The gods must be crazy

September 8, 2007

Guest Post by Morbo

Here’s the kind of story I love: A Maryland man who practices Wicca has won nearly $50 million in a multi-state lottery game — and he credits intervention by Pagan deities.

Ellwood Bartlett is an accountant who teaches classes on Wicca on the side. He told The Washington Post he asked Pagan gods to help the computer choose the right numbers.

“I look at it this way,” Bartlett told The Post. “If the gods are going to intervene, it would be easier to manipulate a machine versus me trying to interpret what they are telling me.”

Bartlett will share the $330 million jackpot with three others. If he opts for a lump-sum payment, he will receive at least $48.7 million — $32 million after taxes. Or he could decide to receive $3.7 million a year until 2032. Either way, it’s a nice chunk of change.

If you are Pat Robertson or some other crazy TV preacher, how do you possibly explain this one?

Robertson has railed against practitioners of Paganism and Wicca for years. He can’t understand that the modern-day followers of these systems are not dabbling in the dark arts. Remember, this is the guy who sat silently by while Jerry Falwell blamed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on “the Pagans and the abortionists, and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians….”

In 2002, Robertson declared war on the Harry Potter books, growling to his TV audience:

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have been talking about God lifting his anointing and his mantle from the United States of America. And if you read in Deuteronomy or Leviticus, actually, the eighteenth chapter, there’s certain things that he says that is going to cause the Lord, or the land, to vomit you out. At the head of the list is witchcraft…. Now we’re welcoming this and teaching our children. And what we’re doing is asking for the wrath of God to come on this country…. And if there’s ever a time we need God’s blessing it’s now. We don’t need to be bringing in heathen, pagan practices to the United States of America.”

But perhaps God has (or the gods have) other ideas. If the Supreme Controlling Force of the universe is so mad at Pagans that he punishes them by heaping riches upon them, I want to be next in line for some of those curses.

“If you are Pat Robertson or some other crazy TV preacher, how do you possibly explain this one?”

Easy: Satan

(Hint: The entire basis of all religion — not to be confused with ethics — is the dreaming up of supernatural explanations for things that people don’t have the knowledge to otherwise explain. It’s really pretty easy to answer almost any question when you’re just making stuff up.)

  • Nothing seems to reaffirm religion more than winning a lottery based on random mechanical interaction of ping pong balls coming out of a machine.

  • Cal is right. They will hold Satan is responsible, since they think that Wiccans are actually worshipers of Satan.

    And who would trade their immortal soul for a few filthy dollars?

    A few million filthy dollars? Three-hundred thirty million dollars?

    Reminds me of the black guitarist in “O Brother Where Art Thou” who sold his soul to the Devil to be a great guitar player. When one of the rubes challenged him about selling his soul, he said “Well, I wasn’t using it…”

  • People have always turned to religion when they feel themselves confronted by forces over which they have no control. Natural catastrophes, the powerful and rich hoarding those things which ordinary people need in order to live decent lives.

    Our immediate ancestors realized that they did have the power to free themselves from some natural catastrophes. They lowered infant and maternal death rates, lowered death rates overall. They introduce public health measures which made our cities and factories livable. They organized unions which effectively redistributed wealth for the first time on a large scale.

    I don’t know what has happened to the confidence we used to have in ourselves. I think it’s been sucked away by the new reality which is the TeeVee screen,and to lesser the video game screen, which drains off what should be the idealism of the young. In these worlds of unreality, it’s not surprising that religion should again rationalize our experiences.

  • ***And who would trade their immortal soul for a few filthy dollars?***
    ——————————————-OkieFromMuskogee

    Why, shame on you, Okie—I figured you’d have known the answer to that question all along. Pat Robertson would trade his immortal soul for a few filthy dollars. He does it all day, every day. Why do you think he’s so up-in-arms over a-la-carte cable tv? Every viewer given the opportunity to escape his daily tirade is a viewer freed from the mesmerizing message to “send those few filthy dollars to the 700 Club!

  • Pat Robertson would trade his immortal soul for a few filthy dollars. — Steve
    Now that’s true. Of course, he isn’t the only preacher who would do so either.

  • The one item I know about Pat Robertson that has always brought me some relief in my life is knowing that sooner or later he will die. One of the few people in my life that from the moment I saw him and heard his voice I had nothing but contempt for him. He is everything I dislike in human beings. That’s when I understood that America’s most basic principal is tolerance. In the after life when he meets his God who has no name he will be amazed to see he is composed of everyone who has ever been and he will be terribly confused over who it is he is supposed to hate.

    btw…I read about one such lottery winner who claims the winning numbers were given to him by his dead grandfather in a dream. He played them the next day and won millions.
    That doesn’t fit in well with Robertson’s religious notions either. All I can say is that there are an awful lot of lottery winners getting other worldly help and good for them.

  • “Did it ever occur to you that all these religious wars and bloodshed has been people arguing over whose imaginary friend is better?” — Robert Anton Wilson

  • In the Bible it says: Judge not lest ye be judged” ; “Love thy neighbor as thyself”; and ” ‘Vengeance is Mine’, sayeth the Lord.” It deeply saddens me to think if you’re not catholic, christian, hindu or jew, you’re not “allowed” a happy ending. How would you guys like it if you were criticized for thanking God? I mean, God’s a BIG God… I think he can hold his own. Besides, what’s wrong with a religion that loves the earth ?! In a word: ignorance. And that’s sad. Why don’t christians set a positive exampe by not judging and become a good sport. After all, no matter what “religion” we’re only human… and happy endings are rare anymore.

  • As a practicing pagan, it makes me overjoyed to hear that something so wonderful happened to a fellow practioner of the craft. It makes me sad to think that there are some people so closed-minded out there that they can’t even be happy for him just because of his religion.

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