Seeing messages in the clouds

August 31, 2005

If you haven’t already, take a look at the image an anti-abortion group is sending around in the hopes of proving something about Hurricane Katrina, God’s wrath, and the group’s political agenda. Here’s the picture, via Pandagon.

The message was crafted by people at Christian Life and Liberty.net, who are convinced Americans are responsible for the storm’s devastation. The group’s email explained:
satelite

The image of the hurricane above with its eye already ashore at 12:32 PM Monday, August 29 looks like a fetus (unborn human baby) facing to the left (west) in the womb, in the early weeks of gestation (approx. 6 weeks). Even the orange color of the image is reminiscent of a commonly used pro-life picture of early prenatal development (see sign with picture of 8-week pre-born human child below). In this picture, and in another picture in today’s on-line edition of USA Today*, this hurricane looks like an unborn human child.

Louisiana has 10 child-murder-by-abortion centers – FIVE are in New Orleans
www.ldi.org (‘Find an Abortion Clinic [sic]’)

Baby-murder state # 1 – California (125 abortion centers) – land of earthquakes, forest fires, and mudslides
Baby-murder state # 2 – New York (78 abortion centers) – 9-11 Ground Zero
Baby-murder state # 3 – Florida (73 abortion centers) – Hurricanes Bonnie, Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne in 2004; and now, Hurricane Katrina in 2005

God’s message: REPENT AMERICA !

I realize that many anti-abortion activists are sincere people who have a strong belief about when life begins, and maintain a firm grip on reality. And then there are these clowns.

Yes, it’s unbelievably creepy that people at Christian Life and Liberty.net see images in weather patterns that they take very seriously. And yes, it’s bizarre that these people can interpret these imagined likenesses to tell the rest of us what “God’s message” really is. And yes, exploiting a hurricane the day after it ravages a region is about as low as a group can get.

But the disgusting part of this is that Christian Life and Liberty.net are telling the thousands of people who’ve lost loved ones, seen their homes destroyed, and have found their city on the brink of ruin that this calamity is, in part, their fault.

The people suffering on the Gulf Coast need a lot of things right now — rescue, relief, maybe a little hope — but the scorn of unhinged fundamentalists isn’t one of them.

I’m not shocked at all. The likes of these people have no shame and will use anything, including human suffering to promote their cause.

These type of people usually like to invoke statements such as “wait until judgement day”……..well I for one would love to be present for their’s.

  • I sometimes wish we could find common ground with these people. Then I see stuff like this and know that’s probably impossible.

  • Hmmmph. I always preferred my own version:

    Florida- put Dubya in the W.H.- 4 hurricanes in ’04 (I figure those were a warning before the election), and ??? for ’05?

    Louisiana… oh, another Red State… In fact, seems like all of the Red States get hit by hurricanes…

  • Adding to Jeremy’s comment, could all of the hurricanes of the last few years be God’s wrath for Bush’s illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq and the tens of thousands of dead?

  • so now they’re looking at cloud formations? sounds like someone was looking at the clouds with fetuses on the brain more than anything. it’s like an inkblot test. there’s nothing actually there, so what you see says more about the viewer than it does the picture.

    it’s not even patterns in the weather–it’s just the way in which some meteorologist happened to colorize a picture of the storm.

  • Are you sure that this isn’t all a hoax?

    Who is “Christian Life and Liberty.net”? I just googled it and NOTHING showed up. Am I blind? Did I put in the wrong words into Google?

    I have only seen this on liberal websites?

    I smell a set up.

  • I think if they’re looking for direct causes (in a far too complex world) they might consider global warming rather than the wrath of some god or other.

    Incidentally, California, New York and Florida rank high on many variables because (duh) they’re big states with many, many people. I bet these three states have the most churches, too.

  • Neil –

    The website is http://www.christianlifeandliberty.net/

    Blind? I dunno. But I think Pandagon links directly to it. As far as a setup, absolutely not. Check out their website, and they’re serious about equating the holocaust with abortion (ie. murder). Their home page, for example, shows a picture from the holocaust next to a picture of an aborted fetus. So yeah, they’re serious.

    But I like the way this discussion is going – Bush stretches the army thin with his little experiment in Iraq, and we’re hit with natural disasters. But the whole “God did it to prove a point” argument just sounds silly to me – what with the entire world’s history FULL of natural disasters, cataclysmic events and the like, is each time there’s an earthquake, tornado, flood, etc., it’s because God is meting out vengeance on the wicked?

    Fucking preposterous.

  • you’d think the right would have something to say about god’s wrath and the destruction of every single one of mississippi’s casinos, which the storm took a last minute turn seemingly to hit them, not new orleans, directly.

    what i’m also baffled at is all these survivors who come out of their attics to find everything as far as they can see destroyed, their neighbors and families possibly dead, and their future unbelievable bleak, and still say in all seriousness, i feel so blessed. look, i want to tell these people, if god is so merciful, if you are so blessed, why did he just utterly demolish your world? shouldn’t these people should feel cursed and damned?

  • What I don’t understand is why these Christians believe
    in the Old Testament god who was truly a nasty,
    vindictive son of a bitch, and not the God of the
    New Testament that Jesus preached about.
    And they don’t follow the teachings of Jesus,
    either.

  • Obviously whack-jobs are going to say all kinds of things to prove that God is on their side.

    Why, just yesterday, I actually heard someone say, “Maybe God trying to tell New Orleans a message…that they shouldn’t be so hedonistic.”

    Yeah maybe. Or maybe the ‘hedonists’ from EVERY part of the country will have to find someplace else to flash their body parts. Dang…maybe God should strike Vegas next…or better yet, Washington D.C.

    Just STUPID.

    How about this…maybe God is a terrorist. Look at all those Americans he just took out. And on top of it, he destroyed all those oil wells and refineries…why does He want to destroy our economy? Is he siding with Osama??? (NOTE: This is called sarcasm. Please don’t flame me.)

    Side note…Has anyone seen any references to Robertson or Falwell saying this stuff yet?

  • Gridlock wrote: “maybe God is a terrorist”

    Actually, that’s funny as hell. According to the militant evangelicals’ own logic, that’s precisely what he is.

    But seriously, 9/11 is nothing compared to the cost and destruction of Katrina; but we left the door for this wide open when we decided to overreact to terrorism and put all of our money there (well, attacking the wrong target actually) while neglecting everything else.

  • I’ve been blaming Bush for our “Acts of God” catastophe’s of late. I think God’s mad at Bush’s gutting of our environmental laws in order to cater to the all mighty corporation profit!

    CalGal

  • Florida got hit because Jeb stole the 2000 election
    Alabama got hit because Judge Roy Moore desecrated the courthouse
    Mississippi got hit because they are the home of the America Family Assc and were dumb enough to elect Haley Barbor Governor
    Lousianna got hit because the casinos teamed up with Abramoff and Ralph Reed succeeded in shutting down two Texas casinos that posed competition to the LA Casinos.
    God is pissed and she won’t tolerate this bunch of thugs for very much longer!

  • Nice try, but at this stage the public has had a fair enough sample of these sanctimonious antics to see through the fraying veil of your “holy and righteous” pretensions to the underlying psychosis of your philosophies, however sincere you may be about it all. Your predilection to perceive prurience and deadly evil in virtually everything you see is an artifact of your own mentality, and no fault of the source. You should seriously consider not blaming others for your own refusal to adjust to simple realities of nature and the challenges of enlightened minds in a diverse and uniting world. Your right to peacefully preach fear and paranoia remains inviolate, but the problem of accommodating your rigid ideologies in a universe that fails to support or corroborate any of them is precisely the source of all your fear, frustration, and ultimate futility in this life.

  • once again these clowns fail to distinguish the difference between the constitutionally proctected and highly personal choice of “killing”(as they say)an unborn fetus and the death of innocent disaster victims, the murder of evolved healthcare workers and their own double standard. If you cherish
    life, you cherish ALL LIFE.

  • This is such a load. What part of leaving judgment up to God did everyone miss? You really think that hundreds of thousands of people deserve to die slow deaths in their attics or due to disease we never see in this country from the toxic water? You should all pray for yourselves and your judgment on this poor group of people. How many pro-lifers died in Katrina? By your account, did they deserve that? If you’re going to call yourself Christians, be sure to live your lives by the entire Bible, not just the parts that suit you. Hypocrisy is a sin the last I checked.

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