It is a real tragedy what happened or what is happening in Haiti, but this kind of thing just pisses me off. This article quotes a religious man in the midst of the chaos. Rev (You can tell from this that the man has no real qualifications) Eric Toussaint said -
Besides the bit about the the killing of the looters, the rest of the article is about humanitarian aid that is pouring in to the country. Right at the end of the article, this Rev fellow shows what a prick he really is!
That’s right Eric, you arrogant prat, an invisible man in the sky lay in bed thinking “Mmmm, I have a plan for Eric, but first…let me kill thousands of innocent men, woman and children; let me slaughter their pets too; let me cause the collapse of all government services…hehe, I’ll bring the place to its knees! Then Eric, my precious (To be said in your best Gollumian voice), can step up to the plate…”
Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!! It just grates me!
Click on the picture to link to some Google images of the destruction etc. These kinds of disasters are horrible…and no, they don’t happen because Eric has such a high opinion of himself!
Delivering his quotes Pat Robertson said, “Haitians had an agreement with the devil to remove the French from their homeland Haiti and the Haitians succeeded in that agreement with the devil assistance, that is why this quake hit smashed Haiti and ruined the Haitians.” He also added, quake was a devil blessing for Haitians so they could readdress themselves to God.
But you don’t understand! It’s those darn Haitians exercising their god-given free will injudiciously and going against their heavenly father’s will. That incensed him deeply because he loves everyone infinitely, including all those errant Haitians. He decided to teach them a sound lesson to get them back on the right path. He was very gracious and wise to include many children, babies and infants who suffered and died because now several of them, though not all, are with him, safely away from the horror and carnage and bloodshed and destruction that is his infinite mercy and compassion. And who are you to question that, hmm?
It is actually a pity that Mabus didn’t consult the oracle that is the writings of Nostradamus, and warned us all of this earthquake. He could’ve saved many lives.
I am however, sure he’s pouring over those same writings this very second to look for retro-active proof that it was PREDICTED! Wait, I feel that there’s a logical failure here somewhere…
The following extract from Candide by Voltaire refers to earthquakes that struck Lisbon in 1795. Candide is fiction, but the religious zealotry is not:
After the earthquake, which had destroyed three-fourths of the city of Lisbon, the sages of that country could think of no means more effectual to preserve the kingdom from utter ruin than to entertain the people with an auto-da-fé, it having been decided by the University of Coimbra that burning a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible secret for preventing earthquakes.
In consequence, they had rounded up a Biscayner for marrying his godmother, and two Portuguese who, while eating a chicken, had set aside a piece of bacon used for seasoning. After dinner, they came and secured Dr. Pangloss and his pupil Candide, the one for speaking his mind, and the other for seeming to approve what he said. They were taken separately to extremely cool apartments, where they were never botherd by the glare of the sun. Eight days afterwards they were each dressed in a san-benito, and their heads were adorned with paper mitres. The mitre and san-benito worn by Candide were painted with upside-down flames and with devils that had neither tails nor claws; but Dr. Pangloss’s devils had both tails and claws, and his flames were upright. In these costumes they marched in procession, and heard a very pathetic sermon, which was followed by an anthem accompanied by bagpipes. Candide was flogged to the cadence of the anthem; the Biscayner and the two men who would not eat bacon were burnt; and Pangloss was hanged, though hangings were not a common custom at these solemnities. The same day there was another earthquake, which caused most dreadful havoc.
…from which satire we have adopted the adjective “panglossian” to describe someone who is incessantly and naïvely optimistic to the point of ignoring reality.
Oh, come now! Everyone knows that a volcanic eruption can be averted by tossing a virgin into the crater every now and then, but Earthquakes? Phht! Believe this and you’ll believe anything.
Randi comments on a commenter’s gormless comments. An archbishop’s, nogal. Why are religious “leaders” and “authorities” so often so infuriatingly, blankly banal? Is this man perhaps senile? Does he suffer from Alzheimer’s?
Perhaps the most telling point in his unspeakably dim theodicy is that innocent people died in this disaster because they needed reminding that they are (or, in many cases, were) fragile and vulnerable, and that they need each other and the archbishop’s version of god.
Ya lives and ya learns. :
ETA: If these are supposed to be this god’s moral lessons, it’s really odd how much outrage their various interpretations can provoke.
If these believers think the earthquake was an act of God, someone should mention that the rescue missions were an act of Man. What gets my goat about all the “miracle” testimonies is that it’s only survivors who will have a testimony in the first place. What … did God ignore all the other 1000s of prayers and answer only yours? Get friggen real! Then again, gullibility and credulity are prerequisites for faith in the first place.
The first thing I thought when hearing this news about Haiti was…
Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un (Surely we belong to Allah (God) and to Him (God) shall we return).
The second thing was…
Sura – 4 Women (Al-Nesaa’)
[4:78] Wherever you are, death will catch up with you, even if you live in formidable castles. When something good happens to them, they say, “This is from GOD,” and when something bad afflicts them, they blame you. Say, “Everything comes from GOD.” Why do these people misunderstand almost everything?
[4:79] Anything good that happens to you is from GOD, and anything bad that happens to you is from you. We have sent you as a messenger to the people, and GOD suffices as witness.
Even if I suspend disbelief and for a moment and postulate that a God/Allah exists… To say that he is responsible for absolutely everything, good and bad, is still beyond my comprehension. Is there then no place for satan? What is satan then responsible for? And demons, if everything in this world happens because God wills it, then surely demons and satan cannot affect anything and are inconsequential. Moreover, if men do not have free will and everything they do are “ordained”, then whether one is faithful or not, a saint or a sinner, nurse or killer, is not in the control of the individual and he shouldn’t be rewarded for it, nor punished for it.
To be blunt nazzeem, I don’t think any of us are going to be swayed by some nebulous quotes from any holy book you care to quote. God does not exist.
I am assuming that you hold with the above citation and that it is meant as some kind of defence or divine justification for the tragic events in Haiti. If that is so, I find myself wondering exactly what sorts of things those very many little Haitian children and babies did to bring such wrath down upon themselves – children and babies who were injured, maimed or killed, and/or robbed of their parents or siblings.
I’d appreciate it if you would clear this up for me.
ETA: Please note that in an endeavour not to overcomplicate matters, I am ignoring for now the profound ontological difficulty inherent in saying, on the one hand, that your god made everything, presumably including me, and on the other that if bad things happen to me, your god had nothing to do with those occurrences. This logical misconnect, while glaring, should not discourage the requested clarification.
It would seem that you have a point. It was a pact that the Haitian’s made with the devil that resulted in the Haitian earthquake! (We won’t discuss plate tectonics or poor building standards in one of the poorest countries in the Americas - that would be silly!)
Pat Robertson - a firm believer in the god of the Bible, not the god of the Koran - seemed to think that the Haitian’s all sat under a tree and an planned a takeover with the devil that resulted in the earthquake. His god apparently also dishes out the good stuff. Not sure what kind of arrangement they have and who gets credit for what? They have some stiff competition though…
Man does not know what the future holds, but the opposite is true for the past. As most of what happened are recorded in history. Depending on where you get the information from, most of it is true.
I think one should understand the story of Prophet Abraham (peace be upon him) to get a better picture of what I was thinking. If I’m not mistaken, the whole town including his wife were destroyed.
As for the devil… The story goes;
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
Does God exist;
Surely in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the marvels contained in them, and in the alternation of night and day, coming and going, increasing and diminishing, there are signs, indications of God’s power, for people of pith, for people possessing intellects.
We should also remember what happened with Stephen Hawking when making statements like “God does not exist.”
We should also remember what happened with Stephen Hawking when making statements like "God does not exist."
You become a household name the world over, reach the highest spheres of academia, in spite of an debilitating illness? .And go on to make some very worthy contributions to man’s knowledge of the universe. Of course, people like Albert Einstein die at the ripe old age of 76, also being hailed as one of the brightest people to ever walk the earth, working up until his very last days. (A lot of religious people I know aren’t that lucky) All this after proclaiming: “I do not believe in a personal god”.
Of course, I can tell you my successes in my job and life has been much the same after I became an atheist, no great tragedy has befallen me, in fact I’m doing better than ever. (To which you will of course say “YET!”). Many people I know (including those I meet at SITP), seem to be doing quite well despite claiming “God does not exist” for years on end, some even being raised atheist from birth. (Or, you could say, raised with no religion). What you are picking on is just one brilliant man who was unfortunate enough to suffer from a bad disease. One that many religious people also suffer from. I also have yet to hear of anything that bad happening to Richard Dawkins, or Sam Harris, or Christopher Hitchens. They all are perfectly fine despite leading the charge against religion.
In the end you realize: People get sick. Religious ones or atheist ones, doesn’t seem to matter.
