[SOURCE]
Encounter is a program on Radio National – part of the ABC.  It’s a sort of religious program that apparently ‘explores the connections between religion and life’.  This week they did a story on the floods in Central Victoria and as Martyn Scrimshaw a salvation army officer based in Bendigo was talking I was talking back to him:
Sometimes you really have to think about the response.
I’d suggest you’re not thinking about your responses enough.
Floods I think are – droughts and floods are probably a little bit easier, in that we live in a country where we will have droughts, and we will have flooding rains, and when the rain comes it does flood.
Well yes, you’ve got that right. Â The response is fairly inane. Â The question you really need to ask is why do we have floods and droughts if your god really cares?
And to a certain extent, talking to farmers and things,
You talk to things?
it puts hope in, like they might have lost their crop,
Not only have they lost a crop to flooding, but they’ve had many failed crops because of lack of water.
but the fact is that we needed a flood to fill dams, we needed a flood to fill the lakes and reservoirs, the long-term benefit of that flooding rain will be incredible.
OK, I agree, we need rains.  But really, what’s the point?  Surely your god is clued up enough to understand the devastation his lack of attention to details causes.  Rather than allow ten years of drought and then fill the damns over one weekend, why not give us about 30mm of rain a month, enough to keep everything topped up and prevent flooding.  He could also arrange for the rain to happen about 4.00 a.m. so it causes minimal disruptions.  Once a month we should have a bloody good thunderstorm with lots of thunder and lightning, I like a good thunderstorm.
The farmers can plant now knowing that the soil’s moist enough to plant, without worrying about looking at the sky.
I’ve yet to meet a farmer who doesn’t worry about the rain, just the right amount. Â They are always looking at the sky, probably hoping now that they get good follow up rains with no more flooding, and then wondering if they’ll get enough water next season.
We just hope that the winter is fairly kind to us. But that’s the country we live in.
Would that be the country that your god created? Â Your bastard god must’ve known that eventually we’d be trying to grow crops to feed the world. Â Perhaps it was his day off.
How do we explain earthquakes and tsunamis and things like that? I don’t really know, all I know is that there is still hope.
Hope? Â You’re hoping for earthquakes, tsunamis and things like that (are they the same things you talk to?). Â If you don’t know how to explain them, then talk to a scientist. Â Earthquakes happen when the crust of the earth moves. Â It’s in big slabs and the slabs rub against each other as they move, causing shocks. Â The shocks stir up the water, the water makes a wave and crashes when it hits the land. Â See easy, and no need to wonder if god did it!
And while creation might groan, and nature throws these things at us,
If creation could groan, it’d be groaning about stupid religious types who thinks nature throws things. Â Nature doesn’t give a flying fruit bat’s piss about you.
it’s out of that that we see incredible human good, how people support each other, encourage each other, that we haven’t got empty pockets, that we can still reach out.
Really?  Could it be that people just really care for their family and friends, their communities.  Not because of an evil god character, but because that’s how we do it in this society.  When you look at the devastation in Haiti after their earthquake you’ll see what little impact a few floods have actually had.  The people of Haiti now live an even worse existence with roaming gangs and no law.  The reason we handle natural disasters so well is because we have good government, wealth and support systems.
I believe that just shows us the good side that God created.
The good side? Â So, your arsehole god also created a bad side that causes the death and destruction just so you can see the good side? Â What an arse about system you believe in.
Coming up on Encounter:
The King James Bible – The Translation
Sunday 01 May 2011
First in a two-part series marking the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. This week: the story of how six companies of men produced a new translation that has come to be regarded as one of the greatest works in the entire canon of English literature.
Oh, how exciting. I can hardly contain myself…
Is this the same Salvation Army that has a suicide prevention program, the same Salvation Army that is intolerant of homosexuality and the same Salvation Army that knows (but won’t publish) that intolerance of homosexuality is a contributing factor to suicidal behaviour?
Oh yes, that’s them. A good reason not to thank god for the salvos.