Prayin' n' Lightnin'

6:06pm, ET, 24 April 24 2006, via Reuters:

Lightning kills 5 Mexican children in prayer: Youths between 9 and 16 die praying at metal cross in central Mexico.

MEXICO CITY - Five Mexican children were killed when a large metal cross they were praying at was struck by lightning in central Mexico, local media reported Monday.

Five children between 9 and 16 years old died and several others suffered burns when lightning struck a white-painted metal cross set on a hill in the town of Santa Maria del Rio early on Sunday, according to two newspaper reports.

“The lightning went straight into them and killed them instantly,” local Red Cross chief Eduardo Suarez told the daily El Norte.
----------------------------------------
Once again, it is proven conclusively to me that God does not exist.

What kind of loving, caring, paternal God, the kind that the religious literature and tradition is filled with, kills children expressing their faith, devotion, and (what they understand to be) love for him?

How is it that children could incur the wrath of the God described in the Bible, Quran, scrolls, texts, etc.? What did they do to anger him? Were they not praying hard enough, sincerely enough, loud enough? Were they not kneeling in the proper manner? Was a kid or two being sarcastic, giving God some sass-prayin'?

How is it that the most innocent of all, children, get this kind of treatment from the guy who's supposed to be all-loving and all-compassionate?

Or is it that God, if he's up there at all, is capricious and vicious and utterly uncaring at all about what we're doing down here, whether he can hear us or not? Is God swatting at bugs when he zaps down his power from on high? Is God pulling the legs off flies, or maybe stirring the anthill with a stick when he kills and burns human children, just to see what the rest of the colony will do, to hear the horrific screaming parents over the charred bodies of their babies? Is that what it's all about? At least this scenario makes a lot more sense to me, and is much more logical in the grand scheme of vicious, random, undeserved, unspeakable suffering that humans go through every day.

Or maybe God is punishing the parents, because they weren't praying then, too. Or maybe the parents are bad, so the children as targeted as punishment. Remember, this is the same demented, twisted God that ordered Abraham to sacrifice his own son for his (God, that is) greater glory.

The lesson here: praying won't do you any good, whether you mean it or not. First, God just isn't up there. It's static buildup among moving cloud formations that you've got to watch out for, among the other thousands of things on this Earth that will kill you in the blink of an eye. And on the off-chance that God really does exist, he's a capricious, immature little bully like Tremayne in Star Trek, like a spoiled child, and he'll take you down whenever and wherever he chooses, whether you think he's a good guy or not.
---------------------------------------------
Woman Hit By Lightning While Praying in Storm

DAPHNE, Ala. (May 29, 2006) Worried about the safety of her family during a stormy Memorial Day trip to the beach, Clara Jean Brown stood in her kitchen and prayed for their safe return as a strong thunderstorm raged through Baldwin County.

Suddenly, lightning exploded, blowing through the linoleum and leaving a pockmarked area on the concrete. Brown wound up on the floor, dazed and disoriented by the blast but otherwise uninjured.

"I said, 'Amen,' and the room was engulfed in a huge ball of fire," she said. "I'm blessed to be alive."

Brown, 65, was hit by a bolt of lightning that apparently struck outside and traveled into the house Monday afternoon. She doesn't know how much time passed while she remained disoriented on the floor before Jamie Matthews, her 14-year-old granddaughter, discovered her after returning from the beach.

"I was just standing there when a huge ball of fire engulfed this whole room. I don't remember much after that," Brown said hours later as her family helped clean her home. "Concrete was everywhere."

Brown was at home alone when the storm hit, while her husband, James Brown, was at the store and her son and his family were on their way back from the beach.

James Brown said fire officials told him lightning likely struck across the street from the couple's home and traveled into the house through a water line. The lightning continued into the couple's backyard and ripped open a small trench, James Brown said. Pieces of concrete were scattered throughout the family's kitchen - ruining day-old brownies sitting on the stove.

"Never in my life did I think something like this could happen," James Brown told the Press-Register. "I always thought if you're in a house that you're safe. That's not the case."

Mrs. Brown said paramedics suggested she go to the hospital, but she chose to stay at home with her family.

"I'm blessed. That's the good news," she said.
----------------------------------
My first question is: how in the hell does this ignorantly devout moron think that she's blessed, after her god sent down fire from the heavens upon both her personally and her home as well, causing what appears to be at least a few hundred dollars' worth of damage, which she may or may not have the money to pay for? How is this idiot blessed? Does she think that she somehow was favored by her God, that somehow she's special and singled out for some kind of grand celestial happy and caring attention because he took a shot and missed? Is she already rationalizing that the lightning just happened to come on down, and that God saved her from it? Can she convince herself that the same guy who creates and controls Everything, including weather events, caused the lightning and then save her from it? Yeah, it's pretty clearly already taken place.

Maybe she's blessed in that she realizes that her praying didn't do jack, and that she was a victim of pure meteorological happenstance. Maybe she says she's blessed because now she's been freed of the irrational superstious beliefs that have imprisoned her mind, her creativity and her actions for 65-odd years, that now she truly sees the light and knows that there is no God. Maybe she's blessed in a new sense of freedom.

Because why would God do that to her? Is she asking herself that question right now? Does she even have the capacity to think along these lines, or is her indoctrination so complete that she's already rationalized it away as something grand and positive and happy and good in her ridiculous Christian cosmology (sadly, most likely)? Why would God send a lightning bolt into her house to strike her down while she's praying for her family? I mean, it may be questionable what those poor Mexican kids were praying about, and how they were praying, when God shot his bolt on down into their midst, but there's no mistaking her intentions here. As brainwashed as I believe she is and will remain, she was genuinely concerned for her family, and out of pure maternal love and devotion asked her God to watch over the things nearest and dearest to her, the most important things in her world. And for this she got blasted onto her ass and into semi-consciousness with a lightning bolt right into the kitchen. Her entreaty was as pure and real as it's ever going to get, and to my mind, she was punished for it.

So why was God pissed off at the kitchen-prayin' lady? Maybe she's praying for the wrong folks; maybe her family is bad, truly evil, and God is mad because she's asking him to take care of bab people. And maybe he's sending a specially-coded God-message to the rest of the neighborhood to stay away from this family. Sure, that's possible. Maybe God thought she was being selfish, thinking only of her own family, and not more about him. Maybe God was pissed because she wasn't singing his glories, wasn't paying more attention to God and his problems and needs. Sure, that could be a good reason to zap her down to the deck. After all, the Bible is full of retribution from on high for this kind of transgression.

Secondly, I mourn for the brownies, those poor, poor ruined brownies. What a senseless waste, truly.
----------------------------------------
The lesson here: First, once again, there is no God. Second, you should protect yourself from severe weather.