# Just curious how drowning a bunch of kids can be considered God's will **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 15, 2025, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860 "2025-07-15T01:00:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/141 "2025-07-15T18:54:35Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > When you can distinguish between people of faith and people who have really stupid rigid ideas about faith, I will be able to listen to you. No, you won’t. Not listening to unbelievers is part of what faith is about. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/142 "2025-07-15T19:00:26Z")
This might not be entirely on topic, but IMHO, one phenomenon across many deeply-religious and/or MAGA folks is that they don’t feel as much pain over the deaths of their children as other parents do. Look at the mother who said, “My son died of Covid but I’m still voting for Trump” or the father who said he’d “do it again” (not vaccinate) when his daughter died of preventable measles. When you take that lack-of-pain and apply it to something like Camp Mystic, it may be easier for (some) parents to write off their child’s death as “God’s will” if that death didn’t emotionally hurt that much to begin with. Again, just my 2 cents. I’m no mind-reader. The vast majority of Camp Mystic parents, of course, must be devastated beyond words. But if there is a small minority of them that isn’t hurting as badly, they could more easily chalk it up to “God’s will.” ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/143 "2025-07-15T19:02:16Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > When you can distinguish between people of faith and people who have really stupid rigid ideas about faith, I will be able to listen to you. And when you can successfully tell one from the other and tell us which is which, we will listen to you. But be ready for the nasty little fact that others will have lists that don’t match up with yours. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/144 "2025-07-15T19:06:27Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > at those that either follow beliefs like theirs To be clear you have no fucking idea what the beliefs of the parents of these children are, what the beliefs of those who made the decisions about safety choices were. But they are religious so you are free to paint in the brush of what you know they are like and what they think. Stupidity and hatefulness is not the domain of fundies alone apparently. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/145 "2025-07-15T19:08:02Z")
And neither are they exempt from it. Welcome to world. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/146 "2025-07-15T19:08:11Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > No, you won’t. Not listening to unbelievers is part of what faith is about. Not to me it isn’t. I don’t listen to what you say about faith because you don’t know one damn thing about faith and you don’t want to know. You find the lowest dumbest ideas about faith and try to make that the entire story.That makes your conversation about faith dull. You relegate billions of believers, many of whom are more intelligent, more compassionate, more profound, more subtle in thought, than either of us, to a kind of dogged witless irrationality. It’s disappointing. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/147 "2025-07-15T19:10:21Z")
Maybe you can carpool with them? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/148 "2025-07-15T19:14:08Z")
I’ve got no problem carpooling with most of the world. Was that supposed to be a “gotcha”…and would you like to try again? ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/149 "2025-07-15T19:16:15Z")
> [@DavidNRockies](#): > > Yet, they’re oddly silent on this kind of thing. > > Seems a bit of a double standard, no? And we’re just randos on some Internet message board. I’m not so sure those televangelist do a lot of bible studying. When Job was afflicted with all his troubles, his friends were unsympathetic insisting he must have done something to piss God off. God later admonished those friends because they were making assumptions about Job’s character that wasn’t true. You’d think more Christians would learn that bad things can happen to good people and it’s not their fault. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/150 "2025-07-15T19:17:08Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > This might not be entirely on topic, but IMHO, one phenomenon across many deeply-religious and/or MAGA folks is that they don’t feel as much pain over the deaths of their children as other parents do. It is certainly relevant. I have long said that the one distinguishing factor that is different between conservatives and liberals, MAGA and democrats, is empathy. Conservatives do not seem to have it. I would actually go as far as to say you _cannot_ be a conservative if you have it, because it would be impossible to support policies if you couldn’t help but consider their effect on strangers. The only way you can separate families, lock innocent people in cages, deny healthcare, deny basic freedoms, is that you cannot put yourself in their situation, cannot feel their suffering. I never thought of it in this “god’s will” context, but it fits. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/151 "2025-07-15T19:23:29Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I have long said that the one distinguishing factor that is different between conservatives and liberals, MAGA and democrats, is empathy. Conservatives do not seem to have it. I would actually go as far as to say you _cannot_ be a conservative if you have it, because it would be impossible to support policies if you couldn’t help but consider their effect on strangers. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that people who talk about “the sin of empathy” can be assumed to not be very empathetic. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/152 "2025-07-15T19:30:25Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Those who don’t believe in a deity realize that the world is a random place and that there is often no explanation for what happens. There’s plenty of explanation for how this happened. It happened because adults put children to sleep in a known flash flood high risk location. It happened because they not only ignored, but deliberately contravened, attempts made to prevent putting children to sleep in a known flash flood hazard zone. It happened because the federal, state, and local governments made no sufficiently serious attempt to prevent people (not only the ones running the camp) from building sleeping quarters in known flash flood zones, and to allow building them there without designing them to allow for survival in such floods. It happened because alarm mechanisms to alert people who were known to have built in a flash flood hazard zone were not designed sufficiently to do the job, and because when some specific people were alerted in time to save at least some lives they didn’t act immediately. It also probably happened due to human-caused climate change; but even leaving that out of it entirely, this was in large part, and in particular as it pertains to this specific camp, a preventable disaster. To what extent the attitude that floods are “acts of God” that humans can do nothing about contributed to this mess I have no idea. I suspect that attitude was probably part of it; but I suspect the profit motive and in the case of the people in government the desire to not get voted out of office both had something to do with it also. But to say that atheists must think this happened entirely randomly and that there are no explanations available is nonsense. > [@Velocity](#): > > This might not be entirely on topic, but IMHO, one phenomenon across many deeply-religious and/or MAGA folks is that they don’t feel as much pain over the deaths of their children as other parents do. Look at the mother who said, “My son died of Covid but I’m still voting for Trump” or the father who said he’d “do it again” (not vaccinate) when his daughter died of preventable measles. I very much doubt that that’s a lack of pain. I think that’s more likely to be a defense mechanism because they can’t deal with the pain of acknowledging ‘My actions killed my child.’ It may well cover an unbearable depth of pain. Yes, there are some people who don’t give a shit about their kids; and even more people who don’t give a shit about anybody else’s kids; but they’re not grouped by religion or lack of it, and they generally show a lot of other symptoms of neglect. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/153 "2025-07-15T19:34:28Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > This might not be entirely on topic, but IMHO, one phenomenon across many deeply-religious and/or MAGA folks is that they don’t feel as much pain over the deaths of their children as other parents do. That is offensive to assume. People grieve differently than how others think they should. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/154 "2025-07-15T19:35:40Z")
It is not offensive to assume that some feel less grief than others. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/155 "2025-07-15T19:45:44Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > That is offensive to assume. Too bad. Honesty about the Right is always offensive. And they’ve demonstrated again and again that they have very little actual concern for their children’s lives and welfare. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/156 "2025-07-15T19:55:05Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Too bad. Honesty about the Right is always offensive. I hope you never have to experience how to deal with the loss of a child. If you did, you would understand what assholes you all are that assume that a group don’t feel the loss of their child as hard as everyone else. You don’t know so fuck you and your judgements on those that suffer and need to deal with the hardest loss in life. And go ahead and double-down on your ignorance just knowing it make you and all of you that agree even more of an asshole. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > It is not offensive to assume that some feel less grief than others. Do you know the grief that comes from the loss of a child? Do you assume that you can judge their level of grief they from how they publicly deal with it? Sometimes you live life day to day. Sometimes hour to hour or minute to minute. During the darkest times it is second to second. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/157 "2025-07-15T20:17:31Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > I hope you never have to experience how to deal with the loss of a child. If you did, you would understand what assholes you all are that assume that a group don’t feel the loss of their child as hard as everyone else. The people who throw their child onto the street because they turn out to be gay or otherwise don’t fit into the narrow box they want their child to be stuck in _do not_ in fact care about their children as much as other people do. Insisting that they do care about their children endangers those very children. Many of whom have made that mistake, and believed that their parents cared about them more than they cared about their hate. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/158 "2025-07-15T20:18:50Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > you would understand what assholes you all are Not everyone in this thread is making that claim. Please retract the “all”. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/159 "2025-07-15T20:54:39Z")
I know for a fucking _fact_ that some kids are loved more than others. Some kids are loved less, some are loved more, some mistake the treatment they received as children as “love” and pass it along to the next generation, and some are just outright hated. ---
**Author:** ![We\_re\_wolves\_not\_werewolves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@We\_re\_wolves\_not\_werewolves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/We_re_wolves_not_werewolves)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/160 "2025-07-15T21:08:08Z")
of course, but being on the “Right” or “Left” (however you are defining those terms) has absolutely nothing to do with whether a parent loves their kids more or less than other parents. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860.md?page=9)