Invariably, the predictable ends up happening to them while they do nothing waiting for “God to provide.” It never occurs to them that God might “give a leg up” to those who help themselves first :=}[/quote]
First of all, I don’t agree with the view that you seem to be taking that people use religion as an excuse for making bad choices. You may have had that experience, but there are quite a few well controlled studies that support the contention that those who identify themselves as having a religious faith tend to be more physically healthy and (mildly) more emotionally healthy. Rather than inducing passivity, religion seems to be associated with people making better choices. (Or, people who make better health choices also identify themselves as being religious – sort of a chicken/egg issue.)
And second, you don’t really believe that no one else has thought of the “leg up” idea, do you? Is it really possible that there is anyone out there who hasn’t heard the phrase “God helps those who help themselves”? It’s not Biblical, but depending on who you believe, the quote is three or four hundred years old. . . Benjamin Franklin popularized it. Edna Mode had a less spiritual version: “Luck favors the prepared, dahling.”
Anyway, I don’t think there is anything to be gained by using anecdotes to discredit those who don’t have the same belief (I consider atheism a belief) as you. Live and let live . . .[/quote]
njtosd, I DO believe in God and I DO believe that persons who have faith in God can make it through and survive insurmountable obstacles (even temporarily) such as terminal cancer.
The persons I am referring to were not willing to follow rules properly to obtain an outcome that was dependent on the adherence to those rules or wanted to cast their past behavior in a better light so would not take the steps to fix a pickle they had gotten themselves into. In plain lauguage, these people perpetually had their “head in the sand” in the name of “faith.”
Their self-inflicted outcomes were due to diving headlong into “dire straights,” knowing it was not the way to do something but felt that since they had such great “faith” that God would not forget them in their time of need.
A person with this “blindspot” does not listen to reason. Their faith in God is a “cure-all” for all their problems and insurmountable “habits.”
