Evangelicals and the whole "Wrath Of God" nonsense

[Yitzhak Finnegan]

After the death of Jerry Falwell, news accounts reported his assertion that Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks were "God's wrath" against America for allowing abortion, gay-marriage, the usual crap. I started to put these ravings under my own intellectual discection. And it's an interesting route of twists and turns when you apply someone's 'cherry-picking' universally (Well, if this incident, why not that one as well?).

Just Hurricane Katrina? Can you prove it's not all natural disasters? So all hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, etc., are God's wrath for abortion, among other things. But....don't pregnant women also die in these things? And, speaking of abortion, aren't Gloria Steinam and Bille Jean King still alive and active? So, according to this thesis, God expresses his opposition to abortion by killing pregnant women in natural dissasters, while allowing those who had abortions to live long lives, have successful careers and even (regardless of whether you agree with Ms. Steinam's views or not) iconic status in today's society. Is that what your're saying?

As for September 11th, okay Reverend, you say it was God's wrath. What is the difference between God's wrath and God's will? So, if the terrorist were agents of God's wrath, they were merely carrying out God's will? Ergo, anyone who was against those terrorist attacks is going against God's will, is that about it?

And Reverend, was it just Sept 11th? Can you prove that all other terrorist acts weren't also God's wrath? And, just terrorist killings? Can you prove that all other murders, from the headline-making cases like John Wayne Gacy to the lesser armed-robbery-turned-fatal shootouts, all of this is God's wrath, and therefor God's will?

Wait, it get's even better (if that's the proper word). Aren't these evangelicals forever telling us that abortion is murder? And if all acts of murder are God's wrath, and therefor God's will, doesn't that make abortion another case of God's wrath? So, by your own assertion taken to it's logical conclusion, abortion is merely the patient and pratcitioner carrying out God's will. Which means that to be against abortion is to be against God's will!

One is tempted to not even bother to answer people like Falwell, Pat Robertson, anyone with such an aversion to reason is beyond any kind of intellectual debate. But their nonsense must be vigorously fought, discected and pulverised at every corner to help stop their influence in society.

[John McVey]

You'd like Dr Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. He's very good at tearing religionists to pieces and rightly dragging them over the coals for their disgusting moral beliefs. Unfortunately, Dr Dawkins doesn't have anything good to put in place of religious morality. That's why and when you read Ayn Rand instead. That's when you learn of real morality for the first time.

One is tempted to not even bother to answer people like Falwell, Pat Robertson, anyone with such an aversion to reason is beyond any kind of intellectual debate. But their nonsense must be vigorously fought, discected and pulverised at every corner to help stop their influence in society.

Fought? I agree... but I ask you, for what reason do you fight? Why do you personally care about what others think and who has influence over whom? What's it to you that people who are total strangers you're never likely to interact with are staggeringly irrational? Let's be blunt: you are not likely to change the world in any appreciable manner. What are you going to do when your apparent total ineffectualness in this and the world remains as messed up as it has always been becomes brutally apparent to you? If you cannot give a solid rational answer to the question "what's in it for you?" then you haven't seen morality and what it is for. Without a valid answer, in due time your anger will be reduced to quiet despair, constantly and quietly eating away at you. Do not let hate consume you, however justified that hate may be. Life requires that your primary focus be on achieving your positive VALUES, not upon what disvalues others provide need to be dealt with, which is only a secondary at best.

There are valid moral reasons to personally care about society, but you have to specify them to the letter and make sure that it actually is YOUR SELF INTEREST at the centre of your concerns for explicitly identifiable and totally rational reasons, lest there just be some 'the good of society' notion whose reasons for your concern over have drifted off into some dark fog. Even if, at root, all you actually need right now is a good cathartic rant, then it is better to set up true morality and greatness in unabashed and vigorous defiance of their irrationality rather than to pick holes their words and have nothing uplifting to put in its place. Don't be embarrassed if this is really your motivation, there's nothing wrong with a justifiable anger and needing to use your mind to confront it - just be sure to focus on the good and not the evil.

If you want to make a difference to your own life by making a difference to others who could provide values to you, then you should be showing them how to gain good value and not merely proffer reasons to discard what they presently wrongly value. Most people want to be moral and want values. If you merely threaten to take these things away from people then they will fear and despise you for it. Many will then cling to their irrationalities all the harder because of the bleak emptiness you threaten to bring as the only alternative. If that is all you actually do, and all that you have is hate of the evil, then your estimation of people will grow steadily worse - and this WILL consume you and darken your world. Instead, if you give them real morality and values and PROVE IT, then they will love you for it, and your world insofar as it contains other people will become all the brigher.

"It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."

JJM

[Yitzhak Finnegan]

Not every conversation must always start off at the "first tier", since this is a forum for readers of Ayn Rand, I assumed they were already familiar with those underpinnings you stated. My musings on this particular point were to help viewers of this forum chip away at the evangelical's idiocy; confront anyone who makes this whole "wrath of God" nonsense in a way that might get some others interested in your line of logic, and they might start seeing your other points as well.

Edited June 19, 2007 by Yitzhak Finnegan