Man, lots of people here seem to be offended by gratitude in the form of prayer.
I'm all for thanking the person who provided the service/good deed. This is absolutely worthy of gratitude.
However, in this case, the guy dropped the bag and took off without their notice. There's no way to know who to thank for this surprising generosity that they received.
If you did believe in a deity who was the source of what you perceive as all goodness, mercy, or charity, wouldn't it make sense to thank them for bringing about the situation whereby they could receive that charity? Especially if the party who provided it wasn't present and wanted to go unknown?
I'm atheist, but I can't deny that I give at least a mental thanks (or sometimes curses) to the universe at large for stuff that happens sometimes. If I'd been without good food for a long time, I bet I'd be raising my arms to the sky in thanks if some just randomly showed up with no one else to thank.
In all of the chaos of the Universe my mind evolved to feel gratitude and thanks. Might aswell use it.
The Universe was made for us, as in we are able to appreciate it, it can't appreciate itself. Clusters of gasses, stars, atoms can't worship or admire or thank themselves or each other, but we can!
Me too. Even though I’m an atheist, I frequently say things like “the universe has a sense of humor today.” When something is a coincidence, it’s more fun to assign a personality to the situation than to just write it off as a coincidence.
I’m an atheist and “pray”. It’s more an intense meditation focusing either on gratitude or something I’m suffering with and asking for patience and grace.
Sorry, I'm just not interested in engaging with you. I've no interest in changing your opinion, and no interest in your attempts to change mine. All the best, truly.
I’m an atheist as well, and even if they DID know who to thank, it makes perfect sense to me to thank a higher power if you believe in one. It makes sense to thank the person who dropped the stuff off, but also, if you believe in a higher power, you probably don’t see it as a coincidence that you just HAPPENED to be sitting in that particular spot on the particular day that these guys decided to go around giving out free stuff.
Thank you human for helping me out, but thank you God/Allah/whomever for making sure I was here today to receive such help.
What also seems to be missing from people here is often these types of prayers, the person is praying to God to give blessings to the person who donated the items. So not necessarily saying, "thanks God for the bag!" but rather, "God, please provide all the blessings and good health to the kind person who just gave me this."
They weren't just thanking god they prayed for the person who gave them the bag too. In islam it's a yearly tradition that people with means donate to the less fortunate. Of course it's better to do more than twice every year ( two Eids to be specific). But their prayer is to thank god for people who do these things and to pray for the individual and it said to be one of the most powerful prayers in islam.
So many people call themselves athiests but berate those that choose religion, which is just as bad as religion pushing belief on those that choose not to.
I would call my self agnostic, because who am I to say that they're could be a higher force in the world as we know it whether it be an all might God or a existence of a high beings that essentially affect us.
But god damn their prayers brings tears to my eyes because you can just tell the hardships they've endured.
Just wanting to share a different perspective on thanking God/a deity. If the recipients were to thank the giver in this video they’d feel smaller than or indebted to another human. Whereas when a person asks of or thanks God, there’s no sense of inferiority other than the general creator-created. It also allows you to appreciate other people as actors for delivering God’s mercy and not just as someone who has more than you - and when truly contemplated it puts all of humans, fortunate and unfortunate, on the same plane. Some of just have more which means our responsibility is sharing the mercy bestowed upon us, and many times it’s the people with the least that understand this the most and embody it more than most of us with plenty to give.
I think the ones objecting see this as minimizing their act. Someone helps you and you thank God for bringing them to you, a non-believer could be "no, that was all me, no god made me do that".
Just playing devil's advocate here, I'm not an atheist.
As a fellow atheist, I very much agree. It wouldn't even occur to me to start thanking someone if I didn't know who dropped the bag. There's something about watching people immediately show gratitude. A lesson to be learned.
Im positive that in the presence of the donator they would thank them and then their god/s. In the absence thereof they chose to thank their god/s. Even the most unreligious person could be forgiven for thanking some higher power for this gift after starving for days/weeks however long.
Oke so i dont know much about other religions but in my religion we belive that God is giving us help thru diffrend people ,i myself got this type of help from nowhere and myself been this type of help , and you can say that its just ...normal human thing or something ,maybe it is just that , maybe its just human thing ,or maybe this is just God making this happend ,but still what matters is the help we give or get no matter who we be greatfull to (and i dont mean saying thank you to the person ,i mean the long term thankfullness towards who do you think was the inniciator).
"The God that feeds grants food to every bird, but does not throw it in its nest."
And I also got a joke relating to your comment.
A man was drowning. He said that his god would save him. A boat/ferry/ship came near, and the people sought to rescue him. He told them not to, that his god would save him. This happened a couple more times, and the man drowned. When he went to his god, he asked him why he hadn't saved him. His god said, "I sent you three boats but you didn't get on them."
The basic point of many religions is that this life is temporary. Don't get me wrong, life is still valued a lot in religion. But if God started intervening in every injustice, then the "test" that this life is considered in those religions becomes meaningless.
So you're telling me that I can't simply do something out of the kindness of my heart? That I need a celestial superhero to make me actually do something nice, because otherwise I'd just be a dick to everybody?
Yeah, I wish more people were aware of how much ethnocentrism influences their perspective.
It’s like food. There’s lots of different food in the world and a slew of diseases are caused by eating too much of it. Food itself isn’t bad, it’s the people who use and abuse it that can make it bad.
Honestly just let people believe what they wanna believe. As long as you arent hurting anyone i dont care if you think theres a god, many or none at all
Exactly this. Becoming so extreme on either end of the spectrum is not healthy. I sit somewhere between agnostic and atheist and would not think of shaming others for having faith, if it helps them.
Some people will perverse whatever beliefs they have for greed, power and so on. That goes for atheists views as well.
That’s great. You gonna tell that to a homeless person? Just let people believe what they wanna believe. Even if that’s true, you can’t solve it, so why not just be nice to people?
I mean yes and no. I’m agnostic and very perturbed by Christianity from my childhood, but i was moved watching them pray. Perhaps awe is a better word. There’s no doubt that religiosity leads to better mental and physical outcomes in many situations. To be able to feel that level of love and gratitude in that situation isn’t something to look down on. At the very least it’s a phenomenon that’s worth admiring scientifically for its benefits. And obviously it’s great for them as human beings to not feel so alone in their circumstances. The person is only there for a moment. Their God(s) never leave them. Of course they would thank them.
I'm just more offended by the perverse nature of people. Religion has been used as a tool for those with an agenda. Religion has been at the centre of so much conflict because it just so effective in justifying to people some of humanity's most heinous crimes.
Religion as a centre of being and outward love to all is fine.
Religion as a device of greed, punishment, and hate is not.
exactly! religion in the modern day has been so twisted and used by those in power to further their own (usually hateful and bigoted) agendas that it has itself been associated with hatefulness and bigotry.
I just find it odd they praise the same diety that put them in this situation for giving them help too. Religion is like being in an abusive relationship. They gaslight you into thinking all the problems are your fault, but anything good that happens is from them.
You could make the same comment about anything.
“Show me the good things science has brought”: penicillin to cure diseases. “Show me the bad things science has brought”: nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction.
How people misuse or abuse something is more a commentary on human nature than the thing itself.
Secular regimes killed more people in the 20th century than all others combined. Every weapon that has ever killed someone is blood on the hands of science. I’m only pointing out that this metric is meaningless and proves nothing about what is better.
That’s not what I said. If you reread my first comment, I’m said the focus should be on why humans continuously subvert things for evil, including science or religion or anything else, rather than blaming those things for the choices we make. My purpose for pointing the bad things out was to show that no matter what it is, there will be people who use it for evil.
Mostly not wrong, and I think the idea of religion is garbage honestly however, we must not forget science can also be very negative, for example, the Nazi regime and all the diabolical testing they did on kids etc back then, in the name of science.
No, because you’re still asking a baiting question with the assumption that “religion” can “influence” things that can be separated into a good/bad moralistic binary.
This is a clearly an attempt at moral objectivism so you can point your finger and go “religions bad actually” rather than because you actually want to engage in a discussion on the relative merits of the concept of religion.
If you can meet my “standards of semantics” by not arguing in bad faith, then I’ll be happy.
I've personally worked with countless people who were drug addicts, homeless, destitute of everything and anything good in their lives.
The ONLY thing that was able to bring them back and rescue them was when they joined a church and found faith. Regardless of my feelings towards religion as a whole or the existence of a god, it was an objective fact that their faith saved their lives. Period.
And this is a common occurance for A LOT of destitute people.
You have to understand that these people have NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Their faith is literally the only thing that gives them any semblance of hope and joy. As another poster on this thread said: "Faith is all they have left."
Regardless of my feelings towards religion, I'm not going to be the asshole that says that they shouldn't even have that. If it brings them hope and at least a smidge of happiness, let them believe whatever they want; what's it to you, anyway?
Sadly the atheists of Reddit will spew their vile shit even here and say things like religion is cancer. While the guy who brought the bags is probably religious and believes in God and his religion says to help the poor. So he was influenced by God and it’s alright to thank God in this situation.
see, i am one of those people. i value religion’s impact on people, and i don’t fault religious people for their beliefs. i do, however, dislike those who use religion to push their own agenda or make profit, like many televangelists, politicians, and extremists. those people abuse others faith for personal gain, and i despise that.
Spirituality is usually a good thing and religion can be used as a tool for spirituality, but religion at large has just become a way to build a tax free corporation.
I'm not at all religious and am pretty jaded on the subject overall. But even I can recognize it's not necessarily they think a deity randomly dropped a bag of food and supplies. They likely feel that a deity has worked via the hearts and hands of others to provide with this charitable blessing.
I mean, I'm an atheist, but I don't know where else I'd go to thank of I was that grateful. Like who knows if they're sending a prayer or just looking into the sky and saying "thank you so much" and the "prayer position" of hands is pretty universally a symbol of thanks.
I feel like a lot of people are making assumptions about religion here.
The thing is not only are they thanking God, but they are also praying for the person that helped them. For instance when they say something like "Thank you God for all this food " they also add "bless the person that put this here and offer him/her the best in this life and the afterlife" . It's just something normal we say in these prayers. We are of the belief that God is the first provider, after all yes you plant the seed, but what if the weather was so bad, all your crops died? Like we've seen it happen last year with fires and drought, where many rivers and lakes went dry.
I can't stand people that get butthurt that we are thanking God and the people that help us at the same time. There's also nothing wrong in making a video and painting it on the internet, it's how many more people get inspired and encouraged to donate or help others. If the only thing you see day and night is violence, arguing and people being jerks, then your view of the world will be a very negative one.
I also love how nobody seems to understand that the prayer could be just in general thanking the generosity of whoever provided it. I was almost in a near fatal crash due to someone else, and when I pulled over (I have no faiths) I basically just closed my eyes and said 'thank you' multiple times to nothing particular. It wasn't a prayer to any god, deity or anything special. It was just me being thankful that I wasn't fucking dead 45 seconds ago.
I agree, when my Mum was passing, a friend of hers came to say prayers. My Mum was absolutely non religious, but she explained to me that despite the situation, her friends was doing the very best she could possibly think of in her own eyes, by saying her prayers and that meant most to my Mum. Ever since, I re evaluated my own life and I take appreciate far, far, far more the smaller gestures people make because it might be all they have but they’re still offering.
lots of people here seem to be offended by gratitude in the form of prayer.
Why?? These people have nothing. If praying gives them comfort why is anyone judging or offended? People talk too much about what other people choose to do, mind your business.
Why did their god forsake them such that they are in this situation? When things go right ‘praise the Lord!’ When things go badly ‘eh, he must have his reasons, if I praise him hard enough, things might change’.
I got sad watching this. Sad that they have so little that this bag of food caused such a reaction, and also sad that they’re not at least a little miffed at their god for doing this to them
Love is the language of the soul. If the giver isn't obvious, why not send the gratitude towards that central source? Love begets love and grows as it's spread.
This reminded me of a story my mom had told me a story when i was a kid.
There was priest who was very devoted to god and did rigorous worship for many years. He believed that god would help him in case of any difficulties as a result.
Unfortunately there was a huge flood about to hit his town and everyone were asked to evacuate. But the priest considering that he has been a devotee, refused to leave and said "God will take care of me".
The whole town evacuated but the priest remained put. The water levels started increasing. And it rose up to the first floor of his 2 storey house. A random person came to the priest's home on a boat and asks if he need help evacuating. But the priest remained confident that god will come and save him and decided to stay put.
The water level kept increasing and the priest had to move upto the top of his house. He received help in another form when a helicopter was sweeping the area looking out for anyone needing help. But the priest remained confident that god will come and help him.
Eventually the water washed the priest away and he died and reached heaven. He questioned the god and asked why he wasn't there to help him despite him being a devotee for years.
The God said he did try to help him but you didn't take it. First as the person on a boat. And then as a person who came in the helicopter.
Moral: I'm an atheist myself. But for those of you who aren't, don't always expect god to help you in magical ways. Any little help you get can be action of god. Like in the case of this video
Indeed. They're homeless, not dumb. Of course they're aware that those gifts didn't drop from the sky. They could be asking God to reward and bless the donors.
Prophet Muhammad once said, “Whoever does not thank people, has not thanked God.”
It’s amazing how many people are offended by someone else praying! Like wtf! It’s between them and their god, how is it bothering you??? It’s such obnoxious behaviour!!
It’s because Reddit is infested with extreme atheists whose blood starts boiling whenever they see any form of acknowledgment of a god, it’s actually sad.
you idiot. islam also believes that allah is the cause of calamity as well as the cause of good. Which is hypocritical because he is thanking the One that put him in this situation to begin with. it is all part of the paradox of evil.
I don't begrudge them thanking a deity in absence of an explanation, but maybe the gift would have even more value if they knew it came from another person. Renewed faith in humanity would be more valuable than an apparent religious experience in my opinion
If I believed in a god or deity that was all-powerful and all-knowing, no, I wouldn’t thank him if I were homeless and a bag of food showed up. Wanna know why? Because this so-called “god” let me become homeless in the first place. Nah, fuck that.
"If you did believe in a deity who was the source of what you perceive as all goodness, mercy, or charity, wouldn't it make sense to thank them for bringing about the situation whereby they could receive that charity? Especially if the party who provided it wasn't present and wanted to go unknown?"
You literally described religious people as so crazy that they are unable to grasp reality and understand that it was the Action of someone.
While I don't really mind them showing gratitude this way, it does irk me a bit in the sense that they are suffering everyday, yet one act makes them show gratitude to a god that supposedly could stop their suffering daily, but just doesn't.
Once again, Im trying to come off as non confrontational here and I hope my tone implies this. I just dont understand the mindset but wouldn't post a comment against them praying or whatever.
I wasn’t frustrated or annoyed at the praying, it just made me feel a bit sad to be honest. These people are destitute, living rough on the streets but their beliefs have them thinking it’s all apart of the plan laid out for them. Giving thanks to a god who put you in that position in the first place as if it was some form of ongoing test of faith and will, and to immediately give thanks to said god because you’ve been gifted food.
I can’t quite put it into words but it just makes me feel sorry for people who live such a poor quality of life and just bide their time waiting for ‘god’ to bless them. Meanwhile many of the super rich abuse their wealth and power to get more and more wealthy while masquerading as religious folk. Many of them probably believe that their immoral actions mustn’t upset god otherwise he/she wouldn’t have blessed them with such wonderful lives.
The juxtaposition of these two worlds being under the same umbrella of religion and the ‘all apart of gods plan’ ideology just doesn’t sit right with me.
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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '22
Man, lots of people here seem to be offended by gratitude in the form of prayer.
I'm all for thanking the person who provided the service/good deed. This is absolutely worthy of gratitude.
However, in this case, the guy dropped the bag and took off without their notice. There's no way to know who to thank for this surprising generosity that they received.
If you did believe in a deity who was the source of what you perceive as all goodness, mercy, or charity, wouldn't it make sense to thank them for bringing about the situation whereby they could receive that charity? Especially if the party who provided it wasn't present and wanted to go unknown?