America Needs Fatima, a project of the right-wing American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, is linking the tornadoes that hit Illinois this weekend to the state’s recent approval of a marriage equality bill. Robert Ritchie, the group’s executive director, is just asking the question:
Do you think the massive Illinois tornadoes are linked to the passing of the same sex “marriage” bill?
The massive tornadoes that hit Illinois after the passing of the same sex “marriage” bill, has stimulated many people to reflection.
In it, some see God’s chastisement; others see it as yet one more merciful warning from Providence; others yet deny both options and give various reasons.
What do you think?
Ritchie also offers a link to an America Needs Fatima article, “Is the Voice of God Resounding in the Recent Catastrophes,” which blames homosexuality for several natural disasters.
What do you think?
It’s a non-argument
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/11/12/super-typhoon-haiyan-suffering-and-the-sin-of-climate-change-denial
Why do you have to explain that we know gays don’t cause tornados? Why do you have to explain that ruining the planet is a moral question? I feel sad for gays. I feel sad for all of us. What an atrocity. Would it be any better if the preacher asked, maybe almighty didn’t like and was going to destroy you or somebody else because of it. Oh, and I’m just asking. Its like telling a horror story to a child as a good night story.
Occam’s Razor applies here. Take “Murphy’s Law” (if anything can go wrong, it will). Apply it to a chain of logical inferences, and you get Occam’s Razor: the explanation with the fewest logical inferences wins (fewer things to go wrong). Clearly, this depends on the phenomenon being explained. Modern Physics seems to posit that the 10-space of the Universe is a projection of a fewer-dimensional gravity-free quantum-mechanics-compliant-verse. Physicists may be encouraged because of the fewer dimensions (Occam’s Razor, again) (also, a resolution of that century-old conflict between quanta and gravity). And while this is still plenty complicated, consider that they are trying to explain black holes, not tornadoes.
In a world where 21st century Physics is close to explaining black hole event horizons, its difficult to comprehend the efforts of the ‘saved’ to use gays to explain the phenomenon of tornadoes, which are mostly explained by 19th century Physics. Defending ‘Tradition’ shouldn’t mean rescinding Physics to an earlier, ‘friendlier’ 17th century version, when anything could be solved by a good Witch-burning.
Glenn Beck hired Barton to teach at his online university. Barton is also considering running for the Senate.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/31/possible-senate-candidate-david-barton-climate-change-is-gods-judgement-for-abortion/
People like Barton and Copeland are either suffering from a mental disorder or they are fraudsters (most likely). The problem is that a significant chunk of the population is crazy and when they look at them they see decent rational people and really believe that they talk directly to God. Religion is their alternative explanation of reality, science is irrelevant, and unfortunately they have a vote.
Even if you believe in religion, and there are some good people like Katherine Kayhoe that do, you should still believe in compassion towards the family of life. The driving force of our compassion and our desire to understand is moral, not in a narrowly defined religious sense defined by any particular religion, but in all encompassing sense of respect for and love of life. There are some that just plain don’t get right and wrong and don’t know it. Barton displays a disturbing obsession with viewing and judging what everyone else is doing, with out an introspection about being judged. He that soweth discord among brethren. A heart that devises wicked plots? Evil is thick and deep. Even atheists understand evil.
I must admit this charge goes well beyond the scope of known intelligence- but the GOP no longer has any known cognitive thinking- just mindless chatter about the greatness of greed and stupidity.
“Gaydom causes tornadoes, REPENT!” is a call for a religious-right witch hunt.
“Cultural racism causes Black and Hispanic crime and economic failure” is the clarion call of the Marxist PC/MC witch hunt.
Guess whose witch hunt is actually claiming innocent victims?
Why Golden Dawn of course. The nazi anti immigration group. Remember that darling of your philosophy? That bastion of love and tolerance?
I’m having trouble guessing the meaning of ‘MC’. As for your question; you tell me.
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/december/annual-hate-crimes-report-released/annual-hate-crimes-report-released
MC is “multi-cultural”.
As in, “all cultures are equally valid”, but you can’t even suggest that people change from a culture that’s blatantly failing to help them succeed to the one which obviously does, because that’s racist.
Oh, and if you’re White, all the failures are your fault. Whether you’re present, as in integrated suburban school systems, or absent, as in monochrome urban school systems or whole nations across an ocean.
Who gets to define what is “success” and what is “failure”? Native Americans lived in the United States for many years before Europeans showed up. Their life spans were actually longer than those of the Europeans, but their lack of alteration of the landscape was seen as “decadence” by the Europeans. We do not all accept the same standards of “success.” For some of us, living harmoniously in accord with our natural environment IS “success.” Some people see technology, social hierarchies, and political entropy as “success.” I guess it’s all a matter of perspective, eh?
Actually , there is considerable evidence that Native Americans DID “alter the landscape” in significant ways, particularly with fire. Just not in ways that the Europeans who came here to have “dominion” and exploit for immediate gain could recognize or understand.
The Native Americans made some mistakes, but their overall goal was, as you said, “living harmoniously in accord with our natural environment” and sustaining it for the use of future generations.
Too bad we slaughtered so many of them before we could learn from them. But of course, capitalism, free markets, and the hubris of “manifest destiny” required it.
I would suggest that while they did “alter” their environment to some extent, it was not so drastic as we might think. The aboriginals of Australia have been using fire for thousands of years to alter not only the landscape, but as a method of sending ashy particulate into the atmosphere, which altered weather patterns. While many modern technologists might suggest that they had no “real” notion of weather control, their actions did accomplish their goals, so who are we to question what they knew or did not know? I believe there are places in Africa where indigenous peoples did similar things, but I am not as aware of what was done, and to what extent such things were done there.
As a person of Choctaw, African, and French ancestry myself (Cajun/Creole), I am not personally aware of any similar uses of fire in the Western Hemisphere, though I could just be unaware. I have looked into as much of my own native ancestry and their practices as possible, and I live in New Mexico USA, where I interact with Native Americans often.
I am aware of the manner in which Hopi, Pueblo, Navajo, and other Southwestern Tribes constructed and managed the dwellings they occupied historically, but they tended to build into and on top of, rather than vastly alter any landscape. I am in the process of learning more about as many of the practices as possible, but Hopi and Pueblo peoples are very protective of their traditions, and much of their tradition is not made accessible to non-tribal members.
You are correct, however, in that Europeans did establish a policy of mass destruction of tribes and their practices. The policies they enacted were part of the “Pillars of Calvinism,” which were codified at the Synod of Dortdrecht in the 17th century, as a less than spiritual way to give Dutch Industrialists greater control of commerce by equating “work” with “salvation” and suggesting that “good works,” or charity, is not a significant path towards attaining “Heaven.” It seems to have worked well. It continues to this day. Max Weber wrote a rebuttal to this in his “Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” but Weber was labeled as a something of what is now called a “Bleeding heart,” and dismissed by a number of influential people of the time. But, we have Capitalism in its most virulent form currently, so something was missed.
If you are using Native Americans as the standard, you obviously mean holding territory and building a population and society on it. NA’s did this with warfare, including genocide; the ethnic group represented by Kennewick Man has no living descendants that we know of.
And when European Man showed up, Native American Man lost the competition. If you’re going to rule the NA’s possession of the Americas legitimate, you also have to grant legitimacy to anyone winning by the same means.
And you’ll only do so if you can defend your natural environment from those who want to take it from you.
E-Pot obviously needs attention today, since he is waging war on several threads. And he is in such a hurry, he suffers some logic fails.
He conflates the “competition” between NA tribes that went on for many thousands of years WITHOUT destroying the vast majority of the NA’s or the environment with what occurred when the Europeans arrive here. Now THAT was genocide and destruction—-herds of tens of millions of bison reduced to only a few hundred survivors and the NA’s decimated, driven from their homes, and shoved onto reservations.
I think that was “obviously meant” was not “holding territory and building a population and society on it”, but just living in reasonable harmony and balance with nature.
“…you also have to grant legitimacy to anyone winning by the same means” is almost beyond comment. I will just point out that the logic fail there is the use of “same means”
The “grand pronouncement” at the end is just plain awesome in its mindlessness. “You’ll only do so if you can defend your natural environment from those who want to take it from you”. As if the NA had any sort of chance at a fair fight against the European predators. Kind of like the Poles when the Nazis invaded?
He is reading the “American Exceptionalist” textbooks from Texas, apparently.
Apparently, you have been reading a lot of history from Texas textbooks. It is true that Native Americans had territorial disputes, but I would stop watching old John Wayne movies for your version of Native History. I would suggest your read the History of the United States by Howard Zinn if you would like a SLIGHTLY more accurate version of Native History. Also, what you suggested is a bit more like what the Calvinists said as justification for killing them. If you would like a list of books written by people not coveting the land they were on, I can suggest a few.
So far as archaeology can determine, the Native Americans destroyed all of the North American megafauna within a generation or two of crossing the Bering land bridge. The Maori did the same in New Zealand (the Dodo went extinct within historical memory, and Europeans had nothing to do with it).
Nothing the Commanche didn’t do when they felt like it. Europeans were just better at warfare, and also better at mercy; once their enemy was beaten, they (mostly) let them live peacefully. Somewhere. They weren’t like the Aztecs or Maori, who sacrificed or even ate their conquered foes.
The NA’s has a whole continent. They had tens of thousands of years. They had massive resources. Why was it the Vikings who made it to Labrador first, and not e.g. Iroquois discovering Ireland and Denmark?
That, my friend, is a question you cannot answer if all you read is “The Mismeasure of Man” and “Guns, Germs and Steel”. You need to at least expand your conceptual vocabulary with “The Ten-Thousand Year Explosion”.
Life is too short to argue with people who know all and make authoritative pronouncements laden with logic fails and misinformation (and also constantly bring up side issues to divert the conversation).
Like “The Native Americans destroyed all of the North American megafauna within a generation or two of crossing the Bering land bridge” Really? That’s only 50-some years—didn’t it take them a lot longer to spread out to where all the megafauna were? And I seem to remember reading that climate change after the retreat of the glaciers caused massive habitat change, and that killed off the megafauna more than the NA’s did.
And we want to talk about a comparatively small population of birds on a small island and compare it to the huge herds of bison that roamed much of a continent? (To say nothing of the fact that Mauritius, the small island where the Dodo lived was probably never visited by the Maori of New Zealand. AND European sailors who hunted them for food and predation and competition from non-native species introduced by Europeans were among the reasons they died out, so Europeans DID have something to do with it) Fact check, E-Pot? You’re probably thinking of the Moa, another large flightless bird that DID live in New Zealand and became extinct before the “white man” arrived.
And “Nothing the Commanche didn’t do when they felt like it” An occasional slaughter of a few hundred by the Comanche equates to systemic genocide? And Maori are Native Americans? And the Aztecs are hardly typical of the NA’s we’re talking about.
And “Why was it the Vikings who made it to Labrador first, and not e.g. Iroquois discovering Ireland and Denmark?” That conveniently ignores the fact that the NA’s DID “get” to Labrador “first” and that the NA culture was more attuned to living in harmony with nature in a locality rather than sailing all over the world. From what I can recall reading, the NA’s built few large vessels, and even then only sailed up and down the coasts to hunt, fish, and trade.
Thanks dumboldguy! I could not have said that better myself! Right on! It is amazing what some people portend to be “historical fact” that is more reminiscent of a rant by Glenn Beck than anything that is considered consensus by the experts in the field. I have heard people like Pat Robertson, for example, talk about the history of India and Asia and make vast errors in the scope of statements, along with factual errors too numerous to even take seriously – it is clear that they were deliberate deceptions.
Many people represent themselves as “experts” and make assertions. Until extremely recently, the ONLY people making assertions that there was doubt about the impact of mankind’s activities on climate were actually economists, not climate scientists. They were using tricks of mathematical induction and erroneous citation of non-existent “data” to suggest statistical doubt in conclusions made based on reproduced results of academic and organizational climate data collections. That is distinct from making assertions based on erroneous induction from fallacious syllogisms and erroneous logical math.
Wholesale racist redaction of history aside, one cannot simply assert something happened without citing the data that supports that. Suggesting that it rained because someone prayed for it to rain is not actual “data.” Suggesting that it rained because of collection of data that supports known patterns of atmospheric change that generally precede rain is a different issue. There is no guarantee that some confounding factor has not created errors in predictions, but attributing simple singular cause and effect to complex systems is at best naive, at worst fraudulent. The dismissal of complex factors by ceteris paribus assumptions is a fallacious error, unless your representing your assertion as a simple theoretical model, and not an actual predictive outcome. Peace.
“New”?
I believe this study is still in review.
Attributing the consequences of disaster to the actions of a vengeful God reminds me of the 2010 flash flood on Mt Ruapehu in New Zealand. Six students and their teacher from Elim Christian College were swept to their deaths while on a outdoor pursuits exercise.
The media circus surrounding the event and subsequent inquiry turned up the disturbing rationalisation of parents of the survivors that their children were blessed and spared because God needed them in his overall plan.
I don’t know how this went down with the parents of those who were lost, but the implications are not pretty to contemplate – unless of course God needed them in Heaven…
Or even more interestingly, maybe “God” just hated those particular students. I suppose a “God” that generates storms to punish all in the vicinity of the “wicked” must also be capable of arbitrary hatred.
People that make comments like this are insane. There really is no reason that we should be allowing them the power to make decisions or exert pressure on others. People that preach superstition are superstitious because their insanity leads them to insane fears. Following the advice of the insane is, most times, itself an insane act. What we need to do is get these people the psychiatric and spiritual help that they need, and in the meantime, we need to tell them to shut the fuck up.
v. good Jeffrey. Those are my exact thoughts when I hear about repent-or-the-planet-will-burn stories…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2451604/Apocalypse-Now-Unstoppable-man-climate-change-reality-end-decade-make-New-York-London-Paris-uninhabitable-45-years-says-new-study.html