Corsair the Rational Pirate

Right on Schedule, The Ignorant Tools Appear

I have been waiting since the latest catastrophe for the ignorant to make their appearance. Usually it takes a few days for the basement-dwellers to get their noses out of their bibles long enough to look around and see what is happening in the "real" world (as opposed to the one in which they are on the right hand of god dispensing justice to all the wicked teenage girls wearing their revealing clothes and giggling and jiggling and completely ignoring me as they strut around the mall, the sluts. I'll show them...) Ahem.

Anyway, the Mouth Breathing Morons (MBMs) have made their initial thoughts (such as they are) known:

Steve Lefemine, an antiabortion activist in Columbia, S.C., was looking at a full-color satellite map of Hurricane Katrina when something in the swirls jumped out at him: the image of an 8-week-old fetus.

"In my belief, God judged New Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion," said Lefemine, who e-mailed the flesh-toned weather map to fellow activists across the country and put a stark message on the answering machine of his organization, Columbia Christians for Life.

"Providence punishes national sins by national calamities," it said. "Greater divine judgment is coming upon America unless we repent of the national sin of abortion."

Meet MBM Number 1. He seems to think that the New Orleans thing was a national disaster rather than the local disaster that it really was. If god was so incensed at our use of abortion, why not do what he has done in the past and kill all of us? It would seem to be well within his purview as creator of the universe. Instead he sent a flood that ruined the lives of a bunch of poor people, many I am guessing who have never actually gotten an abortion.

Seems rather cruel and capricious to me. I'm sure that'll make me want to bow down and glorify this guy's munificence. Look, Stevie idiot. Just shut up about the whole abortion thing. You want to thank someone for something, thank your mother (who regrets her decision more every day) that she didn't abort you when she had the chance.

Here's a gimmee:

"It is almost certain that this is a wind of torment and evil that Allah has sent to this American empire," a Kuwaiti official, Muhammad Yousef Mlaifi, wrote Wednesday in the Arabic daily Al-Siyassa under the headline "The Terrorist Katrina is One of the Soldiers of Allah . . ."

Really. This is too easy. When words like this come from MBM Number 2, good Christians everywhere shake their heads and think this camel jockey is living in a fantasy world. When Robertson and Falwell say it it is supposed to be a message from god. Shaaa.

OK, this guy seems to be shooting kind of wide:

In Israel, Christian journalist Stan Goodenough was struck by the juxtaposition in recent days of Jewish settlers being removed from their homes in the Gaza Strip and Americans being forced out of their homes in New Orleans.

"Is this some sort of bizarre coincidence? Not for those who believe in the God of the Bible . . .," he wrote in a column for the Web site Jerusalem Newswire. "What America is about to experience is the lifting of God's hand of protection; the implementation of His judgment on the nation most responsible for endangering the land and people of Israel."

I think the nation most responsible for what is going on in Israel is... Israel. I don't see any floods headed their way, however. MBM Number 3, therefore gets sent back to the showers to try again to see if he can connect anything in this hemisphere with the big disaster.

And coming down the straight away is the fag haters (MBM Number 4):

In Philadelphia, Michael Marcavage saw no coincidence, either, in the hurricane's arrival just as gay men and lesbians from across the country were set to participate in a New Orleans street festival called "Southern Decadence."

"We take no joy in the death of innocent people," said Marcavage, who was an intern in the Clinton White House in 1999 and now runs Repent America, an evangelistic organization calling for "a nation in rebellion toward God" to reclaim its senses.

"But we believe that God is in control of the weather," he said in a telephone interview. "The day Bourbon Street and the French Quarter was flooded was the day that 125,000 homosexuals were going to be celebrating sin in the streets. . . . We're calling it an act of God."

Yep, musta been god hating on all them gays he created. You know when that flood hit San Francisco the other week and all those boy-lovers were floating face down in the flood waters.... What? There never was such a thing? You don't say. Instead, again a bunch of poor blacks who had no connection to the imminent arrival of tourists of the homosexual variety (except maybe for selling them things and cleaning up their hotel rooms) were killed and washed out of their only homes. Hmm. There is that whole "aim" thing again. God can't seem to hit the broad side of a city when he starts throwing storms around. I hope he puts the seat up, I bet he makes a big mess everywhere.

Oh, look! A visit from our friends:

The Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson, who were roundly criticized for suggesting that the Sept. 11 attacks were divine retribution for abortion, homosexuality, feminism and the proliferation of liberal groups, have been silent on the meaning of the hurricane. Most of the major Christian political advocacy groups also have been cautious.

Damn, MBM 5 and 6 can't be bothered to make my life easier by making some completely stupid statement completely out of touch with reality. Shit, I hate working with the second stringers (MBMs Number 1 - 4).

And the apologetics now make an appearance:

McFarland said in a telephone interview that theologians had debated for centuries how a good, wise and all-powerful God could allow so much evil and suffering.

"When someone asks 'Why do innocent people suffer?' I will gently remind them that we are not really innocent," he said. "God did create a perfect world. But we humans introduced moral evil, sin, rebellion and disobedience. And after God judged human sin in Noah's flood, the weather patterns that we know today developed."

Rather than blaming the hurricane on any particular sin or sinners, however, McFarland wanted to impart a positive message.

"As a Christian, I would say that God didn't cause this but God did allow it, and we believe that God will bring a greater good out of this," he said. "For God's love, power and wisdom to remain uncompromised, he will have to bring more good than pain from it, ultimately."

Fuck you, pal That is the crux of what is wrong with your stupid religion. You may not be "innocent" but I got nothing to be ashamed of. And all the kids now killed, diseased, traumatized and washed out of their homes didn't do anything to anyone yet because of their alleged "evil" they get thrown out on the streets to fend for themselves. Here's a heart-rending (something you wouldn't know anything about) story about a real sinful monster:

On Friday morning, a freckled, skinny 18-year-old named Serena Bane stood in the driveway of her home at 1006 Rue de LaSalle, watching in disconnected shock as her mother, father and two brothers were pulled from their home in body bags. How do you bury four people, at just 18?

You tell her that a greater good is going to come out of almost her whole family being murdered by your heartless monster of a god. The greater good here would have been the flood stopping by your house, you soulless creep.

So now you are going to sit around in your churches with your fingers in your ears telling yourself that god really really is going to make some lemonade out of these lemons this time, I swear it. He didn't really after that earthquake in Iran or the one in Japan or the tsunami or 9/11 or at any other time in history (the black plague? Noah's flood?) but this time it will happen. I know it will. Hey, don't we need to talk about tax breaks? MBM Number 7 is almost the most illogical of all these idiots.

But now, a touch of sanity:

Ted Steinberg, a professor of history at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, argues in his 2000 book, "Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America," that Americans have often seen divine will in earthquakes, floods and droughts whose consequences have been worsened by improper planning.

In his opinion "as an atheist," he said, Katrina "was an unnatural disaster if ever there was one." By building levees along the Mississippi and draining marshland, he said, the Army Corps of Engineers and local officials hastened the sinking of New Orleans below sea level and destroyed the barrier islands that protected the Gulf Coast.

"Blaming God," he said, "is moral hand-washing."

Gee, it takes the atheist to inject a little sense in this discussion. As it almost always does.

This really is a lose-lose situation for the religoids. If god did kill all those people and ruin New Orleans, then he is a monster. If he just sat back and allowed it to happen and didn't lift a finger to help, he is a monster. If he didn't do anything because he really isn't there, he is an imaginary monster. In any case, screw him and the boat he flooded in on. I wouldn't want to be in any club he was a part of.

posted by corsair the rational pirate at 14:18

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