I am always immensely amused when religious people find ways to attribute positive events to their sky fairy's generous intercessions, but somehow fail to hold it accountable when bad things happen tonthem. Two examples caught my eye this week. A friend of my wife's sent an sms letting everyone know that her young son was innhospital in a serious condition with pneumonia, but that he was about to be saved by the lord jesus, in response to her apparently fervent prayers. So where was god when her baby contracted pneumonia? Recovering from a hangover; distracted by trying to decide which ostentatiously pious sportsman to grant victory; whispering in the ear of a Catholic priest as he sodomised an altar boy; or did the all-powerful god send pneumonia to test her faith (human sacrifice is after all an integral part of biblical teaching)? Rather than thanking god for her boy's survival, perhaps she could recognise that hundreds of years of science has developed an unbelievably effective body of modern medicine. Those doctors saved her son, not some ridiculous imaginary friend. It must take a lot of self-discipline not to question the motives of a god in a world so manifestly randomly cruel. But I guess that's what Sunday school and madressas are for - indoctinating the common sense out of people requires that you start early.
Another recent example is that of a South African surfer who survived a shark attack. Did it occur to him that god sent the shark to kill him? Maybe he had coveted his neighbour's wife?
All of which reminds me of a great atheist t-shirt: "prayer: the act of begging an all-powerful deity to change its master plan for the universe."
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