Silly Things Theists Believe Legitimize The Existence Of God
Lightning strikes, cloud shapes, attributional errors, and what not!
Introduction
A classic assumption that seems to exist amongst followers of most religions is the way random objects are shaped, or how certain situations from everday life legitimize the existence of god, or their god, to be specific. Scroll through social media, and you’ll notice there’s no dearth of videos and posts catering to just this cluster of theists. There is a certain trend to pander to and placate theists on almost all posts, be they political or apolitical.
Often, these phenomena — which theists believe legitimize the existence of a supernatural being — have completely rational and logical explanations for them rooted in scientific thought. But since we have more theists in the world than scientists by a massive margin, the former win out just by sheer virtue of being larger in number.
This sleight of hand especially works amongst the poorer, underprivileged, and uneducated classes as they’re much easier to be fooled and tricked into believing in the existence of a supreme being. A supreme being who has the power to control their destiny just by signalling his/her presence through certain phenomenon, phenomenon that can be explained using science and logic in less than 2 minutes.
Whether it is lightning strikes, the way a cloud is shaped, or attributional errors for logically explainable phenomenon, there is no limit to the variety, number of objects, and naturally occuring phenomenon that theists can engrave their beliefs onto.
Theists refute any kind of scientific or logical explanation for any of these occurences and are hellbent on proving that these are acts of god, when in reality all of these phenomena can, and have been, perfectly explained by science, logic, and common sense.
Here they are:
Clouds shaped in certain ways
I could have titled this, “Weirdly shaped clouds”, but that would be disrespectful towards clouds, wouldn’t it?
Clouds are inherently odd structures with no specific shape or form to them. Looking for a specific shape or pattern in them is akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. I’m not talking about cloud classifications here. That is something different altogether.
What I’m actually referring to is the way theists always manage to see a symbol of their deity or sign of the divine in clouds, and how that always signifies mysticism and confirms the existence of their God to them.
This peculiar aspect is what makes it all the more bizarre.
Lightning striking the statue of a god or deity
Ever noticed the hulabaloo surrounding a lightning strike on a statue in religious communities?
This usually happens when a bolt of lightning from the sky manages to strike a statue of a God or a deity on the ground. There are tons of articles around the web of such occurences rattling the religious and godfearing in various countries, but I’m only going to list the most recent one for the purpose of this article.
In fact, it happened not too long ago when a lightning bolt struck the famoust ‘Christ The Redeemer’ statue in Brazil:
As expected, many theists went gaga over it on social media.
Some believed it to be a sign from their God or deity signalling his/her presence to them:
Some believed it to be a sign that judgement day is near, and that we all must all start repenting for our sins:
Theists may believe in whatever supernatural stories they want. But there’s a perfectly logical and scientific explanation to all these lightning strikes.
Like this person perfectly put in her reply to a theist:
Another person already knew that it was a yearly occurrence and tried explaining this to the theists:
Surviving an accident or a calamity and attributing it to divine intervention: The False Cause fallacy
As is usual with all disasters, news outlets are quick to interview survivors and narrate their stories of survival to the world. Let’s take the example of the most recent triple train disaster in India. In this case, newswriters wasted absolutely no time in interviewing survivors, and telling their stories to the world, albeit, while adding their very own religious spin to it.
This false attribution error is so classic that it is rooted in theists’ very way of thinking and existing. You’re bound to catch them using it in almost all situations where “God” could intervene. This is known as the false cause fallacy, where theists confuse correlation for causation.
Take this piece for example:
The title itself is a dead giveaway that it has been written by a theist. Because let’s face it. No one is ever going to write an article titled, “Seat swap with father and daughter kills two in deadly Odisha train mishap”.
The story outlines how a father-daughter duo was saved from the accident just because they requested for a seat change from the Ticket Checker as their original seats were separate and they wanted to travel together. Because of this, they escaped an almost certain death by swapping their seats with two other people seated in a coach positioned three rakes away that wasn’t impacted by the crash.
Is it factually true that they were saved because of the seat swap? A hundred percent, yes! I’m not denying that.
It’s the attribution and reasoning for it that I’m against. This is the pinnacle of theist logic applied to ordinary everyday situations and rare events. Analyzing a situation with a religious lens tends to “miracalize” it solely by telling it from a survivors point of view while discarding all other genuine viewpoints. Because for theists, its only the positive news that matters. They are sensitive and allergic to hearing “negative” news, or what rational thinkers would plainly describe as “reality”.
“This is the pinnacle of theist logic applied to ordinary everyday situations and rare events. Analyzing a situation with a religious lens tends to “miracalize” it solely by telling it from a survivors point of view while discarding all other genuine viewpoints.”
The article doesn’t inform us of the state of the passengers whom they switched seats with. Are they alive? Are they injured? If they are, then why did “God” choose to do this to them? Did they commit any transgressions against the people in their lives?
As usual, theist logic works only in one direction — the positive one — and all other viewpoints are discarded as negative or deemed as catastrophizing.
Thankfully the world of rational and logical thought, although missing from the article, was fully alive and kicking in the comments section:
The takeaway from this point is that theists believe positive outcomes legitimize the existence of God, whereas negative outcomes are rarely spoken about or publicly discussed.
Nope. We don’t do that here. Only positivity please!
Final thoughts
You know what actually legitimizes the existence of God? Evidence.
If you were suffering from a certain illness and were healed solely through prayer and offerings, then sure, you get to believe in the existence of your god. If you witnessed a certain miracle in your life, something that couldn’t be explained in any other rational way, then for sure, go right ahead and in believe in the existence of your god.
But what you shouldn’t be doing is brainwashing the masses into believing that god exists simply by assigning illogical and silly meanings to perfectly natural phenomenon like lightning strikes, cloud shapes, and rock formations, or attributing perfectly logical positive outcomes to God.
Are you aware of any other logically explainable phenomenon that theists believe legitimizes the existence of God? Do let us know in the comments bar to the side.
