An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles

[dr_tectonic]

Just to get a jump on it -- I'm sure that in a day or two there will be idiots claming Hurricane Katrina is a sign of "God's wrath" or some such nonsense.

In the spirit of E.O. Wilson, I would like to claim that the only thing you can really say for sure about the mind of God as it relates to such matters is, "God sees fit to visit natural disasters upon hazardous areas, whether people live there or not."

I hope that Louisiana and New Orleans get through it all okay -- but the situation is grim.

Comments

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and choosing from every clean animal and every clean bird, he offered holocausts on the altar. When the Lord smelled the sweet odor, he said to himself: "Never again will I doom the earth beacuse of man, since the desires of man's heart are evil from the start; nor will I ever again strike down all living things, as I have done.

As long as the earth lasts,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat
Summer and winter,
and day and night
shall not cease."

Genesis 9, 20-22

[drdeleto.livejournal.com]

Tell that to the folks in Gomorrah. Localized vengeance is apparently biblically sanctioned.

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

Well, it is very specific. "All the earth" and "all living things." New Orleans is not "all".

Irony alert— the Louisiana board that deals with building codes and the like was planning to meet this week to plot strategies in the advance of such a hurricane as Katrina. One even said that they were hoping to be pre-emptive, but that obviously failed.