(Content note: religious justification of the death of infants.)
Pat Robertson, on the 700 Club, on how to comfort grieving parents who ask, “Why did God allow my baby to die?”
As far as God’s concerned, he knows the end from the beginning and He sees a little baby and that little baby could grow up to be Adolf Hitler, he could grow up to be Joseph Stalin, he could grow up to be some serial killer, or he could grow up to die of a hideous disease. God sees all of that, and for that life to be terminated while he’s a baby, he’s going to be with God forever in Heaven so it isn’t a bad thing.
So let me get this straight. God lets babies die, because they might grow up to be Hitler. But he didn’t do that with — oh, let’s see if we can come up with a good example — ACTUAL FUCKING HITLER.
Seriously? This is what you tell grieving parents? God knows best? Your baby died because it might have grown up to be Hitler? So “it isn’t a bad thing”?
[vomits, sets everything on fire]
Sounds like an argument for abortion. I wish they would make up their minds.
Or worse… he could grow up to be Pat Robertson!
Take that Godwin!!!
Need we point out that God’s record of miscarrying future Adolf Hitlers is 0 for 1?
Maybe he’s got to let a Hitler grow up once in a while, so you can appreciate all the ones he kills off and takes straight to Heaven’s dead baby Hitler ward.
But don’t you see, Greta: This is the inevitable corollary of Pascal’s Wager!
* God is good
* God is knows everything
* A person who dies as an infant does so for a very good reason which only God can know
* Therefore, all is right in the world- see point one.
Circular reasoning resting on two un-testable assumptions.
Accept the assumption of god’s omniscience and the world must become deterministic, free will an illusion. Observe that evil exists, therefore an omniscient god cannot be good. QED.
TL, DR: Screw god if he exists, and I sincerely hope that pious jerks like Robertson, honestly believing in the drivel they’re peddling, have an utter existential dread of ending up in hell that torments them as they torment others.
A six-weeks-on fetus (is it even a fetus at that point?) would of course inevitably become Beethoven. Hypocrite.
Wow. How evil can one be. Leaves me speechless.
I find it interesting that God may have taken her baby because of the potential for him to be the next Hitler, but he let the real Hitler grow up and kill millions. His god is one screwed-up dude.
I recall hearing an old story about a grieving mother who demands to know why her young sons died of an illness. An angel shows her a vision of them as men being hanged for some crime. That is supposed to be comforting.
I laughed at your posts but the thought that bereaved parents are really being told that their dead child was secretly evil disgusts me. How can it be comforting to poison the memories of their child like that? It also begs the question of whether the parents would be partly to blame for all the evil the dead child might have done.