re: "God's plan" God does not save us from earthly suffering

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You'd have to be a complete idiot to think that it was a good idea to pump a pipe full of benzene and toluene and then route it through an aquifer.

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Let’s just put it in barges and send it down a river. Or on rail or in trucks and send it over surface land and waterways.

The environmentalist argument against pipelines is very confusing.

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Those are pretty arrogant and extreme assumptions of what i said.

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Yet I stand by them, as I have heard people say almost identical things to mean what I inferred from you. If I am wrong I can accept that and relent, but experience tells me that people interpret god's nature to be whatever is most convenient to them or their group. Protestantism proves that theory IMO.

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willpower is the tool we have to change our domain. God uses people who believe in him and themselves, to help when it is absolutely needed. If not how do we ever retain anything we learn without some strife?

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I was born unbelieving. Some of my earliest thoughts were thinking to myself how bullshite the whole thing seems. Try as I have, I've never been able to shake it.

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The real Bible doesn't exist anymore. It has been selectively pruned and curated to be the authoritative document the church needed it to be when convenient

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Never heard of the Septuagint?

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I am amazed at the number of people I know who are turning to God right now. I am 50 and have a group of close friends that I have known since elementary school. We have crawled through some pretty sinful living together for 30+ years. All raised in “the word” but you wouldn’t have known it by the way we acted.

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This may be your anecdotal perception but overall more people, both by total numbers and as a percentage, are walking away from religion than at any previous point in human history. In fact non-belief is currently growing at a faster rate than any religion including mormonism (which is the fastest growing religion at present).

Many of those born today will likely live to see a world where only a minority of people in western society hold any claimed religious affiliation whatsoever. Only the sheer raw numbers and birth rate of Muslims in certain parts of the world will likely keep the global religiosity rate above 50% over the next couple hundred years.

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Is your experience the complete opposite?

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I wouldn't say it's been the complete opposite, it's just been a continuation of a longstanding trend. It doesn't seem to me that 2020 broke with ongoing trends regarding religiosity and belief in god or gods one way or another.

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Do you know a lot of people who are suddenly turning away from faith?

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I have regular interactions with relatively few people who are deeply religious apart from some members of my immediate family. Between medical school, residency/fellowship training and my subsequent career I've interacted with people with advanced post-graduate training (which correlates very heavily with decreased religiosity) almost exclusively for nearly 15 years now. Nearly all these people are mildly culturally religious, not religious at all or actively reject religion. I just don't know that many people who are devout enough that "walking away" would be a noteworthy event. There's just a paucity of such people in advanced scientific fields.

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Does the subject come up a lot in your regular conversations?

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Sure, it's just that it's usually with people who have either long since dismissed such ideas or only casually entertain the most superficial aspects of them. With rare exceptions the only deeply religious people I talk with on the topic are some members of my family and undergrad buddies, the majority of which are also becoming less devout as the years go on.

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But how could you possibly know the # of people who are currently turning to know Yahweh right now. Just assuming based on trends?

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I just haven't seen or read anything persuasive that would indicate a trend that's been ongoing for nearly 2 decades has suddenly shifted.

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It is our job while on earth to try and prevent it

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If it's God's plan there's no preventing it.

Freewill fricks a lot of belief systems up.

The Lord Will Not Forsake His People

Psalm 94
O Lord, God of vengeance,
O God of vengeance, shine forth!
2 Rise up, O judge of the earth;
repay to the proud what they deserve!
3 O Lord, how long shall the wicked,
how long shall the wicked exult?
4 They pour out their arrogant words;
all the evildoers boast.
5 They crush your people, O Lord,
and afflict your heritage.
6 They kill the widow and the sojourner,
and murder the fatherless;
7 and they say, “The Lord does not see;
the God of Jacob does not perceive.”
8 Understand, O dullest of the people!
Fools, when will you be wise?
9 He who planted the ear, does he not hear?
He who formed the eye, does he not see?
10 He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke?
He who teaches man knowledge—
11 the Lord—knows the thoughts of man,
that they are but a breath.[a]
12 Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord,
and whom you teach out of your law,
13 to give him rest from days of trouble,
until a pit is dug for the wicked.
14 For the Lord will not forsake his people;
he will not abandon his heritage;
15 for justice will return to the righteous,
and all the upright in heart will follow it.
16 Who rises up for me against the wicked?
Who stands up for me against evildoers?
17 If the Lord had not been my help,
my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
18 When I thought, “My foot slips,”
your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.
19 When the cares of my heart are many,
your consolations cheer my soul.
20 Can wicked rulers be allied with you,
those who frame[b] injustice by statute?
21 They band together against the life of the righteous
and condemn the innocent to death.[c]
22 But the Lord has become my stronghold,
and my God the rock of my refuge.
23 He will bring back on them their iniquity
and wipe them out for their wickedness;
the Lord our God will wipe them out.

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There's just a paucity of such people in advanced scientific fields.

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Overall that's probably true, but it also depends on your circles. One of the most devout people I know and work with has his PhD from MIT. And while I don't know him personally, Ian Hutchinson says he has regular prayer, Bible studies, etc with his coworkers. Does he count as "advanced"?

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I would argue it says right the opposite...that it is evidence that a good God exists and he is patient in wiping us all of the face of the earth for our depravity, to give us time to come to Him in repentance through the work of his Son, Jesus Christ.

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People, people, people.

You can argue the good and evil characteristics of deities all day long - but it's irrelevant. Atticus Finch isn't any more real just because he's good... and Joseph DeAngelo isn't any less real just because he's evil.

When I see a reason to believe there are actual deities running around the Universe, then I will start wondering about their characteristics.