Most Christians will talk about “Gods Plan”. Which makes sense to me, the Christian God is omniscient and omnipresent so he could have a super well laid out plan for every micro second of human history.
But like, doesn’t this kind of defeat the purpose of prayer? Like if a family member gets sick, what’s the point to praying to God about it. Whatever happens is part of his “plan”, so there really isn’t any chance you’re going to change his mind on whether Grannie is going to pass.
Same with things “going against Gods Plan”. Gods plan should have every contingency accounted for, so it really shouldn’t matter what anyone does. Is there a chance that if too many people are gay that will derail Gods plan and everything will be fucked? Or did Gods Plan account for me being a big gay commie? Is the idea that you can’t fuck up Gods master plan, but if you do a bunch of weird crap God doesn’t like it will throw things off slightly and God will have to compensate which he finds really annoying?
Beat me to it. I think most serious Christians of any denomination believe that it basically doesn’t make sense and that you need to make a leap of faith in order to believe. God is like a dude and the rest of us are like insects, so how are we supposed to understand what he’s up to? He works in mysterious ways. Anyway, it’s a good thing none of this mystical nonsense influenced mainstream economic theory, swapping out “god” for “the market.” I mean, that would be ridiculous. That would mean that the people who consider themselves rational scientific atheist/agnostics are actually religious nutjobs who go way beyond those videos you might have seen of people writhing on the floor with gigantic snakes while babbling in tongues.
Protestantism, and specifically Calvinism, were a mistake.
Protestantism is the only world religion I’m aware of which states explicitly that good works aren’t required for a reward in the afterlife. All you need to do is believe, and then hope for the best.