I guess Michele Bachmann is still around, and still saying stupid things, and sometimes journalists still publish her words. Did you want to know what Bachmann thinks of climate change? Too bad, because here it is.
“I want to refer people to the book of Genesis,” she said. “I would encourage pastors to start preaching on this issue of climate change and God’s view of climate change.”
You may be wondering where in Genesis the words “climate change” appear. Bachmann was referring to the covenant between God and Noah after the great flood.
“God put a rainbow in the sky as a sign of His covenant, and He said very clearly to the entire world, ‘Never again will there be judgment, never again will the world be flooded.’ …You can take that to the bank. That’s God’s word.
“And what is it these frauds tells us with climate change? That the world’s going to be flooded. Isn’t it interesting? …God says we will never be flooded.”
Bachmann challenged every pastor listening to spread this good news to their congregations, because “God’s people are perishing because of lack of knowledge.”
Close your eyes to the world around you, and only trust this myth about an event that never happened! Do nothing! Taking action would mean you don’t trust God!
It reminds me of Christian Science or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or cults where people will stand around and watch their children die agonizing, preventable deaths because their religion preaches that they’re supposed to just pray over the sick. Bachmann would like us to simply pretend the wounds we’ve inflicted on our planet don’t exist.
What’s particularly egregious about this idiotic rationale is that even if all the icecaps and glaciers in the world melt, sea levels will not flood the entire planet. So that wouldn’t violate God’s promise to Noah anyway.
I wonder what all the people who have experienced local floods think about that.
I’ve read that after Benjamin Franklin invented the lightening rod churches in Europe refused to install it considering installation an affront to god. Many churches were lost.
Given Gilgamesh which may have influenced the biblical narratives on a flood, it’s possible a flood happened, though not as depicted in the hyperbolizing myths. People often live near rivers and other bodies of water. Bodies of water fluctuate in depth. Freakish events happen every 100-1000 years. There are flood accounts across the globe.
Tropical storms, supercells, and tsunamis happen. My own neighborhood flooded several years back and I, like a modern day Noah, put my dog in the car and boarded her at the vet for a few days as I lived at a hotel. God was punishing my neighbors for the Trump signs.
So contrary to Bachmann (does she live in a swamp???), God broke his word about flooding people out of their homes.
hemidactylus @ 4:
Some geologists believe that the myth of a Great Flood arose out of a folk memory of the Mediterranean flooding the Black Sea when the glaciers retreated after the last Ice Age, around 7,000 years ago. It would explain why a flood myth shows up in so many cultures in the area as well as oddities in the Biblical flood account (like how it mentions Mount Ararat which is well outside the territory of Israel, both in biblical and modern times.
I wonder what the reaction of her bank would be.
@6- chigau (違う)
I wonder how you put it through the vacuum chute at the drive thru or signify it on the transaction sheet for the teller. Floods and banking— two things for which Bachmann seems to have limited familiarity.
@5- Cat Mara
Thanks. I recall talk of such a larger significance event but couldn’t remember the details.
I thought their god said that he wouldn’t flood the world again. He never promised he’d hinder humanity from flooding it, did he? So even if we take that mythology at face value, Bachmann is wrong, I’d say. Climate change isn’t their god’s punishment.
The oldest known flood myth is a Sumerian one about Ziusudra in Mesopotamia, who was warned by a god that the gods were about to flood the world and he should build a giant boat. There’s a bit of humor in the tale because the gods weren’t supposed to warn people but a god who liked Ziusudra told the warning to a “reed wall” when Ziusudra was on the other side, so he could hear it.
The epic of Gilgamesh likely is somewhat later (I’m relying on works I read years ago, so I don’t know if there’s new scholarship about the dates). It tells of Utnapishtim and his wife being the only survivors from before the great flood because the gods warned them to build a boat. Once afloat, Utnaphishtim sent out birds, until one failed to return, showing him dry land was near. The goddess Ishtar then vowed to him that the gods would never flood the world again, and as proof she created flies with rainbow-colored wings as an eternal sign. (There is something familiar about that detail …). The book I read said that type of fly was associated with dead bodies. One scholar said some scholars have suggested that “Noah” is derived from Utnapishtim – which I assume might have been pronounced “Ut-no-ah-pishtim.”
The last early Bronze Age flood myth, also Mesopotamian, that I know of is about Atrahesis. The gods visited various disasters on humanity because cities repeatedly got too noisy. One disaster was a flood, which Atrahesis was warned about.
M B might ,wot am i saying ,MB is a poor deluded fool .The really sad part is that there are millions of people like her .
Not just in amruca before britshit at least us Brits could laugh at the wackaloons the other side of the Atlantic .
Global floods. Global!
So, now all we have to worry about are droughts, storms, fires, earthquakes, and epidemics. I feel completely reassured.
Bachmann is that classic person who opens her mouth and puts her stupidity beyond doubt. And yet, like Trump, and, say Palin, to name but a few, she had enough following to become a major public figure.
daved @1
Ah yes, but consider what would happen if God precipitated all the moisture in the atmosphere to fall – in 40 days and nights – as rain. Enough water to “flood the world” perhaps ?
But with global warming going on, the atmosphere will probably take up even more moisture, thus foisting droughts onto the world. Just our way of defeating God’s word once again.
U. of Warshington geologist David Montgomery wrote about “Noah’s Flood”. Here he is talking about it in a short TED talk.
I once worked with a guy who used that “water in the atmosphere argument.” It’s amazing what creationists are capable of pulling out of their butts.
MB is a stylist in the art of stupidity.
gruebleen:
Not even slightly; it would yield a global amount of around 1 inch of rain.
(Gotta use the magical “fountains of the deep” for a proper flooding)
I thought the covenant involved chopping off foreskins, and now it’s apparently about rainbows?
Well, depending upon the idiot confronted.
Either earth is what Venus looked like before Sol heated up or God wants us to inhale vaporous mercury – somehow and CO2 is good to make us like Venus, because is sort of rhymes with penis or something.
Trust me, they go in circles trying to figure that nonsense out.
stroppy @16, John Morales @17
Oh that’s destroyed my simple, happy belief in Phillip Jose Farmer and Kilmore Trout :-)
I have no problem with this.
She says that God made a legally binding promise. She’s holding him to his promise in determining legal matters concerning policy and the like?
Fine…then God simply has to make a personal appearance to testify in congress that he plans to keep his word. Literally anything else is hearsay and inadmissible as evidence. If he refuses to appear, then the testimony is null and void.
Balls in your court, Michelle…call God up and set up a meeting…or STFU!!!
There are two ideological reasons why so many conservatives have a hard time with climate change. One is what Bachman expresses here — it sticks a knife in the whole God idea. Not only is there the bit about Biblical floods, there’s also the fact that, if you follow the science, warming is almost inevitable to happen on any planet that develops technology (with its energy needs) on a planet with fossil fuel reserves. So any God that sticks his chosen people on such a planet without any guidelines for what technologies are extinction-level dangerous to develop is a hugely irresponsible deity — akin to a parent who leaves a loaded gun sitting on the table in a nursery.
The other problem for conservatives is that, if global warming is real, then it will absolutely require both a strong central government and lots of international cooperation to solve. For someone who is ideologically committed to the idea that both of those things are always bad, that’s a big adjustment to make.
We should encourage everyone like this to join a “snake handling” cristian congregation. Problem
solved.
@23- birgerjohansson
What did the snakes ever do wrong to deserve that. I mean you’re slithering around near some bushes trying to get a heat image of some tasty rodent and next thing you know you’re tonged into a canvas bag. Hours later some warm being is flailing around with you in its hands speaking in tongues. My though they are cozy warm, but the flailing is disconcerting. Maybe a dry bite will warn off the craziness. If they were only less spastic and shaking the warmth might be enjoyable, but not the plastic holding bins. Not those! Oh to be back slithering in the woods minding your own business.
Ah yes, the “rainbows are God’s post it notes” section. As if Yahweh is constantly thinking to itself, “Hmm, ima flood me some Earth… what’s that there? A rainbow? Oh yeah, I promised not to do that any more. Well, damn, maybe I’ll just give some more babies cancer or something instead.”