It has become routine in the wake of some major tragedy for some religious idiot to say that it was punishment from god for something or other. The only question is who will enter that swamp first. This time Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association and Republican huckster Mike Huckabee who do the honors, saying that god did not prevent this unspeakable tragedy because of the fact that school-sponsored prayer and Bible readings and the Ten Commandments are no longer permitted in public school classrooms.
I was a little surprised by this, to be honest. It is one thing to talk about god punishing entire communities of people with hurricanes, earthquakes, and even gunshots for the sins of the adults, with any children that are killed being collateral damage, so to speak. There is Biblical precedent for that, since presumably a large number of infants and toddlers were killed during Noah’s flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because of the wickedness of the adults.
But it is quite another to invoke god when the targets themselves are very young children whom we normally think of as innocent (apart from their Original Sin, of course). To say that god deliberately allows the killing of twenty elementary school children because he is ticked off at US Supreme Court decisions on the Establishment Clause would seem to be a bit much for even a devout Christian to swallow and so I did not expect such a response this time and I am surprised that Fischer and Huckabee actually went there.
Perhaps these two are so used to using any tragedy to make a political point that they reflexively say these things without thinking it quite through. On the other hand, maybe they truly believe that god targets children and maybe enough people agree with them. After all, there is precedent for that too, in his murdering of the first-born children of every Egyptian family in response to Pharaoh’s recalcitrance in freeing the captive Israelites.
The Bible seems to have precedents for any atrocity that can be attributed to god. Fortunately, most of those things never happened and are the stuff of myths. Unfortunately, too many people believe that they are actual events and can be taken as indicators of what their god can and will do.
I am surprised that Fischer and Huckabee actually went there.
Why? They’re losers and they have nothing left to lose. So they’re unrestrained by taste, decency, or common sense.
Fischer and Huckabee are complaining about not being able to indoctrinate children with their fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity.
I’ve made essentially this same comment on Dispatches:
I’m guessing that God “hardened the parents’ hearts” to keep him out of their schools just so he’d have an excuse to allow the kids killed. I mean, there is precedent for that, right?
These people really do have a very low opinion of their god. Presumably, being such complete bell-ends themselves, they don’t actually see anything wrong in their god’s revolting behaviour.
The thing is guys, your god is an evil monster. Given that your god is an evil monster, those who oppose him are, by definition, the good guys. You might like to claim that your god is all powerful, that what your god says is right, is right, because your god says so. I have news for you, your god may have been pretty powerful when ignorance was commonplace, but knowledge is sort of like kryptonite to your god. His powers have been reduced so much that the best he can do nowadays is make faces on toast.
These guys are way off the mark. The real reason this had to happen was because we have forgotten God’s laws in our schools by allowing people to mix linen and woolen fabrics. Or maybe it is the part about husbands being too friendly with their wives during the 7 days she is unclean after having her period.
May I correct you a bit? It’s even worse. The killing of Egyptian firstborns wasn’t a response to any Pharaoh’s decision.
And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.
And you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my first-born son,
and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me”; if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay your first-born son.'” Ex 4:21-23
honestly if the christian god existed, the only morally non-reprehensible thing to do would be devoting ones life to fighting it. in fact in a setting where the world is controlled by an immortal nonhuman psychopath with no sense of love empathy or good taste, driven entirely my rage and petty dickishness, its human pawns are just about the most despicable thing there is.