Natural events eclipsed the human tempest (threatened department merger or elimination) my colleagues and I have been preoccupied with lately. A young mother and her 9-week old infant lost their lives and home in an instant, as a tornado gouged an ugly ten-mile swathe through this region yesterday.
Inevitably, obscenely, survivors rushed to thank God for sparing THEM.
A grinning buffoon of a minister, sporting a tee-shirt reading: "Give Blood: Play Hockey," cheerfully announced that he and his congregants couldn't wait - on this Good Friday - to see what exciting thing the Lord would cook up next.
Survivors solemnly insisted: "It's God's work." Great. As George Carlin used to wonder, incredulously: "'God's will'? Who does this guy think He is?"
Bertrand Russell had a saner perspective:
It is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascisti, and Mr. Winston Churchill?
Or storms that randomly steal the lives of young mothers and their infants?
Inevitably, obscenely, survivors rushed to thank God for sparing THEM.
A grinning buffoon of a minister, sporting a tee-shirt reading: "Give Blood: Play Hockey," cheerfully announced that he and his congregants couldn't wait - on this Good Friday - to see what exciting thing the Lord would cook up next.
Survivors solemnly insisted: "It's God's work." Great. As George Carlin used to wonder, incredulously: "'God's will'? Who does this guy think He is?"
Bertrand Russell had a saner perspective:
It is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascisti, and Mr. Winston Churchill?
Or storms that randomly steal the lives of young mothers and their infants?
Charles Darwin (
Posts
1 comment:
"I just don't know how people without faith can get through catastrophes like this... It's a blessing from God." God bless.
http://tennessean.com/article/20090413/NEWS06/904130344/-1/NLETTER01?source=nletter-news
Post a Comment