By JEFF SCHWEITZER
Added: Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:00 UTC

Thanks to LWS for the link.
Original link

As the world reacts to the monstrous earthquake off the coast of Chile, one voice remains curiously quiet. Without Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson to guide us, we are unable to decipher why god has caused this particular calamity.

According to religious prognosticators, sinners will suffer the wrath of god in the form of earthquakes as biblical punishment for their errant ways. The declarations and explanations of such divine calamities always come after the fact, but let us not have such annoying details get in our way. Nobody is more out front in decoding god’s will than Robertson; he declared that the devastating earthquake in Haiti was a consequence of Haitians making a pact with the devil. Robertson also believed that Hurricane Katrina was god’s punishment for legalized abortion; and that Florida’s weather woes are due to the state’s support for Gay Days at Disneyland.

So we must therefore ask the great “broadcaster, humanitarian, author, Christian, businessman, statesman” from Lexington, Virginia, for what sins did the citizens of Anchorage, Alaska, suffer for the quake of 1964? I remember not any declaration of god’s intent from that event. And now of course we must query Robertson on the divine meaning of the massive earthquake in Chile. Perhaps their sin is naming a country after a pepper, and then misspelling it.

These most recent efforts to interpret god’s intent based on man’s experience raises the question of how well we have done historically in predicting or deducing the divine plan. A favorite is to claim knowledge of the End of Days as a consequence of natural events. Predictions of the Apocalypse or its equivalent have in fact been a common theme throughout history. But the record for accuracy is not particularly pretty. An error rate of 100% (after all, we are still here) should call into question the legitimacy of the enterprise, but alas, that is not the case. The likes of Pat Robertson never tire of pretending to know the mind of the infinite being conjured from their imagination. Let’s see how we’ve fared over the past 150 years.

Xhosa Girl

In South Africa, in 1856, a young Xhosa girl went to fetch water at a local stream. There, she claimed to meet strangers from the spirit world. Excited, she returned with her uncle, Umhlakaza, who spoke with the same spirit world reps. From this encounter, Uncle Umhlakaza came back with an important message. At the time of this ghostly meeting, the Xhosa tribe was battling the English. The spirits told Umhlakaza that to succeed in driving out the foreigners, his tribesman must kill every animal in their herds, and destroy every kernel of corn so carefully stored in their granaries. The spirits promised him that if his tribesman followed these instructions, heaven on earth would be theirs. Dead loved ones would return, fat cattle would rise from the earth, corn would sprout in abundance, sickness and troubles would be banished and the old would become young and beautiful again. With such great promise, backed by the authority of the spirit world, Umhlakaza’s orders were carried out, resulting in the slaughter of two thousand cattle and destruction of all grains. Instead of earthly paradise, the Xosa experienced a famine so deadly that the tribe nearly ceased to exist.

Branch Davidians
...
Continue reading

TAGGED: RELIGION