I thought you was about announce the death of Steve Bruce tbh
It was worth a try @brb but once a conversation starts it's hard to shift.

I read some utter **** being spouted and championed from Stephen Fry as intelligent when it was anything but. Why would God give children cancer or something like that.
I find that argument absurd.
I'd say he highlights something extreme to make a point.
He could have said disability as well, of any sort.
Which points to evolution.
But then, did God provide the basic tools for evolution to then work with?
I think people who worship a God are in need of a crutch in life. But, if it gets someone through their day, whatever.
It's where religious differences cause such destructive violence and death that it causes me anger.

Science and the Universe brings me closer to religion, the creation of what we see is amazing. Yet I don't see God as a man or even human, I just see it as something. I generally see the human form of religion as a set of rules to control people - you see these controls in extremism.
Even though I was brought up as a Christian and went to CoE school, including Sunday School, and went to a religious youth club as a young teen, it was a lazy form of religion at best.
As I've got older I've been drawn closer, but more through an improvement in knowledge of our surroundings and the questions around that, from things such as what is time, through to our interplanetary surroundings. The more I look the more questions I ask...and the less I get answers. It's like corridor of forever opening doors.
So much so that just for anyone of us to be here is a miracle in itself, if you ask AI the odds are 1 in 400 trillion, mind-boggling statistic on its own. I believe in fate but I'm uncertain as to what form that takes, everything happens for a reason. Anyway, I'll keep exploring my mind, because the fascination of it all keeps ones mind at peace because it's a shining light at times at the end of a very dark tunnel.
Fate is teasing Leicester City at the mo, will they stay up or will they go down, the gods already know, they just aint telling Fosse, because they like to tease.

Very much my thinking ...
Apart from the last paragraph- the Gods have already given me everything I ever wanted on the footballing front - relegation is a temporary inconvenience- but a Premier League title (without an asterisk) is forever - just ask those who haven't got one![]()

I thought you was about announce the death of Steve Bruce tbh
I think I saw it mentioned in the other thread, which I'll reword to why would god give people certain conditions, my answer to that it's the challenges of life and being human, and everyone has their own in some form. I look at it like this, when I'm at my worst, I accept what I'm experiencing is no where near as bad as what someone else is experiencing somewhere. It's like saying I'm hungry on my diet, look up the statistic and in 2023, 757 million people suffered hunger worldwide. If I suffer ill health as an old man, some young kid may have just had their legs blown off in a world conflict, it puts everything in perspective - it makes us stronger even though we don't see it, to rise to it's challenges, eventually we all die, the one certain thing in life, so spread your wisdom if for no other reason than helping people rise to their challenges in life - replace negativity with positivity....just don't ever be a Spurs fan.![]()
God to the earliest people was the life force of the planet that controlled the tides and seasons spring, summer, autumn and winter, then it became an abstract unseen force that controlled the seasons and was prayed to provide the seasons to enable food to be grown and or hunted and had many names God, Allah Jehovah etc and there were the Prophets who were the perceived contacts with god and were the same in Christianity, Islam and Jewish religion until Jesus and then the divisions began that still divide us today, that is just our part in the overall concept and every different part of the planet has its own version
What I have always found fascinating tho are the ancient gods, the Greek/Roman Gods, the Norse Gods, The Egyptian Gods, and Indian Gods etc who were advanced beings who gave our ancestors in various parts of the world and different times the means to improve their lives in exchange for them being regarded as gods, not ALIENS brb but beings that took us from cavemen to early civilisations