The Case for Separation of Church and Weather (Guest Voice)
The Case for Separation of Church and Weather
by Tina Dupuy
The Moche lived in northern Peru from about 100-700 A.D. Their molded ceramics are still a highlight in the annals of human accomplishment. If you walk through a museum of pre-Columbian art, it’s easy to spot a Moche piece — the faces are so realistic you expect them to wink at you.
Around 500 A.D., the world was experiencing some drastic climate changes. There was a super El Nino weather phenomenon on the west coast. Cataclysmic floods were followed by drought. The Moche, like most ancient peoples, are thought to have been very religious. They wanted to thwart this devastation and improve the weather by trying to appease their gods. So they sacrificed masses of their citizens. Just slaughtered hundreds of people in hopes of saving more.
Does this sound like religious extremism? Yes. Because it is.
Negotiating with nature is a very ancient thing to do: Pre-science, pre-wheel, pre-written language. As a species, we’ve always seen patterns in natural events and taken it personally. Floods are because of sin — droughts are because of witches. Earthquakes are God’s anger towards women’s suffrage and Chinese immigration, etc.
But now we know better. At least, some of us do. Sort of. Now we know the Earth’s crust shifts. It always has. All our continents used to be one; scientists refer to it as Pangaea. We know that continuing shift results in earthquakes. Instead of hurricanes just appearing all of a sudden as a result of moral shortcomings, we can now track them via satellite for days. There is also a growing understanding about how global warming has intensified weather patterns, hurricanes have been made worse by pollution and the extraction process for natural gas known as “fracking” has caused earthquakes.
Yes, we have a greater knowledge of weather and seismic activities than ever before.
So when the East Coast experienced a rare earthquake — there was an archaic response from religious leaders. It wasn’t that these things happen on this planet we all live on – it was because of gay marriage. Rabbi Yehuda Levin told his YouTube audience, “[We] are starting to see the connection.” As if the earth never moved before cake toppers had two grooms.
It’s ghoulish opportunism. Just like in the wake of the quake that nearly leveled Haiti and killed thousands, televangelist Pat Robertson claimed it was because Haitians made a pact with the devil to liberate themselves from slavery 200 years ago. So Robertson’s devil ran an 18th century anti-slavery Caribbean underground railroad? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? He has an odd religion. He also chimed into the “what did we do to deserve a non-fatal earthquake in DC?” discussion by claiming a crack in the Washington Monument meant something beyond “why not to build a 555-foot marble obelisk on swampland.”
Then there was a hurricane in the same area within a week. For capitalizing atmospheric interpreters — it’s show time! Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann told a rally in Florida — the state with the highest proportion of elderly (think Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries) and hurricanes in the country — that these events are a warning about government spending.
Because weather is a quid pro quo with God and the Republican Party’s agenda.
It’s time to build a wall (or a levee) between church and weather.
Natural disasters aren’t punishment. And religion isn’t a Doppler radar.
In 1693, the Massachusetts colonists thought a hurricane there marked the Apocalypse. In April 2011, Texas Governor Rick Perry issued an official proclamation for Texans to pray for rain for three days. Rain has yet to come and it’s categorized as a D4 Drought (there is no D5).
What does this mean? Nothing. It means church and weather should get a divorce and block each other’s numbers. Since church and state are no longer the same thing – church should secede from climatology.
It’s not for the sake of the weather — it’s really for the sake of the church’s credibility.
Because really, we could stop letting gays marry, eat all our vegetables, never cheat on our spouses and get to church three times a week — it won’t stop the weather…or the world.
© Copyright 2011 TinaDupuy.com, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. This column is licensed to run on TMV in full.
The copyrighted cartoon by David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star, is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.
12 Responses to “The Case for Separation of Church and Weather (Guest Voice)”
Ignorance isn’t bliss, and willful ignorance is ten times worse. Some people prefer to take refuge in comforting nonsense and surround themselves with others who are like-minded, because it’s easier than embracing reality. In short, it’s what we used to call a cop out. Knowledge is the best driver of behavioral change, but we all know the old saying; you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Sadly, our country has been inundated with false leaders, pundits, and snake oil salesmen who prey on this rampant ignorance and gullibility. We even have a powerful political party that trades regularly on this sorry condition. Needless to say, none of this is boding well for our future.
I agree that statements like the one by Bachmann are ridiculous, but I’ll take issue with some of the underlying assumptions in this article.
Of course, for people who don’t believe in God, any discussion of how much divine influence there is in the weather is fantasy. So, from this point on I’ll assume we’re just talking from the perspective of mainstream believers trying to answer the question: how much influence does God have on weather events?
The article asserts that we should not attribute any weather events to the divine or pray for good weather. Why? Because, asserts the author, we can now explain weather events scientifically.
Firstly, I think the author overstates the degree to which we understand how weather events occur. Meteorologists can’t predict with certainty when storms will develop or the path they will take even days or hours in advance. Certainly then, there is room for a divine being to manipulate variables, if he or she so chooses, to cause or direct weather events without us noticing that anything supernatural is occurring.
But more importantly, the implication of this line of reasoning means that we should not pray for sick people to recover. We also understand biology scientifically, so is it wrong to pray that God intervene on behalf of a sick person? What about praying for help finding a job? Certainly if God can’t or doesn’t control the weather or our biology, he can’t control how well we perform at an interview, much less the decision process of the hiring manager.
So this implies that God must be a passive being. He set the universe in motion but doesn’t intervene in any affairs since then. That’s a perfectly fine view, but it’s by no means religious extremism to suggest that he can and does intervene, perhaps subtly, for his own purposes.
Now, by no means am I attempting to defend statement’s such as Bachmann’s that assert to know the mind of God, and furthermore that the divine mind is primarily concerned with political affairs, much less that it is aligned with any one political ideology. But equally so I would not assert that since we know a little about the science of the climate and biology, that therefore we have proven that God does not ever have any influence on such things.
adelinesdad — I agree, but there’s a big difference between praying for something to turn out the way you’d like and blaming natural phenomena on the gays or the liberals. Pretending to know the mind of God and assigning blame to political or social enemies is pretty crappy all around.
Prayer is different in a lot of cases. Even from the perspective of an athiest (some of us, at least), there is a certain validity to praying for things like a job or recovery, in the sense that directed wishes (which things like prayers, Wiccan spells, any religious rituals, etc, could be described as) are able to clarify in the mind of people what they want. Naming what we want is an important first step in self-actuation. When people think that the Divine has their back, they tend to do better at things, have hope and find strength for recovery, or prepare for their interview more thoroughly and confidently. “Ask and ye shall receive” is another way of saying “what is expected tends to be realized”, one of my dad’s favorite sayings.
One side point here is that none of that really applies to the weather.
Query…..when faith-based statements are made for political purposes, is it still apropos to refer to the statement as “red meat” or does it become “kosher meat”?
casual — I think it has something to do with whether the statement has been blessed by a rabbi.
Roro,
I agree with you, but the author was also critical of Rick Perry’s admonition to pray for rain. That indicated to me that she was not only critical of people who blame gays and other scapegoats but, more broadly, anyone who thinks that there is any divine influence on the weather (and by extension, any other naturally occurring event such as our health). Her reasoning (we know why weather happens and it isn’t God) also implies a broader argument. So it was that broader point that I was objecting to.
I think the difference is this: it is not extreme to say that God can and may influence natural events. Nor is it extreme to hold to certain moral positions on religious grounds. However, it *is* inappropriate for someone to say “God did this because of your immoral behavior.” Not only is it immensely prideful (not a Christian virtue) to think that we can know the intentions of God, but it also violates the Christian teaching to not judge others. God reserves judgment to himself, and while we can learn about and preach the morality taught by our particular religious persuasion, we are crossing a significant line by claiming to know how God would judge specific individuals or groups.
Roro, follow up query,,,,,has anyone ever accused you of being blessed with a sense of humor?
casual, you’re so often so horribly rude I’m not sure if you’re “accusing” me of having one or accusing me of not having one. Considering your general attitude toward, well, everyone, I’m guessing the latter. I was, in fact, making a joke. And I am, in fact, goddamned hilarious. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether or not that’s a joke, mk?
Jesus said, “[God] causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” I’ll take His word over Ms. Bachmann’s any day.
-[Because really, we could stop letting gays marry, eat all our vegetables, never cheat on our spouses and get to church three times a week — it won’t stop the weather…or the world]-
Yeah well you don’t speak for God either “Tina”. How the hell would you know?
Allen, Do you think otherwise, I guess?
Funny and ‘real’ caricature.