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

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

We might say that the mind of people seems hell bent on living in a variety of disaster-prone places, thereby flaunting the will of God. But I don't think I would...

[psyclonic.livejournal.com]

I can almost imagine Jerky Flaw-well repeating his 9/11 crapola. Almost.

I am more worried about well-meaning people chalking up this one intense hurricane to global warming, when the better evidence is the continual increase in tropical storm frequency & severity over several years. Any poorly thought out or researched opinion plays better for the naysayers.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

It's because not enough people are dressing as pirates.

[toosuto.livejournal.com]

Ramen to that.

[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.

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

James Wolcott had an article up a year or two ago basically rooting for the hurricanes (as a means of reducing overpopulation.) To give him credit, he's removed all links to that article from his site this week.

Do "Unnatural" Acts Cause Natural Disasters?

[(Anonymous)]

I assume that this article made the rounds a ways back, right? (article with correlation between homosexuality and natural disasters, and religiosity and natural disasters).

http://www.sodomylaws.org/usa/wackos/wacko003.htm

But Baptists and Others share the prize: both groups show a definite correlation with tornado frequency correlation =3D .68, p =3D .0001). This means that Texas could cut its average of 139 tornadoes per year in half by sending a few hundred thousand Baptists elsewhere (Alaska maybe?).

...

Now Pat would have us believe that gays are the cause of tornadoes (as well as earthquakes, meteors, and even terrorist bombs), in utter disregard for evidence showing that Baptists are much more likely to cause them.

...

As any statistician will tell you, of course, correlation doesn’t prove causation. Protestants causing tornadoes by angering God isn’t the only explanation for these data. It could be that Baptists and other Protestants purposely flock to states that have lots of tornadoes (no, we haven’t checked for a correlation between IQ and religious affiliation).

Re: Do "Unnatural" Acts Cause Natural Disasters?

[(Anonymous)]

(that was Bats, BTW).