I have had many close calls as well as accidents and injuries, but today, Easter Sunday I'm just happy.
Earlier today, family event, many little cousins playing in the yard, I was playing frisbee with the older ones. One cousin is very large for his age, he's 12 but he's tall, heavy, and has that strong natural strength but yet he's a spoiled brat and acts like a toddler. He finds this baseball in the grass, rears back turns around and just chunks it, blind throw. 20 feet away is my little baby niece almost one years old, laying in the grass playing. This baseball is on a straight path to her head but just before it gets to her, it hits the ground and takes an odd bounce straight left.
The rest of the family, being Christian, just chalked it up to a guardian angel and said thanks to god and went on.
But In that moment I felt Fear, anger, sadness but in the end happiness and gratitude. I want to thank someone, some being, make a prayer, but I can't, who would I be talking to?
I am very happy for my niece and angry at my cousin but yet I also have these strange feelings I don't know what to do with.
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Close call. Gravity and friction of oxygen will make things like this happen. It's natural for people to be inclined to react to things the way others do. Seeing your family praise the lord probably triggered that type of response. If you know better, then don't let it rest on your mind.
If god and guardian angels are going to take credit for near misses, they also need to take the blame for all the hits that happen. Lots of kids get hurt/killed every day.
The football almost never follows same path after it hits the ground. Too much football in my world. Only round balls do that. Thank heavens he wasn't kicking a soccer ball. Thats so scary.
Opps I misread baseball for football. That is even scarier. sorry disregard my awesome knowledge of football
WHAAAAAT?????! Closet_atheist, you have got to understand MY skepticism about this story. You always find a way to worm the possibility that YOUR god exist. Yes, I said YOUR god. You see you have never been anything on this forum that you have claimed to be. You have always been an advocate for a god. You really shouldn't even be in this area of the forum. I'm sure you changed your designation just to get here, it has nothing to do with what you really believe. In the entire time you have been here you have changed your moniker and what you proclaim to be at least half a dozen times. I'm sure there are elements to your little story that are true because I trust that you just aren't that creative, but the part where a baby is in danger has got to be completely false. I doubt that anyone left a baby alone in the grass. I doubt very much that your "cousin" actually stopped playing frisbee with you to chuck a baseball at that baby. The whole story smacks as an excuse for you to interject your god. How many times have we on the forum seen this kind of thing from you? (Rhetorical don't answer)!
So no, I don't believe you or this story.
He never was. He is trying to be a clandestine christian on the Atheist Republic.
Mykcob4
I know we do don't see eye to eye in a political sense but to throw me under the bus and make false claims about myself is terrible of you. I am hurt by your accusations, I posted this looking for support about my mixed emotions.
I've never posted anything to say I was Christian. Only conservative political views, so I am that one percent of atheists, does that mean I need to be picked on and throw out?
Okay, Closet let's give you the benefit of the doubt yet again. I don't care where you are politically, that doesn't matter concerning this issue. This has to do with the many post and replies you have made where you are an advocate for christianity, not a particular religion but for the belief in a god.
Take this story. An atheist would not even speculate that maybe a god or an angel interjected to protect a baby from harm. Atheists would accept the facts as they come, not try and speculate about divine intervention.
That's my point. You aren't an atheist. You are a believer masquerading as an atheist. Take the title of this thread. "Close call or guardian angel". That smacks of belief or at least speculation of belief. If I wrote this story and I never would, I would have titled it "Another close call but false credit is given to the myth of a guardian angel." Of course (if your story is true, and I highly doubt it) there was no divine intervention. There is no divinity to intervene.
And I am skeptical because how many times have to changed your status? maybe I am mixing you up with someone else, but I know one thing, you have never been a true atheist.
I think you're confusing him for someone else.
Wow, balls thrown with a spin tend to bounce oddly when they land
Closet_atheist, I think I know what you mean about an overwhelming sense of gratitude and a deep need to express appreciation. I have that too. When I was a christian I channeled that appreciation to god, but I was thanking no one. There was and is no god to hear it. Our appreciation is real; we recognize our incredible fortune to be an intelligent, conscious being that knows love and joy and excitement. And we recognize when in the normal course of our lives there is a real probability of something going badly but it goes well after all. We didn't deserve something good but something good happened anyway. We have good reason to be thankful, but we have no good reason to thank someone that isn't there. That goes for god or gaurdian angels.
Thank physics. The closest thing to a god I ever thank for anything is Physics, chemistry, biology, and the sub-sciences that reside therein. Though they are inanimate and unwanting, they still perform. Chemistry and physics and biology allow all life and all that we see and experience to exist. If there is anyone worthy of my thanks, it's the branches of natural science. I don't attribute any supernatural powers or consciousness to them, but whimsy is nice in an otherwise boring situation.
Good points, Jared. I also direct my internal appreciation to the countless billions of ancestors of mine who ALL managed to live long enough to reproduce. The epic struggle that led to me is awe inspiring. And the innate skills and auto-programming gifted me by my genetic code is the result of hundreds of millions of years of my ancestors' struggles. They squirmed out of the mud in the pre-Cambrian seas 570 million years ago, outswam arthropods throughout the Ordovician and Seluriun periods, crawled onto land in the Carboniforous period, and have been scrambling for life ever since. I have what I have because of them, and I'm appreciative for that.
I'm enamored with science. The fact that you get it, and you're as awe-inspired as I am is amazing. The closest I get to scientific conversation around here is bullet trajectory and the location of a deer's vitals. Fucking rednecks. Anyway, couldn't have put it better, your summary of evolution was truly poetic.
@Truett: "The epic struggle that led to me is awe inspiring."
Absolutely right, Truett. I'm amazed that debris from the death of stars drifted here and coalesced into a planet that produced life, including me. I'm in awe of my DNA, which links me to everything that's ever lived. I'm the product of an uninterrupted chain of cell divisions. I'm four billion years old! How can people trade all this mind-blowing reality for vicious fairy stories about evil spooks?
.
Could have gone one way, went another, a foul ball goes out of play and the next thing you know contrivances of AI lead the discussion.
Always entertaining.
Closet_atheist,
The idea of guardian angels come from the Zoroastrian religion. It doesn't do converts but just about everyone believes in most of their beliefs. That is, they know them ever if they don't accept them or know where they come from. It's like a stealth religion.
Your niece was lucky she wasn't injured. It would have been a major tragedy.
Thank you everyone for your responses; many were logical, some were an excuse to be an asshole, but a few were empathic.
Most noteworthy was Truett, I felt as though you knew what I was going through. It was all I could have hoped for, heartfelt and genuine, thank you, it was very much appreciated.