God Versus Science In Moore, Oklahoma
BY SAM FIELDS
If there was one thing that was predictable in the news coverage of the Moore, Oklahoma tornado it was the survivors “thanking the Lord”.
It was, therefore, amusing to see the link that I was sent by a Browardbeat.com reader.
In it CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asks a mom holding her baby if she wanted to “thank the Lord” for the survival of her family.
Not likely she told Blitzer. She was an atheist.
I’m pretty sure that was the minority view in Moore. But what if you believe that this was all the work of an All-Powerful, All-Knowing Supernatural Being?
The obvious and inexorable conclusion is that the Almighty is also to blame for the death of 24…including the seven third-graders.
If Believers are right, you gotta wonder what those little bastards did to so piss off Jesus that he killed’em?
Since 1999, Moore, Oklahoma has experienced multiple tornados including two F-5 catastrophes. If all this is the work of God, than that place must be a regular Sodom and Gomorrah.
But how could that be? As evidenced by the TV interviews of the locals, the only thing that exceeds the number of churches in Moore must be the number of McDonalds.
Or is there another explanation for the tornados and other natural disasters that have recently made Oklahoma “Ground Zero” for an angry Mother Nature”?
And it’s not only tornados. It’s drought and a spate of earthquakes that have recently struck the “Godfearin’ Okies”.
Of the 1200 or so tornados that we annually experience, no more than one is an F-5. So what are the odd of the same town getting hit twice by F-5’s in 14 years?
Is it God, bad luck or the wrong end of climate change?
Science says that it’s the latter two.
The mentality of Okies, as propounded by its political leaders, says otherwise.
Senator James Inhofe (R. Ok) is the Senate’s most ardent climate change denier. Sounding like a Holocaust Denier, he calls it a “hoax” perpetrated by Al Gore, Michael Moore and Hollywood elites. [Since John Wayne and Charlton Heston died, are there any other kind?]
Inhofe’s rants are not surprising in a state economically dominated by fossil fuels.
It does not change the facts that human activity has caused the degree of climate change that has led to weather extremes including thunderstorms (Think tornados.) and the multiyear drought that now afflicts the Midwest and Southwest.
Add to that a growing body of evidence that the search for fossil fuels, through the method known as “hydraulic fracking,” is promoting earthquakes in places like Oklahoma.
Fracking is a way of releasing fossil fuels by injecting liquids into rocks deep in the earth. Scientists now seem sure that a 5.7 earthquake that struck Oklahoma in 2011 was induced by fracking.
The scientists at The U.S. Geological Survey and the National Academy of Science have looked at the recent spike in seismic activity near fracking sites. Since 2009, the number of earthquakes greater than 3 on the Richter Scale has increased from 1.2 per year to 25!
In a report, the scientists conclude that this is “almost certainly manmade.”
Of course, they’re just a bunch of atheist scientists. Who would believe them?
In Moore, Oklahoma they know better. Earthquakes come from Jesus bowling.
May 24th, 2013 at 12:17 pm
Don’t forget Westboro’s take on the root cause of the disaster…
Westboro Baptist Church Member Blames Oklahoma Tornado On Jason Collins’ Coming Out
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/westboro-oklahoma-tornado-_n_3312712.html
May 24th, 2013 at 1:28 pm
Sam;
I will say a prayer for you … you fucking heathen.
On a tangentially related note.
By definition, intellect, or “reason” is the ability to revise one’s beliefs in light of better argumentation. Taking simple, empirical data from the the world around you should make it easy to determine that the physical laws of the universe DO NOT CHANGE. It therefore stands to reason that “miracles” can only possible be one of two phenomena: A, an outside agent actually interfering with the laws of the universe; or B, hyperbolized coincidences. Considering the Bible was written in a time when allegory was the most common form of journalistic reporting and most people still believed spitting on a wound was an appropriate way to cure it, it is far more reasonable to assume the latter.
May 24th, 2013 at 5:37 pm
Why can you not, just once, leave people of faith alone. It appears that you are not at peace yourself until the hatred you continually spew, at and about everyone with whom you disagree, has washed over each and every one of us. Stop it, please, just stop it. Just once, try to be a positive force in the world.
May 24th, 2013 at 8:01 pm
NBC reports that tomorrow May 25 …..northern New England expecting snow..
May 24th, 2013 at 10:52 pm
Chaz, the laws of the universe are only constant from our perspective. As the universe continues to cool and expand from the big bang, they change in the future. Just the same prior to the bang and when the universe was in a superheated state, the laws of nature were different.
May 25th, 2013 at 9:08 am
Dear Garl,
I’ll leave “people of faith” alone when they start leaving me alone.
In my country ( I don’t know which one you are from) “people of faith” are using their “faith” to take over the body politic and ram their beliefs down our throats and do it with our tax dollars:
Government: Pay for our schools and churches
Require public schools teachers to recite our supernatural incantations
Don’t make us pay taxes
Etc., etc
Worldwide, “people of faith” kill by the millions and oppress by the billions because they believe their faith is better than some other guy’s faith.
In reality all supernatural faith is bullshit. I will continue to point that out.
May 25th, 2013 at 12:50 pm
As for country, I am from THIS one, born and reared. As for THIS country, faith in a greater power which you so liberally trash was the reason for its founding, and played a major role in the very formulation of its government. So, trash it if you must, but remember that in so doing you are trashing the very essence of this place which gives you the right and opportunity to spew, year after year, your hatred of all things to which you do not personally subscribe. Shame on you, you egomaniac. And oh, by the way, all of those people of faith who killed all those millions of people just happened to be men. So, one could ask, is it gender or faith which caused the problem…
May 25th, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Sam Fields is proof that Global Warming is man-made. Earth’s temperature goes up ten degrees every time that blowhard opens his mouth.
May 25th, 2013 at 1:35 pm
sam does that mean i dream of jeannie and bewitched aren’t real? and what about all those disney movies? i’m shattered
May 25th, 2013 at 4:14 pm
>> faith in a greater power which you so liberally trash was the reason for its founding
Actually, you should study your American History a wee bit closer.
May 25th, 2013 at 4:20 pm
1. God drowns the whole earth.
In Genesis 7:21-23, God drowns the entire population of the earth: men, women, children, fetuses, and perhaps unicorns. Only a single family survives. In Matthew 24:37-42, gentle Jesus approves of this genocide and plans to repeat it when he returns.
2. God kills half a million people.
In 2 Chronicles 13:15-18, God helps the men of Judah kill 500,000 of their fellow Israelites.
3. God slaughters all Egyptian firstborn.
In Exodus 12:29, God the baby-killer slaughters all Egyptian firstborn children and cattle because their king was stubborn.
May 25th, 2013 at 5:07 pm
@7 – Garl, faith wasn’t the reason for the nation’s founding…
https://www.au.org/resources/publications/is-america-a-christian-nation
But you end with a very good observation: “… all of those people of faith who killed all those millions of people just happened to be men. So, one could ask, is it gender or faith which caused the problem…”
More precisely, it is the social acceptance of gender discrimination which is a key factor. Societies mature enough to effectively eliminate gender discrimination gain in the process of doing so the ability to confront and control bigotry, which is the direct motive for most mass killings.
However, as a Washington Post writer recently pointed out, “… let me be clear: gender discrimination is pervasive within almost all religion.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/religion-lays-foundation-for-gender-discrimination/2011/04/13/AFoNzEYD_blog.html
May 26th, 2013 at 10:46 am
We’re now told, by the religious zealots, not to take the bible literally, for it’s really only a template of sorts.
In other words, cherry pick those passages that support your needs, and throw away anything else that might prove problematic (aka rape, incest, bestiality, murder, plunder, slaughter of children).
So, then, what was once “the word of god (pun!), is not a Mad Lib of sorts.
What then is the critical thinker supposed to believe?
Here’s one of my favorite biblical thought-experiments.
If Jesus is the one true messiah, the only God, whom you shall hath no other gods before him, yada yada, how come so many gods DID come before him having nearly identical biographies? There are no less than two dozen god-men of the ancient Mediterranean whose birth was heralded by a bright star in the East (Sirius, for those who don’t practice astronomy), who were also adored by wise men, walked on water, fed the hungry, resurrected the dead, were crucified and rose again, etc.
Many even had the same birthday as Jesus – December 25th!
Not coincidentally, this was the Roman Holiday of Saturnalia centuries before the clergy decided to call it Jesus’ birthday. Surprise! Christians plagiarized earlier religions.
I cannot spell it out any clearer than that.
Knowing that, how can one believe anything Christian doctrine teaches? How do you even begin to separate what was invented from what was borrowed? You don’t. The cold, hard truth is, it was an old story then, and it’s an old story now. These messianic archetypes – the man that is god, the man who conquers death – existed long, long before Jesus came around. They were old news when soap was a cutting-edge technology, before written language was even invented. They are ancient fucking history. Jesus was not the antitype of these messianic figures, he was their distillation.
If you are skeptical of this information (and you should be, as doubt is the seed of all knowing), investigate the matter for yourself.
One hugely recurring problem I find when debating with Christians is that they either know very little about other religions or are ignorant of their existence entirely.
This is counter-intuitive to me, and perhaps my own fault in failing to understand the religious mind. Shouldn’t it be fairly crucial to make the most educated decision in choosing a religion, if practicing the “right” one is important to you?
For example, you wouldn’t want to choose a religion based on plagiarism, would you? Or one that literally absorbed every earlier belief system it encountered through endless politicizing or the diplomacy of the sword? Well, better crack those books then – there’s a whole heap of gods who fit the Christ mold long before Christ.
I suggest you begin by researching Mithra of Rome, Attis of Frigia, Dionysis of Greece, Krishna of India, and Horus of Egypt.
The last should be of particular interest to you, as his mythology is almost an exact carbon copy of Jesus’, right down to the twelve apostles and three-day rebound time after being murdered by jealous clergy. Though, I should point out that Horus was worshipped nearly 1000 years BEFORE Christianity began spreading through the Hebrew-populated Roman colonies.
This should come as no surprise to you, as it’s written right in the bible that the Hebrews came out of Egypt.
May 26th, 2013 at 11:35 pm
i don’t think most people choose their religion. it’s more like they are brainwashed into it from birth. very few can look from the outside in. and so many want it to be true, otherwise they would have nothing, because they are too scared to live without someone or something telling them how to live or guiding them. sad but true…
May 27th, 2013 at 10:20 am
All of these preachy, hard-right, ultra-conservatives think they are going to heaven to be with their god. That alone is a case for polytheism. With all of the things they do in “his” name, if I believed in god I could not believe in the god of a bunch of haters. Plus, spending eternity with all of the hypocritical hater would a sentence in hell.