God Hates America

Check this out:  http://godhatesamerica.com/

This site is amazing.  When reading the Bible I got the questionable priviledge of reading about how God becomes angry with his people and massacres 24,000 of them with a pestilence.  I have firsthand knowledge of the ways in which God targets specific people for punishment and hands out Smitings willy nilly with little regard for smiting those who actually broke the rules.  The website above is dedicated to a bunch of people who actually buy into that stuff.  Obviously the vast majority of religious folk don't buy into the random massacres and arbitrary violence that permeate the Old Testament and believe in a much gentler, more reasonable and more distant sort of deity, but these folks are really into the 'Big strong man in the sky who gets angry and blows stuff up!' version.  They are known as WBC, Westboro Baptist Church.

The crazy doesn't stop with their stated beliefs which are completely bonkers by any virtually anybody's measure.  These people seem to like flying around the country attending funerals so that they can wave placards and chant slogans talking about how the dead deserved their deaths and that those deaths were righteous and deserved punishments from God.  WBC contends that homosexuality, abortion, sodomy, adultery, divorce, and all kinds of other things are prohibited and that because the children of the USA are not being educated in God's will that God is deliberately *tricking* American leaders into wars and then causing them to take hideous casualties as a form of punishment.  They further claim that the swine flu was a direct action by God to kill and punish the world for its sins.  As usual though they froth with anger at the 'crimes' committed that happen to offend them personally they ignore the ones that are equally prohibited by the Bible but don't bother them on a personal level.

In some small way I have to admire these folks.  They read the Old Testament, claim they believe it, and actually go and act as if it is true.  They really believe that God sends plagues to decimate populations that defy him, that God spends his time tricking individual mortal leaders into making bad decisions and massacres soldiers in order to send messages.  This is straight up what is said in the Old Testament - that is God as he was/is written.  Of course in all the other ways they are the scum of the earth.  Showing up at funerals for people who are killed randomly to chant that the person deserved it is unbelievably despicable.  Free speech is something that is important just as much here in Canada as in the USA but there very much need to be limits; it is critical that we have the opportunity to say and think what we want and equally critical that we don't have the idea that that extends to saying those things any time, any place.  Apparently the USA government is trying to ban protests at funerals specifically because of these maniacs which does mean that their goal of getting publicity and being noticed despite their fringe status is working.

The Bible literalists really do exist.  It is a good thing to keep in mind when debating the merits or lack thereof of laid-back religion; when you say that a book is the Word of God you have to accept that sometimes people will actually believe you and act accordingly.