I’m Back… with a Little Rant
So, I’m back after a long hiatus. Apologies to the 10 people that subscribe to the religious atheist - it really sucks when real life gets in the way of blogging.
Anyway, my friend Pinyo who is a personal finance blogger, wrote a post about the Iowa floods and how you should probably check that you have flood insurance. Obviously, that’s a natural target for a comment about how God must be punishing America for having gays. 
Curt thinks that it couldn’t be a coincidence that California legalised same sex marriage at about the same time as Iowa flooded. I’m not entirely sure what rationale he’s basing that reasoning on, but I’m fairly happy that it’s a load of nonsense.
What is it with people postulating that God is a mean and vengeful being, and that that’s ok? Who would want to bow down and worship someone who thought that two men or two women committing their lives to each other is a crime worse than torture, rape or murder? Or that as a result of some people doing something in a completely different place, random Iowans (as far as I know, not known for their immense liberalism) should be punished.
Of course, looking at it from the worldview that God is a figment of some/many people’s imaginations, it’s easy to see where they’ve gone wrong. And Curt, is clearly a bit odd - I’m sure there are plenty of theists who don’t think the way that he does.
As with many slightly deluded Christian types, he suggests that it’s nearly the end of the world. Giving me the opportunity to say “Come the rapture, can I have your car?” although I resisted, as it’s not really fair to Pinyo. Even better than that is his Curt’s follow up comment:
It’s not the gays that are causing natural disasters. The gays are not controlling the universe.
This is just so funny. It makes me wonder whether there are people who think that *the gays* are controlling the universe - and of course, that those people must never, ever gain power.
Random, off-topic, zealots making themselves look stupid without any help from anyone else. That kind of thing makes my day.
[Edited to make it clearer that Pinyo is not weird and it’s Curt that I’m laughing at]
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8 Responses to “I’m Back… with a Little Rant”
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I am staying out of this one
But to be clear…Curt said this…not me:
“It’s not the gays that are causing natural disasters. The gays are not controlling the universe.”
Sorry Pinyo, I didn’t meant to imply that you wrote the funny/stupid comment. I’ve amended the post so that’s clearer.
Let’s see if I’ve got this right. California offended God by legalizing gay marriage. God took vengeance on California by flooding Iowa, which is several states east of California.
Maybe Christians should stop giving God cash and buy him a GPS.
Dumbest thing I saw on TV this week: according to some idiot poll, 21% of atheists believe in “God”. Mind you, the capital “G” god.
I guess we have some REALLY stupid people out there who not only “believe in God” but somehow think they are atheists?
@the chaplain:
Only problem is, I’m not convinced they’ve got the right postal address for him.
@Anthony:
.
Hmmm. 21% of self-described atheists are stupid? Or, the survey was really, really badly worded? Nah. I’m going with the stupid. And fortunately, since I do at least know what atheism is, and have correctly labelled myself an atheist, for once I’m not in that category
I read the thread you linked to. Since it’s rather embarrassing that Fred Phelps has apparently managed to get himself international attention, I should explain that Fred Phelps in Kansas whom you reference in the thread has literally zero followers that are not actually part of his family. The man doesn’t just picket gay pride gatherings. He also pickets military funerals and carries placards saying “Thank God for 9/11.” The man is basically just a troll who has somehow bamboozled the media into giving him the attention he so desperately wants.
Curt’s philosophy is fairly rare, but it does have its adherents, unlike Phelps’s much more extreme version.
Iowa (the state of my adoption and where I currently live) is a bizarre state politically. Of our two Senators, one is quite conservative and the other is quite leftist. Iowa and New Mexico were the only two states who voted for Gore in 2000, but then switched to G.W. Bush in 2004. The state is pretty precisely balanced politically, right in the center of American politics. For what it’s worth, the two cities hardest hit by the flooding - Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, are actually two of the most liberal cities in the state. Iowa City, where I made my home for a decade and home of the University of Iowa, has one of the highest per capita gay populations in the United States. So the idea that the Iowa flooding is punishment for tolerance of homosexuality isn’t entirely out of left field, although Curt probably had no idea that this was true. In any event, nobody died in the Iowa floods so it was a pretty lame sort of retribution. Not exactly a plague of locusts.
As for the 21% of atheists who believe in God, this represents far less than 1% of the total sample. Only 1.6% self-identified as atheists, so this number is 0.336% of the sample, representing approximately 118 people in their 35,000 person sample. The number is small enough that I suspect they might fall into the category of “people who like to screw up opinion polls.” Though some of them are probably New Age types who believe in Gaia or a “great spirit” or some such and are incorrectly calling themselves atheists. The 21% breaks down into 6% who believe in a personal god, 12% who believe in an impersonal god, and 3% who believe in some sort of god but don’t know what type.
So we have 118 extremely stupid people identifying themselves as atheists? And maybe some of them just checked the wrong box or did it on purpose?
I guess that’s not so bad
But of course the godsoaked love stats like that - no atheists in foxholes malarkey, an atheist who smashes their finger and exclaims “Jesus!” - they eat this stuff up. “See Maude, 21’s percent of them athy-ests actually know God is real!”.
The reason that I know about Phelps is that I’ve seen a British documentary on him and his family. The style is one of ‘give them enough rope’ and they certainly lived up to it. I think it’s fascinating what people will do, and the sort of twisted logic they will employ, but I felt most sorry for the daughters of the family.
I’m happy both that Curt had no idea how or whether Iowa is liberal, and that his idea is complete nonsense.
I think having a sample of 118 out of 35,000 or so people being demonstrably stupid is perfectly plausible, although I agree that those people slightly less rigourous in their thought processes may use it to try to claim some sort of advantage.