If everything is part of a plan then our actions don't matter, not in the grand scheme of things they don't. The important actions, a leader freeing a people from slavery, a boy defeating a giant, the dropping of the atomic bomb and the falling of the Berlin Wall are all preordained by a greater power. If you are meant to live you will live. We can all recall stories of people who've survived bullets to the brain, plain crashes and heard claims of miraculous recoveries from cancer.
We've also heart of people killed by stray bullets, who die suddenly of undiagnosed(able) diseases, even children aren't immune to SIDS or other common ailments. Again if these things are random there is no guilt, no questions, nothing but the sheer mathmatical reality that it had to happen to somebody. These events, like winning the lottery are entirely random and you didn't do anything to deserve them and really couldn't have done anything to avoid either (ok you could have NOT had a kid or NOT bought a lottery ticket at all)
The alternative is that there is a plan and nothing you can do will change that plan so why bother? If you're meant to live you can be dropped in a den of lions, fight a giant alone or be executed and you will survive or rise from the dead. If you aren't meant to live you'll catch a discus to the dome by your son at the Olympics.
Fact is these people had faith, real faith not the false faith we see in most people. I commend their strength of belief, I condemn those who claim to put their lives in the hands of a higher power and don't follow this path. Faith isn't for the easy. Most people know that if God asked them to sacrifice their first born they'd magically become atheists. This could would go looking for a knife. They believe, the rest of you don't.
Still faith is a terrifying thing. If you ever wonder why I rally against religion, all of it from radical Islam to Catholisism to lbfno7's belief in a creator it's because they are all rooted in the same insanity that killed this girl. Her parent's aren't murderers as much of the media is claiming. They meant well, they let their daughter die because they have ignorant beliefs but they didn't want their daughter to die. They deserve sympathy not jeering. And a permanent place in a mental institution, or to be put to death.
You don't pet a rabid dog, you don't hide him away either. You put him down because it's the humane thing to do. Why do we do less for dangerously sick humans?
