Thoughts on the Existence of the Universe

[LittleNipper]

Of course this makes sense.  This perfect god who is perfect love allows a baby into the world that cannot see, hear or speak.  Yeah, that is the personification of perfect love!

There are far worse things in this world as being born without sight. Far worse is being born with sight and blind to God at work. This world is now manipulated by sin, God deals with it. Helen found God. What is your excuse?

[Mike Cl]

There are far worse things in this world as being born without sight. Far worse is being born with sight and blind to God at work. This world is now manipulated by sin, God deals with it. Helen found God. What is your excuse?

I don't have an excuse, since I don't need one.  What is your excuse for such deep, deep blindness and ignorance?????

[Mr.Obvious]

You do what exactly to be a positive influence?

In a variety of ways.
As a social worker of a Sociaal Huis (trans: Social House, formerly known as an OCMW) in Flanders, division Social Support, I have a number of clients in empoverished situations to help and support. The first and foremost part of my duties consists of performing social research on people who come asking for a variety of aid, mostly financial, and see if they are entitled to such. As such almost all my clients have what we call 'leefloon', which is a minimum (though I find it less than minimum) survival wage one can call upon if one does not have any other/higher sources of income. For example someone who hasn't worked enough to qualify for unemployment allowance yet, or has lost that right, and has no job. Or people who are waiting for invalidity allowances. But there is also a number of different other forms of aid we can provide, given the situation and request and necessity of the aid for the client. Examples include rent guarantees, refunding the highest-necessary medical costs to illegal clients, advancements on alimony or family benefit, a certain amount of cash each year for children in empoverished homes to be used for social or cultural activities, acting like health service if for some reason this can not be provided by an official health service... The list goes on, really.
We also provide our clients with the information they need to get their rights and duties from and towards society in order. And where needed, we provide the assistance on social and administrative levels to get it done and teach them how to do it themselves in the future where possible. We put them on courses and trajectories so they can integrate better into society and work their ways out of their impoverished situations. We help create an overview into the financial situation and often massive debts of our clients and help them find a way to get them out of it. We contact bailifs and other duns and form the mediator many people need in order to get a bearable repayment plan. We help our clients get social housing when needed and help them keep it. Sometimes we provide work through something called 'article 60'. ... Again, really, the list goes on. We are the intermediate for anybody who is in need of societal aid, between them and any organisation they need.
That's pretty much what's in our job-discription.

But all in all, my own organisation is very bureaucratic and as such we social workers also form an intermediate between our councilmen who have to approve every request on one side and the cliënts we work with every day on the other. It's in that context that many of my colleagues and I push the limits of our profession. For yes, we most of us chose this kind of profession because we find it a worthy cause and existance to help those in need in a way we can... But one can opt we are simply doing our tasks for our wages. However, if you are going to do this kind of depressing job, and it is depressing seeing how many people swirl in poverty and chance-deprivation their entire lives against those that manage to crawl their way out of that pool, you owe it to give it your A-game. (And yes, that may sound more pretentious than I intend.)

For example, one of my clients has a severely physically disabled child. Every few months or so, this growing girl needs new orthopedic shoes. My client asked the Sociaal Huis for an exceptional financial aid to help pay for the last ones. I made the calculations and even though she'd managed her finances as wel as could be expected, she couldn't afford the shoes.  Yet our councilmen denied her request. Normally, that's where my job ends. After a negative call, it's just up to me to deliver the bad news, and that's supposed to be it. However, I instead searched around after delivering the bad news and found a rather obscure volunteer-organization which just might be able to help this once. So I informed my client and filled in the forms for her, as her Dutch isn't that splendid, and managed all contact afterward. She got the exceptional financial aid that way, after all.
I'm also currently going beyond my duties to investigate one of my severely autistic clients' old waterbills, which his previous slumblord is trying to saddle him up with, concerning up to 1500 euros. I could just tell my client to go to the renter’s guild, but I’m not convinced they’ll help him allong well enough.
Other than that, one of my clients, a deeply religious christian women, had to be convinced to allow a lawyer to take her son, who is of age but has the mind of a 4-year old, under legal guardianship. She remains convinced that her son doesn’t need anything like this and that one day soon God will cure him of mental retardation. It took quite some effort from a colleague and myself to get this through to the lady. But you owe it to the young man, even if there is no-one in his surroundings willing to speak up for it.
Perhaps not a 'handicap' as such, but this example is one I want to share too, since you ask. One of my clients has a terminal disease. The doctors give him less than a year. As an illegal man, he does not have rights to anything but repayment of only the most urgent and life-saving medicins and medical treatments. This morning, he called me for an appointment because he had some medication he needed to buy. Ten minutes later, however, he called that he couldn't get to the Sociaal Huis on his own. At this point, it would have been well within my right to tell him to come by later after his partner'd stopped working and could help bring him or come in his stead, and see one of my colleagues as today we were open 'till later. He'd be able to get his medication the next day that way. However, what I did instead was put aside my own administrative work I was working on, and hop on one of our bikes, ride over to him, pick up the prescriptions and a letter he had for his doctor, ride to the apothecary get the receipt without paying, go back to the Sociaal Huis, fill in all the paperwork to get a prepaid card necessary to get the money, hurry over to the doctor and deliver the letter, rush to the bank to use the prepaid card, with the money ride as hard as I could to get to the apothecary in time so I could get the medicins before it closed for lunch, hurried over to my client and delivered the medicins. It took up a lot of my morning and over half of my own lunchbreak. But when someone needs you, and you can help, even if it means pushing aside administrative work for unpayed overtime, you do it.
These are just a few examples. But it's opportunities like these which I refer to when I mean we try to be a positive influence. And we take them whenever they presents themselves.

What I won't do, in order to be a positive influence, is tell them unsupported bull like

Those with seemingly "cruel" disadvantages in this life will likely enjoy far more advantages in eternity. Those to whom God gives much, He expects much from.

You know, Nip, you can postulate assumption after assumption regarding an illogical, unproved, (if it were to exist the way you suggest it does) sociopathic, immortal creator of the universe. But that's all they are: wishfull thinking and blatant assertions without anything to back them up.  And following that, (to you it may seem less pleasant to do but really it's so much better to) accept that there is no valid reason to assume there is some cosmological judge who will right all wrongs. Or that karma will balance things out. Or that hitler is burning somewhere in hell and Father Damien of Molokai is eternally rewarded in heaven. Or that all my struggling clients who live from scrap to scrap will we blessed in the afterlife while the richest in this life who hoard their fortunes niggardly won't pass through the needle's eye.
And you know why reality is much better for mankind than fantasy? Because it leaves you dissatisfied. It doesn't make you accept the world as some illusionary, dreamt up creator supposedly created it to be. You see all the wrongs that have been committed throughout  our past, present and those uncountable onces that will happen in our future… And you realize they will never be righted.
You muster up your intellectual honesty and you stare that ugly truth in the eye. You face the disheartening fact that there is little you can do. And that there is no reason to think any divine creator will help us do good. But you do it anyway. Not because you are told to. Not for some eternal reward. But  because that unfair, ugly world is the only one there is and you just won't stand for that and the suffering you see it create.

[LittleNipper]

In a variety of ways.
As a social worker of a Sociaal Huis (trans: Social House, formerly known as an OCMW) in Flanders, division Social Support, I have a number of clients in empoverished situations to help and support. The first and foremost part of my duties consists of performing social research on people who come asking for a variety of aid, mostly financial, and see if they are entitled to such. As such almost all my clients have what we call 'leefloon', which is a minimum (though I find it less than minimum) survival wage one can call upon if one does not have any other/higher sources of income. For example someone who hasn't worked enough to qualify for unemployment allowance yet, or has lost that right, and has no job. Or people who are waiting for invalidity allowances. But there is also a number of different other forms of aid we can provide, given the situation and request and necessity of the aid for the client. Examples include rent guarantees, refunding the highest-necessary medical costs to illegal clients, advancements on alimony or family benefit, a certain amount of cash each year for children in empoverished homes to be used for social or cultural activities, acting like health service if for some reason this can not be provided by an official health service... The list goes on, really.
We also provide our clients with the information they need to get their rights and duties from and towards society in order. And where needed, we provide the assistance on social and administrative levels to get it done and teach them how to do it themselves in the future where possible. We put them on courses and trajectories so they can integrate better into society and work their ways out of their impoverished situations. We help create an overview into the financial situation and often massive debts of our clients and help them find a way to get them out of it. We contact bailifs and other duns and form the mediator many people need in order to get a bearable repayment plan. We help our clients get social housing when needed and help them keep it. Sometimes we provide work through something called 'article 60'. ... Again, really, the list goes on. We are the intermediate for anybody who is in need of societal aid, between them and any organisation they need.
That's pretty much what's in our job-discription.

But all in all, my own organisation is very bureaucratic and as such we social workers also form an intermediate between our councilmen who have to approve every request on one side and the cliënts we work with every day on the other. It's in that context that many of my colleagues and I push the limits of our profession. For yes, we most of us chose this kind of profession because we find it a worthy cause and existance to help those in need in a way we can... But one can opt we are simply doing our tasks for our wages. However, if you are going to do this kind of depressing job, and it is depressing seeing how many people swirl in poverty and chance-deprivation their entire lives against those that manage to crawl their way out of that pool, you owe it to give it your A-game. (And yes, that may sound more pretentious than I intend.)

For example, one of my clients has a severely physically disabled child. Every few months or so, this growing girl needs new orthopedic shoes. My client asked the Sociaal Huis for an exceptional financial aid to help pay for the last ones. I made the calculations and even though she'd managed her finances as wel as could be expected, she couldn't afford the shoes.  Yet our councilmen denied her request. Normally, that's where my job ends. After a negative call, it's just up to me to deliver the bad news, and that's supposed to be it. However, I instead searched around after delivering the bad news and found a rather obscure volunteer-organization which just might be able to help this once. So I informed my client and filled in the forms for her, as her Dutch isn't that splendid, and managed all contact afterward. She got the exceptional financial aid that way, after all.
I'm also currently going beyond my duties to investigate one of my severely autistic clients' old waterbills, which his previous slumblord is trying to saddle him up with, concerning up to 1500 euros. I could just tell my client to go to the renter’s guild, but I’m not convinced they’ll help him allong well enough.
Other than that, one of my clients, a deeply religious christian women, had to be convinced to allow a lawyer to take her son, who is of age but has the mind of a 4-year old, under legal guardianship. She remains convinced that her son doesn’t need anything like this and that one day soon God will cure him of mental retardation. It took quite some effort from a colleague and myself to get this through to the lady. But you owe it to the young man, even if there is no-one in his surroundings willing to speak up for it.
Perhaps not a 'handicap' as such, but this example is one I want to share too, since you ask. One of my clients has a terminal disease. The doctors give him less than a year. As an illegal man, he does not have rights to anything but repayment of only the most urgent and life-saving medicins and medical treatments. This morning, he called me for an appointment because he had some medication he needed to buy. Ten minutes later, however, he called that he couldn't get to the Sociaal Huis on his own. At this point, it would have been well within my right to tell him to come by later after his partner'd stopped working and could help bring him or come in his stead, and see one of my colleagues as today we were open 'till later. He'd be able to get his medication the next day that way. However, what I did instead was put aside my own administrative work I was working on, and hop on one of our bikes, ride over to him, pick up the prescriptions and a letter he had for his doctor, ride to the apothecary get the receipt without paying, go back to the Sociaal Huis, fill in all the paperwork to get a prepaid card necessary to get the money, hurry over to the doctor and deliver the letter, rush to the bank to use the prepaid card, with the money ride as hard as I could to get to the apothecary in time so I could get the medicins before it closed for lunch, hurried over to my client and delivered the medicins. It took up a lot of my morning and over half of my own lunchbreak. But when someone needs you, and you can help, even if it means pushing aside administrative work for unpayed overtime, you do it.
These are just a few examples. But it's opportunities like these which I refer to when I mean we try to be a positive influence. And we take them whenever they presents themselves.

What I won't do, in order to be a positive influence, is tell them unsupported bull like

You know, Nip, you can postulate assumption after assumption regarding an illogical, unproved, (if it were to exist the way you suggest it does) sociopathic, immortal creator of the universe. But that's all they are: wishfull thinking and blatant assertions without anything to back them up.  And following that, (to you it may seem less pleasant to do but really it's so much better to) accept that there is no valid reason to assume there is some cosmological judge who will right all wrongs. Or that karma will balance things out. Or that hitler is burning somewhere in hell and Father Damien of Molokai is eternally rewarded in heaven. Or that all my struggling clients who live from scrap to scrap will we blessed in the afterlife while the richest in this life who hoard their fortunes niggardly won't pass through the needle's eye.
And you know why reality is much better for mankind than fantasy? Because it leaves you dissatisfied. It doesn't make you accept the world as some illusionary, dreamt up creator supposedly created it to be. You see all the wrongs that have been committed throughout  our past, present and those uncountable onces that will happen in our future… And you realize they will never be righted.
You muster up your intellectual honesty and you stare that ugly truth in the eye. You face the disheartening fact that there is little you can do. And that there is no reason to think any divine creator will help us do good. But you do it anyway. Not because you are told to. Not for some eternal reward. But  because that unfair, ugly world is the only one there is and you just won't stand for that and the suffering you see it create.

Did you ever imagine that God is using you to help that Christian woman's mentally challenged son? That doesn't mean that you will be rewarded in heaven for your deeds. It does mean that God is able to help those He wishes using anyone or by any means He chooses. That is not to hurt your feels. I think what you did was wonderful. The fact is that the son got what he needed and if you didn't do it, I'm sure God would have found some other means.

The truth I face (as A Christian) is that there is NOTHING I can do apart from God. I simply depend on His guidance and things get accomplished. I don't visualize any reward in heaven, I'm just happy to be going in the Lord's perfect timing.

[Hydra009]

Did you ever imagine that God is using you to help that Christian woman's mentally challenged son? That doesn't mean that you will be rewarded in heaven for your deeds.

From the outside, God "using" someone to do stuff and people doing stuff of their own volition looks very similar.

[facebook164]

That doesn't mean that you will be rewarded in heaven for your deeds.

You are a despiccable person! Since the god delusion is your fantasies and you are free to not believe in then I hold you personally responsible for such remarks.

[Baruch]

You are a despiccable person! Since the god delusion is your fantasies and you are free to not believe in then I hold you personally responsible for such remarks.

Unfortunately complacency and irresponsibility (of a negligent sort) in a velvet glove.  This one hasn't read the Epistle of James.  Faith (right attitude) is nothing without works, and works are nothing without faith (right attitude).

[josephpalazzo]

You do what exactly to be a positive influence?

Have you asked yourself that same question? Proselytizing doesn't count.

[Blackleaf]

From the outside, God "using" someone to do stuff and people doing stuff of their own volition looks very similar.

Very strange, isn't it? It's almost as if everything we attribute to God's work could be more easily explained without God. I also find it funny how every good thing we do, God gets credit for, but every bad thing we do is our fault and God is completely uninvolved. According to Christian thinking, we're innately evil. But we're all made in God's image. Doesn't that mean that God is...

[Mike Cl]

Very strange, isn't it? It's almost as if everything we attribute to God's work could be more easily explained without God. I also find it funny how every good thing we do, God gets credit for, but every bad thing we do is our fault and God is completely uninvolved. According to Christian thinking, we're innately evil. But we're all made in God's image. Doesn't that mean that God is...

................Yep. Evil!

[LittleNipper]

From the outside, God "using" someone to do stuff and people doing stuff of their own volition looks very similar.

Well, the Bible says that God used Pharaoh note Exodus Chapter 7

1 And the Lord said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.

2 Thou shalt speak all that I command thee: and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh, that he send the children of Israel out of his land.

3 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.

4 But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.

[PopeyesPappy]

Except for the minor detail that the exodus as written in the Torah didn't happen...

[LittleNipper]

Except for the minor detail that the exodus as written in the Torah didn't happen...

Well, you simply need to prove it.

[stromboli]

Did you ever imagine that God is using you to help that Christian woman's mentally challenged son? That doesn't mean that you will be rewarded in heaven for your deeds. It does mean that God is able to help those He wishes using anyone or by any means He chooses. That is not to hurt your feels. I think what you did was wonderful. The fact is that the son got what he needed and if you didn't do it, I'm sure God would have found some other means.

The truth I face (as A Christian) is that there is NOTHING I can do apart from God. I simply depend on His guidance and things get accomplished. I don't visualize any reward in heaven, I'm just happy to be going in the Lord's perfect timing.

No dumbass the "truth" you face is the blindfold covering your eyes and the earplugs keeping you deaf. All of logic, reason and common sense speaks against religion. You can't do anything apart from god because you are either too stupid or too ignorant of the facts. Only people too weak willed or too mentally incapable of thinking for themselves follow their religious leaders. Ancient laws that were pointless and outmoded centuries ago and people still living in the 10th century do nothing but weight humanity down with idiotic beliefs that are no more than a boat anchor that keeps us from moving forward.

If they figure out a way to make money from blind stupidity you'll be a fucking zillionaire.

[Blackleaf]

Well, the Bible says that God used Pharaoh note Exodus Chapter 7

1 And the Lord said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.

2 Thou shalt speak all that I command thee: and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh, that he send the children of Israel out of his land.

3 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.

4 But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.

I find it amusing how you would quote a verse that many Christians gloss over. Yes, God hardened the pharaoh's so that he would refuse Moses' demands. He then punished all of Egypt for the pharaoh's decision, which he himself was responsible for. God was basically using Moses and the pharaoh as his personal play things so that he could perform magic tricks and kill innocent children, and prove that he is the one true god.

Now, your point was...?