"If, as some say, God spanked the townFor being over frisky,Why did He burn the churches downAnd save Hotaling's whiskey?"
by George Will
When the 1755 Lisbon earthquake killed 60,000, "priests roved around the ruins, selecting at random those they believed guilty of heresy and thus to blame for annoying the Divine, who in turn had ordered up the disaster. The priests had them hanged on the spot."
The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in what is now Indonesia fueled the growth of an extremist strain of Islam, bent on purging society of impurities displeasing to God. That strain has twice recently been heard from in Bali.
This is why the nutcases like Pat Robertson have to be thought of as, well, nutcases and disregarded lest they spawn more nutcases. Too late, huh.
Seriously, there are always those who hop aboard the media circus that surrounds a disaster, looking to enrich themselves while the enriching is good. Scientists can laugh off old silly Pat by providing proof positive that the frequency of natural disasters hasn't changed much over the last few millions years, but look at what is happening to science itself today. People prone to believe that an an invisible man lives in the clouds are also prone to listen to the earthly shaman's who claim they have a direct line to such a deity, and haven't we seen enough of what zealots will do in the name of their god?
Every time I feel we've taken a step forward as a species, the witch doctors prove me wrong, so what do I know.
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