It’s a shock to find out how batshit the god of abraham is, in the minds of some of his believers. A Pharyngula post pointed me to the catch the fire ministries site.

I’ll temporarily ignore the callous insult to suffering Australians. (I’m also ignoring my mental image of an old Bob Marley “Catch a fire” album packaged in an openable cardboard zippo lighter shape.)

This catch-the-fire site thinks believes that their god is ravaging Australia in order to send a message to the USA (!) Even stranger, the message is that what has offended their god to the point of major smiting was the mere suggestion of sending nuclear weapons inspectors into Israel.

No, really, I m not making this up. From their very web page:

“.. I was reminded of Kevin Rudd speaking against Israel in Israel on 14th December 2010. It is very interesting that Kevin Rudd is from QLD. Is God trying to get our attention? Yes, I believe so.
……..
Mr Rudd not only called on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but said it should open all its nuclear facilities to UN inspectors.

God is apparently enraged at the mere suggestion that his chosen people might have some limits placed on their possession of WMD? At the same time, the creator of the universe is so lacking in his vaunted omnipotence that he can’t even express that apparently simple message in any other way than by visiting mass destruction on a continent half a world away from Israel or the USA.

Lucky that some prophetic wingnuts were on hand to pick up and transmit his message in human speech. And, pray for forgiveness on behalf of the Australians, who have accidentally fostered the very man who forced god to carry out this devastating action.

Around 8pm on Friday night the 7th of January we had a strong prompting by the Holy Spirit to repent on behalf of Australia. As we started doing so, I was reminded that every time America went against Israel, there was disaster in the land and this has been documented over the years.

(Given the US’s track record in standing against Israel, it looks as if the US should be close to totally disaster-free by now.) It must be a great comfort to the Australians to know that random Americans are apologising for them.)

Who would ever dream up a god who was certifiably insane? And then decide to worship them?