Sinners in the hands of an angry God

My friends on Facebook have been up in arms about Michele Bachmann's joke about the earthquake and the hurricane being messages from God.  I don't let that bother me in this case, since what bothers me more is that I don't know that she was joking.  A good number of people really believe that God sends disasters to punish people, notwithstanding that the good always get punished along with the bad.  This is a belief that belongs somewhere in the long ago, say the 14th Century, but never mind.

The thing that interests me in this case is the amazing facility people like Michele Bachmann have for changing the rules when the game is going against them.  When disaster strikes in some perceived iniquitous zone, say New York or New Orleans, or any blue state, the religious fundamentalist says that God has a message for the sinners who live there.  Now, this particular earthquake struck smack dab in the middle of Eric Cantor's district.  Suddenly, God has a message for us all.  Why not just for Eric Cantor?

The talent these true believers have for changing the rules, for accusing their opponents of the exact sins that they themselves (and they only) commit, for attempting to rewrite history, for presenting lies as facts, is quite amazing.  It comes from practice.

What are people whose lifelong beliefs are constantly being debunked by the growth of scientific knowledge to do?

If they have power, they can make the new knowledge a crime.  Or they can create a false counter-science.  In short, this resistance to easily seen facts that challenge ancient beliefs creates a special breed of compulsive liars.

It's too bad.  The world of the rational is the world of light.  It's much less scary than a world with a possible eternity of hellfire.

Yo! Dominionists!

Once again, the teachings and life of Jesus are an inconvenience for some who claim to be Christians.

It probably won't make a bit of difference to the Dominionists if I remind them that Jesus had more than one chance to set up an earthly kingdom, but refused. "My kingdom is not of this world," he said.

Well, perhaps that part has been excised from The Conservative Bible, along with anything else that made Jesus Jesus.

Summer

Summer has been everything a man could want. Skirts are shorter than they have been in a long time, shorts are skimpy, and the necklines are amazing. Fabrics are soft and diaphanous.

I'm no romeo; in fact, I'm really out of the running. Summer comes every year, but I've been in autumn for a while, heading toward winter. I'm still not blind, thank goodness.

And I like to think my mind is young. I'm sixty now, and I just got my first tattoo last Wednesday. I'm getting lots of compliments, even from young women. I know the compliments are just for the tattoo, but I like them anyway.

Idiots

The craziness continues, and it's been coming so thick and fast, I haven't been able to focus on one thing and write about it. All I can think of to say today is that the Right wants to get rid of the minimum wage, make the poor poorer, and then make everybody pay for their own health care. I'm going to start raising chickens so I have something to give my doctor for services rendered.