Sunday, July 23, 2006

The amazing powers of the gay

Continuing the "How is religion different from a delusion" thread from the other week, comes this poll from WorldNutDaily. Apparently a number of Jewish rabbis are saying that the recent Israel-Lebanon conflict is a punishment from G-d because of the World Pride parade scheduled two weeks from now.

It's not like the Mideast hasn't been a pressure cooker for decades. It isn't as if there haven't been, oh, a few wars here and there or anything. It's not like there aren't a couple of wars going on right now in the Middle East. No, the rockets and bombings are the fault of the queers.

Such is the power of teh gay. Know it. Fear it. Wear Ultrasuede.

The nutty part is that the WorldNutDaily-ers go right along with it. Only 30% of them were willing to say in the poll that either the violence is not a punishment from above or that they did not know. The largest grouping, at 30%, said that the violence was definitely due to YHWH being in a pissy mood because of all the rainbows. For fuck's sake, what can you do with these people?

Actually, I think this could be a good thing. Demand money from local government or else we will schedule a Pride parade in your town, bringing down the Wrath of the Almighty™ upon you. We could make a killing.

(Via Pam's House Blend)

2 comments:

Matthew said...

This is all about finding a correlation between unrelated events, and I've found that religious people do it A LOT. It's also the case that they look for a "reason" for something which happens, when in fact there is no rational supernatural reason, which is what they're really looking for.

Cases in point:

1) a natural disaster strikes a region, and people say it's because "God" or "a god" was upset with them over something. This is pretty much old-school, pre-Christian type thinking. Why don't we just go back to sacrificing people for appeasement?

2) An accident occurs, and there are fatalities. A survivor says, "I'm so glad I was spared. God must have been looking out for me." The survivor's parents echo, saying, "God must have a plan for her!"

When someone asks, "What about the poor sap in the seat infront of you who was killed? What? No plan for them? God wasn't looking out for them?"

To which the stumbling, standard reply is typically, "Um, well, God must have a different plan for them. It was their time to go."

It's relief of not being dead masquerading as the general-plan-theory when challenged. You really can't argue with that kind of illogical reasoning.

Narc said...

Good points Matt. They don't just want an explanation for how something happened, they need to find some sort of greater meaning in it.

Your point number 1 we saw after Katrina. Never mind that Mississippi was also devastated, God sent the hurricane to punish New Orleans.

Point number 2 we saw right after the mine collapse a some months ago. When the news erroneously reported that all the miners had been saved, there were cries of "They're alive. It's a miracle!" When it turned out that all but one had actually died, there were cries of "One survived. It's a miracle!" There's just no pleasing some people.