Thank GOD this Thanksgiving; for you are blessed!

The greatest stumbling block for theologians throughout history.

 

When people thank God for trivial things like their job or the fact that their favorite football team won the game this year...that really just shows how truly sheltered some people are. Just totally unaware of how many people out there have no jobs and how many people don't have the leisure of worrying about let alone watching sports or doing anything fun and enjoyable.

If God gave us all free will anyways you have no one but yourself to thank for how well you've done in your life (and perhaps friends/family who helped you get there). Free will means he/she/it is not intervening with us, or shouldn't be.

I am thankful when people give thanks where it is truly deserved and when people remember those less fortunate than themselves and do what they can to help them.

 

Well it appears the trolls showed up in mass for this thread.

Great job guys, way to be positive!!!

 

If he really wanted a thread where everyone was just happy and jokingly say what they were thankful for then maybe he should have tried posting it in the Off-Topic Chat. That forum is great for casual chit chat.

 

Um, read the thread title. Then read the OP.

Now explain to me what was the cause for trolling this thread, the way y'all did? What was the threat to the militant atheist crowd, BESIDES someone wanting to give thanks to God?

 

This is a debate forum. Is it really that surprising that people want to come in here and debate their beliefs/thoughts on the subject??? Off-Topic Chat = no debate but mere chit chat.

Also where did I troll?

 

This thread was about giving thanks to God.

What was there to argue about? Again go back, read the OP,,,, scratch that answer me this:

Do you believe in God?

 

There is a lot to argue about actually. Particularly thanking God for trivial and stupid things attributed to your life. God gave us free will, yes? Then God should not be intervening in any aspect of our life, except perhaps if we choose to follow him and study the various religions he/she/it exists in. But that is a choice and that is the whole point of free will. God did not get you your job, God did not make your favorite sports team win, etc. Those are all things to be thankful for for yourself and the players on your fave team.

It opens the door to the idea that, well you have all these things that God gave you, but so many others don't have much of anything, is God playing favorites now?

There is a lot to debate here. But I think you just wanted to come in and accuse people who are bringing up these points of being trolls.

Is that relevant somehow to trolling?

But if you must know I have my own personal deity that I believe in, yes.

 

What I'm missing is the dissonance between being grateful for what one has and being aware that there are others who have not.

Did Bill Gates give himself the brains it took to become a man of such extraordinary means?

Then there is no such thing, because if God doesn't influence your life, another unseen entity will.

Do you consider oxygen and your ability to respirate stupid and trivial?

He doesn't. His enemy, OTOH, does it every chance he gets, whether we're OK with it or not.

In the sense that He doesn't impose His love on those who reject it, sure. Is that a problem?

 

That's where the though of God playing favorites comes in. If you have all these things thanks to God and you look at your neighbor living in a box in the alley way who believes in God just as much as you do...does God simply not love him as much? That's what I am questioning.

Yes, like many other people have before and after him.

Such as?

Did the OP thank God for this? I saw a lot of thankfulness for silly things and quite frankly other things a person could attribute to themselves only, like always having money in his Star Wars wallet. I don't know about you but I'm pretty sure God isn't depositing cash into his wallet on a regular basis.

Hell he thanked God for inventing the cell phone. Do you know who really invented the modern cell phone? Dr. Martin Cooper. Not God.

I don't think you understood what I meant by what I said so allow me to clarify. By following the word of God, whatever word that may be (Bible, Torah, Qu'ran, Talmud, etc.), it can and will affect your life. He may not actively be affecting your life at present, but because of the written material he left behind, or that his followers left behind and by studying it you apply it to your life, or I imagine most people do. Thus you are being affected by God, but inadvertently so to speak. Does that make more sense? I am having trouble explaining what I mean with this one...

And how many people living in poverty believe in God? You think everyone living in poverty just simply doesn't believe in God and that's why they're under hard times?

 

Atleast those who are intellectually honest.

 

Since the devil believes in God, that is a definite possibility.

Then presumably you gave yourself your own brain, in which case you created it...so how about posting the blueprints?

I'll give you one guess.

Don't dodge the question.

Cell phones wouldn't work if photons didn't work the way they do. Who do you think designed those, along with the rules by which they and other subatomic particles operate?

None of those are the word of God by which Christ said we should live.

No, but every one of them who loves God is thankful for the gift of life.

 

Haha...ok.

Ooooohh, you were talking about the physical creation of the brain? I thought you meant the ability of each person to further their own intelligence and become successful with the use of their own brains.

Well no, God did not make my brain, my parents were definitely involved in the matter though. You know, the joining of sperm and ovum and all that. I don't have a blueprint of my brain, if you mean like an X-ray. But you can easily find an X-ray of a brain on Google if you'd like. The human brain is generally the same in everyone, there is the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, pons, medulla oblongata, cerebellum, spinal cord, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, etc.

Zeus?

You're dragging other things into the debate that were in fact not mentioned in the OP and behaving as if they were. Unlike you I will stay on topic. Thanking God for putting money in your wallet when he obviously did not is stupid and trivial if you ask me. Thanking God for things he obviously did not create/invent is also stupid and so on.

And did the OP thank God for those particular things? No. He thanked God for the invention of cell phones, which is something God did in fact not invent.

Right. Well you follow whatever belief you wish to, I am not declaring you have to believe in anything. I am simply clarifying my comment.

And that's great, but it really has nothing to do with what we're discussing now does it?

Shall I direct you back to the OP?

 

That too.

So they created your brain?

Whom do you know who can build a brain fron an x-ray?

No. And don't play stupid, please.

And that is problematic because...?

You have me confused with someone else.

The topic, as far as I'm concerned, is the content of your posts that I'm responding to; yet somehow you seem to have an aversion to talking about that content, other than to engage in mindless repetition.

I didn't ask you, and I hardly need to, since you've already said that.

I couldn't care less.

Of course it does, because by implication you're making people who are thankful to God out to be morons.

I'd rather you just stop dodging straightforward questions, TIA.

 

Yes. They created all of me. Without them I would not exist.

I'm really not. I honestly have no idea what you meant by your original comment here. Although, yeah, the Zeus thing was a joke. But I am lost on what you meant, that's why I asked to begin with.

Because it's off topic.

Then why are you here?

The OP made itself appear moronic. A person can be thankful to God without being frivolous and without attributing things God did not do to God.

And I'd rather you simply stay on topic. If you want to play 21 questions with me maybe we should take it to PMs?

 

They didn't create any of you. No farmer is fool enough to think he creates watermelons, so no one should be fool enough to think procreation of humans equals creation of humans.

And without God they wouldn't exist.

Perhaps we'll come back to it another time.

I don't see that as a problem, so your options are to go whine to management or terminate the conversation.

To bear witness to the fact that your objections here are asinine.

I don't care. The conversation will proceed in a direction I find acceptable or there won't be any.

 

You will find you don't have that power.
The only thing you will be able to control is your contribution to the conversation, not the existence of it.
God complex much?

 

I most certainly do, same as my adversary does.

I guess you're one of those people who think one hand can make a clapping sound.

 

There are more than two involved in the conversation though, aren't there?

 

Obviously I was talking about the conversation between me and my adversary, Mod Edit: Personal Attack removed.

 

Except a farmer's sperm and his wife's ovum are not involved in the creation of watermelons. They could however be involved in the creation of a zygote, thus they would be the creators of their offspring.

No, without their parents they would not exist, and so on and so on all the way back to the beginning of humankind. But I won't be so arrogant as to assume I KNOW for a FACT what happened at the beginning of humankind. I wasn't there and no, I will not attribute it to God or Odin or Zeus or any deity you can think of. If you want to believe that, that's fine though, but I do not.

Perhaps even you didn't know what you were talking about, or maybe you forgot.

Actually I will be withdrawing from the conversation myself very soon here. I only 'whine' to management' as you put it when I see people trolling, flaming and bickering to the point of insanity as a certain two people do in a forum I frequent.

Well excuse meeee princess!

And here is where I am stepping out since it's getting a little too crazy for me. Have a nice day hun.

 

Does god condone such insults?

 

Peace, love, joy, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.
These are the Fruits of the Spirit.
They are the traits, according to Paul in Galatians, that identify someone who is truly infused with the Holy Spirit. In other words, a Christian.
How many of them do you imagine you demonstrate?

 

You certainly can be idiotic when you put your mind to it.

Then surely you would not be so arrogant as to assert that God had nothing to do with it. Right?

I know exactly what I'm talking about, but taking it further with you would be like trying to teach arithmetic to someone who has decided to stand on the principle that 1+1=3.

 

Is there any reason you're being nasty and mean to me yguy?

All I see in your post is personal insults and I don't usually see you behave this way on the forums. You normally have some real substance to your posts. Is something bothering you?