“LADY LAKE, Fla. — Tornado victims and their supporters turned out for today’s service at a church that was demolished in the killer storms that waylaid central Florida, trying to stay optimistic about the long recovery ahead.
The cleanup that began not long after Friday’s destruction took a brief pause as the faithful and others gathered under bright sun and clear skies at what was the Lady Lake Church of God. Its splintered remains have become a rallying point in this rural area hit hard by the three tornadoes that killed 20 people and destroyed hundreds of homes.”
You know, I always assert that Christian people are irrational. By which I mean, without the ability or facility to reason, or unwilling to use that facility. And people go “Oh, come on, that’s harsh. Give me an example of that.” and then I go kinda red and splutter and wave my arms and say “Are you BLIND?”.
But just in case, the above is an example. If you can’t see what’s slightly mad about these people getting together at the remains of their church to praise their vengeful, wrathful lord then you should perhaps look harder.
“Praise unto You, oh mighty one, for not smiting all of us, in thy wrath! We appreciate that. Glory be Thine, oh Lord, for vengefully destroying thy own house of worship, and the houses of so many who adore You. Praise and Glory both to You, Lord, for slaying so very few of thy believers this day!”
Yeah. Cheers for that, Big Guy.
February 5, 2007 at 1:18 am
Obviously it’s a test from god, DUH!
February 5, 2007 at 2:52 am
If they believe in God, and their own immortal souls, and the eventual resurrection of their bodies, then death isn’t the worst that can happen. Of course, that’s the big scary thing about religious types – that they may lay down their lives for a cause, believing in a better life after death. I’d like to reassure atheists that most mainstream Christianities take that ‘thou shalt not kill’ thing very seriously. Think of it as an analog of Asimov’s laws of robotics.
My own take on this is that storms happen. If it were absoulutely necessary to keep someone alive (presumably for their future work in the redemption of mankind), then they’d get a miraculous escape from a killer storm. For the rest of you, either move away from where the bad weather hits, or expect an early end to your current life.
February 5, 2007 at 5:35 am
This isn’t anything to do with your point, I just wanted to note that the scooter-thingy you’re using as an avatar looks just like the robot wheelchair thing with the highly advanced “Yes No” lights in that episode of Star Trek when Spock was court-martialled for trying to take his old crippled captain to some Forbidden Planet or other. Cool.
February 5, 2007 at 5:54 am
Yeah. That hadn’t occurred to me, but Yeah, it does. Have you seen Trekkies? Some guy built one of those and rides around in it. Then he goes and bothers the people at the local Radio Shack. They don’t appear to want to have anything to do with him. Pretty much the same deal with Sir Clive Sinclair and the C5.
Follow the link in the entry on my LJ and watch the TV ad for them. It’s really great!
February 5, 2007 at 3:47 am
How do you think they should have reacted?
February 5, 2007 at 7:45 am
Like this:
“Wow, why would the God described in my sacred books do this? Or allow this awful to happen? If he couldn’t stop it, he’s not much of a deity. If he could have stopped stopped it, but didn’t, is he just fucking winding me up, or what?.”
This would then be followed by:
“Come to think of it, there’s a whole hell of a lot of evidence that this God I worship is pretty much imaginary. And not a lot of evidence to the contrary. Why I am tithing to this damn church again? Screw it, from now on, I’m sleeping in on sundays.”
That’s pretty much the way it went for me, anyway.
Until I found out about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, anyway. Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
February 5, 2007 at 8:02 am
You should read some of Joseph Cambell’s books. He’s a comparative mythologist.
February 12, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Yeah, it’s really fun wandering around classical mythology looking at where the early christians cherry picked various bits from, once they’d recruited enough gentiles to not be jewish any more.
February 5, 2007 at 9:36 am
I actually don’t see anything too logically wrong with thinking “God does these things for a reason only sonetimes I’m too puny to understand why” and then getting together to say “I don’t know why you did this thing that I don’t like but I still love and trust you”. I don’t believe it myself but I can see how it’s not totally unreasonable (if you don’t count the unreasonableness of faith in the first place). I’m still struggling to understand the experience of “faith” but I can see that Bad Stuff Happening probably isn’t faith-shaking for many people.
The religious reasoning I don’t get is the idea that if you can get enough people to pray for you then God might just change his plans and magically save your life because you just won some cosmic popularity contest.
February 7, 2007 at 1:45 am
> “I don’t know why you did this thing that I don’t like but I still love and > trust you”.
I don’t know about you but to me this sounds like “battered wife syndrome”.
“He beats me because he cares”
And what is our response to that as a society? “Wake up, he’s a prick! leave him”
Why does this apply to our fellow man but we expect less civility from out deity? Basically you’re saying we expect more humanity from our fellow man than from our “perfect” deity. And yes I see that that is a truism by it’s very definition. But still…
February 7, 2007 at 2:41 am
True but usually when you leave the prick you do continue to believe in his existence and often take steps to protect yourself from him.
I have often heard the god/human relationship decsribed as being like a parent and child and, though as an adult I have no desire to put sopmeone else in-charge of my life that way, I know that I frequently make decisions my kids dislike and/or don’t fully understand and no one would consider me an abusive parent.
I see the whole beleiving in god thing as logically poor but within that belief I can see that bad stuff and misfortune probably won’t change anything.
February 7, 2007 at 2:44 am
Ahahaha. Now I have a mental image of like, a scene from COPS where they’re arresting a drunken, shirtless God.
“Sir? We’re arresting you for causing a hurricane to destroy your believers houses.”
And he’s all “Can’t a diety have a DAMN beer?” as they stuff Him in the back of the car.
Oh, and there a christian girl yelling at the cops “He does it because He loves me! It’s my fault! Don’t take Him! It’s just His Way! His Mysterious Way!”
That’s golden.
February 5, 2007 at 3:54 am
thats nothing….
you should read the book of job.
and i think from this side of the fence, dying (granted all is good between you and the almighty)… not such a big deal. kinda like getting subbed off the field and you get to go home, have a shower and see the rest of the picture.
i dont think this was an example of “christians being irrational”. this was just a group of people who’s clubhouse got taken out by a tornado and they’re rallying to rebuild.
now, if say there was a preacher standing on the remains of the church yelling “this is a direct sign from God to kill all unbelievers, and maybe sacrifice a child or two” at the top of his lungs, i’d kinda say that’s being irrational.
“JSR almighty” – what do you reckon? god for a day 😀
February 5, 2007 at 7:48 am
Re: thats nothing….
A wise man named Fred Dagg once wrote (okay .. sang) as follows…
“If I ruled the world, certain people would have to buck up their ideas. Starting with certain people living right ’round here.”
If someone promotes me to God, there’ll be a reckoning.
February 5, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Re: thats nothing….
lol, i think that’d make for some hilarious entertainment- they should definately make a movie of it. super-geek becomes god for a while, imagine what that’d be like! (after the ‘reckoning’ of course).
February 5, 2007 at 4:52 am
It seems to me that they better damn well get together and praise their vengeful, wrathful lord. After all, if that’s the sort of thing he does when they spend half their lives grovelling to him, imagine how he’d treat them if he was really pissed off? Bear in mind that if the descriptions of this god-thingummy are even close to accurate, they’re dealing with an omnipotent two-year-old with even less impulse control than normal.
February 5, 2007 at 5:56 am
When in doubt, sacrifice more goats, or a virgin – but only if absolutely necessary.
February 5, 2007 at 8:01 am
How about a virgin goat?
February 12, 2007 at 10:56 pm
If I were a bible-believing sort of a person, I’d probably mention that God makes the sun rise on the good and the evil, and the rain fall on the just and the unjust.