WHY DO BELIEVERS WANT THE DESIGNER GOD AND RANDOMNESS AS WELL? THEY CANNOT HAVE BOTH.
The appeal of saying that God and randomness are compatible
If God is the one true cause of all things then what room does all that leave for chance or randomness? Religion cannot say that God causes chance events to be chance. But sometimes it does say it. It is pretending that randomness can happen even in a universe kept in existence and ruled by almighty God. Religion likes this doctrine for it helps it face how science shows that the way the universe works is as if nothing intelligent is behind it at all. The notion that the universe looks designed so there must be a designing God is going out of fashion.
Free will
God causes all things and thus how they will behave. You have free will then
because of God and not in spite of him which means there is no getting away from
his control. A God who permits you to act is still controlling.
The doctrine that there are no accidents
A tremendous infinite sequence of events takes place thus enabling you to enjoy
a coffee in x street at x time with x your friend at x o clock on x planet in x
solar system ad infinitum. One major thing was how dinosaurs had to become
extinct by what looks like an accident in order for man to even appear. Some
might say the whole past is about making your coffee date happen! They might
say, "Why not? The whole universe works together. There are no real accidents."
If there are no real accidents then they are quite logical.
People fear that which will never be controlled so they run after miracles and
see them as signs that there are forces that can take control and which probably
will at some point.
The paradox is they think things are too random and that scares them and then the miracle is God stepping in to straighten things out. That makes no sense. If randomness causes a pattern as it can, random is random, then a miracle breaking the pattern could be random too.
They think belief in miracles helps their sense of meaning in life. Belief in
miracles will not give you a real sense of meaning for they are said to be
beyond the powers of the universe and an intrusion. It is the assumption you
make that the universe won't always be left to do its own thing, but that benign
intervention will take control that gives meaning. Most of the meaning comes not
from belief in the miracles but in the assumptions you leap to. You find meaning
in the mundane more than you realise. After all you spend most of your week
thinking little about magic and miracles. Realise it and your problems with
meaning in life will lessen or evaporate.
When somebody commits suicide, religious people have no problem saying, "She
couldn't live without her job. He couldn't live without his child." That is
really telling people that if they think they have no hope then they are right!
They show at times like that what they really think! And they are the people who
are part of a religion that tells atheists that they cannot have hope! If we
really think life drove a person to suicide, then it follows that suicide is to
be responded to like an accidental death. The thought that your loved ones will
not take it personally if you take your own life will only encourage you. You
will reason that people have to suffer whatever time you die anyway so their
pain will not put you off. Religion has the same flaws as the hypocritical
society it emerges from. It is no help.
Prayer and chance
Believers seem happy with prayer though they must see it works no better than
chance does. Do they want to believe that God uses chance to answer prayer? They
act that way. There must be a buzz in imagining that chance is on your side. And
it is arrogant because if chance is chance it cannot be on anybody's side.
Chance is that which God will not interfere with or control so to feel it is on
your side makes you feel stronger than God!
Many religious people mean chance when they talk about the good things they have got from God. They make chance their God when it seems to favour them. The religious divinisation of chance is what religion's faith with its terrible doctrines is based on. For example, Hell and original sin and the goodness of people being left to suffer by God. To say that a good God can let these things happen or decree them is to declare chance to be God. Those doctrines when based on an evil foundation must be evil themselves even if they would be okay on another foundation.
Many assume that God if he lets the random happen is still directing it. That is not randomness at all. It is another form of control. Randomness would God a deceiver for it is superficial randomness. It is not random at all but a lie. When people pray to such a God it is really chance they are invoking for you cannot really trust a God like that!!
Random makes God cruel
Why do people want the idea of God to agree with the idea of random? Why does God make randomness? Is it to let bad things happen? If so then genuine respect for goodness does not exist. Randomness is an amoral neutral act with a neutral amoral intention.
If there are a million events and one of them is random and the rest are not
then that is absurd. The one cannot be random. The other events make it
what it is and give it what ever room to act they want to so it is not truly
random.
If the event kills then God is responsible.
A mistake
Read this, The random can be one event or any number. The more events that are random the more things are left to happen by sheer chance and without any purpose. If God allows one random event and somebody dies he has huge responsibility for that. If he allows two there is less. Three less again. And so on. Even if he allows a billion random events he still has some responsibility. Somebody is still dead and everybody is at risk of being killed and it is because he chose to make it possible and decreed how random it would be.
The fact of the matter is that God is forcing events to be random and thus is still responsible. They are not really random. So he is as much to blame if it one random event or a billion.
Would a cancer doctor be good if he did not help person x but set it up for chance to do the trick? So why would we call God good for doing something like that?
The risk
Risk and evil make an interesting combination. Risk is seen as good if it can
lead to something good. Risk is seen as bad if it leads to something bad.
Whether risk is good or bad is assessed not by the motive but by the result. So
a risk by itself is merely morally neutral or nothing to do with being moral or
immoral.
The idea that evil and sin are worth the risk of you doing good instead presumes
that risk is a good thing which is nonsense. It is about the consequences not
the risk.
For that reason the notion that evil fits an all-loving God is absurd. He
supposedly gives you free will as a gift though it can be used for good or bad.
Prayer
The random can plunge you into great happiness or untold misery. Random is
seeking something good but at a risk. Wanting riches or a bicycle or anything is
not worth the risk. What if you pray and prayer can be answered? If you
seek them at such a great risk, then you are being self-destructive or putting
what is okay for you before what is safer or better for you.
And praying for a bike for others is invoking the random into the life of another and thus is other-destructive.
You even have people who invoke the random for others but they would not want it for themselves. You cannot risk yourself without risking others. A risk will strike somebody else if you elude it.
With all these facts to hand, is it any wonder that some of the most prayerful people who ever lived have been the most toxic and the most dangerous? Is it any wonder they are aflame with violent religious passion that leaves many innocent people dead in its wake?
The past
When we say something terrible in the past should not have happened, we mean and
only mean that the forces of chance should have fell in a better random order.
And if free agents with free will did the harm it does not matter at all now for
they cannot go back and choose differently. What matters is that the bad
thing happened and sadly cannot be undone. The past being left in the past
is a principle and it is the truth for the past really is in the past even if we
try for it not to be. Deliberately bad acts are in the past and really
only matter when they are about to happen. Thus our desire for justice is
essentially a desire for revenge. So even if we want to believe that
morality matters what good does it do? It is foolish to say we need faith
in a moral God's plan and this saves us from randomness for it saves us from
damn all. Random or not it does not help us with the past.
Conclusion
God and random are incompatible. We need to believe that accidents really are
accidents so belief in God and what comes with it must be discarded.
