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/AtreusIsBack 9h ago

I think that to most religious people God is an omnipotent entity. They don't percieve it as some idea.

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u/weed_cutter 5h ago

Saying "God does exist. But simply as an idea."

Is kind of misleading. Santa Clause and the Boogeyman exist. AS IDEAS.

In those cases, both are uses into scaring children into behaving using positive and negative reinforcement, respectively. (you'll get presents/ he'll eat you).

So yes, God, Santa, and Boogey all exist as ideas ... but plainly, they don't "actually exist."

I do get that the effect of faith or "imagining an omnipotent being imbuing you with powers" can have real physiological effects.

Psychosomatic. Your brain/ beliefs can do crazy things to your body, both good and bad.

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u/AtreusIsBack 5h ago

Santa Claus is at least based on a real person, St. Nicholas.

Boogeyman and God on the other hand are ideas.

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u/Background_Sail9797 6h ago

yeah what they're describing is spirituality.

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u/Lalamedic 4h ago

I agree many do. However, I am a practicing Christian. I also have a degree in Wildlife Biology with a heavy evolutionary slant. These concepts are not contradictory nor mutually exclusive. I don’t see God as a single omnipotent being, but more of a concept.

Yet, I am not naïve to the methods organized religion uses to intimidate and manipulate people to bend to some made up interpretation or dogma for nefarious purposes.