I’m an atheist, too, and while I don’t make a point of belittling religious people’s harmless behaviors, I think it’s a stretch to read the quote and say it was probably a metaphor. It reads like someone who honestly believes in the power of prayer to the Christian God.
I’d also add that the news story the link takes us to must have been updated, because that quote is no longer there (except partly in the comments section). Without context, it’s hard to be particularly critical of the quote. The sheriff is talking about finally cracking a case after 13years. The people killed were already dead, so the most the sheriff could hope for would be to find the killer.
Nut sure if that’s supposed to be snark, but words like “omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnificent” are essentially magic words that don’t actually mean anything, but they seem to crop up whenever a logical argument is advanced against the dimwitted anthropomorphic concepts of God common in most religions and mythologies. Their real purpose is to dismiss the argument rather than addressing it: “Of course God can … {whatever} … because, like, he’s God, yunno?”.
But let me clarify about the hurricanes. Yes, God creates them whenever he’s reminded about gays and gets pissed off at their sinful gayness. But he still has to steer 'em. And sometimes he gets distracted, as do we all, and then he loses control and the hurricanes go off course, barging around all over the place. This is, as best as I could understand it, more or less the explanation once offered by the Incredibly Reverend Pat Robertson. But most of us can attribute distracted driving to cell phones or hot passersby – you’d think that someone who’s supposed to be omnipotent would be better at it, but what do I know.
The most charitable explanation might be that this is the particular species of lawman who is elected to the job and periodically has to get re-elected. I find that few things inspire effusive piety quite as much as a public official in pursuit of votes.
Well, is this the same God who’s in three bits, that are actually one bit (but also three bits don’t forget), and who decided that in order to forgive us for being naughty, he had to sacrifice one of the three bits (which are actually one bit, don’t forget) of himself, to himself? I think he’s drunk most days by mid-morning.
Four people from the same business go missing and they had nothing until this guy talked? Fucking incompetent police department. Why were the state cops not called in when the body count at one business started going up?
Geez … I’m looking at this story thinking Shiva would be pleased with this guy … we’re going to execute him and maybe the gods of karma wants his soul for Kate and William’s next baby …
It’s a judgment call, but to me “God answered our prayers. If it wasn’t for Him answering our prayers…” goes way further than a meaningless turn of phrase. If he’d just said “Thank God this guy talked” I’d agree with you.
Also, “considering yourself lucky” isn’t magical thinking unless you think of luck as being some mysterious force that comes and goes. IME most people just use lucky as a word for “benefitting in circumstances where the probability of doing so was low”.
I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. Four people were killed at once at a motorbike shop in, like 2003 and there’s been no leads on who did it until now.
Also, two couples disappeared recently - 11 months ago and 2 months ago. The first couple had just lost custody of their baby because it tested positive for traces of heroin, so there’s probably a lot of people in their lives that could have been suspected of making them disappear. The second couple seemed to have some sort of situation with a fairly recent ex-wife and they just up and vanished. Family were fundraising for a PI when the female half of the couple was discovered chained up on the serial killer’s property.
I’m from South Carolina–you can’t have a Chuck Wright comment without him mentioning religion in some way. Not only does he wear his religion on his sleeve, he rubs it on everyone else’s.
They didn’t “go missing”–the bullet-riddled bodies were found on the floor right where he left them. And given that there were no security cameras and no CSI magic clue that instantly identified him and only works on TV, I don’t see how the police are to be faulted for this. (Out of all the info links I googled up, for some reason I’m posting a video of Geraldo Rivera.)
The sheriff came in after the murders so he gets somewhat of a pass. But I’m sure he also says on occasion: “Today God didn’t answer our prayers. The little girl was found dismembered and with her face smashed in.” Etc.
That’s the omnipresence thing, being next to your own self, and it’s way cool. But my theory is that God’s omnipresence is like superposition in quantum mechanics – he’s everywhere at the same time, until he’s actually observed. Which he frequently is, and for that you can thank those fundies who are always seeing images of God and having little chats with him.
Catch a glimpse of God in the bathtub, and bam! – the superposition collapses and suddenly that’s the only place he is, and nowhere else (plus, it’s a vaguely disturbing image). I believe this explains why those hurricanes are always going off course, with no one to steer them. If God was really serious about smiting gays, he would either stop chatting with the fundies or just lay off the baths for a while and concentrate on work.
You mean we should keep it going, with daily stupid quotes? There’s a lot of material at the moment. Maybe we should avoid party political stuff, to avoid overlap with the dozens of political threads, and “stupid Rep/Dem idea of the day”.