From “The Meaning of Life” by good old Monty Python:

“O Lord, please don’t burn us.
Don’t grill or toast Your flock.
Don’t put us on the barbecue
Or simmer us in stock.
Don’t braise or bake or boil us
Or stir-fry us in a wok.
Oh, please don’t lightly poach us
Or baste us with hot fat.
Don’t fricassee or roast us
Or boil us in a vat,
And please don’t stick Thy servants, Lord,
In a Rotissomat.”

I’ve always wondered the same thing about pro sports folks.  Why come, bloody and ravaged, from a heavyweight bout where you have just pounded your opponents forehead into his hindbrain, and then thank Jesus?

It would be refreshing to hear “well, we would have won the game, but that bastard Jesus smote our quarterback in the first quarter, then obviously blinded the field judge on that 3rd quarter touchdown dispute”

D

i am an athiest but if i was a football coach desperate for a win, i would rally up the boys and say “jesus is behind us and will grant us victory tonight.” It’s amazing how countless generals and rulers have used the belief in help from the divine to stir up some spirit in their men.  in greek mythology, athena supposedly intervened in bloodbaths to help her favorites slay the enemy.  some of the most successful professional teams attribute their success to a false belief that “god is helping us” promoted by the coach. the mental belief that the divine is behind you is a very powerful tool.  hell, i’m only 5’9 140 pounds but if some guy convinced me that some all-knowing all-powerful spirit had my back, i’d blindly run into a fight against mike tyson and he’d kick my little ass.

Humans have always taken the spiritual messages in the Bible and tried to apply them to the physical world.  Example: Mark’s gospel has a passage in the last chapter which says that believers will be able to handle serpents without suffering any harm.  People read that, and decide they can handle poisonous snakes because their faith will protect them.  Only problem: rattlesnakes don’t read the Bible.  In fact, anyone with knowledge of Hebreisms knows that “serpents” are symbolic of spiritual corruption, going all the way back to the third chapter of Genesis.  Goes to show the dangers of reading the Bible literally, I suppose.

Bottom line, the Bible is a guide to living a noble and spiritual life.  It’s a book about God’s relationship with Man, and Man’s relationship with God.  If you want magic spells that let you catch a football or hit a home run, go visit a psychic.  It will do just as much good.

Slate had a good article on this a while back.

The first person I heard bring this up was George Carlin in the seventies. “Yeah, we were doing great until Jesus made me fumble.” -GC

The Skeptics Annotated Bible can be found here.  Someone put some major hours and hard work into this - - but it’s excellent reading.

Great post!

Well, pleased to have provided a “decent answer.”

As it’s pointed out, it’s easy to turn the idea of an omniscient and omnipoent God into a whip to get your followers enthused ("See, God is blessing us!  Go, us!"), a whip to get your followers to toe your line ("See, God is punishing you!  Follow me!"), etc.  It’s also seductively easy to see all misfortunes as proof of someone’s else’s unworthiness (and thus unworthiness to be helped).

And, yes, there is a real sense of unworthiness emphasized in certain threads of Christianity.  In small doses, that’s useful, but, again, it’s a slippery slope into feeling one deserves random acts of badness to occur to one (or that folks deserve their misfortune).

In my view, debating over Why God Lets Bad Things Happen To People is a useless endeavor.  What happens to us is, usually, a lot less important than what we do with what happens to us.  Which is an easy and glib thing to say when something bad isn’t happening to you, of course.

Axilrod,

Your negativism about fighting Mike Tyson means that you clearly did not understand the wisdom and advice given to David when he fought Goliath.

“Against larger opponents at a distance, use ranged weapons.”

Hope you are enlightened.

-JO

That whole doG helps some people idea is a true annoyance. A Second cousin of mine, who I barely know, sent me a World Trade Center slide show about “WHERE GOD WANTS YOU TO BE” and it’s nauseating! The gist of it was, all the people who were late for work on Sept. 11 for one reason or another, even though they may have been frustrated at the time, were just where doG wanted them to be.  Holy crap!  Does that really mean that all the people who died horribly on that day were also just where the doG wanted them to be - or did he just have trouble getting around to making everyone late???  That anyone thinks like this is horrifying. You’d need big blinders on to actually buy this load of poo for any length of time.

JethricOne, boxing mike tyson actually would be done in a not so long ranged boxing ring and with no weapons that would give me any advantage. i would get severely injured and possibly killed.  my negativism is justified

I do know one thing for sure, The Supreme Being, be it God, Allah, Gnesh, Earth Mother, Hank Sr., whoever; I know they hate the Buffalo Bills.

I cringe everytime I see a baseball player or other athlete point to the sky after getting a hit.  It is the individual that has made the accomplishment.  If they should thanking anybody, it should be themselves or the people around them that have supported them.  If I were to teach somebody how to do something and then they went off and thanked god for succeeding, I would be pissed of.

Good day all, after a �brief� hiatus!

Daryl

Mark 16 says:

“16": He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

Is this symbolic or literal?

“17": And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

Is this symbolic or literal?

“18": They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

So in my estimation, these snake handlers have every right to believe their particular version of the fairy tale�or do you believe the other parts of the passage are symbolic as well?

A minor point, but whenever you say things like:

Humans have always taken the spiritual messages in the Bible and tried to apply them to the physical world.

it makes it sound like you�re not human�I suggest using the collective term We unless you believe yourself to be superhuman!

***Dave�s comments are spot on.  I am often assaulted with incoherent ramblings about god�s judgments of us.  Case in point� 9/11.  Was it god�s will or the exercise of free will on the part of the terrorists?  I�m for the latter, but the majority of snake oil salesmen�er I mean�preachers I�ve heard don�t see it that way.  Apparently god doesn�t like us now as much as he did back when we stole millions of people from Africa and tortured, raped, and killed them for a number of centuries�go figure.

This is just one of about 4,637 problems I have with contemporary religion in America.

Guess a lot of what you point out is true...damn, you’d be so dead if you tried to fight Tyson, by the way.

I agree with you on personal achievements such as those in sports. I mean, come on,you worked hard (or your opponents did not work so hard) you won...leave it at that.

Still, if someone believes that God had something to do with it, leave them be..really...it must make sense to them somehow so, well, you know, that’s cool too.

But, really, half the time, people are just too caught up in religion to think straight.

As I see it Religion is all to confusing so I looked to the numbers behind the religions.

Initally it doesn’t help to have the name Gregory

Ie Gregory of David is G.0.D.

Iesous is Jesus name in Greek and has a value of 888 this doesn’t help either because I was born 41763 so 17 would be a special number?!?

888b in base 17 converts to 41763 in base 10

random convergence right ... I wish

888 in base 17 is 314 or Pi yea random
4171963 in the sum of squares

3
1415
1473
-----
5888
4171963=3^2+1415^2+1473^2

Hungry for more have a piece of pi

using the root of 17 4.1231 a 17 4 so use 1231

3 14 159 3 (1 2 3 1)
3 + 14 17
17 + 159 is 176

3 14 159 3
176 and now the first and last to the 159
41763
lets check
3 14+15 93
in 3 of 93 someone born 41763 would be 14+15 or 29
it gets worse
1993 in base 14 converted to base 17 is the number
G0D but it doesn’t stop there in 3 14,15 of 1993 there was the storm of the century which 105 years earlier a similar storm guess the year
yep 1888
when it comes to Grey Matter im in it deep
Now when you think you have the world on your shoulders and its a heavy load think of me and what I am supose to achive - Balance

Love Greg
my code for this note forward89 got ta love it

It is a lot easier if you are a buddhist:
Be grateful for existence.
Have compassion for all sentient beings.
Sit and pay attention, it’ll eventually make sense.