I’m confused by the consequences of the Virginia twisters.
Brenda Williams, 43, returned Tuesday to the shopping center where she was buried beneath a collapsed ceiling in a manicure shop during the storm. She was pulled to safety by a stranger, she said.
“I’m not lucky, I’m blessed,” said Williams, who had a 2-inch gash stitched above her left eyebrow and stitches on her right forearm. “I’m fine. I’m here. I’m in the land of the living.”
She retrieved possessions from her car, which was flipped on its roof and destroyed in the parking lot.
Why was Ms Williams praying to be buried beneath a collapsed building, to be gashed and mauled, and to have her car destroyed? I think her insurance company ought to scrutinize her claims very carefully; she’s too danged cheerful, and I suspect she prayed to some thug god to trash her possessions so she could collect on her policy.
A lot of people got hurt with this reckless prayer stuff, you know.
Looking at the photos of the aftermath, I think god must have got his copy of GTA4 early, and he got carried away. Those video games are bad for you, especially if you’ve already got a rather impressionable and infantile personality.
so if you are a religious masochist, you’re in luck!
as a side note, i always thought that god was a bit of a d-bag…
i dont understand the religious mind.
just what is it that they think is so great about NOT actually dying and going to see jesus. it makes me wonder if they really are just kidding themselves and they know it.
i hate that notion of ‘im blessed’ its kind of saying ‘god was watching and cares for ME, ME, ME.’ its not really any different from a 3 year old pooping their pants on purpose just to get everyones attention.
Blessed by the Mayan thunder god. Or Gene Simmons.
“”The only thing I can say is we were watched over and blessed,” (City Fire Chief) Mark Outlaw said.”
The stupid, it burns!
PZ, I’m not sure I follow you on this blog. Though I can see Ms. Williams chooses to assign her survival to God’s blessing, (and yes, this is amusing b/c in most of these types of blessings God is responsible for both saving lives and causing the natural disasters that take them) couldn’t her statement be read in a more benign way: “I’m blessed to be alive”; rather than “I’m blessed to be in a pile of rubble.”?
I find blessings from God to be as silly as you do, it’s just that I guess I find this example to be one of the weaker examples. Personally, I find God’s blessings in the outcomes of sporting matches to be the most amusing use of blessings.
sorry to pick-nit on this one. I love the blog, keep it up.
She could try thanking the person who saved her ass, not God. If that was me, I’d throw her back into that rubble.
@freddie: I believe it’s the general theme of the day, rather than anything specific to this story.
This is one of the things I just couldn’t over look anymore. Where was god? Where was god during the tsunomy, 9/11, Katrina? He/she was being called on in every name and language – and nothing. Just the huge silence Mother Theresa described.
When I started actually thinking about gods job performance it suddenly got real plain. God, you’re fired.
Interesting you mention GTA4 in your blog. The recent issue of PC Gamer (UK) has an edititorial where Ross Atherton is pissed off with the way that modern society (or at least main stream media) portrays video games as violent to the extreme, without any form of moral inclination or connection to reality (or at least being able to distinguish between fiction and reality). It might be just my opinion, but I reckon those who compare real life to computer games have never played those computer games.
But then I can’t help but agree with you… “especially if you’ve already got a rather impressionable and infantile personality.”
Amen to that, and all debates regarding computer/video games.
When my daughter was 12ish, she stayed home sick from school. She found out later that the bus she rides had been hit side on by a car right in to the seat in which she normally would have been sitting. When I got home that night she and my wife were jumping up and down and praising jesus. I smiled and walked away. Later on when we were alone I asked my daughter what would have happened if her mom hadn’t waved the bus on (private school pickup at the house). She said that she would have been killed and isn’t jesus wonderful. So I said wait a minute, lets think this through. How much longer would the bus have been at our house? She said maybe another minute. So I said, then the car would be long gone when the bus got to that intersection, right? She thought for a few moments and then started crying – “Dad, does that mean the accident was my fault?” I credit that conversation with starting her down the path of salvation. At 21, she’s a reasonbly well adjusted atheist even if she still feels a bit guilty about the bus crash. Unfortunately Mom still thinks the earth is 6000 years old.
The best of these is Dawkins’s example of Pope John Paul 2.0, after an assassination attempt where the bullet narrowly missed his heart, attributing his survival to “the hand of Our Lady of Fatima” having “guided the bullet”. Dawkins wonders why she didn’t guide the bullet to miss him altogether and why it was “Our Lady of Fatima” rather than “Our Ladies” of Lourdes, Guadaloupe, Medugorje, or Knock, who were, presumably, busy on errands more important than saving the Pope.
The sad thing is how true this is…
Sure she can say that she is “blessed to be alive”.
God didn’t cause the tornado, you see. Tornadoes have been explained by science as being a natural and increasingly predictable weather phenomenon. Tornadoes just are. They don’t have any motive. (Unless they are a hurricane destroying an entire city because of their wickedness.)
However, the fact that she escaped a terrible natural disaster with minor injuries when by all accounts she could have been easily killed, that was God looking out for her.
God is just being used to replace the “unknown”.
The causes of tornadoes are known: It’s not God’s fault, the world is just a dangerous place.
How she survived with only minor injuries is unknown: God protected me because he loves me.
Yup. All very reasonable.
Vinny,
How could you live day-to-day with a partner whose thought processes are so different from your own?
Take a look at how much god loves our Navy:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jack.chastain/Adam
That shot with the ship getting hit is the USS Normandy – and my son is inside the ship at that very moment.
JC
Then I guess I’m lucky I’m not blessed.
I prayed really hard that it would rain and three days later it did. When I felt sad I prayed really hard and a few hours later I felt better.
When I compared my prayers to my desires I found that they were scarily close together. Worst of all I compared the outcomes of my prayers with everyone in my city, state and world and good golly.
There was actually a negative correlation. I think we picked the wrong deity and all these prayers to jesus are just pissing IT off.
Recently in Abbotsford British Columbia, a church floor collapsed during a Christian rock concert for teens. Hundreds of dancing teens fell 12 feet through the floor to the basement below. Many were injured (two critically) but no one died.
The church pastor arrived on the scene and declared “it was a miracle!”.
Perhaps no one here has heard the phrase “figure of speech” before? Really this is a bit silly of you all.
Vinny@10: I had almost the precise same comment in a Business Management class with an instructor (I will not dignify him by giving him the title PZ has) who told us about an accident he was mere seconds behind “because I had to go back into my house to get something I forgot.”
He said “I just can’t help but think what would have happened if I hadn’t gone back into the house….”
Of course, I just HAD to say “Well – let’s see – 60 mph – 2 minutes, the accident would have been about 2 miles behind you and you never would have known it had happened….”
It was that very minute I got a C in the course, rather than the A I knew I had by his previously announced grading system.
JC
This Really pisses me off, I was in that parking lot about 30 minutes before the tornado hit, if anyone benifited from her schizoid mumblings, it was me
Not dead? Blessed.
Dead? In Heaven.
Christianity: the feel-good religion of the millennium!
Oh, lord. Thank you for saving me from the tornado that you also sent. Too bad about those other folks, however. Poor bastards.
Amen
Dad thinks mom has corrupted the child with talk about God. He has a talk with child and tried to make her think, over the years he has corrupted her with his talk about atheism.
My point is that you both have tried to put crap in the child’s mind and tried to brainwash her. You just did a better job.
You cannot use logic in a case where you don’t know the end result. What if another kid wasn’t there and the bus went past the place it was supposed to stop. You can’t use what-ifs because it did not happen that way.
It happened the way it happened and there was a reason for it. What-ifs are simply you trying to use logic in a very unlogical way. This is not the Matrix you can’t modify possibilities and even if you could, other possibilities could be modified.
Cyan@14 – I did what I thought I had to do for the kid until she was off on her own. Divorce court tommorow @ 10am. Say a prayer for me ;)
Damn, those intelligently designed natural disasters have the freaking nerve to assault the pious as well as the ignorant. There is something fishy here when the pious claim they were blessed. Better to be smashed and injured than be doubtful over the attribution of your suffering,eh?
PZ, that way you’ll end up infecting them prayers with sarcasmitis, a 100% fatal desease unknown to pseudoscience.
Keep up the good work!
>I did what I thought I had to do for the kid until she was
>off on her own.
yeah, I call that brainwashing.
“I’m blessed” is shorthand for “God likes ME best.”
“Luck is probability taken personally.” — Penn Jillette
I call it parenting, Miller. had any experience at it?
I’d be willing to bet PZ has his copy of GTA IV and hasn’t killed anyone…
Yet.
Ben Stein’s his first target, though, I think!
http://copache.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/problems-with-evolution/
#24
Oh you silly poe you.
@ 28
Troll much?
Let’s keep it real, PZ. If this is the same god that flooded the planet and almost wiped out the entire human race then this small act of destruction is microscopic in comparison.
Therefore we must conclude that GTA4 has actually curbed god’s appetite for murder.
Kudos, Rockstar!
Jacob Miller: Just for clarification, are you insinuating then that the mother was NOT brain-washing?
I think Vinny’s logic is pretty sound here–though it’s too bad the daughter feels guilty.
Now, I can see your argument that encouraging the daughter towards atheism can be brainwashing. But no more so than encouraging (*cough* forcing *cough*) a child toward any religion.
I had to listen to a co-worker talk about how she and her husband were heading for a head-on collision with a truck, and at the last minute he swerved. “That’s how I know there’s a God.”
Other times they talk about deaths and say it’s “God’s Will” or “God was calling them home.”
Yeah. So – to the religious, not getting in a car accident is proof of God’s existence, and GETTING in a car accident is proof of God’s existence.
This God guy sure has an easy job.
“When I was back there in
seminary school
There was a person there
Who put forth the proposition
That you can petition the Lawd
with prayer
Petition the Lawd with prayer?!
You can not… petition… the Lawd… with prayer!”
–Jim Morrison (from the grave)
Vinny,
Pray – ha!
Instead, more realistically but no less fervently: I empathize hope for you: hope that the court judgment is primarily based on logic rather than any other factors that come into play in the judicial system. Its evident that you so love your daughter – she is so lucky to have you, and you to have her.
@28
Obvious troll is obvious?
I can see people of all kinds, the rational as well as the insane being injured and killed by those devine disasters, but how the heck do you explain the churches of these imaginary gods, the very sacred houses of their reason for the deranged masses to worship insanely, being reduced to rubble during these natural disasters. Oh well, our god wants us to build a bigger church to house even larger multitudes of morons so it is a lot easier to have it do it than resort to human urban renewal! Even the normally insane exhibit a spark of lucidity every now and then as they are unaware of it being so, but the religiously afflicted are hopelessly incapable of logical reasoning in the face of plain and obvious superstitious crap.
Ray #19 wrote:
In some cases, I agree — it’s just another way of saying “I was really lucky.” Except that she went out of her way to clarify: “I’m not lucky, I’m blessed.” It must be different.
Given that God’s “blessings” apparently include inflicting horrible catastrophes which: strengthen your faith/ humble your pride/ give you character/ test your trust in God/ force you to learn how to manage/ teach you how to let go of those you love/ punish your transgressions/ show you that this world is hopeless/ take away your dependency on material possessions — and crush your willful spirit — I would much rather be lucky than blessed.
Good luck, VInny! Stay calm.
Jack, is your son OK??
Tornadoes have been explained by science as being a natural and increasingly predictable weather phenomenon.
No,that’s just not the way it is. God hates agglomerations of rectangular boxes of aluminum. She wants that aluminum dispersed because it looks tacky festooned with old cars and laundry.
I thought everybody knew that.
@#15 JackC:
Just out of curiosity – what happens to a Tico when hit by a tornado?
Jacob, I think that in your trolling you accidentally actually hit the nail on the head. Good on ya.
I’d just like to say that in Australia today (2/5/08)is ‘Starlight Day’. This is the day that the Starlight Children’s Foundation sells merchandise and takes donations to raise money for services for seriously ill children. They provide video-games and televisions, screen movies, organise games and activites, grant childrens wishes and provide a variety of support services for family and friends. If you want to actually make a difference today then please DO NOT pray. Instead donate on their website at http://www.starlight.org.au/StarlightDay/Pages/default.aspx
It’s clear why she thanked god. Isn’t it obvious the guy that rescued here was an atheist :-p
#43 Tom M –
Your Goddess doesn’t happen to be Eris does it?
I always liked her. She’s feisty. ;)
This whole absurd “blessed” thing reminds me of Dr. Ravi Zacharias’ disgusting 2008 Prayer for the Nation, as posted by Sally in the Happy National Day of Prayer thread:
I don’t even know where to start, except to say that one has to be a very, very sick person indeed to agree with this sentiment.
Rather than calling Mr Miller (#24 & #28) a troll, perhaps he is sincere. I certainly have waded into foreign waters a few times with a sincere question, knowing it was contrary to the collective wisdom of the commenters, hoping one would give me sincere answer. Even if I disagree with their positon, having a better understanding of their perspective can’t hurt.
So I’ll bite. From the anecdote that Vinny shared, it sounds like his wife had ownership of his daughter’s mind for at least the first 12 years, and he had a “hands off” policy towards his wife’s beliefs. Certainly the first 12 years are a lot more ripe for brainwashing than the next 12.
I’m in a somewhat different position with my 8 year old daughter. We aren’t churchgoers, but she is picking up a fair amount of god and jesus from interaction with classmates, relatives, school (private, so they can teach what they want), and just picking up what the general population has to say on the matter. I have never once told her my beliefs, even when she asks about god, death, and other deep thoughts. She still believes in Santa, so she is not in any intellectual position to discuss this meaningfully. I just tell her: some people believe A, some people believe B, yet others believe C, etc. The one thing I do tell her is that nobody knows for sure; they are just guessing.
To someone who is sure of their faith, they would consider me brainwashing my child, even damaging her by not revealing the Truth, the One True Way, to her. Me, I feel I’m bending over backwards to let my daughter come to her own decision, when the time comes (right now she is firmly in the camp of believing the “three way” as it was explained to her). I figure when she figures out that Santa and the Easter bunny are frauds, the parallels with the mystic overlord story will be fairly obvious.
To me, it sounds like Vinny’s daughter was exposed to both (heh -there are many-) sides of the story, and she chose one that you, Mr. Miller, don’t agree with. That doesn’t count as brainwashing; it is free choice.
“I think god must have got his copy of GTA4 early, and he got carried away. Those video games are bad for you, especially if you’ve already got a rather impressionable and infantile personality.”
Naw, those video games are great for you. Develops eye-hand coordination, fast reflexes, problem solving,
social skillsthick skinned self reliance, and if you get too infantile the other players kick you out of the game!Plus, video games are the great equalizer; everybody’s a god! If that narcissistic, Old Testament, I-am-the-one-true-god prick wants to play Unreal Tournament online, I’ll kick his ass! (Who’s praying for mercy now, Yahweh?)
re #46 Starlight Day
Yeah! On Sunday I’m going to a Star Wars themed party where entry donation and auction procedes will be donated to the Starlight Foundation.
You want a prayer? – here’s mine:
“May the Fourth be with you”
;))
Aaawhhh… Eris – aka Discordia… she’ll put a knot in your noodley appendage…purrr.
PZ, I love the way you think…
Why does it make those who don’t believe there is a God so frightened. People believe, big deal. I dont see everyone in line bashing Allah, Buddha or Brahma. It only seems to be the God of Christians that make so may people angry. Yet I dont see many of them terriozing nations. Unless you consider them standing up for what they believe in and not backing down terrorizing. I guess if you believe like the “majority” you are “open minded and educated”. Its amazing how small that open mind can get when those who choose to believe different than them and feel no shame about those beliefs. Besides what is science without belief. Belief- confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof
I can’t tell if Jacob Miller is serious or not (I think he’s not).
For Vinny to point out that there was a logical flaw in his daughters belief system is not brainwashing. It’s not even exposing her to atheism. It’s just pointing out a simple truth (the car would have probably been gone if she had gotten on the bus like normal) –which is exactly one of the jobs of a parent until the child can think for herself.
I can’t tell if Joni serious or not, either. Poe, Poe, me…
Praise be the Flying Spaghetti Monster and his noodley appendages. Prayer does work!
Ramen.
Monado@42: Yes he is, thanks – as is everyone else, though I think he needed to change the uniform shortly after. He grabbed his camera and took the second shot when the beastie was out in the harbor. Not sure who took the one from pierside, but the person behind the camera had a set for certain.
Last I had heard, no injuries from the crew and families and only three could not get info on their property due to areas being closed.
CF@44: it shakes a bit from what I am told. The son grabbed a handfull of hatch, slammed and dogged it and said the ship suddenly shook like nothing he had felt. Apparently, a few minor things were ripped off – a painting barge ended up adrift – and a VERY large trash compactor on the pier got repositioned. I understand the duty section performed admirably.
I have never seen one of these – and he gets to ride one. Nothing exciting ever happens when I am around.
JC
Ramblin@56 – I have an uncanny ability to knock any conversation completly off the rails. Which is why I limit myself to one post every other year or so. Thank you for re-railing us.
Your point is exactly the what I was going for. Every time I hear a “jesus take the wheel” kind of statement from someone I tell that story about my daughter and I have nearly 70% track record of getting, “Oh, that is a better way to think about that” kind of reaction. The other 30% are like Mr. Miller and just can’t see the logic.
And my apologies for misleading you Jacob@35. She doesn’t feel guilty at all. That’s just a bit of creative irony. Even true stories need a punchline.
Vinny,
Actually, it was a pretty good story. You should post more often.
#55:
I was wondering when someone was going to get around to the “poor, oppressed Christians” line. You try to couch it in terms of having an “open mind”–there’s another old saw. Before you characterize science as a “belief”, I would suggest you learn about the scientific method. I think you’ll find belief has nothing to do with science–that is, if you keep an “open mind” about it. :)
And by the way, atheists do bash other gods besides the Judeo-Christian one–if you read anything by say, Christopher Hitchens, you’d know that.
@#55 Joni —
My grandfather has a saying:
Be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brain falls out.
The beauty of your god, Joni, is that he’s the same guy for both you and Jews. When we mock him, it’s like killing two birds with one stone. Please understand that its just more efficient for us.
I dont see everyone in line bashing Allah, Buddha or Brahma. It only seems to be the God of Christians that make so may people angry. Yet I dont see many of them terriozing[sic] nations.
Ah, I see your problem.
You need to ditch those cokebottles you wear for glasses.
Joni, if you stick around, you’ll see Muslims get the savage just like Christians. We just live closer to a bunch of Christians. Of course if we lived closer to a bunch of Muslims, we might not have the freedom to fisk religion. That freedom being a benefit of secular society conceived by a bunch of deists.
Again: If prayer works I’d have won the last 300 California lotteries; me and 3 or 4 million times 300 other people. Hasn’t happened yet! Wonder what went wrong?
This is from the local NBC news channel. They’re interviewing a woman name Gail Griffin who was trapped in a collapsed strip mall.
Some quotes from Griffin:
“It’s a miracle from god…We were screaming Jesus, Jesus, and I just said Lord, please, please tell me what to do. I don’t what to do; I don’t want to die here… Yes I am alive and I thank god for that, I thank god.”
Quotes from the Announcer:
“That’s when the fear of mortality struck Gail….That’s when faith took over…Gail says it was God that gave her the strength to get out, along with four rescuers who heard her pleas for help”
This is a lot more explicit the saying “I’m blessed”, this woman is directly crediting her Sky Fairy for saving her, saving her from the disaster that many Godbots (and Allahbots) firmly believe that their Sky Daddy himself caused.
Every time I hear these people thanking god for saving them from some bad event, I cringe at the blind irony. These people really believe their god to be all powerful. If he, she, it is so damned powerful why wasn’t everyone saved (at times when some people die), why did he allow anything at all to be destroyed.
Joni #55 wrote:
Oh, come on. The majority are religious; those who are not, are in the minority. And a pretty despised minority it is, too. So this is not a matter of ganging up on the helpless. I think instead we frame it here in terms of “standing up for what we believe and not backing down.”
And we do not believe that religious belief as such is an especially good thing, or even a benign thing. This sets us against the cultural tide, and breaks the taboo in our society that one does not criticize faith. On the contrary, having faith in some form of the supernatural is supposed to be the sign of a sophisticated and sensitive person, one who feels deeply and can be trusted. Someone who “gets it.” It should be respected as a special kind of gift, very desired. You don’t want to lose it. It’s the source of our inspiration and humanity. The violins play.
Screw that.
The issue with we have with faith then is that it masquerades as humble, and “open minded” — when it is anything but. To those with a scientific mindset, one of the most important values is integrity: admitting that you can be wrong, and actually coming up with hypothetical situations which would change a conclusion. Our biases and tendencies to err lead us astray. We tend to want to hold on to a conviction in the face of insufficient evidence, or even evidence to the contrary. That’s a problem, not a virtue.
Science is a self-corrective process. Reason is a self-corrective process.
Don’t kid yourself, or try to get away with equivocation. Faith can mean hope, confidence, optimism, trust, or a working assumption — but when used in a religious context, it means “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It tells you to trust. Believe. Don’t let go. And it encourages you to lose the ability to distinguish between where you stop, and what you have “faith” in begins.
Faith, then, is not a self-corrective process. When you get right down to it, is a refusal and inability to admit error and human limitations. It is not open, but closed. Dogmatic.
The exact opposite of what the faith-filled think it is. Ironic.
If theists are wrong about God and the power of prayer, how would they find out? What would — or even could — change their mind, when they’ve set the system up so that their belief without absolute proof has morphed into a belief without possibility of correction.
I think that is what pisses us off about prayer, and how it is interpreted. It’s not just people deciding to make the best of a bad situation, and looking for the bright side no matter what. No, it’s unfalsifiable. Everything either confirms that you’re right about God — or it confirms that you’re right about God EVEN MORE. The universe is turned into an enchanted garden where it’s all focused on the drama of people and their special relationship with God… because they’re so humble.
We call shenanigans.
We call shenanigans.
Shenanigans!
I’ll go get my broom.
It’s getting pretty worn out though.
@#67 RedMann —
This is the one that always gets me. I suppose you can rationalize away the human evil with “free will” and what not, but natural disasters? The three arguments I’ve heard (I use “arguments” here very loosely) are 1) God does these things to punish us for our sins (Pat Robertson et al); 2) Population control (yes, someone actually made this argument to me…why an omnipotent god would wipe out a bunch of people instead of creating more living space is beyond me, especially since he must have omnisciently realized overpop would be a problem eventually); and 3) Strange and mysterious ways.
I can’t even decide which is the nuttiest interpretation. They’re all so bizarre, each in their own special way. 1) is disgusting, 2) is just really *weird* and makes no logical sense (why I would expect such a thing from a religious rationalization, I don’t know), and 3) is just a really dumb cop-out.
The best argument I ever heard (from a fellow non-believer) was “We all have this idea that a divine power will be “fair” and even “kind.” But why is that? What in life is fair? What makes us believe that, if there is a “creator” he/she/it has to be kind or fair? He/She/It doesn’t.”
And indeed, according to the Bible, he really isn’t at all.
Good heavens! The poor woman is actually practicing pagan religion in public and on TV for all to see, and I don’t think she knows it. The old pagan goddess of luck who protected people from random disasters was absorbed into the Roman pantheon and then into the Christian godhead. The Romans called her Fortuna. The Catholics made her a guardian angel. This poor woman has been blessed by a pagan goddess! Will her soul survive, do you think?
I expect this miraculous-blessed-by-god drivel anytime they stick a microphone in the face of one of these Christians because it’s just too big a chance for them to “witness” to thousands and they can’t resist. They live to witness.
Here in Katrinaland we get a lot of this.
This is the kind of talk that makes me embarrassed to listen to my fellow atheists. Individuals have the right to believe as they please as long as they aren’t harming anybody. People like Ben Stein are maliciously theistic, this woman uses a metaphor to deal with a personal tragedy. This attack is childish name-calling and an excuse to feel superior.
I enjoy reading your blog, PZ, but for the real newsworthy talk and technical posts.
This is the kind of talk that makes me embarrassed to listen to my fellow atheists.
concern troll at 6 O’Clock.
“Recently in Abbotsford British Columbia, a church floor collapsed during a Christian rock concert for teens. Hundreds of dancing teens fell 12 feet through the floor to the basement below. Many were injured (two critically) but no one died.
The church pastor arrived on the scene and declared “it was a miracle!”.
One of the congregation was quoted as saying “The angels were looking out for us, it could have been so much worse”
I want to know if the angels were so damned clever why they didn’t prevent the collapse or at least give some sort of hint of what was about to happen.
@#72 Bene —
If you ask me, “blessed” is a pretty odd metaphor for “three tornadoes smashed houses, piled cars on each other and injured more than 200 people.” (That quote was lifted directly from the article, by the way.)
And it’s not a personal tragedy. There’s nothing personal about it. More than 200 people were injured, not to mention those who lost their homes and other valuable property.
I went over to find the relevant quote for my #75 and noticed this in the article as well:
I’m trying to figure out if the person writing the article was intentionally trying to make it as clear as possible how ridiculous this statement was by putting the “blessed” statement right after the detailed description of the massive damage & injuries caused by the twister. It’s kind of funny and sad at the same time.
“This attack is childish name-calling and an excuse to feel superior.”
No, that is not the purpose of these posts.
@joni
There is a concept in Christianity that explains what is called ‘natural evil’, but one doesn’t hear much about it these days. The concept is ‘spiritual warfare.’ Satan is actually in charge of the planet (there are Biblical passages that support this), and is the power behind natural disasters.
In this view, then, Satan caused the twisters and God did indeed spare these people, as well as the kids at the concert in Sweden, and so on. However, I doubt that any of these would see the work of the Prince of Darkness behind what happened; that would just be, well, too superstitious. :D
@#79 Sudo —
Do the bible passages that support this/Xians that believe this think that it is specifically Satan (the adversary) doing this, or is this more the action of the single general anti-god entity that Xianity has mushed diabolos, Beelzebub, Satan, Lucifer, etc into?
Hey, Joni,
Oklahoma City you ignorant fuck.
Oh, and Matthew Shepherd.
Oh, also the folks who believe in the exact same god as you who apparently have been fucking preteens in Texas by the dozens.
Oh, and the killers of doctors and nurses who justify their actions using exclusively the English version of the Bible.
Fuck you.
Fuck everything that you believe.
Fuck your god.
If He has anything to say about it, I’ll gladly lock horns. By every piece of evidence that I’ve seen, I’ll not only make Him look idiotic in a debate, I’ll kick his ass afterwards, as He appears to be utterly ineffectual and pathetic.
This also, to unwad your panties, applies to any deity anyone chooses to challenge me with,
Fuck Allah, fuck Yaweh, fuck Brahma, fuck Krisna, fuck Odin, fuck Zeus, fuck Jupiter, fuck Satan, fuck Mithras, fuck Amen Ra, fuck whatever ass-sucking god you throw at me.
Cheers!,
Autumn
Um Joni honey, Buddhists don’t consider Buddha a god.
@ # 80
The chief example is the temptation of Christ by Satan in which Satan offers Jesus all the kingdoms of this world, if he will bow down and worship Satan. The argument is that Satan could not have offered these kingdoms if they weren’t his to offer, and Jesus did not rebuke him. In another example, Jesus dispersed a storm while he and the disciples were at sea, indicating that storms are not ‘good’, per se.
And Paul in his letters says that Christians are at war with the principalities and the powers of the air, the forces of darkness, etc.
In the first case the passages refer specifically to Satan, who is seen as a distinct personage in the text. The rest are generally thought to be describing Satan and the rest of the fallen angels.
The idea that Satan is in charge of this world, including the elements and so forth, is extrapolated from the text. A general reading of the texts I mention might lead one to conclude only that these powers control human governments, not the actual elements themselves. Nevertheless, some who adhere to the ‘spiritual warfare’ ascribe control of the destructive forces of nature to Satan.
@ # 82
Um, well, you might be more correct if you said Buddhist don’t consider Buddha to be GOD, with a capital G. But they certainly pray to him, make offerings, and ask for his help, along with many other deities. In Buddhism, the gods and goddesses are believed to be beings that have, through the accumulation of good karma, been born into the realms of the gods or devas. The problem for them is that once their good karma expires, they will be reborn in a lower realm. Hence, the whole purpose of Buddhism which is to avoid accumulating karma at all in order to stop the cycle of rebirth.
http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism/deities.htm
Sudo,
I salute the god within you.
#83-85: To build on what sudo said, it depends on which buddhists we’re talking about here. Especially in the west, where far, FAR too much of our buddhist understanding is actually based on misinterpretations of Japanese concepts of Buddhism (particularly zen). While I’m not a religious studies scholar, I am a Japanese studies scholar, and I can say with some confidence that, at least in the Japanese world view, Buddha (in all his manifestations) is definitely a god. At least, for some sects. Which is really one of the major problems that westerns have in understanding buddhism. I would guess (guess mind you) that there are more interpretations of buddhism that are all over the map than christianity. They all are rather absurd and based on an odd combination of self-hate and wish-thinking, but they do run the gamut from nigh mono-theism to zen to a fascinating combination of confucian-shinto-and-buddhism (in Japan).
So, basically, yes, for SOME buddhist Buddha is a god. Particularly Amida Buddha, where you’ll have the Pure Land and True Pure Land sects preaching that one can achieve salvation simply by believing in the saving power of Amida Buddha.
:) sound like anything familar?
Gee Autumn, what has any supernatural thing ever done to deserve your anger? :-) Nothing, right?
Now the worshippers of said deities, that’s another matter. This is the answer to Joni’s comment. It isn’t the gods (we don’t believe in) that make us angry or frightened. It’s the behaviour of the believers that we criticize and sometimes fear.
Why mostly Christians? Well first of all because this blog is by an American whose interests are impacted more by Christians than Islamists, etc. I am sure atheists in Islamic countries focus their concerns primarily on the evil men do in the name of Allah. Mostly they wisely say nothing.
Secondly, you likely only pay attention when Christians’ actions are scorned. After all, you tend to agree with any criticism of Islamic foolishness you come across, right? Your tendency in this is a common human failing in logic known as confirmation bias. Atheists notice it a lot in creationists.
Christians don’t terrorize nations? Which part of Shock and Awe didn’t you understand? You think that little Vietnamese girl in the photo wasn’t terrified? Odds are most of the people responsible for introducing her and her neighbours to napalm were Christians.
I’m old enough to have seen pictures in Life magazine of American kids being taught in school how to shelter from atomic bombs. Meanwhile the same dull sense of terror that I remember was being presented tit for tat to kids in the USSR. That’s when someone decided it would be helpful to put In God We Trust on the money to help rally the foes of the godless Commies. Am I wrong, or do you believe that America is a Christian nation?
Joni, your understanding of science vs. belief is also quite messed up. I doubt you would absorb any explanation I might make. At least I’m not going to try.
I thought that tornadoes were gawd’s venging angels. You mean that’s not right? I see an angel in every video of a tornado.
Is there a video game Grand Theft ID? It might be interesting.
My house was actually hit by one of these tornados. Well, “hit” is a bit strong- it was petering out by the time it got to me and I only lost a few shingles. Plus it was only an F-0 to begin with.
The funny thing is that I don’t live in the area that’s been getting all these storms… I checked the weather channel afterwards when they showed the effected area, and there was a tiny spot right over where I live, well separated from the main area. Kinda like the rain cloud over Charlie Brown’s head.
If I believed in God, I might think he had it out for me…
Not sure I understand the point of this article. Does it actually say anywhere she prayed ?
Michael
“I’m not lucky, I’m blessed” could be taken as “I’m not lucky, I’m really super-duper ridiculously lucky”.
I don’t think she meant it that way, but it’s possible.
There’s certainly nothing illegal about her stating her belief that a deity intervened on her behalf to save her, but it is offensive to many atheists. The implications are that others who die deserve to do so or are undeserving of staying on Earth or have outlived their usefulness to the deity.
Even as a agnostic (long, long ago), I came to the idea that if Satan and God both existed, they were likely actually the same being or at the very least in quite close cahoots. Of course, I also came up with lots of other wacky ideas, like that the natural shape of a hypothetical deity wouldn’t be human, but spherical, and that the Christian idea of becoming one with God is rather like becoming one of the borg.
Uh-huh, and the way I understand it, God, architect of the Universe and all that, created Satan. Basically, it still boils down to God being the warped, twisted S.O.B. who gave Satan dominion over earth.
[insipid Xian voice on] “But God loves us and wants us all to be happy.” Riiiight. [off]
I’m not too worried about what anybody might say when finding themselves to be alive and safe, happy not to be dead and/or mangled. The nonsense said at church later on is what really gets noxious, but we don’t hear what that is (not that we don’t have a good idea).
But I was thinking about all of these claims about God, and it does occur to me that the idea that we’re in some stupid adolescent’s (“God’s”) computer game makes the most sense theistically. I mean, maybe this kid is sending tornados, then saving select persons here or there, at whim and without any regard for their physical and psychic traumas. We’re back to the capricious God who one petitions and thanks, all without much hope that this God is going to care, but you may as well try.
What I’m saying ultimately is that even though most theists think that they’ve moved on from the OT God, who is little more than a glorified, childish Middle Eastern despot, most of them really have not. Just thank this bully, who destroyed your possessions and caused you pain, for not killing you.
Again, I’m not so much faulting her expression (one may well be glad that God didn’t kill him, if one thinks God has targeted him with a tornado), I am faulting those who make this nonsense into unquestionable sacred belief.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
everyone trashes GTA. it is actually a very smart game that makes scathing satirical commentary of modern society. it’s bluntness makes you laugh and cringe at the same time. it is an obnoxious version of the kid in “the emperor’s new clothes.”
Here is the thing: The woman was right. God did bless her.
Here is the kicker: A deluded persons statement that they were “blessed” is the only power this so-called God has ever demonstrated.
What a tinhorn, two bit discount God these Christians worship. He does nothing for any living thing on this planet.
He lets us die. He lets us murder. He lets us get sick. He lets children be tortured. Lets children burn to death in fires. He lets animals kill other animals for sustenance as they lap up the blood of the prey.
How can anyone insist that God exists? Why is he not evident everywhere, doing miraculous things that only a God can do, to help us, feed us, shelter us? Food should just appear for us, we should never know sickness or old age.
But no – believers insist on worshipping an invisible entity who has no effect on this world that can be detected. This world looks and acts exactly like a world that has never seen the hand of God, doesn’t it?
And you know why it looks like that? Because God does not exist. Never has, never will.
I will be the first in line – if and when an actual God decides to show up and start doing something in return for all our belief and prayers – at the Church door to worship a real God, a God worthy of adulation.
Until then, you can find your Christian, Islamic, Jewish God in the only place he can be found – in the uncritical mind of the too easily-satisfied deluded believer.
Every time someone tells me about someone who was ‘blessed’ somehow by not being killed in a natural disaster, and claims that that is somehow evidence of God’s will or their favor, etc. I always bring up something I heard on NPR years ago. It was back in the late 90’s when there was a rash of tornadoes ripping through the bible belt. One tornado that was reported skipped over a gay porn store and nailed a church. So my answer to the kooks talking about this stuff is always “God loves gay porn, and I can prove it!”
While I have played GTA (3) a bit and quite enjoyed it – the radio was especially hilarious – I have to concede that most people who buy GTA4 aren’t picking it up for its scathing political commentary; they’re picking it up so they can have the vicarious fun of stealing cars, running over pedestrians, and outgunning the cops.
Reminds me of a priceless Simpsons quote from Maude Flanders after their house was destroyed by a hurricane:
“Oh Neddy, it was terrifying. I thought I was headed for the eternal bliss of paradise.”
“they’re picking it up so they can have the vicarious fun of stealing cars, running over pedestrians, and outgunning the cops.”
true. it certainly is vicarious fun–that is also why it has “M” rating.
GTA: No Kids Allowed
I recall Pat Robertson ascribing to this hypothesis. ‘The Devil rules the air’ or some such blither. He then recounted a tale of a preacher who had successfully ‘rebuked’ a tornado, and thereby saved his house.
Joni (#55):It only seems to be the God of Christians that make so may people angry. Yet I dont see many of them terriozing nations. Unless you consider them standing up for what they believe in and not backing down terrorizing.
Ah,yes,the George Bush version of Christianity.Make no mistake, George and his enablers,including you,defend the illegal invasion of Iraq as “not backing down” from Saddam.
First off,Georg agrees with you which is why he called the Middle East attacks a Crusade (don’t forget the Afgha action was to be called Operation Infinite Justice until somebody pointed out that the phrase is a concept in Islam and it might actually look like the action was not only a Crusade but meant to insult Muslims at the same time.
Dearie,the Iraq action is very much Christians terrorizing Iraqis,worse yet,it means killing a lot of them for no other reason than they were there.
George is a Christian Crusader and so are you. Look at your hands,see the blood on them? Take it on faith,that blood won’t come off.
Fuck Allah, fuck Yaweh, fuck Brahma, fuck Krisna, fuck Odin, fuck Zeus, fuck Jupiter, fuck Satan, fuck Mithras, fuck Amen Ra, fuck whatever ass-sucking god you throw at me.
Cheers!,
..and have a pleasant day!
LOL
Joni said
To add to the comments about ‘Shock and Awe’, what about the (largely American financed) IRA terror campaign in the UK?
A believer’s guide to natural disasters:
Shorter guide to faith: “Heads God wins, tails you lose!”