Happy Atheist Forum

I get so annoyed by this. When people demean my work by telling me my talents are "God given." I worked hard to develop my skills, but folks act like it's something I was just born able to do and credit a fictional man with my effort. It's absolutely maddening.

I've also noticed these same people are fairly poor in the talent department themselves. They don't work toward achieving what they want. They simply expect to discover the gifts their god has instilled in them one day by accident.

There's a book out right now called Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. It's about his research into successful people like Bill Gates, the Beatles, professional athletes, etc.

In his research, he came up with the 10,000 hours rule. That, to him, appeared to be the golden number of hours of practice needed to go from good to great at one's craft. That's 5 years of doing something 40 hours a week. He studied students at Julliard and found that the good students had practiced around 5,000 hours in their life. But the exception students had practiced 10,000 hours.

"God-given" is quite the misnomer.

What do you do?

Quote from: "Loffler"What do you do?

You reject god, eat more fiber, and buckle down.  

It seems like theists only believe you are responsible for your actions when you screw up.

Quote from: "Kylyssa"It seems like theists only believe you are responsible for your actions when you screw up.

Agreed.
It's so confusing to me. Their god is responsible for their good actions, and they are responsible for their screwups. And they blame their god for acts of nature that negatively affect humans (acts of god) at the same time.
Where is the logic in any of that?

This drives me crazy as well!  I hear it all of the time, "I'm going to pray for this and that" and I think to myself, why don't you get off of your butt and take some action?  As soon as anything good happens it's "Thank you Jesus" and when something doesn't work out it just wasn't "meant to be".  Arggh, please people stop praying and start doing.  Then when someone does something horrific they fell prey to Satan, what?  You mean people can't be terrible all on their own?

Karla Faye Tucker tried that when she was heading to the lethal injection chamber....glad we didn't fall for that.

Just read up on that Tucker woman.

The bit from wiki that jumped out at me was;

Tucker requested that her life be spared on the basis that she now opposed capital punishment

Coming from a death row inmate, this seems a biased argument.

Yes, after Ms. Tucker chopped up two people with a pick-axe she went to Prison (after a wonderful trial of saying she could care less and they deserved it) and yes, you guessed it, she found Jesus.  Some Reverend got together with her and they petitioned and appealed because she was a Christian now and not the same devil-run person she was when she murdered.  She was the first woman to be executed (I think) so we still maintained our equal rights, hehe.  It was interesting to say the least, at one point I thought she was going to win it.  But, we had Governor Bush and he upheld the boards decision to continue with the execution, go Bush:)

Quote from: "Sophus"I get so annoyed by this. When people demean my work by telling me my talents are "God given." I worked hard to develop my skills, but folks act like it's something I was just born able to do and credit a fictional man with my effort. It's absolutely maddening.

I've also noticed these same people are fairly poor in the talent department themselves. They don't work toward achieving what they want. They simply expect to discover the gifts their god has instilled in them one day by accident.

That's fairly shallow thinking by those people in my opinion, as a "God given" talent would by definition include your determination and resilience in working towards your goals. If God were to exist then your diligence would be attributed to him as well.

That's bullocks. If he existed and I accomplish something, did he do it? No. He would have made me. If my son grows up to be a rock star that's his accomplishment. Not mine merely because I helped bring him into the world.

Besides I guess that means God would be responsible for my failures as well (if I had any).

Quote from: "Sophus"That's bullocks. If he existed and I accomplish something, did he do it? No. He would have made me. If my son grows up to be a rock star that's his accomplishment. Not mine merely because I helped bring him into the world.

Besides I guess that means God would be responsible for my failures as well (if I had any).

You've misunderstood me. My point was that if the pot-maker were to exist, he would naturally be credited for the decorations of his pots. It is not your accomplishments that would be attributed to him, but your ability to accomplish.

As I said, that's bullocks. My ability comes from me. Not my father. Not my mother. They merely provided me the opportunity to accomplish.