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January 12, 2005
Using religion to place blame
Perhaps this is why the question "Why does God allow this?" caught me totally off guard and led me to change my column for this week. Not many events or comments have caused this, but the blatant attempt to diminish God in the minds of all will do it every time. Especially when the question is raised by people who will argue tomorrow that the use of God in the Pledge of Allegiance should be removed and the President of the United State of America should not place his hand on the Holy Bible when taking the oath of office. These people have forgotten it was to get away from political hegemony denying them the right to religious belief that this country was populated in the first place. Whether the Pilgrims or Quakers escaping the Church of England, or the Anglicans and Lutherans escaping the Catholic Church's grip on Central Europe, the first settlers of what became the United States came here for religious as much as economic freedom. They had discovered over centuries the two could not be separate without the eventual loss of both. Evidence of this is found in the declaration made to the King of England on July 4, 1776, which the representatives of the 13 colonies signed. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them ..." How can rational people argue the founders of our country ever intended a separation of church and state be imposed by anyone. It was their belief "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." And these pronouncements were made before they had even won their independence. Today we have a group of individuals who would try to connect God to every evil event happening in the world to show why there can really be no such thing as God. They are well versed in how to phrase the subject to deflect recrimination. I still remember a question to the daughter of the Rev. Billy Graham on the shootings at Columbine High of, "How could God allow such harm to children in school?" Her answer for the ages was, "But God is not allowed in schools." (To be fair, the question of whether Ms. Graham ever uttered the comment remains in doubt.) This is the true conundrum facing the liberal progressives. For if they wish to link God to a natural disaster such as the tsunami, must they not also entertain the possibility other environmental changes might be of a natural source, rather than man induced? The hypocrisy of arguing the former and ignoring the latter would seem to speak volumes to the shallowness of the liberal perspective. But not to them. One reason for this habit of speaking out of both sides of their mouth is money. By aiding and abetting the environmental movement they immediately assume the respectability of the stature of the scientific community whom they then support with other people's money in the form of grants. In this way they can develop ever more pressing issues with which to confound the people as to the error of their ways, and never having to pay a price for their foolishness themselves. To put this in perspective once again, the tsunami was calculated to have generated more energy than 20,000 atomic bombs larger than the one dropped on Hiroshima. That number is 4 times larger than all the atomic bombs ever built by man combined. When we were forced by our government to quit using CFCs we were told their use was destroying the ozone. Yet when Mt. Pinatubo blew in the Philippines, there was hardly a reference made to the fact more CFCs were released into the atmosphere in the first 20 minutes of that one eruption than were released by man in our entire history. So the next time someone tries to tell you that man, individually or collectively, can have an impact upon nature greater than you believe possible, you will have two events to show them how much they may be simply talking out of their hats - as for hard evidence, not theory. As for those who would again question the relevance of God, nature or intelligent design of the universe, I would ask them to take time to consider what it is they are saying. We may not ever know why things like the tsunami and volcanic eruptions happen. They began with the creation of our planet. Perhaps a small amount of humility is in order before asking us to believe we are supreme in all things. Little writes from Pahrump. His column, "The Other Side," appears here on Wednesdays. |
