Speaking and understanding as children this Sunday with god on the pond's side ...

(Above: when the pond first looked at this video, it had about three hundred views. Now it's nearing a million, and rapidly climbing, because it says more than you ever need to know about Mitt Romney).


This Sunday the pond woke in the grip of a tortured dilemma.

What if Barack Obama were to win the election? Think about what it means. We know - thanks to Pat Robertson and others - that Hurricane Katrina was god's omen and punishment for wickedness. Robertson linked that disaster to abortion and the nomination of Justice Roberts to the Supreme Court:

... have we found we are unable somehow to defend ourselves against some of the attacks that are coming against us, either by terrorists or now by natural disaster? Could they be connected in some way? (here)

So if god has sent along Hurricane Sandy - which is said to have caused a tilt and a lean to Obama, and given him the unfair advantage of looking presidential - it's not about punishing the wickedness of New York, but endorsing Obama, a well-known atheist Kenyan Muslim terrorist. Which surely means that god believes either the atheists or the Muslims have got it right.

But what if Mitt Romney wins? Well in that case god's efforts at sending along a hurricane to help Obama on his way has been a complete and utter failure. Which means the Mormons have got it right.

So all those fundamentalist Christians who voted for Romney have endorsed a crazy, wacky cult, where the big man doesn't even know what his church asserts as its theology.

Now if you suffered through the YouTube rant above, you might think that Christ will return to Jerusalem and split the Mount of Olives in twain or some such thing, but of course while this endorses the biblical view of things, as everyone knows Christian preachers and the bible are ill-formed and in error, and Joseph Smith with the help of disappearing gold tablets really got the word of god right.

So what does the Church of JC of LDS say in their Gospel Principles, Signs of the Second Coming, handy for your Sunday schooling?

The Coming of Elijah 
The prophet Malachi predicted that before Christ came the second time, the prophet Elijah would visit the earth. Elijah would restore the sealing powers so families could be sealed together. He would also inspire people to be concerned about their ancestors and descendants (see Malachi 4:5–6; D&C 2). The prophet Elijah came to Joseph Smith in April 1836. Since that time, interest in genealogy and family history has grown rapidly. We are also able to perform sealing ordinances in the temples for the living and the dead. 
The Lamanites Will Become a Great People 
The Lord said that when his coming was near, the Lamanites would become a righteous and respected people. He said, “Before the great day of the Lord shall come, … the Lamanites shall blossom as the rose” (D&C 49:24). Great numbers of Lamanites in North and South America and the South Pacific are now receiving the blessings of the gospel. 
Building of the New Jerusalem 
Near the time of the coming of Jesus, the faithful Saints will build a righteous city, a city of God, called the New Jerusalem. Jesus Christ himself will rule there. (See 3 Nephi 21:23–25.) The Lord said the city will be built in the state of Missouri in the United States (see DC 84:3–4). 
These are only a few of the signs that the Lord has given us. The scriptures describe many more. (here)

And if you head off to that latter link in the text, here's part of what you get:

 2 Yea, the word of the Lord concerning his church, established in the last days for the restoration of his people, as he has spoken by the mouth of his prophets, and for the gathering of his saints to stand upon Mount Zion, which shall be the city of New Jerusalem.
3 Which city shall be built, beginning at the temple lot, which is appointed by the finger of the Lord, in the western boundaries of the State of Missouri, and dedicated by the hand of Joseph Smith, Jun., and others with whom the Lord was well pleased. 
 4 Verily this is the word of the Lord, that the city New Jerusalem shall be built by the gathering of the saints, beginning at this place, even the place of the temple, which temple shall be created in this generation.

And that is where god is due to return to rule the world, with the help of Indian tribes, or perhaps to Salt Lake City, or whatever other revelation or thought cloud you happen to be reading this week. The sign marks the spot:

Which one way or another means that god will have put in place as president of the United States of America - god bless America - a heretic and a cultist, and a barking mad, pacing up and down true believer at that ... who is hooked on the kool aid in the way that scientologists manage to hook their johns with a five and dime ersatz lie detector.

If you click through to the Book of Mormon (the Nephi link will get you started), you'll be reminded what a dull, badly written, rip-off sequel to the bible it is, for punters who just couldn't get enough of the original, with plenty of "and verily I say unto you" and "I give unto you" and "and behold", and "verily, verily" this, and "behooveth" that, and "therefore it shall come to pass", a crass and pathetic imitation of the King James English, and about as credible as an L. Ron Hubbard screed.

You can sell mug punters anything if you're bold enough.

Who cares if it's Jerusalem or New Jerusalem in Missouri or both or an even newer Jerusalem in Salt Lake City or the Mount of Olives will be split before Christ ends up doing a time share in Missouri. It still sounds barking mad weird as hell and such a naked fraud ...

Not to worry, the pond doesn't have a problem with Romney equivocating and fudging and distorting or refusing to face up to reality.

It's the Romney way, and it's a change of pace and a breath of fresh air, and at least it keeps the Sydney Anglicans in some sort of perspective.

Speaking of the Sydney Anglicans wouldn't you know it?

Always ready to put the wild and the wacky and the zany and the weird on their web site, there right out of the Pat Robertson playbook comes John Mason with God's not so gentle wake-up?

The question mark in the header's designed to get Mason off the hook, but it doesn't, does it?

You might think that the header is suggesting that god is so gently waking us to climate science. But it isn't, is it? God's wake-up is a different, not so gentle kind of wake-up call of a religious kind, a bit like one of those Rube Goldberg machines with a hammer at the end of it for the truly righteous.

Because, you see, god is waking us to Her immense powers:

Times like this remind us not just of the tremendous power of weather – the wind and the sea – but of the awesome power of the creator who made them. 
It gives us pause to ask, ‘What greater powers could God exert?’ 

Yep, it's god in the thunder and the lightning and the wind, a child-like view of the universe, almost pantheist, certainly Greek and Roman-based. If we may mis-quote:

We might also ask whether God works through the power of the storm to wake us up, not so gently, to life’s larger realities. Asking this is not saying that God does not care about us, or what we might be going through: She does. Psalm 46 speaks of God being “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble”. 

Uh huh. So god sent the storm to wake us up because She thought we were nodding off?

But the Psalm goes on, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). It is a word to everyone to stop and consider. Jesus echoed this thought when he warned us to turn back to God (Luke 13:1-5). During a hurricane, wisdom tells us to stay inside. Compassion for the many who will suffer directly because of this massive storm calls us to pray that God in his mercy will hold back the worst of the storm’s power. Grace calls us to be ready to do what we can to assist those in need. 

Uh huh. Sending along the storm will cause a heap of prayer. It's a win-win for god.

So what's the key point, the take home message if you will?

Above all, we need to use this opportunity as a wake-up call – to sort out our relationship with God and to order our lives, our values and our priorities in the light of the reality that God is not only there but is the Lord.

Yep, god ravaged New York, killing people in Haiti, Cuba and the United States and causing immense destruction as a kind of wake-up call so that we'd all pay attention to Her powers. One sick puppy, She is, but I guess one with form, what with the genocide before Noah hopped on the boat, a gift for all subsequent practitioners of the art of genocide.

Happily the long absent lord did leave the world with this solid insight:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I really should have put away childish things and the childish notion that god is some sort of will o' the wisp in a storm, doling out punishment and insights by way of weather events, and She and morality and fairness and justice and truth and beauty is no more to be found in the physical operations of a hurricane than She is to be found in chicken entrails or tea leaves.

Sometimes the pond says a little prayer each Sunday in the hope that these loons will be swept away by the rapture, leaving sensible folk behind to enjoy good food, a decent bout of sex, some nice wine, perhaps a coffee and some choice 70% chocolate, and no worries about climate change because all the religious fundamentalists disappearing will have neatly changed the balance of things ...

No such luck.

And wouldn't you know it, last week Cardinal George Pell was prattling on in the Sunday Terror about Science and Religion.

Turns out that the "incident" involving Galileo wasn't typical, and that generally the church and science get on like a house on fire (provided it's the science that's frying). Tell that to Darwin as he's pecked to death by creationists, and climate science is done over by fundies.

Then again, Pell himself of course is a wonderfully respected climate scientist, right up there with Lord Monckton. Whenever he's done with mass, Pell's always out there checking the weather. Can't help himself, he's such an assiduous scientist, ably assisted by the Bolter, Tim Blair and others.

Being adept at cherry-picking, Pell leads with this one from Einstein:

Einstein wrote that science is lame and religion is blind when they ignore each other.

So let's keep on with the cherry-picking. What say you Einstein?

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own—a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.

And then, just to show how inclined to ridiculous egotisms Pell is, he leads with this:

Physics and biology have shown that the universe could not have occurred by chance, because the odds against a casual alignment of the conditions necessary to produce human life are impossibly high and beyond our imagining, one chance in trillions upon trillions. 

Yep, he can't understand it, so it's not possible, and physics and biology agree with him as to his solution to the absolute mystery of it all, as outlined by goat and camel herders and carpenters and fishers a couple of thousand years ago. Now there's a knock-down bout of top notch science at work.

And then Pell wraps it up by taking a pot shot at Einstein:

It was not a coincidence that a Catholic priest, Father George Le Maitre, first proposed the Big Bang theory for the commencement of the Universe, a theory Einstein initially opposed, partly because it paralleled the Judaeo-Christian theory of creation.

Actually Einstein's reluctance had something to do with the uncertainties espoused by quantum physics, but all the same that's a tidy bit of gob-smacking rhetoric.

The Big Bang theory parallels the Judaeo-Christian theory of creation as outlined in the Book of Genesis?

Adam and Even and the Garden of Eden, and all that other stuff set up in the Judaeo-Christian theory of creating, and still amazingly held up as a model and a guide to male and female relationships by the angry Sydney Anglicans?

Each Sunday there's chortles aplenty at the pond.

So many speaking as a child, understanding as a child, thinking as a child ... and without the first clue as to history, science or the whole damn thing ...

Time for a little rendition of a few verses of With God On Our Side? Take it away Bobby:

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust 
If fire them we're forced to 
Then fire them we must 
One push of the button 
And a shot the world wide 
And you never ask questions 
When God's on your side. 

In a many dark hour 
I've been thinkin' about this 
That Jesus Christ 
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you 
You'll have to decide 
Whether Judas Iscariot 
Had God on his side. 

So now as I'm leavin' 
I'm weary as Hell 
The confusion I'm feelin' 
Ain't no tongue can tell 
The words fill my head 
And fall to the floor 
If God's on our side 
She'll stop the next war.