When the East coast earthquake happened last week it didn’t take long for me to start a mental countdown to the time I would start hearing fundamentalists invoking the lord’s hand of judgment. It happens every time. The Japan tsunami and the Haiti earthquake are two recent examples of natural disasters some Christians attributed to a disapproving god.
Pat Roberson recently weighed in on the East coast earthquake on his program The 700 Club last Wednesday, he stated the earthquake “means that we’re closer to the coming of the Lord.” On Thursday’s broadcast he reported on the cracks discovered in the Washington Monument, to him it was a sign that the lord’s work. Here is part of what he said, quoted in the Daily Caller:
‘It seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America’s power. It has been the symbol of our great nation. We look at the symbol and we say ‘this is one nation under God.’ Now there’s a crack in it … Is that a sign from the Lord? … You judge. It seems to me symbolic,’ Robertson said.
He cited Matthew’s Gospel, which mentions an “upheaval in the earth” as a sign of the End of Days. The earthquake is just a “birth pang” of the world to come, Robertson explained.
Yes, Pat, some cracks in a monument are a fulfillment of a prophecy about “upheaval in the earth.” I think you should have saved the upheaval verses for today, post hurricane Irene. A 5.8 earthquake really isn’t much in the way of vengeful retribution.
Then you have Michele Bachmann claiming that the earthquake and hurricane were warnings from god:
I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people, because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet, and we’ve got to rein in the spending.
Bachmann’s handlers are claiming the statement was supposed to be a joke, which I almost believe because of the inanity of thinking her god would send natural disasters in order to rein in our country’s spending. But I don’t buy it; she believed every word of it. In her mind this is exactly the sort of thing god would do.
I could go on about how ridiculous these types of claims are . . . the idea that god would come to our planet and start squashing humans like tiny little ants . . . but that isn’t my point. What I wanted to comment on was the absurdity of counting these events as “hits” for god, while ignoring all the “misses.”
Natural disasters are going to happen. There is nothing supernatural about a hurricane they are quite commonplace this time of year. There is no magic to an earthquake, they happen every single day. So why assume it is god when they happen in significant locations or in large magnitudes? Aren’t these events statistically bound to happen sooner or later?
Compare this too all the misses religionists ignore. Study after study after study after study has shown even a simple thing like prayer shows no effect. How is it possible for Christians to ignore the failure of their god? Most of them simply excuse the inaction as the stubbornness of a holy god who wouldn’t submit to the tests of mankind, but this defense is terrible. If a loving god existed he would want us to find him through any means necessary.
The dissonance here is staggering and highlights the confirmation bias of religious people. Someday they will realize there are a few too many hoops to jump through in order to continue believing in the Christian god.
