The EF5 category tornado in Oklahoma was frightening. People were killed. People were hurt. Possessions were gone.
It was an extremely scary event, and when people are scared whilst facing something over which they have no control they turn to ‘magic’.
Watching the social networks and the reactions to the tornado, once again facts and details were surrounded by the noise of ‘OMG’s and … prayers.
Prayers.
Mostly these were prayers to the Christian based god, but, to be fair, those from other faiths also seemed to use this natural human culling event as an opportunity to hassle their gods too.
So, here’s where it all gets a bit confusing for me.
God is the guy behind everything. Everything that happens is this god’s ‘will’, right? (How humans react to it is their free will, apparently.)
I mean, I’m told, this god caused the EF5 tornado, it didn’t just randomly happen outside of his control. Everything he does has its reason. Reasons we are supposed to accept without rational explanation.
Because of his decision, and as part of his design, people died, people were maimed, and people lost everything.
Ok?
So, then what are these people praying to their god for? Are they praying to say, “Thanks for that mate. We don’t understand why you did that to us, but we apologise.” Or maybe they are praying to say, “Awesome dude!” and make other congratulatory whooping and cheering. Heck, their god decided to do all that, and they never question his plan or the work he has to do in his random killing, maiming, and frightening of his followers.
A lot of the prayers appear to be for those who the god decided to kill.
Eh? They’re fuckin’ dead. What are the prayers for? “Thanks god for that nice painful death for Mrs Smith who took four hours to slowly die pinned under the hummer you decided to lift hundreds of meters into the air and slam back down on her body. Far out man.”
Or are the prayers telling god to do something to Mrs Smith now she is dead? Butt out! If this god has elected to torture Mrs Smith to death, it’s his decision, why are humans trying to intervene? How dare they question his decisions. No wonder he gets cross and keeps pressing the ‘smite’ button.
So, wtf are the people actually praying to their god for when they are saying a prayer for Mrs Smith? I mean, right, most of them don’t know Mrs Smith, or even the slightest thing about her, yet there they are mumbling away at the god that just murdered her. Maybe Mrs Smith was a bad person and deserved the hummer falling on top of her. God, as we are told, has his reasons and his plan. A plan, it seems, that excludes Mrs Smith from life after hummer. So why keep going on and on and on at him about her?
It must be annoying being a god with all these snivelling little useless creeps praying at him all the damn time. All that noise in his head. No wonder he lashes out and kills them every now and again. He probably really loves those who don’t keep praying at him and instead try to work out how to make decisions and do the best they can without crying in his ear every couple of hours.
Either that or he has very serious insecurity and confidence issues that he can only deal with by demanding that people keep telling him how wonderful he is. Personally, I’d feel a little odd telling somebody they were awesome just because they had a tendency to genocide if I didn’t. I certainly wouldn’t think they were awesome. I’d be, well, I’d be god ‘fearing’ without any real free will.
Anyway. The logic of praying for Mrs Smith still evades rational explanation. What are those prayers supposed to achieve?
We all know they actually achieve nothing, change nothing. So, why do they pray?
England's England 