Giving God credit for good things but not blame for bad things in the aftermath of disasters is typical among religiously-minded people in the United States, who are usually Christians.
Using a plane crash as an example, if one person survives, while 200 other people on board die, the sole survivor is held out as evidence of a miracle by God. But if God can save that person, God had the power to save the other 200.
Of course, hardly anyone expects religious belief to be rational or consistent. I certainly don't.
Religions are constructed by humans to meet human needs. Being in accord with reality isn't a must or even a maybe. It simply doesn't matter to believers that their chosen faith is demonstrably true, just that it feels good to them.
Here in the United States, recent devastating floods in the hill country of central Texas have killed at least 49 people with the death toll expected to increase well beyond that as the missing become reclassified as deceased.
The authorities are being quite secretive about the number of people missing along the Guadalupe River, which rose extremely rapidly after thunderstorms fueled by moisture from the Gulf of Mexico stalled out and dumped massive amounts of rain on the area in just a few hours.
What is known is that 27 children are missing from Camp Mystic, a Christian camp along the banks of the Guadalupe. These are the youngest children at the camp, aged 7-9 I believe, as they were in cabins nearest the river while older children were in cabins on higher ground.
The flooding occurred in the middle of the night. It must have been terrifying to have a wall of water several stories tall come rushing down the riverbed in darkness. This is a horrible tragedy.
It's understandable that people seize on scattered amazing survival reports to lessen the pain of all the death and destruction. Today I heard a man talk on a news program about finding a girl clinging to a tree who had been swept down the river for many miles after her family had to leave their car when it became submerged in floodwaters as they were trying to drive to safety.
The man said that the girl had stayed afloat in the rushing water for four hours as all kinds of debris, including mobile homes and houses, rushed by her. She was injured and is recovering in a hospital. He said that it must have been the hand of God that saved her — a miracle.
Well, almost certainly not.
It would have been hugely more accurate to praise the girl, rather than God, for being able to tread water for hours as the river in record flood stage carried her along. But if someone wants to ascribe a miracle to God for saving that girl, they need to explain why God is excused for letting more than 49 other people die, likely including the 27 missing children from Camp Mystic.
Disasters point out the absurdity of religious belief.
The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has declared a state Day of Prayer for the victims of the Guadalupe flood. It's impossible to conceive of a more useless act. A Day of Prayer does nothing to help those affected by the flooding, nor does it do anything to prevent a tragedy like this from occurring in the future.
The National Weather Service and a private firm, AccuWeather, issued flood warnings hours in advance. Yet the county where the worst flooding occurred didn't issue an alert because the county doesn't have this capability, preferring not to spend taxpayer money on an alert system.
We don't know why Camp Mystic staff weren't tracking the storm more closely. Maybe they thought God would protect them, being devout Christians. Unfortunately, their failure to protect the children in their care likely resulted in 27 lives being cut way short. Fixing that doesn't require prayer. It requires a determination to do better.
The Trump administration is slashing staff and money for the National Weather Service. The New York Times has a story about how budget cutbacks at the National Weather Service appeared to have harmed the ability of NWS employees to issue timely accurate warnings in advance of the flooding. Prayer won't help strengthen the National Weather Service. Undoing Trump's budget cuts will.
This is a problem with prayer and religious belief in general. Looking to God for help with problems lessens the motivation to find genuine solutions to those problems. Governor Abbott and President Trump don't believe in global warming.
Yet global warming is causing weather disasters like the Guadalupe flooding to become much more common. Unfortunately, probably many more people in Texas are going to be content with praying for the flooding victims than for addressing the problem of how to adapt to a rapidly warming world where torrential rainfall, hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, and such occur much more frequently.
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Tragedies like the Texas floods are becoming more and more frequent throughout the world. The only God that can help is the God of common sense – and science. We actually don’t need science to tell us that the climate is drastically changing bringing with it more extreme weather in all its forms. But science can and does help in warning us that with the continuing global temperature rise things will get worse – unless we act now to limit the human made causes. But sadly, many leaders are more interested in the economy and some actively deny climate change; even calling it a hoax.
Yes, praying is not going to avert such tragedies, only resources (and education) channeled into preventative measures are going to help alleviate the worst of these weather-related disasters. Many countries are actively pursuing and increasing their clean energy projects.
It’s a sad fact that America was one of the leaders in clean energy innovation but now: – “In total, back in 2024, the US invested around $272 billion into clean energy, a 16 per cent increase compared to the year prior. However, one major stumbling block limiting the US’s growth in clean energy is President Trump. Policies enacted by his administration have threatened to stall more than 400 planned projects collectively worth more than $132 billion, and leave 120,000 green energy jobs at risk.”
“Already, Trump has cancelled the Lava Ridge Wind Project – a proposed wind farm in Idaho with 241 wind turbines – with an executive order handed out back in January. The president also halted new offshore wind leases, delaying a project in New York until at least 2027, as well as pausing in-vestment on a planned green hydrogen production site in Oklahoma.” (The Geographical)
Yup. This is a common trope, this halfwittery. One of fifty is saved, the rest 49 die, and people go all “Ah God Merciful”, while not simultaneously also saying “God cruel brutal horrible”.
As you say, one is no longer surprised, not even a little, at this disconnect, at this …well, halfwittery, when it comes to religious ideas.
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I can think of a hundred and one justifications, starting from “Mysterious ways”, to “Karma”, to whatever else: but it would be interesting to actually get theists’ personal, first-hand take on this. And we do have a few theists here, even in our small group of regular commenters here. It would be cool if they’d speak up, and give us their take on this —- if only they can rein in their propensity to spin incoherently, or to simply blather on incoherently.
Seriously, guys, those of you that are still theists: There’s a tragedy, and forty nine innocents are killed, and one innocent is saved. What’s your take? Is there God’s hand at play there, a merciful one that saves? Is there God’s wantonly callous and cruel hand also at play there? If “Yes” and “No”, respectively, to those two questions, then how do you resolve this, you personally, and speaking for yourself?
Be cool if you’d clearly express your thoughts on this! (Sans the transparently disingenuous spin, and sans the transparently disingenuous incoherent blather, please. That’s no fun, that kind of nonsense.)
If any of you do respond, the theists here, and respond sensibly and sincerely: then promise, speaking for myself, absolutely no ridicule, absolutely no disrespect. Will either just take note, is all; or else, at most, follow up with a completely sincere and completely respectful question or two, to further understand, if such is called for.
@ar
In that case I better just have some coffee
Hahaha
It is precisely when human beings have utterly failed, disastrously failed, that prayer is a great thing. The only thing left.
The people who chose to dismantle public services aren’t going to listen. They are going to be the first to claim it was someone else’s fault. In this case God’s.
So the victims turn to God and so do the perpetrators.
At some point, through enough prayer, maybe God will speak to them. “Please camp where there is cell phone service…. Please have a national weather service app.”
“OK, you are alive! Now why not use that life and stop blaming (others or yourself- human beings are idiots though I love you all dearly), and go back and build and rebuild and staff appropriately the system that you already know works. The one I already inspired people to build. Try honoring the good and building on it… Glad you reached out. Now go and do. ”
This life is a nightmare which is the same as saying this life is a dream. What is a dream? It depends upon the dreamer and most of us are having nightmares because we don’t believe in a loving, forgiving reality.
And before you dismiss me as an idealist just consider what quantum physics says about all this: “Observations not only disturb what is to be measured, they produce it.”
In the rssb cult , anything good is attributed to Gurinder singh dhillon , but any thing bad is attributed to your past karma. This is nothing but part of a rssb locking in program for the blind sheep whose emotions get played by the puppet master – Gurinder/ jasdeep.
Wake up people. Even Gurinder has ran to early retirement in shame and embarrassment, totally exposed as a fraudulent baba and crook.
“We don’t know why Camp Mystic staff weren’t tracking the storm more closely. Maybe they thought God would protect them, being devout Christians. Unfortunately, their failure to protect the children in their care likely resulted in 27 lives being cut way short. Fixing that doesn’t require prayer. It requires a determination to do better.”
Oh boy, these kind of posts by Brian are so, so tired, aren’t they?
Anyway, back in complex, multi layered and multi dimensional reality which usually doesn’t conform with the one dimensional, banal, clichéd, dogmatic and religious like beliefs of folks like Brian, here’s some actual facts and info from this tragic incident:
“Camp Mystic hero killed saving girls spent years fighting for better safety after pregnant wife airlifted from flood….
Richard “Dick” Eastland, the hero director of Camp Mystic, had battled floods on the grounds for decades and even once saw his pregnant wife airlifted from the Texas property because of a deluge, prompting him to repeatedly urge better warning systems in his flood-prone Kerr County.
Eastland — who perished trying to save young girls at his Hunt, Texas, camp on the Guadalupe River — had fought for an early flood alert system after the grounds were repeatedly inundated….
….“The river is beautiful,” Eastland told the Austin American-Statesman in 1990. “But you have to respect it.”
Five years earlier, Eastland’s wife, Tweety — who was pregnant with their fourth child — had to be evacuated from the Central Texas camp to a hospital since it was cut off at the time by floodwaters, CNN reported, citing local news…..
In the late 1980s, Eastland successfully petitioned for an early warning system to be implemented after 10 kids at a neighboring camp died in 1987 when they were swept away in a flood.
That system was retired roughly a decade later in 1999 as it became antiquated and unreliable.
While a few flood gauges are in place today, no new global warning system was ever installed afterward due to a lack of funding, a lack of state support and because of some local opposition.”
https://nypost.com/2025/07/11/us-news/hero-texas-camp-director-dick-eastland-fought-for-years-for-better-flood-warning-systems/
So, we are talking about a hero who died rescuing children, respected nature and spent decades trying to get better warning systems in place (but clearly was unable to probably because US taxpayer money was required to slaughter brown or Ukrainian babies at hundreds of thousands of dollars a “pop”).
Sounds like a pretty decent guy to me. A real Christian imo.
But don’t worry Brian, I’m sure most folks will still think you’re the hero on the high moral ground here…..I mean this guy believed in woo for non-existent-god’s sake, that makes you right by default!
Manjit, I stand by my assertion that the Camp Mystic owner didn’t do enough to save the lives of the children in his care. This is what I said in this blog post. Events have proven me right, as I’ll discuss below.
“We don’t know why Camp Mystic staff weren’t tracking the storm more closely. Maybe they thought God would protect them, being devout Christians. Unfortunately, their failure to protect the children in their care likely resulted in 27 lives being cut way short. Fixing that doesn’t require prayer. It requires a determination to do better.”
Here’s a couple of news stories that show how Camp Mystic failed the basic job of protecting the children who attended this summer camp along the Guadalupe river. He knew the risks of flash flooding but didn’t issue an evacuation order.
A Washington Post story (gift link, so everyone should be able to read it) says that camp staff told a counselor to stay in their cabin as the water was rising, even though girls from another cabin were heading to higher ground. The area where the 27 children were killed was never told to evacuate. Here’s an excerpt. Read the whole story to learn how badly the Camp Mystic owner failed to protect the children.
https://wapo.st/44pck4q
——————-
Ainslie, a rising college sophomore and her cabin’s oldest counselor, hurried across the room to her two co-counselors, who’d each just graduated from high school. Both were restless. “This storm is really bad,” she said, preparing them to help console their girls if they, too, began to break down.
They always left the windows open to keep the cabin cool, and now, as Ainslie lay on her bed, she noticed older kids from another cabin running up the road with blankets and pillows.
“Are we staying or leaving?” she yelled through the window.
“Stay in your cabin!” she recalled a staff member shouting back.
All the girls in Giggle Box had woken up, she said, and they were terrified.
“We need to leave,” the girls started saying. “We need to leave.”
“Our cabin is safe. The other girls’ cabin is not,” Ainslie tried to explain. “That’s why they’re leaving, but we are staying.”
Rain spit sideways through the windows, so she and the other teens climbed onto beds to shut them until someone noticed water pooling in the cabin, spreading across the floor.
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And here’s an AP story about how Camp Mystic kept expanding into a flood plain and requesting exemptions from the federal government that govern structures in a flood plain. Really irresponsible behavior by the Camp Mystic owner.
https://apnews.com/article/texas-flood-camp-mystic-map-records-investigation-e12bee8d5f88301363861ca12c19b929
———————
Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic’s buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors, a review by The Associated Press found.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency included the prestigious girls’ summer camp in a “Special Flood Hazard Area” in its National Flood Insurance map for Kerr County in 2011, which means it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects.
…But Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied FEMA’s flood map determinations, said it was “particularly disturbing” that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation.
“It’s a mystery to me why they weren’t taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone,” she said.
Nota bene: “Experts say Camp Mystic’s requests to amend the FEMA map could have been an attempt to avoid the requirement to carry flood insurance, to lower the camp’s insurance premiums or to pave the way for renovating or adding new structures under less costly regulations.”
Caveat emptor.
Have only briefly read this, and am on my phone: but my understanding — entirely fallible, because basis cursory browse over phone, hence happy to update if presented with valid correction — is that the owners of this place were indeed remiss. And Umami’s comment suggests they were deliberately remiss, to save money.
As I understand it, again basis a very cursory browse, Manjit is pointing to *past* actions of this guy. Surely that is irrelevant to evaluating, and judging, what happened *this* time?
Sounds like the typical woo-flinger’s inveterately desperate gambit, an argument laced with fallacies and misdirection. No doubt a retraction, perhaps an apology, will be forthcoming.
(Yet again: I myself may well be mistaken! Super quick read, off of phone. If I’ve got it wrong, then I at any rate am happy to retract, and update my understanding.)
Dear Brian, you of course “stand by your assertion”. I expect nothing less, to be fair.
I don’t have much time at the moment, but suffice to say your original point was “woo very bad, cause of all ills on earth”.
And now you are talking about allegedly greedy folks trying to save money on insurance.
You’re not criticising “woo” Brian, you’re criticising the antithesis of “woo”; pettiness, selfishness, greed etc.
That has absolutely nothing to do with spirituality, mysticism, the divine, God, Oneness, “prayer ” or other associated “woo”.
manjit,
Good point, fake woo vs true woo. Fake woo gives true woo a bad name.
“Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
The Texas way: why the most disaster-prone US state is so allergic to preparing for disasters…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/13/texas-disaster-weather-preparations-us
“true woo”
No such thing, Umami. Such of “it” as is true, isn’t woo at all, and needs no dodgy defense employing dodgy means by dodgy woo-peddlers. And such of “it” as is true, is ultimately validated by science (witness the core of Buddhism vis-a-vis the core of Christianity).
Sorry, that was going to town beating down a stray throw-away comment, but I believe that’s an important point, one completely apposite to what this place is about, and you I believe are one of the few people remaining with whom discussing this won’t be a complete waste of one’s time. Science isn’t necessarily about materialism. It is about empiricism and rationality. It is just that materialism is what it has yielded so far: so it is reasonable, so far, to subscribe to materialism. There is no reason why real ghosts (whence the actual woo-woo music that gives us that cool descriptor), should they really exist, should not be fully amenable to study via the methods of empiricism and rationality, aka science.
Woo is woo, all fake. It is what charlatans peddle, and gullible fools fall for.