In an election campaign, there's probably no better ally than The Big Man Upstairs. So it should probably not come as a shock that Michele Bachmann has suggested that God called her to run--both for Congress and for the Presidency.
This line of "thinking"--if we can call it that--is so idiotic that it disqualifies her from serious consideration on that basis alone.
God is apparently a very busy guy. In a universe that is incomprehensible in size, comprised of millions of galaxies and billions of stars, God is quite the micromanager--He is invoked at football games and political rallies as if He is watching all the proceedings and intervening on behalf of the better candidate or team. Imagine what it's like up there in heaven: "Jeez, 4th and 2 with just 12 seconds remaining--I'd better have them call a fade pattern into the back left corner of the end zone; that will give them the win. Thank God I'm calling the shots here! My fantasy teams are kicking butt, big-time."
The fantasy, of course, is the idea that God is doing any of this in the first place. And it will do my heart good--oh so good--to see Bachmann's campaign wither away after the Iowa caucuses, where she is sure to flounder. And then, I hope Michele asks the obvious question:
If God wanted me to run, why did he make me lose?
(And why did he even let that Obama guy become President in the first place?)
There will come a time--unfortunately, not in my lifetime or maybe even my grandchildrens'--when people will look back at this type of belief system and say, "What in the hell were they thinking?" I surely do not know, and it's painful and frustrating to watch. When it comes to religion, people who are otherwise fairly bright and reasonable transform themselves into instant idiots.
R.I.P., Christopher Hitchens, for your efforts to debunk all this craziness.
2 comments:
Professor Lapakko,
As I was searching for your Argumentation book, which you mentioned one time during Persuasion class, I stumbled into this lovely, day-maker post.
Indeed this line of thinking is preposterous for our current age and the information we have available, in particular the self-correcting machinery of science. Once I heard someone say that the most secular societies understand that Jesus is no different than Zeus, but it'll take a while before that "time" when our grandchildren will be able to be free of this poisonous thinking, to use Hitchens' terms. This only affirms my theory that as humans we are not writing history as much as we "are" history.
I am currently reading Dawkins' The God Delusion, so this post was a good complement for my reading today.
Hope everything is well at Augsburg.
Regards,
Sergio Monterrubio
P.S. R.I.P. Hitchens indeed, for it is people like him who are actually helping this world be a better place.
Sergio--
Thanks for the note! Nice to hear from you. Hope all is well.
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