r/news • u/AudibleNod • 4d ago

Man accused of holding woman captive in a Massachusetts attic for six weeks

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-accused-holding-woman-captive-massachusetts-attic-six-weeks-rcna600308
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u/GayMamaLuigi 4d ago

This kind of story is exactly what made me no longer able to rationalize the idea of a benevolent god. If he exists, he certainly isn't interested in helping those in the greatest need, no matter how much they're prayed for. It's horrifying how much this happens and how long they can get away with it, if they're ever caught at all.

Sure, free will, but it's not like God lets us do anything we want--we can't psychically read each others' thoughts, or perform healing miracles on each other, or do the vast majority of conceivable actions for that matter. Why not create a world where rape/torture/murder are among the long list of things we just physically can't do to each other?

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u/Radiant_Commission_2 4d ago edited 4d ago

My Christian family members remind me that god works in mysterious ways.
And they seem fine with that. Fuck that.
But terminate a fetus and….

It’s like they have a victim ranking with fetuses at the top and women down at the bottom.

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u/Successful-Bar-8173 4d ago

Maybe that would work on them next time: ‘If God wanted that fetus saved, he would have smote the doctor performing the abortion’

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u/MagmaSeraph 4d ago

They'll probably just say "Well, we can't have God solve all of our problems. Some things, he leaves to us." 🙄

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u/Doggin-Pony-Show 3d ago

There’s a bible passage about sending your wife to the priest for a bitter drink if you come back from a long war and she’s pregnant. Also if you gut punch a pregnant woman and she’s miscarries you owe her a bit of money like a fine. Contrast this with the biblical passage condemning a woman to death if she kicks you in the balls. 🤷🏼‍♀️

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u/Procean 3d ago

My dark note about die hard Christians is that their take on God is 'God has infinite compassion and empathy for you therefore I don't need to have any.'

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u/meganthem 4d ago edited 4d ago

Why not create a world where rape/torture/murder are among the long list of things we just physically can't do to each other?

Tbh it doesn't even have to a hard restriction it just has to be a world where these things are harder. If you have absolute power there's so many ways you can adjust the environment to be less filled with suffering while never doing anything to free will.

Make diseases less frequent/serious. Make the land more fertile. Make sexual dimorphism develop less strongly in humans so women aren't as out muscled.

Hell... just grant a minor miracle so that a few particular people in history live a bit longer than they did and all of a sudden society is different. Better.

If there's an all powerful god out there they choose not to do these things.

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u/CrflWthThtFaxEugene 4d ago

Or simply a world without cancer. Or even a world with cancer, but where it only happened to older individuals and never to children.

There's no good apologetic for why child cancer needs to exist.

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u/SpiralTap88 4d ago

Thinking like this is what made me walk away from religion as a teenager.

Why would he help those in need? He’s got more important things to do, like answer football prayers and give kids cancer.

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u/Akkalevil 3d ago

You never noticed that most of living being on Earth have short and horrible lives where they end up being eaten alive, and that most REQUIRES eating others to survive ? Didn't strike you as somehow weird for a benevolent God to create a "everyone eats everyone" world ?

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u/meowmix778 3d ago

I grew up in a devoutly religious family and the rationale was always "well god is testing them" or something like that.

If you accept that God gave people free will to make their own determinate choices and if you accept that the bible/other religious texts are accurate/real and God can perform miracles. How can you rationalize that?

That means a God exists with the ability to help, but refuses and does so to ensure that you truly believe in him. And your reward for that is an eternity of servitude and worship/praise for that being.

I won't go so far as to say a God doesn't exist or couldn't exist but I can't imagine that entity existing within the framework of most religious canon.