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Opening Arguments

The Lord didn't say nuclear

Ah, Pat is at it again:

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in "mass killing" late in 2007.

"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network. "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

I feel the same way about this that I do about all those UFO stories. If aliens were advanced enough to come all the way through space, why would they land in the middle of a cornfield in East Earlobe, Iowa? If God wanted to talk to somebody directly, why would he pick Pat Robertson?

Posted in: Religion

Comments

Laura
Thu, 01/04/2007 - 6:06am

I don't think he would.

Bob G.
Thu, 01/04/2007 - 7:08am

...hmm...because Robertson is preferable (and not by much) over say, Louis Farrahkhan or Jesse Jackson?

(And we all know the ONLY reason aliens visit our planet is for COMIC RELIEF...!)

;)

B.G.

Jay
Thu, 01/04/2007 - 10:46am

First of all, I don't believe that God told Pat any such thing, but something you said caught my eye:

"I feel the same way about this that I do about all those UFO stories. If aliens were advanced enough to come all the way through space, why would they land in the middle of a cornfield in East Earlobe, Iowa?"

Firstly, what makes you think that aliens are piloting UFOs? Our understanding of gravity and time is so dim that time traveling humans can't be ruled out as a possible cause of UFO sightings. Or adventuring humans from a parallel universe...or a superior indigenous species coexisting with us? Or any one of a thousand other speculations.

As far as the absurdity of the behavior, something substantially more advanced than we are is necessarily going to seem absurd, isn't it?

Moreover, what if one of Dr. Jaques Vallee's hypotheses is right - that the UFO phenomenon behaves more like an automatic control system that is using symbolic language to create a mythology meant to manipulate our society to an end we cannot yet guess at?

But no...I don't think Pat was chatting with the Alpha and the Omega.

Larry Morris
Thu, 01/04/2007 - 11:56am

Wow. (for the last response to this post) I agree, Leo, if any intelligent, extra-terrestrial life has figured out the physics needed to travel all the way to us, "us" is the last place they would want to stop. And, if God does talk to Pat, I now have even less faith in Him than I had before.

Steve Towsley
Thu, 01/04/2007 - 12:18pm

I once sat in a church sermon wherein the pastor opined that man was not meant to have gone to the moon.

His reasoning? Because when we go to heaven, he believes God makes each of us the ruler of our own planet as our reward. So we risk interfering with the divine plan for the afterlife, by landing on any celestial body which may be already assigned as some Christian's heavenly domain.

The point is, to me at least, that one yarn is about as implausible as the other, here.

Steve Towsley
Thu, 01/04/2007 - 4:11pm

>Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him
>that a terrorist attack on the United
>States would result in "mass killing"
>late in 2007.

>"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to
>be nuclear," he said ... "The Lord didn't
>say nuclear. But I do believe it will be
>something like that."

There may be people, a lot of people in fact, who hear a spiritual voice during meditation. Pat Robertson seems bent on proving to us -- inadvertently -- that he is not one of them.

Robertson comes off as a sideshow fortune teller, a charlatan with a crystal ball and a talent for nothing more than generalization.

Robertson has given himself enough leeway in his current prediction for 2007 that he can point to almost any event which dimly resembles his wide-ranging suggestions and assert to his followers that he described future events with accuracy -- because God talked to him at the end of '06.

Nothing that we have heard from him at this year's end warrants any serious examination, or any credence whatsoever as a prediction of anyone's future. Any resemblance between Robertson's pronouncements and actual events will be, by these largely imaginary associations, purely coincidental.

Robertson's waffling on the nuclear business seems destined to give him far too much wiggle room to prove any special ability to predict -- just like every other sideshow mystic with a crystal ball or deck of tarot cards. If one is alert for the signs, it's easy to find plenty of proof that there is no there, there.

JR
Mon, 02/19/2007 - 9:44pm

letme guess,all of you that are kicking Pat Robertson will believe any thing that Hillary tells you, right? I know that I would rather be in a foxhole with P.R. that both Clintons!

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