Thursday 12 February 2009

The wrath of god

It had to happen. The religious are shameless at using tragedy to score cheap points in dubious support of their blinkered views. The current situation in Australia has caused an enormous amount of suffering, with 300 dead and hundreds of houses destroyed, communities shattered and lives disrupted.

While the first thoughts of most of us are with the victims, certain religious people are rubbing their hands together with glee because they can blame it on 'sin', in this case, abortion.

It is unclear why god would choose to punish humanity for allowing new abortion laws to be passed in Victoria and even less clear why he would do so in just about the least just way imaginable. You'd have thought he'd find a less cryptic and more merciful way to point out the error of his creation which - naturally - he already knew would happen.

But there you go. There's nothing new in this kind of thing and no logic has ever been required. The tragedy in New Orleans was blamed on one lesbian comedian who lived there (you'd think god's aim might be a little better than that). Following the tsunami in 2004 that killed 350,000 people, the religious were falling over each other to blame it on various brands of what they considered sexual immorality. Even the floods in the North West of England in 2005 was blamed - by Anglican bishops - on pro-gay legislation.

It's amazing that homosexuality continues to be practiced with all this smiting going on.

Edit: the pope recently promoted this guy to bishop. He's quite a charmer, blaming both Katrina and the Tsunami on unspecified sexual immorality.
"It is surely not an accident that all five of New Orleans' abortion clinics, as well as nightclubs were destroyed,"
he wrote, neglecting to mention that New Orleans had one of the most highly religious populations in the world or that churches were also destroyed. Cartoonishly, he also has it in for Harry Potter for spreading a slightly different brand of witchcraft to him.

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