Everything being 'God willing', or the opposite

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Does anyone live/work with a lot of religious people and find that they use these phrases ('inshallah', 'God willing) all the time? I know it's a fundamental part of their theology, especially in Islam, that all things come from God. I've come across some weird examples, though...'we're going to have this meeting, inshallah'. It bugs me because I like to think I'm going to the same meeting without the aid of any deity.

I guess people generally don't like to think that bad things happen by chance, or even that good or neutral things happen by chance. Also, if you ascribe everything to human will, your view of the world with be skewed against nature. Why can't people attempt to find a balanced view of the world that sees things happening by cause and effect - which is beyond your control, but not beyond your influence?

In secular people, I think there's a tendency to ascribe events to personal or general human will. Religious people distrust human will, but can't stomach raw chance, so they think all things come from the deity. This is needed to make said deity omnipotent but, consequently, it makes their deity seem morally ambiguous. Some religions get around this by replacing the deity with a cosmic law, like karma. The idea of karma as having a will is often seen as a misunderstanding of the concept, but it's a common one. If karma has no will, it is basically cause and effect, anyway.

I'm wondering in what balance of chance vs. sentient will (humans and animals), vs. cosmic will (Gods, karma, etc) - you see events.

I'm about 70% chance, 30% sentient will. S*** happens, and beings have little conscious influence over it (we effect things unconsciously, mostly - which seems like events happen by chance). I believe in trying to effect some influence according to one's moral beliefs because it makes life more fulfilling to do so.

Last edited by puddingmouse on 03 Dec 2010, 4:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You do not have to be religious to say knock on wood - human talk is full of phrases that function more as fillers than meaning.

Where one puts -um- in to keep you from talking before he is ready to stop, another might throw out don't you know, as it were, if you get my drift - am I right or am I right? All of those were example, know what I mean, jellybean?

In some cases, deo volente, insha'allah, if God wills it may actually be a thoughtful expression of something very real to the speaker. More often it is conventional formula. And - this is Wrong Planet, right? I can say this without getting dimped on? SOME of us do not have a lot of patience with conventional formulae.

A relative of mine for reasons best known to himself ends EVERY conversation with God bless you. It is automatic. He makes it a point to get it in before anybody else could say it. HE has to be the big blesser.

Do I find that perturbing? Gee, how did you guess?. I flipflop. Usually I refuse to toss back "And bless you too.". I am NOT going to let him think Nyaa nyaa, I beat. Very occasionally I will throw a bless and get it in before him - knowing he will subconsciously feel like a loser cause he was not firstest with the mostest.

THING is, if they were NOT religious, they would ask about your family first, or toss out a political slogan, or know more about the Celtics game than you do.

Fact is, fellow Wrong Planetyeers, untill the mother ship comes for us we are stuck with them.

Fundamental attribution error. Humans have a psychological need to ascribe intentionality to every event.

Everything being 'God willing' or the opposite - God willing vs Que Sera Sera - God will answer the prayer request (if it is good for you; if not, God will not answer the prayer request)(classic case of weasel wording theology). A prayer wasn't answered because the person praying lacked faith (more weasel wording theology). God willing vs the Fates willing vs sheer dumb luck or lack of luck. The Providence of God vs Mother Nature. Admitted adulterer Marcus Lamb, president of Daystar Christian TV, saying that he will not allow three extortionists to take $7,500,000 of God's money. God's money? God's money or Marcus and Joni Lamb's annual salaries?

"No" is also an answer.

"In due course" is an answer I have used myself a lot.

And if sinners invalidate an organization OR its ideology, tear up your party membership card if you have one. I don't need to specify party - ain't no party qualified to cast the first stone.

Hmmm... I know the Bible says that one should not say what he will/will not do tomorrow because he does not know with any certainty what tomorrow will bring. Rather one should say " I will do x, God willing" because it is more accurate.

I do take this literally, but not to the point that I add "God willing" to the end of every sentence. I just make plans and go about my business with the understanding that God may determine my life to go an unexpected direction or that the "powers that be" may oppose my plans such that the desired outcome of my plans fail to bear fruit. For me, "God willing" means to be ready when the divine intervenes or, at the very least, have some kind of contingency plan in the event of forces beyond your control.

Where I live, though, in the Mississippi Delta, we have another saying: "the Lord willing and the levee doesn't break." Greenville, MS was devastated by the flood of 1927, so it has become a familiar local colloquialism with a very serious origin.

Right. God willing, iff the Lord tarry, if the asteroid does not hit, if a preemptive strike does not vaporize the town ...

The steward has to be aware and act on the awareness that the master may be back any time, but there is no need to vocalize it. Not even if the weather be good.

Typing this, I realize the difference, despite superficial similarity, between Deo volente and Knock on wood.

I think that's what most non-Calvinist Christianity is like in theory, but not in practice. Also, even Calvinists believe the events leading up to predestination are not influenced by praying for God's will to align with yours - God has already made up his mind. Saying 'god-willing' is a dumb thing for a Calvinist to say - God's not willing, God has already willed. I can't even think why Calvinists pray, except to literally praise the Creator (and denounce their own innate wickedness).

Other denominations pray for what they want - which is why Voodoo, a religion that's all about getting what you want, made a nice syncretism with Catholicism as it exists in practice (but not theory). I've never really thought that deo volente or similar phrases were anything like knock on wood - though a lot of people use them in a similar way, because they're not thinking with Christian theology in mind when they do it. They're thinking in a more pagan way. That's why Catholicism has so many saints you can make requests to, like pray to Saint Anthony to find missing stuff, etc.

As regards all Christians, there's a question of how you take 'ask and you shall receive'? Are you influencing God's will in asking? Or are you admitting that God's will is a factor in fulfilling those wishes? Is it changing God's mind or allowing God to act? That's not a pagan mindset, that's Jesus's own words. When I was Christian, I always doubted whether asking for something had any effect on things beyond putting my own mind at ease. This throws up a deeper theological problem for Christianity - you have to accept Christ and ask for God's forgiveness to be saved...why? Like the loving Christian God does not exist if people don't recognise its actions and Will. I know God is supposed to exist regardless, is it that God is only supposed to be destructive if we don't give it an allowance to save people? Why should God be so concerned with that? It's almost like God needs encouragement from people to be anything other than an wrathful a-hole. Saying 'God-willing' in this context is almost like keeping God satisfied that we recognise his power enough for him to use it for good.

Of course, the argument is that we're fallen and need to let God into our lives to be on his side. That's why God doesn't care for your wishes if you ignore him - because we're all so horribly sinful we need to say sorry so he can start doing good stuff for us. God will do stuff regardless; none of it will be nice unless you get on his side, that will help make his mind up in favour of you. That may be why some people say God-willing, they're scared that if they don't recognise that God does stuff for them, it will turn ugly.

Insh-allah, in both theory and practice, is nothing like knock on wood - unless the wood controls everything in the Universe. Islam works off the idea that Allah is closer than your own jugular vein. Allah does everything already, in real-time. In theory, saying insh-allah is simply stating the fact that Allah does everything and that everything is dependent on Allah. In practice though, it's often used in a pious way that is done to make it look like the person is always thinking about God - like, if you say it enough, it'll sink in. Merely thinking it doesn't show other people how religious you're trying to be.

Last edited by puddingmouse on 05 Dec 2010, 9:49 am, edited 7 times in total.

Evidently by your point of view it was God that permitted the levee to break.

puddingmouse -

this question comes up a lot around our place, as one or other of us looks at perceived contradictions between ask and you shall receive and outcomes after a year of fervent prayer. AND the issue that God already knows what we want and need, so why does he wait till we say pretty please with sprinkles on it and then say no?

Partly I think the instinct to pray, even if it is only "I hope Miss Porter doesn't see whdere I carved my initials on the desk", is hardwired. But functionally - it can give God, when we listen, an opening to explain why we will not get a pony and why a mountain bike is better.

I agree it's hardwired. I disagree that it has a practical use beyond calming one's nerves. This is mainly because I haven't believed in God for a while.

Is it God doing the explaining, or is it experience? If you think life experience is like gaining the wisdom of God, you either believe (pantheistically) that God is life events, or that God controls them. Praying is still effectively talking to yourself because God does what God wants to do, anyway. This negates 'ask and you shall receive'...Jesus didn't supposedly just say stuff and not mean it. This means the idea of a God just doing whatever it wants contradicts the Biblical Jesus. Either God responds to prayers or Jesus is wrong.

Not my pidgin to discuss God pros and cons at you.

Spent too much time as a careful and honest [AND polite, if anyone reads this] atheist alternating with agnostic.

But - for what it is worth - what I got in the woods looking up through the trees [one older prayer mode for me] felt more like getting calmed by being in Yvonne's aura [not romance, an acquaintance who had the ability to damp my emotion to near flatline]. Like, that is, somthing from outside, different from solitude in the room for example.

Of course God is not the only hypothesis for exogenic calming / assurance. Jung, Qi, etc.

"Praying is still effectively talking to yourself because God does what God wants to do, anyway." - a definite point, One part of one of several tensions. Hereabouts we go round the cycle frequently.

Putting it in those words reminds me of discussions about psychotherapy. Where I have not found my way to a conclusion.

It wasn't the only thing that God permitted to break back then. It was in part Herbert Hoover's promise of disaster relief that won him the election and the broken promises that lost him the critical black vote 4 years later. "God works in mysterious ways," as they say.

It also exposed racial inequities in the Mississippi Delta, which was just one more motivation for the cause of civil rights. The only lasting negative impact was "the Great Migration," which in turn led to the urban climate in which gang violence and the illegal drug trade flourishes today.

I think there's personal, libertine free will, as well as external, fatalistic forces over your life that you can't control/ I'm sure of that. Whether fate is from a greater consciousness or just random chance or a combination, though, I don't really know. There's really no way to clearly answer that. It would annoy me for people to focus so much on what I can't control, though. I like to keep my eyes on what I can influence, self deterministically, in my own life.

We will always have entropy.

ruveyn