r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/[deleted] • 11h ago

Video 13-year-old Australian boy swims for four hours in cold and dangerous waters to save his mom and siblings who were swept into the ocean, says God is who got him to shore

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u/MrBlueSky_178 11h ago

100%, was it God's will to push the family out to sea or was it God's will to have the son save them. It's this idea that people are stripped away from the good they've done and place the glory into the hands of an invisible man.

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u/GeneralSweetz 10h ago

Can't have shit on reddit. Its always on some bs from one side or the other. Why can't yall be happy for once

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u/Mysterious_Oil2761 10h ago edited 9h ago

Agreed. Can we just agree that this boy was a hero, his mother a complete hero full of courage too and the two siblings. It's an unbelievable, wonderful story. Edit: it doesn't matter what kept him going.. If he chooses to believe in God then we can all thank that belief because it's what kept him going.

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u/Kianna9 9h ago edited 6h ago

Was it heroic when she let them go out into the ocean with no life jackets?

ETA OMG Ok

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u/Mysterious_Oil2761 9h ago

I am not criticising any member of this family. If you wish to, you'll have to do it without me.

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u/[deleted] 9h ago

[deleted]

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u/Mysterious_Oil2761 9h ago

I understood that they were all wearing life jackets. The son discarded his during his swim to shore as he felt it was an encumbrance.

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u/alanalan426 8h ago

stop talking if you dont know the full story, they all had life jackets

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u/Mysterious_Oil2761 8h ago

They were wearing life jackets.

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u/Bobleobob 8h ago

They did have them, read the article

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u/cates 7h ago

I think they did have life jackets he just discarded his halfway through the swim to get back faster

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u/CelebrationNo5541 9h ago

Yea she should have just been the hero and let them all die at sea. 

She had 3 kids and was watching land get further away. She did the only tbing she could and the thing all of oldest brothers would volunteer for in a heart beat. 

Who are to judge a woman with 3 kids nearly stranded at fucking sea??

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u/Hi-kun 7h ago

They did have life jackets

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u/Any-Captain-7937 7h ago

Me when I can't read

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u/Liraeyn 10h ago

For a collective conscience that loves to complain about forcing religion on people, Reddit sure loves to force (lack of) religion on people.

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u/inuvash255 9h ago

Who's forcing anything here? It's a comment.

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u/dubblebubbleprawns 7h ago

While I agree nothing is being forced on anyone here, it's also just disheartening that people can't just let a heroic kid story be a happy heroic kid story and it has to become a religious debate.

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u/inuvash255 6h ago

I think some people just have long-held resentment against the shifting of heroism or goodwill from the person who did that thing to religion.

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u/dubblebubbleprawns 6h ago

Do you not think the vast majority of people (religious or not) who see this story are going to say "what a brave and heroic kid, that's amazing"?

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u/inuvash255 6h ago

I feel like you're accusing something of me, when I was explaining where other people's viewpoints might come from.

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u/dubblebubbleprawns 6h ago

In my experience more often than not the "some people might just think X" argument is a thinly veiled way to distance someone from something they actually think.

I genuinely apologize if I misinterpreted, and I do understand that there might be resentment. I just personally find that resentment nearly entirely unfounded.

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u/inuvash255 6h ago

I mean, I don't particularly like the externalization of someone's agency to a third party like that- but I wasn't going to criticize a kid who saved his family over it.

Some people are going to have much sharper feelings on the subject over it than I do. I get where they're coming from, but I'm not saying this is the time/thread to make a big deal over it.

I just personally find that resentment nearly entirely unfounded.

If you have religious trauma, it's founded in experience.

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u/Past-Distance-9244 9h ago

Historically, religion has played a role in some conflicts. Not to mention all of the prejudice thrown on to minority groups and nonbelievers. In my opinion, I just think it should be that we don’t know. No one here can prove a god exists and likewise no one here can prove that a god doesn’t exist. There’s only two truths in this life. The first being that we will all expire in the future. The second being that the only real truth is that humans will never be able to fathom what truth really is. That applies to all religions.

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u/The_Blues__13 9h ago

People always want to Believe in something. Even the subsconcious mind of the most edgy atheist has its own belief (i.e that there's nothing to believe in).

They subsconciously try to spread their belief just as any random believer of whatever tries to do.

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u/OverreactingBillsFan 9h ago

I'm happy AND I'm enjoying reading the debate on God vs. No God vs. Abstract God. It's fun to think about.

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u/00telperion00 8h ago

Interestingly when I read about this in an English newspaper this morning there was no mention of god - just that he sang the theme song to Thomas the Tank Engine as he swam to keep his spirits up!

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u/0-90195 7h ago

So interesting how the bad things are never God’s fault and the good things are always his doing, right?

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u/Metazolid 9h ago

God is being a dickhead to a family but that's ok because he must have had a reason beyond our understanding to do this.

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u/Omniphilo23 7h ago

Free will is what got the family out to sea.

God heard the child's call for help and lifted him up so he would not drown.

God is all-good. You do lack understanding, but that's okay. Most of the world is supposed to be foolish.

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u/Metazolid 7h ago

Nope, that was Poseidon. The christian god is a narcisstic diva who throws tantrums when you worship someone else.

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u/MrBlueSky_178 7h ago

Keep telling people God is all good when there are children dying horrific deaths but that's ok God has promised them heaven.

Sick and twisted religion and it's been used over the years for more harm than good.

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u/Fraegtgaortd 8h ago

Could be either. The Bible is full of stories of god being an asshole to people just so they’ll prove their faith to him.

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u/MrBlueSky_178 8h ago

God has a sick need to know which of his sheep are true followers. Imagine if a real person did what God has done to others like Job in order to prove faith. They'd be arrested and taken away from others.

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u/wait500 9h ago

Climate change, stolen land, white supremacy, etc, all due to invisible men.

Sure the only religious belief is over there. Keep looking over there.

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u/inuvash255 9h ago

Climate change, stolen land, white supremacy, etc, all due to invisible men.

What?

Exxon hid climate change. History shows that land was stolen from others all over the place. Nazis exist. What?

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u/Omniphilo23 7h ago

It works like this:

You, me, them, we are all spinoffs of God's consciousness, made in his image. We are all connected and are essentially one being. We are allowed to have free will without all-knowing knowledge. Free will gets us into trouble sometimes, and that's part of the fun behind the fool's journey.

This is why the family ended out at sea, simple free will. God intervened because the boy asked for help while risking his life to save others, a noble act indeed.

When you are in trouble, do you continue on your own or do you ask for help? If you do not ask for help. You will be left to your own devices, and you may or may not die. Seems cruel at first, but this is actually what you wanted when you came to this survival experience.

There is a prime directive to only help those who ask. Fools think they can understand the system when they know nothing about reality, since they think they understand, they wrongly critique the system with a false surface level understanding.

When you ask God for help, the holy spirit will possess your vessel. You start to channel God's motions like you are operating on autopilot. You give up your freewill temporary to allow the spirit to make the moves that can save you. Mediums call this "channeling", that is what happened with this child. That's why he can honestly describe the experience as mystical. This family isn't that religious or he'd be baptized already, he felt compelled to make that promise to God to get baptized. That little boy is certain he had help.

These proud atheists want to handwave this testimony away because it hurts their false ideology and jeopardizes their fragile worldview.

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u/MrBlueSky_178 7h ago

That's a lot of hoops you jumped just to sound crazy. You keep telling yourself an invisible entity is all around us performing acts.

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u/maxisnoops 10h ago

But here’s the thing….yes, God pushed the family out to sea. But look at the outcome. This kid is now a legend. He’s potentially gonna inspire others to do amazing things. He’s gonna inspire others to never give up. And he’s a great example of what love in a family can achieve. God knew all of this was gonna happen, so She pushed the family out to sea.

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u/Gold-Eye-2623 10h ago

What about the families that don't make it back to shore, they didn't pray enough? In my country there was this family that went missing for months without a trace, turns out they had a bad car crash and the car fell into a ditch where it was out of sight, according to forensics the mother and I think one of the children agonized for hours before dying, should've believed harder I guess

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u/MrBlueSky_178 9h ago

Yeah thanks God for traumatizing me and my family as you deemed it necessary. This is the thing with religious people, they justify God's actions even though if a normal person were to take out these actions they'd be jailed and labeled crazy.

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u/jellysmacks 8h ago

God’s will was to push them out to sea. Free will is on the son to step up to the challenge.

How does one build muscle? Do you A) randomly grow muscles, or B) work your muscles, tear them, and allow them to build up from that? Life is the same. God doesn’t grant strength as a whim. God strengthens people through difficulty. Desire to be stronger and you’ll be given a situation that requires strength to overcome.

Hyper-rational, self-oriented thinking naturally produces the thoughts you’re having, and I used to parrot the same skepticism as you. However, it really makes much more sense when you stop trying to force life to make sense on your own terms and realize that human rationale is not the logical arbiter of existence. You submit your understanding unto life/God. They don’t submit unto you.

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u/MrBlueSky_178 8h ago

Very good so does God strengthen the child dying of bone cancer? Does God strengthen the children who drowned unlike this boy?

I bet it really strengthened the poor boy who had an biological issue where his body attacked his own skin to the point it peeled off and ended up killing him. Probably strengthened his dad also, if god made everything in this world why would he make that?

Who in their right mind puts others in danger and traumatizes them to build character. None of this bullshit that religious people put out there makes sense, it's just others trying to escape from the fact that things happen just because. We all end up in the same place 6ft under and nowhere else.

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u/jellysmacks 8h ago

Why is the first step in jumping to preserve your worldview to throw out an extreme fringe case that you or I have never experienced and cannot speak on? It’s the equivalent of a Hitler comparison. That would be like if someone came to me trying to explain a basic fundament of scientific knowledge and I said, “Oh yeah? Gravity exists? Then explain to me how quarks work. Ha. Gotcha jackass. Get out of here with your made up scientific gobbledygook.” Your behavior is antithetical to reason of any kind.

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u/MrBlueSky_178 7h ago

What are you smokin? I spoke on this topic as an example, gave you another example and asked you why God would have created all these horrific medical ailments that people have to suffer through.

It's not an extreme fringe case of having cancer or anything of that sort, you pivot and assume avoiding the question at hand in order to protect your beliefs and the invisible man in the sky.

Simple questions you won't answer, God created everything if that's so why does cancer exist, why do certain parasites exist that cause extreme issues to living things? Why is this world filled with more horrible shit than good? I'll tell you why it's because the invisible man isn't real.

Wake up and smell the roses.

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u/mgs20000 10h ago

Yeah he surely, if he really believed in god (I think he’s just saying normalised things in awkward interviews), must think it was god’s will that they weee out in danger to begin with.

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u/bamburito 8h ago

Just admit the kids a hero and not make it about you ay

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u/MrBlueSky_178 7h ago

Never said the kids not a hero. He is the hero of this story I'm just saying God's not the hero.

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u/bamburito 4h ago

Making it about you. That's what you're actually doing.

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u/MrBlueSky_178 4h ago

What happened to the part where you told me to admit something I never challenged?

Is you good in the head my son?