thank you calsailor- yes, we hold the other names even more sacred (if that's possible) and I avoid using them out of respect. That's my religious training.

I don't think sp2 "heard" you- he seems not to hear anyone except his own personal demons. I have to feel badly for anyone who lives in such a hate filled prison world where only those who think like you are allowed and all the rest will be destroyed. It's a far cry from the world of love and light that was at the heart of Christ's teachings.

I hope I can enumerate the future events one by one so you would believe that it's like a movie I've seen already.

I can but I won't. It would only give the enemies an advance screening.

I have given a few before and that's all I can disclose at this time.

God will NOT allow Abortion and Gay Marriage to go on unanswered. This is His world and nobody messes with Him. Evolution too. Survival of the fittest? God does not see them (evolutionists)fit so they too must go.

What an interesting thread!

On the one hand we have a couple of people quoting bible verses out of context, and without understanding that they are practicing isogesis (the reading into the text whatever they want), and not exegesis, understanding what the text is saying, according to rules of interpretation: First is the meaning of the original writer, in the context of time and place. Then in the hermeneutical understanding of its place in the canon. (Spiderman, I'll be happy to translate those terms...). At the most basic, "prophecy" in the scriptural sense, means first, to speak in the name of God to the current situation: "Thus says the LORD, to my people..." This is what the great prophets did in the Hebrew scriptures. For all of you who are spending all your time in Revelation for your understanding of prophecy, you are not reading prophecy, you are reading apocalyptic material. It is very different, and must be interpreted differently. Instead, try the Gospels (to find out what Jesus said) Psalms, to pray as he did, and the classical prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, the 12 minor prophets, etc.

Scripture is not a movie of the history of the world that you can line up texts with a particular date and explain it all. It is the record of God's people, understanding and dealing with G-d's interaction with them. Sometimes it is clear, and many times not.

In contrast to "we have the mind of G-d", try reading 1 Cor 13:8-13, which is one paragraph in Greek...again, one has to read in context, and the context says that we are limited in what we know, but we are called to love as the basic attitude of followers of G-d.

I see a lot of hate and very little love in many of these posts.

As to whether or not G-d is predictable, or controllable, how about allowing that the sinful world in which we live has impact on all of our lives, and that death and destruction, as well as random choice, is part of it? G-d has given us freedom of choice, and much comes from that. The freedom he gives us is an awesome gift, but comes with some heavy consequences, sometimes.

To Sparrow: I have used the Jewish naming convention for G-d, even through I believe it is not a sin to do otherwise. There are a variety of names for G-d including the name which is usually pronounced Adonai instead of the name of the G-d of the Covenant. But I will respect your obligation and training.

"You can't even spell God correctly and you claim to know a false prophet? Just remember my previous posts especially concerning prophecies so you won't be caught by surprise."

Ah, spidey- so much you don't know. It just so happens that Jews believe the name of G-d is sacred, ergo we use a dash instead of the o so we don't use His name in vain. Not, of course, that's something you would understand.

It just occurred to me that someone with an obsessive interest in tossing people into hellfire might also have an interest in fire in another sadistic sense - arson. And we all know what arsonists do once the fire gets going.....

"And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live." (Numbers 21:8)

I don't make the rules.

Just a slight turning of the head can make you safe.

So you say, Spidey, seems you're the one most interested in feeding people to hellfire... Unless of course they obey you.

Who's that sound like?

Sparrow wrote "I've seen enough of your posts to know a false prophet when I see one. The sad part is you don't."

You can't even spell God correctly and you claim to know a false prophet? Just remember my previous posts especially concerning prophecies so you won't be caught by surprise.

Christians don't pray evil for evil people. They know too well how God will punish unbelievers. Pity is the word. They pity them for the burning they will experience.

"Look and live", that's what Christians pray.

In the said "movie" that Im talking about, I've seen you guys burn. But there is a way out, just look and you will live.

Still, Arminius.

"As you know, no real Christian would ever pray for harm to anyone. Not even a prayer for rain. Not even against Bin Laden."

Well, why do that when you can blame your fellow countrymen for not being pious and Republican enough, and pull back from Tora Bora to keep the demonic spectre alive?

He was bound well and good, with no particular concerns about his health, ...seems someone had some other priorities, though, when it came to close the deal.

I mean, I'm a very nice person, but someone wants to get on camera and gloat over the carnage, saying, 'I did this,' use of 'force' gets pretty clear-cut.

Can't make anyone go bag the guy if they don't want to, though.

If Bush wanted him, he could have had him. But then it would have been hard to divert resources to assaulting 'Babylon,' wouldn't it? He literally *pulled our troops out when they had the guy cornered.* Then advertised how the little twitch's influence was 'everywhere,' particularly Iraq...

Forget about it.

The thing about all this religion and politics, is, there's always someone willing to sell someone the notion they can *feel* powerful, as long as they give up all responsibility for what's done in their name. Or their own carefully-cultivated ill-intents.

It's still malice, though. Palpably.

Like I said, attempts at 'black magic,' ...they just deny it and project it. "We can't be doing what we're doing cause we're not that kind of people."

Yaaaah. Right.

Yeah, what can you do, Arminius, they think everyone coming down the pike is the 'Antichrist' when they long since got themselves completely backwards.

I mean, even I was raised to figure the people trying to make a lot of money by 'ending the world' were... the bad guys or something.

Go figure.

Paganplace,

As you know, no real Christian would ever pray for harm to anyone. Not even a prayer for rain. Not even against Bin Laden. Hell, not even against Spidey. It IS ironic, though! Damn fool fundies.

I mean, all these Christian maledictions, what they look like to me is 'sowing the wind' and praying for crop failure.

Yaknow?

Oh, so much here.

"Not too long ago, a spokesperson for the Evangelical Focus on the Family made an online appeal asking Christians to pray that God would send a rain storm to ruin Senator Barack Obama's outdoor stadium speech in Denver. However, the weather was glorious that night. A week later, a hurricane forced virtual suspension of the Republican Convention in Minnesota. Whose side is God on?"

I dunno, but invoking unseen powers to hurt others? Especially when you *should* know that getting what you want would be bound to screw up weather patterns elsewhere.

My people call that kind of move 'black magic.'

Ironic ennit? Many such ironies occur.

"I suspect stormy prayers are more common among Evangelicals than among Catholics."

Not that Catholics are immune, check out Good Friday rituals.

Well, check out Good Friday. Praying for the coercion of others to agree with you ain't much different.

" Asking God to curse a political convention with a storm is not a practice in the Catholic cupboard."

Eeeeh, it's back there with the old can of baking powder and the cream of tartar, but it's there.

" Moreover, to their credit, enough Evangelicals protested Focus on the Family's politicizing of prayer that the ad was taken down. But the theological question remains: Can we discern God's will by looking at the weather?"

This is one of those questions that comes backwards.

"Most religions believe that a deity controls the weather. Sometimes that means a god of the wind, a goddess of the sea, and other gods for the earth, mountains, and the like."

Eh, your cultural bias is showing. You're projecting your Christian notions of 'Control.'

Gods or spirits of wind and weather generally *are* these things, not someone off in the spirit world 'controlling' stuff on their Xbox. A relationship with that isn't *human-centric,* you have to understand.

These aren't indirect means of judgment on morality, or if enough witches or liberals got burned, these are embodiments of the world to be greeted as presented.

"The Abrahamic religions all include the basic revelation to Israel that their monotheistic God has just as much power as in other religions. This is spelled out more clearly in the scriptures of Israel than in the Christian Gospels. "

Actually, it presents the presumption that other religions are simply more-unacceptable versions of their own.

Ain't so.

And we got Doppler radar, now. Be especially careful what you 'pray' for.

No 'excuse' not to.

sp2- I've seen enough of your posts to know a false prophet when I see one. The sad part is you don't.

Arminius- we agree. I'm always amazed at the people who call them selves "Christian" and have no idea what that really means.

SP2 :"Telling the truth is NOT similar to hating. Im just a wistle-blower unmasking false religions."

I don't think you're capable of knowing the truth. Jesus would not recognize the vengeful, arrogant, self-proclaimed soothsayer you are, as one of his followers. Quoting your interpretations of the bible does not make you a whistle blower unmasking false religions, it makes you a blowhard.

Spiderman2:

I agree with you that there is a difference between telling the truth and hating. The trick is to tell which one you are doing. As you know well, the devil can distort the truth and cause you to hate even what is good. How do you guard against that? Do you look back at what you write and see whether it was done in love?

Can we discern God's will by looking at the weather? I think not, at least not in the short term. The problem is that our perspective is so limited and also colored by our own biases. Who among us has not had this experience: We were absolutely sure something was true, only to find out that it wasn't later when some new information comes to light. So people who try to read God's intent in current events run a significant risk that their views will be turned upside down when more information is available.

As for the other big question put forward in the article, "Can we influence God through prayer." Jesus clearly said that you can. He said "Ask and you will recieve, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you." To think otherwise is to render prayer useless. But he also predicated it on Faith. " If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could move mountains." I think in general, God will grant your wishes if they are made with good intent and they fit in with his overall plan. His intent is for you to love God and love your Neighbor as yourself (including those you count as enemies, because God allows it to rain on the just and wicked alike.)

Finally, I think to ask a loving God to do evil to your opponents is asking him to go against his nature. He may in fact allow evil to occur as part of the teaching/ testing/ refining process, but not because someone wanted to use him as an instrument of evil.

Spiderman2 aka Canyon Shearer, Bible Thumper, Fortune Teller and Severely Brainwashed in that Old Time Religion,

This is all you can handle considering your state of mind.

Fools are those who have read only the bible. God cannot be proud of such lazy creations!!!!

What "voodooer of the hoodoo" blessed you with such stupidity in the field of fortune telling and interpretations of said stupidity???

Telling the truth is NOT similar to hating. Im just a wistle-blower unmasking false religions.

c ya later

Sparrow,

Spidey's posts are usually a minor source of entertainment, but he can get really hateful. Here's what he said about the shooting at the UU church in Knoxville, TN:

"It's a pity that those people died of gunshot wounds but it's more terrible to think that those people will go to hell because of this FALSE PREACHER."

No true Christian would ever say such an awful thing, nor ever presume to judge.

Sparrow wrote "there's not much point in trying to refute you with facts."

Big events that happen in this world are all written in the Bible. It is as if Im watching a movie but had a preview of the script already. In other word's it's like watching a boxing match where you already know the winner even before they start fighting.

That is the facts I hold. So if you wanna bet with me with that "boxing match", I won't feel excited but instead pity for you coz I have a preview of the fight already long before the organizers of that match even have thought of it.

If you're new in this blog, try reviewing my previous posts when things in this world gets messy.

spiderman2- It's really hard to argue with someone whose depth of ignorance and bias is so vast. I gave up trying to have an intelligent discussion with you on several other blogs because there is simply no way to get past the brick wall you've erected in your mind. What you know about Jews could fit on the head of a pin. what you know or understand about G-d or Jesus wouldn't fill the space inside an atom.

You're a perfect example of why Christianity gets such a bad rap. "God teaches his flock and you guys are not his flock. That is the difference. We are both correct. We are taught and you are not. That's the difference."

You may well believe that, and since you refuse to believe or listen to anyone that disagrees, there's not much point in trying to refute you with facts. You'll simply reject them. I will simply remind you Jesus was a Jew and remained so throughout his life. If it's good enough for him, should have been good enough for you.

Please don't waste your time quoting the bible or all the old, stale arguments about Jews and Christ. If you feel like wallowing in your ignorance, have at it. Just don't think you and I are capable of having a real discussion on any level- I don't stoop that low.

Saparrow, man cannot fathom the intelligence of God but he knows the will of God thru the Bible. To understand the Bible, one needs the help of the Holy Spirit.

You guys are not lying if you claim that you don't know the mind of God coz you are ignorant of the Bible.

Jews reject Christ because they don't understand the Bible.

"Who has known the mind of the Lord so that he can teach him?" However, WE HAVE the MIND of Christ." (1 Cor. 2:16)

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are SPIRITUALLY DISCERNED." (1 Cor. 2:14)

God teaches his flock and you guys are not his flock. That is the difference. We are both correct. We are taught and you are not. That's the difference.

spiderman2 wrote: "Arminius wrote "I do not know the mind of God"

The idiot strikes again. You claim to be a Christian and you don't know what Christians should be doing? So who's mind do you know? The Devil?"

If I were G-d I would find it so offensive that a puny human with the life span of 3 score ten could actually presume to know what I was thinking. The only thing we know is that there is a vast, nearly incomprehensible force in the Universe (and this holds I think whether you are a scientist or a priest) that we know only bits of. And I think what we can know, we approach through the bible or science or philosophy- but to think that you know the mind of G-d is like an ant claiming to understand Einstein.

I would also like to point out that the Bible was written by men- who act as both interpreter and filter. The bible is about the interaction of man and G-d, the things that, if you believe, He wanted us to know. But the Bible is not an autobiography. the bible was written by holy men and historians in languages that were translated over 1000's of years, into the many versions we have now. Any biblical scholar will tell you this.
Men have always interpreted the bible. You may feel you have the definitive interpretation and then there are others who will claim theirs is. Language changes- we don't speak today as we did when the King James bible was written. We've lost the meaning of many words, and their context.

Judaism understands this. the Talmud is a record of rabbinical discussions on law, ethics, history, etc. Who can argue over the meaning of G-d's statements? Well, the problem is not what G-d says, but how man understands it.

When we say, "an eye for an eye." Many people interpret that to mean revenge. But it is a law that codifies the idea of fair punishment, part of ancient codes of law that sought to create a system of justice, not revenge. A man steals your cow. You do not then go and kill his children. It's all how you look at it.

In the context of the times, the concept of parity, even in retribution, was crucial to the development of civilizations. In a more subtle sense, there is an underlying assumption that there is an element of forgiveness and discipline. The story of Solomon and the baby is essentially this.

Oops got a little off topic- my point being that no one can claim to know the mind of G-d. It seems to me the height of arrogance for for someone to claim he does because that would mean he puts himself on the same level with G-d. And sorry, spiderman2- you aren't.

Spiderman2 aka Canyon Shearer, Bible Thumper, Fortune Teller and Severely Brainwashed in that Old Time Religion,

This is all you can handle considering your state of mind.

Fools are those who have read only the bible. God cannot be proud of such lazy creations!!!!

What "voodooer of the hoodoo" blessed you with such stupidity in the field of fortune telling and interpretations of said stupidity???

Why is it that it was supposedly 'God's will' to 'punish' New Orleans with Katrina, but when all those floods were happening along the Mississippi earlier this year, nobody said a word about God?

spidey - to put it simply - you're a douche. - you represent everything that is wrong with religion and christianity in the world. Im glad you think god is a hateful D*ck, so you can live through life being misguided, and passing on your retard gene to your retard children. good day sir. I SAID GOOD DAY!

Arminius wrote "I do not know the mind of God"

The idiot strikes again. You claim to be a Christian and you don't know what Christians should be doing? So who's mind do you know? The Devil?

You are lost Arminius. You just said it but don't know how to say it in very SIMPLE WORDS.

"I do not know the mind of God" simply means I'M LOST. IDIOT.

"...But we have the mind of Christ." (1 Cor.2:16)

I find it so odd that we believe in G-d as omniscient and omnipotent, but spend so much of our time speaking for Him, anticipating Him or explaining Him. I could say consider the source when someone like a Dobson or a Falwell or a Robertson claims to speak for G-d and G-d said that yada yada yada. But the problem of praying to G-d for a hurricane to wipe out the Democratic convention is that no real reverend or pastor or priest or rabbi would ever ask such a thing.

I wonder how so-called men of G-d (and women for that matter) could have such a trite concept of the Almighty. What being of vast and unknowable power would really waste his time on a political convention? It really boggles the mind.

We pray for g-d to destroy our enemies (as our enemies are praying to theirs for the same), we pray to win in Iraq, we pray for G-d to throw "non-believers" into Hell, we pray to God to make our team win the football game. Then we wonder why our prayers aren't answered.

This is what I believe- with every foolish, trivial,insipid, mean-spirited prayer we make, we make a mockery of G-d. Cursing the convention, asking for a fancy car, praying for a gas pipeline to go through a wilderness refuge.....these things don't come out of our belief in a good or just G-d who is all knowing and all powerful. These things come out of a belief that so long as we pay lip service, G-d will do for us.

The idea that we can discern G-d's will in the weather is like claiming to know the universe by reading tea leaves. I always thought the premise of religion was to live our lives according to His laws and teachings.

But today it seems G-d has many psychoanalysts to tell us His mind, and many mouthpieces to tell us His intentions. I still find that so odd.

God, the weatherman?
"God was so good to us that the rain stopped when we arrived at the beach, and started up again after a wonderful day out, just as we were getting into the car"...

These were the words I heard. That seemed like such a wonderful thing to report. Then I thought about why was it raining at all, and was it warm enough for them? Did God not grace them with a whole week of sunshine?

And what about Hurricane Katrina that caused so much destruction in the states - Was that God too? You see, if its not OK to say "God sent the Hurricane", its not OK to say "God gave us good weather".

Or, is it the case that God gives good weather and the Evil one stirs up the bad stuff? Perhaps God is no longer playing Chess with the Devil (see "Spanish Train", by CdeB), but is now in a struggle for the climate. As each new weather catastrophe appears, God stamps it out, like some divine game of 'whack-a-mole', spreading rays of sunshine when he's done. You see how silly this is all getting?

So if you're going to credit God with your sunny day, your free parking space, your lottery win, or whatever else, make sure you remember to praise him in church on Sunday for the whole picture, for the cancers, catastrophes and cold snaps.

Credit where credit's due.....

Spidey leads the dance of the zombies into the new Dark Age, blinded by his ignorance, and he leads the bleating sheep into.... hell? Who knows? I do not know the mind of God, and would never presume to know. Unlike Spidey, who claims that he does. Hubris, laced with stupidity, nothing more, except perhaps a wounded ego crying out to feel important.

Arminius wrote "right wing zombies in a dance macabre to a new dark age."

What's more macabre than living in a society where men marry with men and women with women and babies are FORKED OUT even before they are born?

OBAMA made himself VERY CLEAR. HE SUPPORTS ALL OF THAT. He had made it clear that he will appoint VERY LIBERAL JUDGES who will make sure those things will happen.

What people don't realized is that God is reserving not a hurricane for these people but FIRE that will pulverize them in SECONDS.

Many people don't know the mind of God. That prayer for rain is way too kind compared to what God reserves for them.

Well this is about the weirdest thread ever, more worthy of the late great "Weekly World News" and their once a month "Face of Satan on Mars?" kind of story.
Have fun ya'll. I'm in NC getting hit by a hurricane, so one presumes God doesn't like our "First in Flight" license plates - maybe God is from Ohio.

Ah, yes, St Sarah the Moose Slayer, determined to lead the legions of mindless right wing zombies in a dance macabre to a new dark age.

Anyone who prayed for rain to mess up the Dems convention did not obey the Second Great Commandment. But apparently fundies have not yet heard of that..... why does that not surprise me?

I think the prayer for rain was requested so the Dems would not have a succesful convention and lose the election.

But God is so much smarter than us. He knows that a heavy rain would not hurt the chances of the Dems to win the election.

So what he send is a HURRICANE by the name of PALIN. We would yet see how this hurricane will wipe out the Dems in November. We've already seen the initial devastation and the Dems are already scrambling and looking for cover.

The mind of man is NO MATCH with God's.

No heavy rain or flooding will hurt the Dems but this Hurricane Palin surely would.

I hope Mr. Arroyo would realize that his is a false religion.

For the person who prayed for that heavy rain, thank you. I think God answered your prayer.

(CCNL, give me a better post that's worth answering)

Spiderman2 aka Canyon Shearer, Bible Thumper, Fortune Teller and Severely Brainwashed in that Old Time Religion,

Fools are those who have read only the bible. God cannot be proud of such lazy creations!!!!

What "voodooer of the hoodoo" blessed you with such stupidity in the field of fortune telling and interpretations of said stupidity???

The reality of it all is that the "pew sitters" and "bowers" are coming to grips with the flaws in their religions and in ten years the religions of today will be unrecognizable or extinct as the "pretty and ugly wingie flying thingies" are finally buried in the piles of utter stupidity.

I think the prayer for rain was requested so the Dems would not have a succesful convention and lose the election.

But God is so much smarter than us. He knows that a heavy rain would not hurt the chances of the Dems to win the election.

So what he send is a HURRICANE by the name of PALIN. We would yet see how this hurricane will wipe out the Dems in November. We've already seen the initial devastation and the Dems are already scrambling and looking for cover.

The mind of man is NO MATCH with God's.

No heavy rain or flooding will hurt the Dems but this Hurricane Palin surely would.

I hope Mr. Arroyo would realize that his is a false religion.

For the person who prayed for that heavy rain, thank you. I think God answered your prayer.

Recently a; lightening bolt struck the massive status of Christ of the Andes. Was Zeus getting back at the Christian takeover?

Note that no Catholic would/should consider this nonsensical essay worth responding to.

It is sensation seeking journalism at best.

Father Edward Schillebeecks comments to the Dutch who blamed God for the horrific floods caused by a major North Sea storm:

from his Church: The Human Story of God,
Crossroad, 1993, p.91 (paperback)

"Christians must give up a perverse, unhealthy and inhuman doctrine of predestination without in so doing making God the great scapegoat of history."

"Nothing is determined in advance: in
nature there is chance and determinism; in the world of human activity there is possibility of free choices. Therefore the historical future is not known even to God; otherwise we and our history would be merely a puppet show in which God holds the strings.

For God, too, history is an adventure, an open history for and of men and women."

Bottom line: One of God/Mother Nature's greatest gifts to us is that of the Future.

Arroyo: it's a shame that your god denied you a brain with which to think, only a mouth with which to spout. Now if your god is incapable of controlling the weather and unconcerned about the prayers of loving servants then it can't be all-powerful or all-loving. These are two of the important tenets of the catholic church. I hope you're not suggesting that the catholic church would lie to and deceive its followers!!!

This is folly. On Faith must be on drugs to select such topics as Hurricanes from God and Jesus for NASCAR. Our brave essayist did his best, but one cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

This column is an expansion on the old question, "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?"

The scientific answer is "yes, it makes a noise." The non-scientific answer is, "no, it doesn't."

The scientist knows that noises are the result of things that happen in the physical world. A tree falling always makes a noise as it contacts other objects and sound waves are created.

The non-sceintific person makes the egoistic assumption that man must be present to experience the noise - if man isn't present to hear the sound, then it didn't happen.

Of course, the scientist could prove that a sound was created by putting a sound-activated recording device near the tree and recording the sound as it happened, even if nobody was within a hundred miles of the tree, and even if the recording wasn't played back for a millenium.

The weather's the same thing. Weather happens because the conditions of our planet create it. Rain storms happen all the time in places we don't even know about. God has nothing to do with it.

An intelligent evangelical (why did God make so few of them?) would pick his shots when asking God to use the weather against his foes. Wish a hurricane on New Orleans during hurricane season and you have a good chance of proving that God hears and answers your prayers. Wish a hurricane on N Dakota and your God doesn't appear to be so powerful, nor so easily influenced. Wish a snowstorm on Florida in July and you might be trading in your churchly vestments for a straight jacket.

"But the theological question remains: Can we discern God's will by looking at the weather?"

The simple answer is NO. Why persist in superstitious nonsense?

Bill Sides wrote: "This logic makes me thank God for the first amendment."

Don't thank God, thank our founding fathers. God would not approve of the first amendment. He wants obedience, not debate, at least according to those who claim to know Him. Try to speak freely in a church and see where it gets you. Catholics talk about excommunicating those who debate church law or withhold communion if you vote one way versus another. Only the church would consider punishment for voting wrong.

No, don't thank God, thank those who decided God had no place in government and would be agast to see God on money, in the pledge, and in government buildings. A relatively recent phenomenon that has no basis in heritage.

When Palin said our founding fathers put "Under God" in the pledge, she lies or is just very uninformed. First of all, the pledge was first written in 1892. "Under God" made its way into the pledge in 1954 at the height of the cold war and IMHO is unconstitutional. "In God we trust" was not on the first printed bills. But leave it to someone like Palin to lie with a smile about it. I can't wait for someone to ask her about that, but our free press is not doing a good job these days.

Gezelda,

"People believe things in spite of evidence to the contrary because they need to believe in order to feel secure enough to get out of bed in the morning."

Such beliefs offer nothing but an illusion of security. While you're right about a need to feel secure, I suggest that people are capable of addressing the insecurity directly. That involves hard emotional work, as opposed to the easy route of belief. I agree that life demands much courage - ultimately we have to find that courage in ourselves or find help from others.

I submit that it's deeply immoral to try to find courage or security by crafting hateful beliefs about others. If someone feels he needs to believe that others deserve to suffer for making different choices about religion or about personal lives, then the person should not expect sympathy in their need for courage or security.

People believe things in spite of evidence to the contrary because they need to believe in order to feel secure enough to get out of bed in the morning. Searching for truth is often difficult because when we find it, we often find it is bigger than we are. Or, we find it demands more from us than we want to give. More often than not, we can't find it. Life demands a lot of courage, and sooner or later almost everyone runs out of his or her own personal supply, and turns in desperation to some Source beyond for help. Faith itself is not so much the problem; it's the fantastic lengths to which people will go to make up stories about their faith and then try to force other people to agree with them.

"Can we discern God's will by looking at the weather?"

It's outrageous that this is actually being posed as a serious theological question. At least with demagogues like Hagee and Robertson, one can conclude that they are merely voicing their own hatreds. If one asserts a divine role in physical phenomena like the weather, then one must present scientific evidence for the assertion like one would for any scientific theory. This applies to similar notions in the secular realm, like Rosie O'Donnell's hateful claim that lying causes cancer. Unless she can demonstrate how that would be biologically possible, it's rude for her to even state her claim.

This is a discussion which should be held by the entire mainstream media, because this stupidity was certainly reported everywhere as the Conservative Media anticipated yet another persuasively eloquent speech by Obama. God knows the media would have smugly reported on "answered prayers" had it rained during the Dem's final night.

The eerie irony of the arrival of another hurricane in New Orleans and a string of hurricanes headed America's way near the anniversary of Katrina and during the week of the Republican Convention was not pointed out or commented upon at length in the mainstream "Liberal" media, and Conservatives were spared the embarrassment, shame, and blame they so richly deserved. Katrina symbolizes the great failure of domestic leadership by the current Republican regime and illustrates why their convention was so bellicose, clueless, and colorless. When the American media refuses to report and comment upon this telling story, it reveals its connection to that "other America" of corporations and the mega-wealthy who aren't liberal at all except for expectations for their own selfish, narrow interests. Shame on you, Media gods, for not having sport with the way this story ended the way you did in starting it!

It was Rev. John Hagee who said "Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans." "New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God," Hagee said, because "there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came." and he went on to imply that the parade being canceled was the result of Gods wrath. By that logic I would have to assume that the first day of the Republican Convention being canceled was a result of Gods judgment; perhaps for the Republican Administration's failure to respond to the human suffering imposed by Katrina on the people of New Orleans. This logic makes me thank God for the first amendment.

"But the theological question remains: Can we discern God's will by looking at the weather?"

No Anthony, the theological question is can man manipulate God through prayer. Can you petition the Lord to do YOUR will, and is prayer cumulative so that God counts the prayers and say, ok, that's enough for me to answer the prayers.

Most religions have this notion, whether its praying for victory in battle, rain for crops, fertility, or for a sick person to get well. Christian religions teach that we have the power of God in our hands, to manipulate God, or at least petition Him. It is this belief in the ability of a single person to have God do their bidding that leads Focus on the Family to pray for it to rain on opponents. Its not a question about God, its a question about man and his use of God, as though God exists to be used by man.

As with politicians, absolute power corrupts, and their is no greater absolute power than the power of God.

This reminds me of all the evangelicals (Pat Robertson & his ilk, especially) saying how Katrina was God's punishment for such a sinful city. If that's true, then what about those boy scouts being struck down by lightning at that boy scout camp this year? I chose to read that as God's displeasure at the BSA for banning gays.

Despite the oft-demonstrated stupidity of many religious folks and especially evangelical Christians, its hard to wrap my head around the idea of a "reverend" actually asking people to pray for God to send weather to ruin someone's speech. And I'm sure there are many people out there who really do read something divine into the hurricane disrupting the Repubs' convention but not Obama's speech (hey, maybe it will drive a few votes to the Dems!).

It's a similar instinct to the one that moves people to pray about field goals in football. Apparently these people really believe that (a) God can control hurricanes and field goals, (b) he cares enough about these things to steer them one way or another, but not about many other things in the world seemingly much more in need of divine intervention, and (c) that the decision as to which way he is going to send the football (or hurricane) is dependent on the relative weight of prayers received from "each side."

Religious folks - how do you answer these questions to yourselves: why does god send hurricanes, which cause death and suffering? Why doesn't god just tell us who he wants to be president? Why do we even have presidents, or elections? or play Super Bowls? If god controls all, why do humans bother to do anything?

You can't be serious! You're using a hurricane to determine whose side God is on? You're just as terrible as the people who tried to diagnose Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. You clerics are a looney bunch! Looney!