Signs of the Times -- New Orleans, Thailand, God, or Accident?

by Morocco 13 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Arthur

  How many righteous cities can you name? None! Consequently it follows logically that any disaster befalling any city on earth is somehow deserved because of a lack of righteousness.

  Pretty silly.

  Yeah, and this is something that people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell just don't get. God does not punish entire city populations because of brothels, abortion clinics, or lesbians.

  This is the same fallacy that haunted many people after Pompeii was wiped out by Mt. Vesuvius. It was believed that it must have been some kind of punishment from the gods for misdeeds of it's residents.

  It's interesting to note that the most destructive natural disasters in this planet's history happened before humans even existed. (mass extinctions by climate change, meteors, etc.)

  But then again; maybe God punished the dinosaurs because some of them were gay and lesbian.
• 

  sass_my_frass

  I believe that they are acts of geomorphology and meteorology.
• 

  trevor

  As far as New Orleans goes the people there built there city in a saucer below sea level. You could say by their ignorance they were asking for it or tempting fate.

  This sensible statement from jaguarbass shows the difference between reality and fantasy. The people of New Orleans have always known the risk, the same as people who live on the rim of volcanoes. Here is another dose of reality in the form of a quote:

  The fact that New Orleans has not already sunk is a matter of luck…During a strong hurricane, the city could be inundated with water blocking all streets in and out for days, leaving people stranded without electricity and access to clean drinking water. Many also could die because the city has few buildings that could withstand the sustained 96- to 100-mph winds and 6- to 8-ft. storm surges of a Category 2 hurricane. Moving to higher elevations would be just as dangerous as staying on low ground. Had Camille, a Category 5 storm, made landfall at New Orleans, instead of losing her punch before arriving, her winds would have blown twice as hard and her storm surge would have been three times as high.

  Yet knowing all this, area residents have made their potential problem worse. "Over the past 30 years, the coastal region impacted by Camille has changed dramatically. Coastal erosion combined with soaring commercial and residential development in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have all combined to significantly increase the vulnerability of the area," says Sandy Ward Eslinger, of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal Services Center in Charleston, S.C.
• 

  Morocco

  It seems to me that most (resonable) people believe the way I do: it's mother nature not vengeful god. I don't believe these things are punishments. Other people do. Why? Why do people believe these natural disasters are a response from God? I think (imho) because people, in the Old Testament, claimed he was active daily in the lives of men, meting out punishments and prosperity. He no longer does these things today. The question becomes: Is the claim that natural disatsters are from God simply a desperate attempt at solving the enormous absense of his presence in relation to his daily activity recorded in the Old Testament? I'm not asking if this "Jehovah" ever existed, what I'm asking is: Are people trying to cling to the idea that God is still active in peoples' lives, the way he "used" to be, by blaming things like this on Him? Are they striving to answer "where is god?"