Basically, if your house burns down during the tornado that came right after the locust plague, while you are welcome (and probably right) to blame it all on God, God has the out of being all-knowing, so that you also have to admit that "God works in mysterious ways and never does anything without a reason."
Living, corporeal people can't get away with that sort of blanket excuse.
If I walked up and burned down your house, and told you that it was "my will" and that "I have a reason for what I do, that you just can't understand because you cannot comprehend my mind" you would
A: Kick the hell out of me and
B: Have me locked up as a derange loony.
But for some reason, some people are capable of leaping beyond these basic perceptive realities and allow God to get away with (literally) murder with no accountability or even an explanation.
OK, why am I talking about this? Well, probably because the whole repeal of Prop 8 and all the arguments surrounding it is so prominent in the news right now. The Anti Prop 8 arguments (that won the reversal) are all fact-based, rational and grounded in sound legal precedent and documentation, while the Anti Prop 8 arguments seem to consist of purely irrational (from a legal standpoint) faith-based (or at least a slim interpretation of faith) screeds consisting of phrases like "It's evil" or "Its against God" or the wonderfully vague "Its destroying the institution of marriage"
...um How?
The Pro-Prop 8ers never seem to be able to answer that part of the question. If two men or two women marry each other, how does that physically, rationally and fundamentally threaten the institution of marriage, or your marriage for that matter? When the argument devolves to a purely faith-based, moral objection then the argument ceases to be an argument, and just becomes a yelling-match soundbite on the evening news.
The problem though, is that this just further reveals the underlying (and growing) neo-conservative/religious right sentiment among a lot of Americans. The tea-baggers and fundamental Christians that we on the coasts mock and laugh at, are gaining strength and power, and we smug coasters may wake up one day (maybe in 2012 after the next election), and discover that we have suddenly become a reviled minority.
I know, I never seem to be happy unless I am forecasting doom, and now that the Gulf oil leak has been plugged and all my dire predictions have come to naught (for the time-being), I need to find a new target for my pessimism, but this neo-conservative-religion based movement has been steadily growing and fomenting for quite a while, and seems to be gaining momentum as more people struggle to survive in the tanking economy.
I am haunted by this nightmarish vision of President Sarah Palin pointing her finger at me and saying "You're going to prison for un-American thoughts...you betcha!" and then some clean-cut young storm-troopers will come and haul me off to a gulag in Idaho where I will be brainwashed by relentless hours of watching Fox news and the 700 Club.
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