“We hope and pray and believe in a God of miracles.”
Relative of a person probably drowned in the Nepal-China Flood
Believers in the existence of a supernatural creator of our planet – most but by no means all Christians – go on and on and on and on and on about its moral perfection and infinite love for its human creations.
So why all the floods?
Of course the deeply defective planet the creator, if it exists, plopped us upon -- without apparently first asking permission -- disproves the moral God thesis. As do the scriptures it supposedly produced. We humans just suffered yet another a sterling example of a people slaughtering mass water disaster that killed apparently thousands of people minding their business in a horrifying period that, while too short for them to escape their terrifying terminations, was long enough to make it a gravely agonizing end of existence for those of all ages.
Check, if you wish, this video of the Nepal-China super-flood --
Observe that in the first segment terrified victims are trying to flee for their lives from a massive water wall, hundreds of feet tall, that they presumably knew they could not evade and would in minutes end their lives in a torturous manner. But in their extremis they could not help but run to put off their dreadful deaths by a few moments.
And the Christian creator is OK with this.
As are those who worship and dare not criticize the deity they want to be ever so nice to them.
Drowning is an awful way to die. There is the intensely scary panic realization that being trapped underwater one does not have access to air, and if one does not regain that in moments, then one’s life will come to a usually unexpected end. A person automatically does not inhale as long as possible, but that becomes increasingly agonizing until there is the involuntary inhalation in the brain’s last desperate effort to try to get the oxygen it has to have. Filling the air passages and lungs with water is extremely uncomfortable and can lead to terminal vomiting. Mind shutdown quickly ensues (at least in terms of awareness of the external world, a large percentage of drowning victims undergo near-death experiences because the brain remains intact and able to experience a last bout of dream effects which are often but not always pleasant). Causing death by drowning is patent criminal mental and physical abuse leading to murder.
Flood victims are generally innocents. They happen to be in a location that is subjected to a sudden influx of massive waters – a stream or river valley, a coastal region subject to storm surge or giant ocean waves. Warning times range from none, to days in the case of approaching big storms in locations where alerts can be provided in these modern scientific times. In many cases the cause of the flood is entirely natural, as per tsunamis. Or it may involve errant human decisions, such as deficient dams, or choosing to dwell and work in floodplains known to be subject to dangerous torrents. Always entirely innocent are children just beginning their lives.
The Nepal-Chinese event apparently could not have been scientifically predicted and from that time adequateevacuation notices issued -- it involved hidden complex issues regarding terrain, water, and glacial ice in a manner that was not readily discernable. When it started it was not practical to issue timely warnings to those downstream. Many of those lost were on a religious pilgrimage, albeit nonChristian.
The critical issue is that there obviously is not a creator with supernatural capacities who is opposed to floods of the natural world he created regularly killing people – and hapless creatures. If it did care it could prevent the disasters from happening in the first place, or at least issue live-saving warnings. Being of immense knowledge and power the Lord of the universe could have set up a planet that does not chronically produce the earthquakes and giant slides that create super waves and valley floods, and the assortment of storms that generate coastal surges and valley floods. Instead it seems to have gone out of its way to devise a large variety of awesome flood creation schemes.
Last year happy girls were attending a Christian summer camp in Texas. Had the deity of unlimited power that they believed loved them dearly notified the Protestants who laid out the camp to of course not put residential cabins in reach of flood waters, like hello? Having failed to provide instructions to protect the kids, did it do anything about the immense rainstorm that was overloading the watershed upstream? Nope, it was fine with that. As the waters rose in the dark rural night did their alleged creator warn the little ones and their caretakers to in no uncertain terms clear out to higher ground? Not a peep. As the rushing gurgling waters surrounded and engulfed absolutely terrified children who then went through the tormenting drowning process as they desperately prayed for help, did the god reconsider his decisions that were leading to the loss of their comfort, safety and adult free will? No need to bother with that, his love for his children being infinite after all.
There are a host of historical horror stories of floods dispatching countless victims. This still young century alone includes the Great Indian Ocean Tsunami that took out about a quarter million, the 2011 Japanese coastal wave that drowned almost 20,000, Katrina did in 2500 or so. In the 1900s a Chinese flood eliminated 150,000, one in Bangladesh a third to half a million, another in China probably the higher value, yet another up to 2 million. The highest toll is likely the millions lost a few centuries ago in China. Adding to the total toll are countless little floods, like the ones that just took out some campers in the Grand Canyon. Unlike the latter, most flood victims are on the lower end of the prosperity scale, not well educated -- and usually pious.
That’s the real world actuality of creator deity accordance with the floods this planet periodically produces that it could prevent if it wished too. The scriptural example is bigger still. According to many Christians what the Bible says is the Inviable Word of God and all must take what it says as reality. Really? In that case God created a planetary inundation about 4.5K years ago that wiped nearly every human, as well as land animals. Doing the geographic-hydraulic math, each day saw the waters rise a few hundred feet (to top the mountains in 40 days), a super swift engulfment that dwarfs any actual flood. Such likely would have submerged and eradicated almost the entire population in a few days at most. In their desperation to explain why human fossils are found only on the top of “flood” deposits over a just few weeks that actually were laid down over billions of years, creationists fantasize that smart humans were able to best evade drowning until nearly all the land was swamped. Of course actual people are highly prone to getting themselves into trouble early in floods and needing rescuing if that is doable -- watch the Weather Channel and disaster news coverage. What is disturbing about fundamentalists is how they praise the global flood as both righteous and merciful, what with the creator sparing a few people and land animals on a large boat. What they do not show in the children’s illustrated Bibles is the bodies of the deceased children bouncing against the hull of the Ark. Why is that, seeing as how it was a good and necessary thing under the wisdom of their upright creator? Might it be that showing children that God is a kid killer might cause them to go atheist, perhaps? They have a point there.
The pitiless Christian creator really has a thing with killing its creations children -- whether it be deliberately or without caring intervention -- via lots of water. But that is just one of a great array means of cruel natural premature death it is fine with, others including quakes, volcanics, lightening, extreme winds (funny how much all of Tornado Alley is in the Bible Belt, much of which is also subject to hurricanes), starvation, predation, and by far worse of all the diseases that have killed half of the children yet born (~50 billion -- https://gspaulscienceofnonreligion.substack.com/p/the-great-god-worship-scandal-our). All this barbarity somehow being integral to its flawless scheme to establish its perfect heavenly utopia. Of course the creator is mythological -- and the religious industry that claims God is real and good is a multi-trillion dollar propaganda complex (https://gspaulscienceofnonreligion.substack.com/p/the-competing-global-industries-the). What is all too real is how believers are so weirdly callous about premature death by water and other means. To the degree they demand that all must acclaim the high morality of the deity that does nothing to save little Christian girls from spending their last conscious moments inhaling life snuffing water. It is nonsense and moral hypocrisy of high order. It is shameful.
There is a growing human factor in the floods of this century. Climate change induced by willy-nilly burning vast amounts of fossil fuels is destabilizing weather systems and glaciers in a manner that is boosting dangerous flood events freshwater and marine. The response of the evangelical right is to urge injecting yet more CO2 into the air (https://gspaulscienceofnonreligion.substack.com/p/oil-is-godly-well-at-least-american), this on the premise that it is God, not humanity, that controls the climate. Which if correct means a depraved creator is deliberately drowning lots of folks. This is another argument theoconservative climate change deniers are not close to winning.
What is very perturbing and deeply disappointing is how for millennia people have bought into the patently nonsensical theoindustry deception that a creator who oversees such an egregiously dangerous planet in which traumatic death is commonplace, is a moral being deserving uncritical admiration and devout worship for its goodness. Such serious gullibility probably has to do with us being big brained primates that evolved to live and reproduce in small nomadic groups, rather than savvy intellects designed to conduct sound analysis. That God is Good lie is wearing down some as nontheism is the fastest growing opinion among an increasingly educated populace, but there is a very long way to go towards a more rational world.