Nadia Bloom is a young girl who was lost in Florida, and was found by a fervent Christian who went off into the swamps babbling in tongues and praying to God to lead him to her. As you might guess, all the other rescue workers and volunteers are now forgotten, the prolonged search is unimportant, and all that matters is the one fellow fortunate enough to stumble into her was a Bible thumper. Isn’t that sweet?
Now the newspaper is running a poll with a stupid question. Just look at the answer that is winning:
Yes. God must have directed James King to where Nadia was. How else to explain it?
54%
No. Couldn’t we just chalk this up to chance, persistence and/or good luck?
27%
Maybe. How can we ever know for sure?
19%
If you feel like answering yes, I have a follow-up question. A quick google search easily turns up lots of names of young girls who are missing, and then turn up dead. Where was God for
Marisa Spoonhunter,
Anna Le, and
Olivia Rutherford? Were they just too wicked? Was God too busy making sure the right football teams won?
Maybe answer #1 should be rephrased. “Yes. God is a capricious bastard.”
Capricious? Heaven forfend, inscrutable, working in mysterious ways, his dead girls to make.
It’s no more mysterious than why he designed life to look like it evolved, after all. Sheesh.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Afternoon poll, tasty…
The bible bogey is magic. It can do whatever its believers want it to.
73% of the readers of the Orlando Sentinel are nuts.
Okay, this is not a scientific poll so it could be more.
(Or less)
This makes it easier to undestand why Rush Limbaugh affirming that the Icelandic volcano messing up airtravel in Europe is God’s anwer to the US passing healthcare reform can have that many followers.
Gee, these people are nuts.
After a year of searching, Putnam County (Florida) cops are now calling their probe in the disappearance of 5-y.o. Haleigh Cummings a homicide investigation, so she can join the sad list above.
If only the Putnamanians had prayed harder…
FTFY
To answer the follow-up question: Because THOSE people’s rescuers, clearly and obviously, didn’t pray hard enough.
Jeepers, PZ, is that so hard to understand?
#4 negentropyeater
Why do we Europeans have to suffer because of America’s sins?
I’d like to know, and maybe some of the former believers (I’ve given up on the occasional person who still believes but is obviously too deranged to carry on a rational discussion for more than two posts) who frequent this blog can tell us,
does the question PZ poses ever even occur to a believer?
Does the thought of tens of thousands of dead children who were never found by their loudly praying family members and searchers, whose skeletons and decaying corpses spend the centuries in warm swamp waters and underneath nicely poured basement floors ever enter your thought processes?
Not only did God direct James King, but also explicity used this whole case to settle once and for all which version of the bible is the truth.
Mysterious ways indeed.
My guess is that all the other missing dead are acceptable collateral for such an important message.
If you shuffle the two names, James King becomes King James as in the King James Bible. Coincidence? I think so! :p
I actually have suspicions that James King knew the girl’s approximate where-abouts all along. That and 60 cents could buy me a candy bar. But it seems to me that in cases like this, the
fondlerfinder knows more than anyone else. Especially a religious finder.(Do I have to add that this is pure speculation and biased opinion?)
No, that was already settled when Jesus used the King James Version.
He just punctuated it for the rebels and evilutionists with this latest manifestation.
Glen D
http:///tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
If nobody died, how would the bleevers know it was a miracle when someone didn’t?
○ Because you’re all pinko fascist gays.
○ Because you’ve been taken over by pinko fascist gay mooslins.
○ Because you’re not Merkins.
○ Dogs bark in mysterious ways.
○ Because you’ve already got
decentsocialist healthcare systems.○ Because you’ve got a better currency (well, the Eurozone does).
○ Because you’re all whimps and ain’t whumping on the mooslins.
○ Because you can’t see Russia from your front door.
○ Because you don’t speak Merkin.
○ Because you smell.
○ All of the above.
Clear?
#12:
My first thought exactly. You can bet the FBI is looking quite carefully at James King.
Does anybody know why James King is a former member of that church? Inquiring minds….
If you were Rupert Sheldrake you might surmise that a “psychic” system evolved through natural selection that improved survival within groups by being able to locate a relative in danger. That I would not be surprised to discover has some truth to it.
Still, the randomness factor is far more likely.
I agree. The “finder” is a “person of interest”. I don’t believe in that sort of coincidence and niether do (most) police.
This is central Florida we’re talking about here. It would have been a miracle if he hadn’t been a bible thumper talking about miracles.
God works in mysterious ways. And remember working in mysterious ways and being an asshole are not mutually exclusive. Because logically, it was God that put the swamp there in the first place so that little girls, to whom He gave autism to, would get lost. And God who made the earthquake in China killing hundreds of people.
Noah and the Dinosaur
Jonah and the Dunkleosteus
Dude, you rearrange his name and he’s KING JAMES. You know, like the only real version of the HOLY BIBLE? It’s obviously God acting here.
Damn my urge to type before I read!
Alan #8, < < Why do we Europeans have to suffer because of America's sins? >>
Because god blesses America. Dontcha know that?
@black-wolf72: It does seem to occur to them pretty often, but terminal religious credulity has an auto-correct mechanism. As dutchdoc noted, the common official justification is just that the parents and friends of other unfortunates just didn’t reeeeeeaaaaallllllly believe, or didn’t want it bad enough. But they usually don’t even have to go there: selective amnesia and rationalization kicks in, as people swallow one tragedy to protect the rest of their comprehensive belief system.
You probably heard about the recent truck/van crash in Kentucky which killed 10 Mennonites on their way to a wedding (it happened close to my former residence, so I read up on it). Turns out their church had held a big prayer service the night before, praying for their safe travel. Then the family was literally crushed and burned to death by a semi full of brake parts. So the church held a follow-up memorial service, and you could almost hear the auto-erase click over in their memories: immediately after telling reporters about the safe-travel prayer service, church members shrugged and said, “Well, God knows best.” Never once did they allow themselves to think that their prayers had simply been futile, directed to empty air rather than an incomprehensible but basically good sky-daddy.
You forgot to add that our women don’t shave their armpits
Curious meta-comment there. It is a scientific poll – they are conducting an experiment of sorts. But by stating that it is not ‘scientific’ they show they don’t know this and so therefore they are correct once again. This is a scientific, but pointless poll would be better.
And thanks very much God for only making me stuck in Canada with nothing better than to read Pharyngula, rather than being killed in a Chinese earthquake. Now I believe.
Because you can’t see Russia from your front door.
haha, good one. what’s sad is that there are probably way to many americans who don’t know that Russia is in Europe.
back to miracles though:
If it weren’t for them how would we know that the one or two who don’t die were miracles?
I’ve spent years with daily newpapers, much of it on the police beat.
I’ve never seen a case of the “psychic” or bible-banger knowing exactly where to look when that person didn’t turn out to have a hand in the crime. Of COURSE he know where to look.
Doesn’t this strike anyone else a just a tad suspicious – the guy was searching by himself and went to just the right place.
I’m not saying he did it – she would ID him – but somebody who was involved told him where to look.
#15 #26
And shopping trollies with rotating rear wheels.
Olamide Adeyooye – missing from Illinois State University. A genuine believer in God, who apparently couldn’t find her. FOX news also couldn’t find air time to discuss her absence either. Found murdered.
From the article:
//If King didn’t have faith, he wouldn’t have been out there to find Nadia in the first place.//
I think some people need faith, because without it they’d be complete and utter immoral bastards. It would be nice if people didn’t need to believe in some sort of guiding mythology in order to help a family find their missing child. What about all the other volunteers who helped search? Just because the guy who got lucky enough to find her was a babbling zealot, that doesn’t invalidate all the other searchers efforts, beliefs, or motives.
re 12:
No, but you should add whether you even read the article or not. Seems just about everyone else involved with the search was also suspicious of his “miraculous” find. And he seems to have been thoroughly investigated and cleared.
Why’d your fricking sky pixie let the little girl wander off and get lost in the first place, huh?
If King didn’t have faith, he wouldn’t have been out there to find Nadia in the first place.
I have no problem with noting that King’s faith is what motivated him to participate in the search. I do object to the implication that if King hadn’t gone looking for her, that she would not have been found (as in “definitely not found” as opposed to “most likely not found”).
Seems like you start your premise with a falsehood, and that is that there is evidence for a god, and he guides people and fixing soccer matches.
@#12 and 29: Accusing someone of involvement in a child abduction, on the basis of zero evidence and just a bit of “gut feeling” and “suspicion”, is not OK. It’s libelous, and it’s a really, really shitty thing to do.
I don’t care what your experience tells you. Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence. You show some actual evidence that substantiates your speculations, or retract them.
Yes. God must have directed James King to where Nadia was. How else to explain it? 26%
No. Couldn’t we just chalk this up to chance, persistence and/or good luck? 64%
Maybe. How can we ever know for sure? 10%
Pharyngula lives.
I think that its wonderful that gawd only waited
FOUR DAYS!!!!!!! to guide the yahoo to where Nadia was.
Only FOUR days!!
Truly a miracle.
#4 negentropyeater
“… the Icelandic volcano messing up airtravel in Europe is God’s anwer to the US passing healthcare reform …”
#8 Alan B
“Why do we Europeans have to suffer because of America’s sins?”
Why did the poor people people of New Orleans and the gulf coast of Mississippi have to suffer for the sins of the partiers who come to New Orleans for Mardi Gras?
Why did people working in and visiting the World Trade Center have to suffer for the sins of thousands of gay people, feminists, and pagans who had never been to New York City?
Why did the people of Haiti have to suffer for things their long-dead ancestors supposedly did?
I think the correct answer to your question is that Rush Limbaugh saw how much publicity those dumbass comments got for Falwell and Robertson, et al and wanted some of it for himself.
The story seems to change with each retelling. The official version on the police records (according to a news source) was that the bible thumper wasn’t even looking for the girl. The articles also like to hype the danger of alligators. There’s at least one golf club out there where the members will laugh at you if you thought every alligator out there wanted to hunt you down and eat you; in fact, if you happen to clobber an alligator with a golf ball you take a penalty. If there happens to be a gator on the green obstructing your putt, that’s your problem.
God loves lost white girls.
I love the 4894 morons who answered:
So, given the fact that this girl was a member of a church congregation, and given the fact that 80% of Americans are Christian (and higher in the south), what would you estimate the probability to be, that the person who found her would have prayed for success?
I’d put it somewhere around 85 to 90%. So the news is that something which is almost certain to have happened did happen. Yawn.
‘Cause The Big Guy In The Sky has terrible aim.
Eleven-years-old and lost in the woods for four days, bug bites head to toe? I’m just glad she was found and recovered. I did participate in the poll, though, since the “yes” answer is silly.
Coincidence is just an atheist delusion designed to spurn all that is meaningful and disintegrate all that is connected. How else could you explain this amazing anomaly – basic probability? Pblfblblf… Have a heart you heathens.
Because America is exceptional! (And anyone who doesn’t accept this as a fact is just like the Nazis!)
Has anyone noticed what James King’s name is if you switch the words around?
@george.wiman:
Unless Olamide Adeyooye is your misspelling of “Mary Sue McCheerleadingsquad”, it’s a pretty safe bet as to why neither Fox nor Fox’s god cared about her whereabouts.
Alan N, #8
Maybe it’s because we’re not Christian enough any more, and certainly not Christian NationsTM. Well… maybe with the exception of, say, Italy, Poland and Romania (which, as you might have noticed, haven’t been affected too much by the said volcano).
Lots of well thought out arguments as to why it isn’t a miracle…
…but you’re all wrong. It was a miracle and GOD was behind it. :-)
Anyone else find it ironic that this bible-thumping, god-conversing christian is a fucking military contractor?. God told him where to find the little girl, but nary a whisper about that “turn the other cheek” thingy.
WWJD, indeed.
blackwolf, I did question those things when I was a believer. My prayers often included, “God, how could you? or Why won’t you? or Why did you?” I guess that’s what makes me a former believer — the fact that the whole god thing didn’t make sense even when I thought he was real.
Looks like the poll has been pharyngulated. “No” is now 70%.
“Lots of well thought out arguments as to why it isn’t a miracle…
…but you’re all wrong. It was a miracle and GOD was behind it. :-)”
Ah yes, who needs well thought-out arguments when you have baseless assertions.
it’s even worse, PZ. It’s not that those girls were too wicked. It’s their PARENTS that were too wicked, the children became part of god’s plan as an instrument to test their faith.
The saddest thing, from a christian perspective that’s a valid argument!
If a million zealots searched in a million swamps for a million missing girls and one zealot eventually found one girl in one swamp while muttering the entire time, this is truly proof of God’s love.
The other day a million monkeys were typing away and one of them, smug satisfaction on his monkey face, handed me the complete works of Charles Dickens. “This isn’t Shakespeare,” I said. Stupid monkeys.
Why did god let this little girl get lost in the first place?
Did she or her parents do something horrible like open a biology book or something?
Or was this a case of divine vengeance on the Democrats for passing Universal Health Care? God has notoriously bad aim and usually chooses soft targets, kids, puppies, kittens, and so on.
Just to add to PZ’s question
PZ
No, they were scantily clad and had to die to save Florida from earthquakes, and it worked, no earthquakes in Florida.
That’s proof there is god, take my word for it.
Not sure how the Sea org in Tampa fits in.
I’ll have to get back to ya.
blf @ 14
Actually the Finns have a very good view of the Russians ;-)
Another poll to Pharyngulate:
Does having a National Day of Prayer violate the Constitution’s separation of church and state?
http://www.wset.com/news/stories/0410/726607.html#
Yeah, it’s called Yahoo! Answers.
She wasn’t wearing a burkha so an earthquake happened* and she got thrown into the swamps.
*Nobody else noticed the earthquake, it was a miracle.
Actually, it makes complete sense that Europe gets to pay, in the form of lost air travel due to a volcano, for their sins. First of all, what American can pronounce that volcano’s name? If God was punishing Americans, he’d have caused one with a pronouncable name to erupt.
Point B, He’s making Europe pay for criticizing the Pope.
It all ties together, doesn’t it.
Praise Dawg.
MikeM
This is one of the reasons why I’m into golf, the second most atheistic sport on earth. Of course, we all know that polo is number one, but I don’t have room for a horse.
Someday I hope to play eighteen holes with Tiger. Then maybe we could go golfing.
At #64
I don’t know about the monkeys…..
but yesterday one of my cats typed
E=
No = 77%. A real miracle.
23% picking their noses, rocking rhythmically, and praying for the numbers to be reversed.
@ 67
Also the one sport where you can lose due to lightning strike. And I think we all know what that means
——————————————
Interview with the Teabagger
“who went off into the swamps babbling in tongues”
LOL just like a Cohen brothers movie…
The poll asks a question at the end of Choice 1 and then provides the answer: Choice 2. These polls are moronic.
The poll asks a question at the end of Choice 1 and then provides the answer: Choice 2. These polls are moronic.
haha, good one. what’s sad is that there are probably way to many americans who don’t know that Russia is in Europe.
umm, last i checked, RUSSIA is part of Asia, not Europe.
there are parts of the former USSR that are now part of Europe (the continent), but Russia is not.
…and a serious pedantic entry marks a return after several weeks absence.
health issues resolved… though it appears randomly, not due to any medical intervention.
hey! must be a miracle!
:P
Not entirely true. The dividing line for Europe/Asia is the Caucus mountains, which are just inside Russia. So, part of Russia (including Moscow) lie within Europe, but the majority is in Asia. Last I heard the European and Asian plates were fused, so some people are calling it Eurasia. Both are correct.
The dividing mountain range is the Urals, to the west is the European part of Russia.
…and a serious pedantic entry marks a return after several weeks absence.
too bad it was incorrect.
I was living in Utah when Elizabeth Smart was rescued from her abductors and I remember that shortly thereafter billboards popped up all over the state proclaiming, “Miracles DO Exist!”
I never could make sense of that claim, especially since Smart was found only after having been repeatedly raped and brainwashed.
“Yes. God is a capricious bastard.”
Not true. God lets everybody die.
“Coincidence is just an atheist delusion designed to spurn all that is meaningful and disintegrate all that is connected. How else could you explain this amazing anomaly – basic probability? Pblfblblf… Have a heart you heathens.”
Um yeah basic probability actually explains it really well. I hope you’re a Poe but if not, don’t feel too bad, many people get caught up with the problem of big numbers.
I’m retracting my last comment as I’m pretty sure I missed the joke now. *WOOOOOOSH*
Ichthyic, please accept my apology for my previous rude gloating. I have a great respect for your comments and was just a little giddy at catching you in an error.
Antiochus has it exactly right with
I actually had a conversation with such a person once where I brought up the canonical “Why doesn’t God heal amputees?” He went from “Well, how do you know he doesn’t?” (um, because even the Weekly World News doesn’t have a single claim of any such?) to “Perhaps nobody asked him…”. Once I picked my jaw up off the floor, I just said “Are you actually claiming that no friend or family member has ever sincerely prayed for healing for an amputee? You KNOW better than that.”
That was the end of the conversation, because after this his cognitive dissonance got too loud for anyone to talk over.
If being psychic had ever evolved in the slightest degree it would have been so incredibly useful that it would have spread through the gene pool like wildfire and increased in intensity to the point where we would hardly need language any more. This is just one way to be sure that it never has. No one is psychic.
I’d be more inclined to ask some questions about his friends and what he’s been up to for the last few days.
Psychics also make such claims minus the bible.
#57
If god exists and it is omniscient it does not have to test faith because it would already know. Similarly if it is omnipotent (ignoring the mutual exclusivity) it would have created that level of belief in that person.
Option 1 ain’t winning no mo’ !!!
In the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake some ministers made the usual public statements about God
10,000 votes against? I thought pharyngulation was only good for about 4000…
Discussing it with friends here on the Prairie, we thought it more likely that Jame King, rather than being involved in any abduction, was more likely out alone trying to hide his still, his meth lab or his poaching traps from the other search parties.
When she was found, multiple people said, “shenanigans.”
Too much doesn’t add up like:
1) she has aspergers. How many special needs kids are allowed to go ride their bike, unsupervised? When my normal child was her age, I NEVER let him ride around the neighborhood unsupervised. And let me point out, since I live here, a couple of blocks away, that this is not your normal neighborhood. Those woods she was, “lost,” in is Lake Jesup. “The lake is home to a wide variety of species and is considered to support one of the state’s densest populations of alligators.” I’m sorry, but no parent worth a damn allows 11-year-old children to just play around the area unsupervised. Period.
2) This was the last grid the police hadn’t checked. Supposedly this guy dreamt he found her and then woke up and went straight out to where she was. Bullocks. Sounds more like he knew right where and when to place her. If nothing else, THERE WAS NO OTHER PLACE TO LOOK! They’d had heat-seeking helicopters out here hovering everywhere since the day she disappeared. If a gator didn’t get her, that’s the only place she could have been.
3) The family has been spouting god this and god that from the beginning. The girl, who supposedly cannot tell lies because of the aspergers, has not been allowed to be questioned. Suspicious much?
That’s always my follow up question too – these kinds of claims drive me insane. But it looks like you’ve had an effect on the poll numbers:
Poll: Was Nadia Bloom’s rescue an actual miracle?
Members of Metro Church in Winter Springs, which Nadia Bloom used to attend, call her rescue by former member James King a miracle. Is it?
Yes. God must have directed James King to where Nadia was. How else to explain it? (1202 responses)
9%
No. Couldn’t we just chalk this up to chance, persistence and/or good luck? (11615 responses)
88%
Maybe. How can we ever know for sure? (441 responses)
3%
As horrible as it sounds, I’m actually really surprised that ‘god’ didn’t let an alligator find the girl first. She was lost in the swamps surrounding Lake Jessup, which has one of the highest concentration of very large gators in the state. I go mountain biking on the trails along the lake sometimes and I get nervous with the size of some of the gators I’ve seen pretty far from the lake. But then again, if she was alligator food, it wouldn’t be a miracle, would it?
@Cinnamonbite
With respect, your reasoning behind point number 2 is flawed. I have about 5 years experience with wilderness search and rescue, and one of the first things you learn is that the probability of finding someone, even in an area that has been searched with the latest gadgetry is never 100%. It’s not necessarily better to search a new area vs. searching the previously examined areas again. Depending on the location of the unsearched grid from the last known sighting of the victim, the chance of finding the victim may actually be marginally raised more by searching an area again. Of course, this raises a different question of why the subject was located in such an unlikely grid of the search area……
Nonetheless, this James King fellow is a blithering idiot for launching a search on his own. Individuals such as him do more harm than good, as they are more likely to get lost and need a search party of their own than they are to find the victim. Furthermore, such untrained individuals may also taint any clues in the area.
God has taste?
Kids with Asperger’s aren’t incapable of riding a bike and understanding where their house is. I’ve never seen anything that indicates where she is on the autistic spectrum. If anything, my kid with Asperger’s reminds me when it’s time to make the turns to get places.
It’s frighteningly easy for any kid to get lost quickly. Half a block farther than usual turns into two, and if the woods were close it could only take 50 yards or so in to become disoriented, and then it’s game over already in the same amount of time it takes for the parent to go to the bathroom between checking on the kid’s spins around the block.
89% NO
James King found her. HMMMMM??? maybe he knew where she was all along.
Why would I say something like this?
Here in San Diego ounty CA we have just had the Chelsea King and Amber Dubois rape /murders solved
Where thousands of people showed up to search for Chelsea only to have a Sheriffs Dept Diving team find a possible site on land and in fact found chelsea Kings body in a shallow grave. Amber Dubois’s remains were found when the accused, John Gardner took sherrifs dept. personnel to her shallow grave. He has plead guilty to the murder and rape of these two girls and will be sentenced in June.