Demand Hovind and Fischer Apologize to Connecticut Shooting Victims

I’m a Christian, at least nominally. Raised Roman Catholic, still follow the saints, believe water turns into wine. That kind of Catholic. I’m also the kind of Catholic who supports the rights of LGBT people (including the right to marry and have/raise children), the rights of women to control their own bodies within reason (including the right to have abortions without question), thinks Deism is the only sensible way to be a Christian, and thinks the Church should fess up and pay up when it comes to child abuse.

Michael, sir, I hate saying this, because the word I am about to use should be used sparingly and honestly. But you, sir, are a bigot. There are plenty of Christians who are horrified that anyone would think God stays away from non-believers and places where people don’t kowtow to him. I believe (I can’t know, obviously, since I’ve never seen God in a rational, provably experiential way) that God is everywhere and sees everything, but that does not mean that he necessarily acts to stop all evil. Evil happens anyway because we have free will and can choose to do evil if we wish. And sometimes because people witness evil, they become better people. But for the most part, I believe God leaves the earth alone, and expecting him to show up even for the shooting of 28 people when there are adults and children in outrageous numbers who are shot to death in North America alone every day is foolish. I don’t think any one life is more important to God than any other. Being white, cute, tow-headed , six years old and middle class does not make a child any more precious to God than being black, plain-looking, brown-haired, 12 years old and poor. If all lives are precious than God would not save children just because they match a demographic that makes most white Americans feel protective. For all we know, God may have had his hands full keeping a hospital full of children in Somalia from being massacred, or keeping yet another girl in India from being raped, or stopping a drug deal in Colombia, or supporting a young man about to testify against a pedophile priest. 28 lives in Newtown might not have been his priority that day. Or maybe they were, and he knew that by them dying, it would lead to Americans eventually putting more gun control into place. Or maybe, just maybe, there isn’t a God at all, and a whole bunch of us go to church not because we are stupid or can’t tell fantasy from reality or hate non-believers, but because we desire fellowship, the ability to do good works in a group, need comfort in painful times, or because ‘God’ is really a manifestation of our own thoughts and deeds, both good and ill . . . and there weren’t enough of us in Newtown that day to materialize and stop a disturbed young man with too many guns and a mother who thought more of her fetish than she did about protecting others from her son’s instability. I tend to believe it’s the latter. ‘God’ can do many things, but ‘God’ can’t always stop evil from happening, and stopping all evil would leave the world static and sterile., and keep us from growing as sentient beings.
Previous to Newtown, I’d never heard of these men. It is as bigoted to assume they speak for all the Christians in the world as it would be to assume Osama bin Laden spoke for all Muslims. Even the Pope doesn’t speak for all Catholics, and the Church itself is made up of many people who have never been to Rome or seen a bishop up close.
Bigotry is ugly no matter who practices it. Don’t become the thing you claim to hate.