they're just talking to themselves, I'd say they think they're doing what god wants them to do.

[edhopper]

2. But whenever something bad occurs

with an obvious religious cause, i hear about all the other reasons it was done.

[Solly Mack]

3. People tell themselves that, so maybe they do believe it

but I have found that their god usually tells them exactly what they want to hear.

[Curmudgeoness]

5. You said exactly what I was going to say...

God tells them exactly what they want to hear.

Funny how that goes. I guess it is because god loves them so much and wants them to be pleased.

[mountain grammy]

4. We'll pray on it and wait for the lord..

is what my relatives say.. whatever. I don't get it.

[Freelancer]

6. Sure they do. -nt

[rurallib]

7. sort of a game

they pretend to ask some big authority that no one else has ever seen or talked to.
Said authority according to them basically tells them to do what they planned to do anyway.
Thus they resolve themselves of responsibility and do what they were going to do.

[Promethean]

8. This can go different ways depending on the individual.

There are the people who just use god as a justification for their own desires. Hey I found this holy scripture which can be interpreted to mean what I want it to mean.

There are also true believers and people who live in a society where the dogma is literally law. Then the misdeeds can be attributed to a plain reading of the dogma. The thing is the people with power in these societies usually show signs of being in the previous category. They manipulate the true believers for their own ends.


Another factor is what you mention in post #2. There is a religion right now with a huge number of true believers (over a billion in number). There are several countries where this religion's dogma is law. These dogmas directly and unambiguously command what we see as atrocity. However a certain ideology in our society have labeled members of this religion as victims that must be protected.

This ideology has complete control over our universities. Has huge influence in our media. Yet claims to powerless and victimized and is thus immune from its own definition of wrongdoing. It does this while defending the religion of atrocity as hard as it can because: victim status. To the point where it is taboo in our media to attribute any wrongdoing to the dogmas of the religion.

I must be obscure. This "powerless and oppressed" ideology has so little power it definitely cannot get me banned from this forum for speaking against it...