Poe's Law? Or perhaps the corollary?

Someone named TamTamPamela posted a video that she now says was a hoax.  In it, she says that god is "good" and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami were his way of telling the atheists that he's "there."  Is it real or is it someone from 4chan?



The question that people aren't asking is the true important question: Why is it so hard to tell a troll from the real thing?  Why have crazy Christian crackers gone so far off the rails that what should have been obvious as a troll (if it really was) could pass for the real thing?  Shouldn't crazy hatespeech be questioned as an attempt to smear Christians?  Why are we so conditioned to expect this crap?

Because Christianity has a long history of blaming natural disasters on God's wrath.  The notable exception would be tornadoes ripping up "Tornado Alley," which happens to coincide with the "red" stripe of right-wing fundamentalist Christianity that runs up the middle of the U.S. map.  Tornadoes are just tonadoes, but earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and droughts (except the 1930s "Dust Bowl" in the midwest!) are God's way of punishment when he's too impatient to wait for everyone to die and then throw them into Hell.

And because the Old Testament God comes around whenever it's handy for them to summon him, but if someone (ohhh atheists, for example) cites the genocide and atrocities of the OT "God" suddenly they believe in the New Testament.

Anywho, this whole thing introduced me to the Trollnews channel, which is some fun watching/listening.

Pray for Japan... even though they're atheists

...in the sense that they don't believe in a supreme being, anyway.  Shintoism and Buddhism are prevalent "religions" but belief in a supreme single deity is not required.

I keep seeing and hearing of people saying they're "praying for" Japan but not saying what they're praying for exactly.  It's really a kind of meaningless expression of concern.  Deep down they know their prayers won't affect the outcome other than to make them feel a bit better about being helpless. This is the kind of insipid vague crapola that bugs me when it's directed toward me.  If you actually question the good-hearted souls who offer to pray for others they will quickly become embarrassed at how shallow and useless their gesture is.

Here are some questions to ask in case you run into this inanity:

1. Why would a Christian god care about non-Christians?
2. Why didn't God prevent the earthquake and tsunami?
3. What are you asking God to do, exactly?
4. Why didn't you pray for Japan (or Haiti, or Thailand) before this happened?
5. What about all the other people in the world who need help?  Why not pray for them?
6. Why are you only praying for the living?  Why not ask god to forgive the deceased for being Shintoists and Buddhists?
7. Why aren't you praying for God to halt the aftershocks?  (they likely aren't)
8. Why should God listen to you?
9. If you pray for the Japanese and another earthquake kills more people there, does that mean God doesn't answer prayers?
10. Why doesn't God perform a miracle and bring all the victims back to life?

God hates "God's Country"

My college years were spent in Wisconsin, which I was informed by some townies is "God's Country."  Since then I have lived in a few other states that claimed to be "God's Country."  In the Northeast the word "country" signified hick music and toothless miners, so they made no such claims.  (I suspect a superiority complex - no need to assign a deity to the best city in the world)

And now 100,000,000 people, mostly in "God's Country" are being tormented by ice, sleet, snow and wind.  God hates the Midwest, obviously.

It's up to the atheists to make that declaration.  Fundy televangelists were quick to blame Katrina on New Orleans' lack of morals, but where is God's wrath when the midwest is attacked by an "act of God?"

If they look hard enough they can find reasons why God would smite the people in his "country." 

I think hubris is reason enough.  Bigotry is a good one. 

I was going to make a list but I live amongst these people.  Suffice it to say, winter sucks, and that's all there is to it.  And New Orleans is in a part of the country that's subject to hurricanes.  And California is prone to earthquakes.  These things aren't "Acts of God" because 1) there is no god and 2) there is no agency to any of this.  Weather just happens.

Prayer doesn't work. Really. It doesn't!

Intercessory prayer for the sick has been proven several times not to affect the outcome:


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18277062

CONCLUSIONS: In patients with CFS [chronic fatigue syndrome], distant healing appears to have no statistically significant effect on mental and physical health but the expectation of improvement did improve outcome.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17131980

CONCLUSIONS: Distant healing or prayer from a distance does not appear to improve selected clinical outcomes in HIV patients who are on a combination antiretroviral therapy.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567

CONCLUSIONS: Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG [coronary artery bypass graft], but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15715813

INTERPRETATION: Neither masked prayer nor MIT therapy significantly improved clinical outcome after elective catheterisation or percutaneous coronary intervention.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11761499

CONCLUSIONS: As delivered in this study, intercessory prayer had no significant effect on medical outcomes after hospitalization in a coronary care unit.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11565401

CONCLUSIONS: The effects of intercessory prayer and transpersonal positive visualization cannot be distinguished from the effect of expectancy. Therefore, those 2 interventions do not appear to be effective treatments.