James Randi updated his weekly commentary on his website, opening it with a very amusing rant on religious belief, which might be good to post here. You can read this week's commentary here.
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Well folks, now we all know why Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had his debilitating stroke. Evangelist Pat Robertson has now decided that the affliction was divine punishment for "dividing God's land" – Israel, of course. So, according to Dr. Robertson, strokes are not caused by the brain of the victim being deprived of oxygen due to a clogged, narrowed, or ruptured artery, nor by bleeding within the brain. The old superstition that brain cells thus deprived of oxygen malfunction and die, resulting in loss of function in the part of the body controlled by these brain cells, is refuted by Dr. Robertson’s superior medical knowledge, I guess. No, God did it. That’s the vengeful, savage, jealous, angry deity that Pat accepts and fears.

Said Robertson in his omniscient fashion on his television program “The 700 Club,”

God considers [Israel] to be his. You read the Bible and he says, “This is my land,” and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, “No, this is mine.”

I see. This chap who created everything is touchy about the desert he’s chosen as the chosen territory of the chosen people? Gee, but it’s hard to figure out these basic facts of the world – but that’s why we have the wisdom of Pat to explain this stuff, of course. Robertson, a practiced name-dropper, assured his Club members that about a year ago he’d prayed with Sharon, whom he referred to as "a very tenderhearted man and a good friend." He said he was sad about Sharon’s stroke, but he pointed out that in the Bible, the prophet Joel had warned about doing anything to divide God’s land. In Robertson’s opinion, Sharon flew in God's face to appease the European Union, the United Nations and/or the USA.

I used to think that Pat Robertson was cunning, that he knew how to manipulate the naïve into his way of thinking. No longer. Recent blunders prove that he’s just plain ignorant, vengeful, and stupid. He’s not only a national disgrace, he’s an affront to the entire rest of the world, a blemish on our species.

But at least he’s consistently stupid. He divined that the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin also was due to that man’s efforts to achieve peace in his country by giving land to the Palestinians. Then he suggested that American CIA agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. As recently as last November, he warned residents of Dover, Pennsylvania, that disaster might strike there via the angry hand of God because they’d voted to oust school board members who favored teaching the “Intelligent Design” nonsense.

Hey, Robertson, shut the hell up. You embarrass everyone.

While I’m on a God rant, following the recent mining disaster – see www.randi.org/jr/2006-01/010606netherlands.html#i13 – the wife of the governor of West Virginia appeared on the NBC-TV Today Show and reassured viewers that people in her state still believe in miracles, as her husband had stated before the fact of the miners' demise was reported. Ignoring the twelve deceased, she designated the survival of the thirteenth miner as evidence to prove that at least some “miracle” had occurred. What an illustration of the desperate need these people have for their mythology and let’s-pretend philosophy! Want a better example of what looks like a miracle, lady? Try watching a sunset, listening to Mozart, or holding a baby in your arms; those aren’t miracles, either, but they sure out-class what you accepted. Your “God” made the mine shaft fall in, “He” suffocated twelve miners, and then – just to be capricious – “He” let one live, yet you see no defect in “His” decision? “God” even decided to give the survivor some brain damage, maybe as a little joke. Hey, “He” sure is a fun guy, isn’t “He”?

Can I rightly accuse your God of all this? Yes, I can. You see, I looked him up on Google. He’s omniscient – that means he knows everything. He’s omnipotent – so he can do anything. He’s all-merciful, forgiving, and loving, too. He controls everything: remember that falling sparrow? Well, do you suppose – if you thought about it at all – that God decided to carry out the West Virginia disaster – as well as the recent disastrous tsunami, murderous earthquakes in Guatemala and Pakistan, and bombings in Iraq – just for fun? Your merciful, caring deity sent hundreds of thousands of innocent people, many of them children, to their deaths! During the Holocaust, he heard the prayers of other millions, yet he allowed the poison gas to be released. This is your God?

When is the religious population of this Earth going to start figuring out that they haven’t got invisible friends living in the sky or under the ground who do these things?

Let’s grow up, shall we?

I have always admired James Randi for the work he does exposing hoaxers.

I am sorry to see, though, that he uses sarcasm and flippancy in the above critical essay. I think he raises important points in this essay and I agree with most of them, but I think he would be a better critic if he would not use insulting lanaguage. To me, the humor isn't funny, either.

It's a good post, Kiku and I am not saying it shouldn't be here. It fits in very well. I just am saddened by the flippant tone of Randi's criticism - much classier in my opinion to avoid sarcasm.

I think what you have to do is try to imagine the viewpoint Randi is coming from. He's well into his seventies now, and he puts up with a lot of nonsense every single day because he sees it as fighting the good fight. He wrote a book long ago about faith healers, and you can most certainly feel the contempt and anger he has at those who manipulate desperate, ill people's ignorance and hopes to make money. I can see how you can decipher his language and tone as insulting or sarcastic, but once you put it into the perspective Randi sees it, it's understandable. I think he's just tired of this constant stupidity being endlessly repeated, and I sympathize with him. I have my own frustrations at the downhill spiral that Americans seem anxious to take when it comes to critical, reasonable thinking. This faith in such nonsense as psychics, advocation of teaching ID in public school science class, and militant, religious fundamentalists' fulfilled agenda is taking us back to the dark age, and most of it stems from ignorance, which is pathetic considering that all the information to fix it is available to anyone willing to take the time to look at it.

I understand your frustration with Robertson. Personally, I do not buy into a lot of what he says either, and I feel in some aspects he gives Christianity a bad name. Many so-called T.V. evangelists do. However, God does not cause suffering and hardship. It is mankind's ignorance and sinful nature that causes suffering. Lastly, if you had a personal relationship with God, you would not be so quick to claim that "we don't have invisible friends in the sky". You cannot see the wind either, but that doesn't mean it does not exist. You can feel the wind, and I can feel God's presence guiding and directly my life.

Good point, Kiku, faith healing of the kind that takes peoples' money and takes them out of their treatment is morally (and usually legally) criminal. And, I see what you mean about having to put Randi in context - fair enough. One can't form a complete opinion of someone based on one little website sample.

I have just always admired him and I was just kind of disappointed to see him almost, kind of ,sniping. But, that website is for his close readers, also. I have seen him on TV many times and he is intelligent and well-spoken. We're lucky to have a voice like him.




I've never been into TV preachers (my dad always called them, "shouting preachers" - an old southern saying of his). I have been kind of glad that Robertson has been saying these outrageous things and showing that he is a "fanatic".

Nice words Samurai and I certainly agree with you Silver G -he loses his impact by getting sarcastic which to me is passive aggressive behaviour. There's a fine line between sarcasm and being a self-righteous jack-ass even if what you are saying is accurate or fair. Think how much better for example Farenheit 9-11 would have been with less sarcastic comments and more facts. You run the risk of turning the people you are criticizing and exposing as scam artists as underdogs and victims if you get too nasty with your tone and approach and that just gets them more sympathizers. Then again I understand this guy has been through the ringer and on a personal level I am the first to admit I have been too angry or sarcastic with certain people when I shouldn't have been, so don't get me wrong-but I just think Silver G made a good pt.

I agree with everything that you guys have said. TV evangelists get my goat. I have to tell you guys something that happened to me when I moved to middle Tennessee a year and a half ago.
My children and I were looking for a church to get active in and we would church hop each weekend to see what the different ones were like. (We came from a large, non denominational Christian Church in Tucson, Az. that had about 2500 members.)
Living in rural Tennessee is a culture shock in the beginning.
One Sunday we went to this traditional looking church nearby. Also had the children with us, who were 9 and 4 yrs. old respectively. We sat in the back of the church as we were almost late.
Well, this preacher gets up and starts jumping around and screaming at the TOP of his lungs....then he starts "speaking in tongues" , which sounded like little kid jibberish, and I looked over at my professional, 33 yr. old daughter, who is sobbing in her seat next to me. Her husband looked at her then at me, I nodded and we all quietly got up and snuck out. I thought she was getting a migraine or something. We got to the parking lot and I asked her what was wrong (other than the obvious). She just said: "I want my old church back with normal people." I never laughed so hard...all day the kids were laughing about the crazy preacher with the towel.
Luckily, we finally found a small church with "normal " people but it took a year.Sheesh!!!:D:D:D