More to the point concerning the Los Angeles Finger Pointing Project is the response of Los Angeles resident Jim Underdown:
Send Prayers
No, send food, clothes, money, and lots of firefighting help. (No guns or lawyers, thanks.)
I know people mean well when they say I’ll pray for you, and I really do appreciate the sentiment. You’re showing empathy to people who are going through a rough time. But think about that praying thing for a minute…
You are praying to the same god who kept our usual rainy season dry as a bone and turned the local hills and mountains into kindling. This is also the god who made sure that whatever small flames first ignited turned deadly by sending howling winds so we couldn’t put them out.
God didn’t have to invent droughts or wildfires. He chose to.
Think about that before your next prayer[. – sic] Thanks for the nice thought, though.
Mr Underdown works for the Center for Inquiry. In case you were wondering why his mind wandered down that path.
It’s suggestive of confirmation bias, isn’t it? The bias being I‘m the center of the Universe and God loves only me. From the football player “thanking God” after a successful play, to survivors of disasters, why God positively favors one person while giving the next a good smiting is a question that’s hardly ever out in the open; one hopes it’s dragged out and given a drubbing in the privacy of religious institutions, but it should be aired publicly.
After all, I rather doubt that Los Angeles, or City of Angels as that happens to translate, was full to the gills of people needing a good smiting, and if they did, I’d much rather see a big thumb come down and smush them out, rather than ambiguous use of natural phenomenon far more easily attributable to climate change.
Well, I’ll wrap this up before I tread the path where I prove God’s smitey wrath and competitive angels inevitably end up with Satan. Speculating on the nature of supernatural creatures makes my teeth itch.
