This is the typical Christian response, if it had hit and killed Donald Trump, God would not have been involved at all. We attribute God's divine intervention any time it is convenient for us to place him in there, but we you go for more naturalistic explanations when things don't go so well. Also the cherry picking that is occurring where Christians are completely ignoring the fact that this other man was killed in the crossfire is absolutely disgusting to me. If God we're really protecting Trump, why not just never have had this occur in the first place? Maybe God causes it to rain that day and they decide to host the rally somewhere indoors instead. Now I'm also just as disgusted with the people who are upset that it didn't hit Donald Trump, this is not how politics work. We discuss things civilly in order to resolve our issues, you do not resort to violence unless as the very last resort to protect our rights. I''m a pacifist and don't want any violence in the first place. I am happy Trump is alive as I would be if it happened to Biden (he got so lucky), but do not think this is the result of some morbid plan God has in mind. Good stuff Alex!
In 1983, I was flying my hang glider over a 1000 metre mountain in the Snowy Mountains. I was hit by turbulence so strong that it broke the keel of my hang glider in two places. The wings went vertical and although still attached to the remnants, I was falling like a dart. I threw my emergency parachute, but as it opened, I smashed against a ledge, breaking my shoulder and then bounced down two ledges, taking out some ribs. I spent a week in hospital, but recovered completely and started flying again. My friends told me I had fallen the height of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is normally fatal. My very devout Catholic mother told me that God had saved me on his mountain. I wanted to say it, but didn’t: Then why did he break up my hang glider? Or at least if he wanted to break it up, to wait until I was far enough away from the mountain to allow me to float down safely in my emergency parachute. Malcolm Muggeridge, before his conversion to Catholicism, tells the story about being caught in a traffic jamb and so missed his plane to India. A standby passenger took his place when he did not turn up. The plane crashed and all were killed. Religious people said God had saved him, and while he liked the idea, the wrote: but what did the standby passenger think as the plane was going down?
Good read. I think one of the most awesome things about the human family is that we can see patterns in anything. And I think one of the most awful things about the human family is that we can see patterns in everything. If believing that makes someone feel better about the world then that's awesome but at the same time the heathen in me is screaming "WHAT. DO. YOU. MEAN!"
P.S. that title was so click-baitey it hurt my face
Corey Competore *sacrificed* himself using his free will to take Trump's place Alex. Even if his intent was to save his own family. If Trump was saved someone had to die in his place. Now it should all make sense.
From a purely empathetic perspective, I understand why Trump supporters are crediting God. They are already conspiratorially minded and many believed an assassination attempt was imminent, so thanks to confirmation bias, the attempt helped confirmed their "battle between good vs. evil" narrative, strengthening their resolve and faith in divine influence.
Of course, however, Trump supporters do not seem to have considered alternative explanations. For example, what if the bullet was actually God's warning to Trump, meaning Trump must repent for his pride and confess his sins or risk losing the election? The fact I haven't seen or heard this interpretation mentioned (let alone accepted) even once by his supporters is concerning to me.
In terms of what you've written, I'm most interested in your discussion of the problem of evil. As an agnostic atheist, I think the "free will" response to the problem of evil is heavily flawed, but I find some responses that do not invoke free will to be pretty compelling, in the sense that they provide explanations for the existence of seemingly gratuitous evil and suffering that are internally consistent within Christian theology, meaning they can put believers' minds at ease despite valid concerns from non-believers.
With that in mind, how would you respond to a believer who says that God is not all-powerful in the traditional sense, and that evil and suffering exist because they are reflections of God's unchanging nature, that God's plan happens to involve him personally ensuring that certain instances of evil and suffering occur for reasons unknown to us, and that complaining about this relies on the unwarranted assumption that a good God would want to prevent suffering that some humans deem as gratuitous, which is both unfalsifiable and possibly rooted in an anthropocentric bias? Like what if they just straight up say that, while humans are tasked to reduce suffering, God actively needed some suffering to occur due to his nature, which he doesn't have the power to change, and that his plan accounts for factors beyond the mere well-being of conscious creatures? And what if this believer was a non-literalist who believed that God continues to incrementally reveal the nature of morality to humans, providing space for them to reject the screwed up things found in both the Old and New Testaments?
I suggest a mechanism for and reasoning behind God’s actions here.
As we know, God rarely intervenes in the physical world these days. Any such noticeable action would be bullet-proof proof or his influence. However, our minds are still a realm rather opaque to science – in affecting our actions there is still room for God.
Additionally, with his all-seeing eye, noticing a bullet in flight towards an important figure surely is easier than predicting the shooting in advance. Do we actually have record of God’s omniscience of the contents of our minds?
Why choose this outcome, favoring Trump over Corey Comperatore? Well, God is documented to have valued the lives of prophets over numerous persons of even his own people.
I hope the shooting was not one of the Seven Trumpets of Revelation.
I find it both astonishing and depressing that in 2024, we still have vast swathes of people in an advanced civilisation that believe their leader has been chosen/anointed by God. One doesn’t have to look too far back into history to see the dangerous consequences of such a belief and the impact it can have on the behaviour of its subjects. US history is stained blood as a result of this thinking; I’m sure a major driver of the acts of suicide bombers of Japanese kamikaze pilot in WW2 was the fact that their leader had God on his side, or that they were doing God’ chosen work. This type of cultural canonisation infects us in our deepest critical faculties. It’s not too different to bowing down to a King or Pharaoh, believing they are a descendant of Jupiter or Ra. It appeals to tribal, self-interests, self-righteousness and narcissism. “My’ God supports ‘my leader’, it’s us against them but screw them because I’m on the right side, and it’s life or death. But I guess as Bob Dylan said, “You don’t count the dead, when God’s on your side”.
This is the typical Christian response, if it had hit and killed Donald Trump, God would not have been involved at all. We attribute God's divine intervention any time it is convenient for us to place him in there, but we you go for more naturalistic explanations when things don't go so well. Also the cherry picking that is occurring where Christians are completely ignoring the fact that this other man was killed in the crossfire is absolutely disgusting to me. If God we're really protecting Trump, why not just never have had this occur in the first place? Maybe God causes it to rain that day and they decide to host the rally somewhere indoors instead. Now I'm also just as disgusted with the people who are upset that it didn't hit Donald Trump, this is not how politics work. We discuss things civilly in order to resolve our issues, you do not resort to violence unless as the very last resort to protect our rights. I''m a pacifist and don't want any violence in the first place. I am happy Trump is alive as I would be if it happened to Biden (he got so lucky), but do not think this is the result of some morbid plan God has in mind. Good stuff Alex!
In 1983, I was flying my hang glider over a 1000 metre mountain in the Snowy Mountains. I was hit by turbulence so strong that it broke the keel of my hang glider in two places. The wings went vertical and although still attached to the remnants, I was falling like a dart. I threw my emergency parachute, but as it opened, I smashed against a ledge, breaking my shoulder and then bounced down two ledges, taking out some ribs. I spent a week in hospital, but recovered completely and started flying again. My friends told me I had fallen the height of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is normally fatal. My very devout Catholic mother told me that God had saved me on his mountain. I wanted to say it, but didn’t: Then why did he break up my hang glider? Or at least if he wanted to break it up, to wait until I was far enough away from the mountain to allow me to float down safely in my emergency parachute. Malcolm Muggeridge, before his conversion to Catholicism, tells the story about being caught in a traffic jamb and so missed his plane to India. A standby passenger took his place when he did not turn up. The plane crashed and all were killed. Religious people said God had saved him, and while he liked the idea, the wrote: but what did the standby passenger think as the plane was going down?
Good read. I think one of the most awesome things about the human family is that we can see patterns in anything. And I think one of the most awful things about the human family is that we can see patterns in everything. If believing that makes someone feel better about the world then that's awesome but at the same time the heathen in me is screaming "WHAT. DO. YOU. MEAN!"
P.S. that title was so click-baitey it hurt my face
Corey Competore *sacrificed* himself using his free will to take Trump's place Alex. Even if his intent was to save his own family. If Trump was saved someone had to die in his place. Now it should all make sense.
Someone said God saved Trump that day so he could experience losing to a black woman. ;-)
From a purely empathetic perspective, I understand why Trump supporters are crediting God. They are already conspiratorially minded and many believed an assassination attempt was imminent, so thanks to confirmation bias, the attempt helped confirmed their "battle between good vs. evil" narrative, strengthening their resolve and faith in divine influence.
Of course, however, Trump supporters do not seem to have considered alternative explanations. For example, what if the bullet was actually God's warning to Trump, meaning Trump must repent for his pride and confess his sins or risk losing the election? The fact I haven't seen or heard this interpretation mentioned (let alone accepted) even once by his supporters is concerning to me.
In terms of what you've written, I'm most interested in your discussion of the problem of evil. As an agnostic atheist, I think the "free will" response to the problem of evil is heavily flawed, but I find some responses that do not invoke free will to be pretty compelling, in the sense that they provide explanations for the existence of seemingly gratuitous evil and suffering that are internally consistent within Christian theology, meaning they can put believers' minds at ease despite valid concerns from non-believers.
With that in mind, how would you respond to a believer who says that God is not all-powerful in the traditional sense, and that evil and suffering exist because they are reflections of God's unchanging nature, that God's plan happens to involve him personally ensuring that certain instances of evil and suffering occur for reasons unknown to us, and that complaining about this relies on the unwarranted assumption that a good God would want to prevent suffering that some humans deem as gratuitous, which is both unfalsifiable and possibly rooted in an anthropocentric bias? Like what if they just straight up say that, while humans are tasked to reduce suffering, God actively needed some suffering to occur due to his nature, which he doesn't have the power to change, and that his plan accounts for factors beyond the mere well-being of conscious creatures? And what if this believer was a non-literalist who believed that God continues to incrementally reveal the nature of morality to humans, providing space for them to reject the screwed up things found in both the Old and New Testaments?
I suggest a mechanism for and reasoning behind God’s actions here.
As we know, God rarely intervenes in the physical world these days. Any such noticeable action would be bullet-proof proof or his influence. However, our minds are still a realm rather opaque to science – in affecting our actions there is still room for God.
Additionally, with his all-seeing eye, noticing a bullet in flight towards an important figure surely is easier than predicting the shooting in advance. Do we actually have record of God’s omniscience of the contents of our minds?
Why choose this outcome, favoring Trump over Corey Comperatore? Well, God is documented to have valued the lives of prophets over numerous persons of even his own people.
I hope the shooting was not one of the Seven Trumpets of Revelation.
I find it both astonishing and depressing that in 2024, we still have vast swathes of people in an advanced civilisation that believe their leader has been chosen/anointed by God. One doesn’t have to look too far back into history to see the dangerous consequences of such a belief and the impact it can have on the behaviour of its subjects. US history is stained blood as a result of this thinking; I’m sure a major driver of the acts of suicide bombers of Japanese kamikaze pilot in WW2 was the fact that their leader had God on his side, or that they were doing God’ chosen work. This type of cultural canonisation infects us in our deepest critical faculties. It’s not too different to bowing down to a King or Pharaoh, believing they are a descendant of Jupiter or Ra. It appeals to tribal, self-interests, self-righteousness and narcissism. “My’ God supports ‘my leader’, it’s us against them but screw them because I’m on the right side, and it’s life or death. But I guess as Bob Dylan said, “You don’t count the dead, when God’s on your side”.