The people of Stornoway were cleaning up yesterday after a twister tore through the town, ripping slates off houses, uprooting trees and flipping a car on to its roof.
The freak storm struck the day after the God-fearing isle of Lewis staged its first gay civil partnership ceremony on Monday and less than a fortnight after the first Sunday ferry set sail despite protests from religious believers.
(continues...)
The Reverend James Tallach, of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, told the Record: "I'm not in a position to say this was the will of God. I don't have that information here.
"But I am prepared to say that it's certain no good will come out of defying God's law.
"That is what a Civil Partnership does. What happened on Monday was in defiance of God.
"We have also seen a clear breach of the Fourth Commandment, which regards keeping the Sabbath holy. Sunday sailings were also against the law of God."
62 comments
Correlation does not equal causation.
And if that's the worst your supposedly omnipotent god can do then tell him to have at it.
Funny that we don't see the pillars of fire, booming voices from above and people being turned to salt any more, wouldn't you agree Reverend?
@Eden: True, it is Saturday. However, I believe it was Constantine that changed it to Sunday for Christians shortly after "converting" to Christianity. I've read that it was simply a ruse to continue sun worship in the guise of worshiping the Christian god.
Storms? In the Outer Hebrides? Unheard of, I tell you.
Who knows what might happen if they allow dancing ...
Oh for fucks sake!
A random tornado which btw is so common across Tornado Alley that if this is a sign from your dumb god then he chose an event that is too common to create any buzz.
A tornado? Ok, anyone killed? No, Ok, they will rebuild and new tornadoes will form this year, next year, next decade, next century etc.
So, yeah, a tornado is a sure fire sign from god... Oh please. go see a shrink!
Uh Rev, the sabbath is on saturday, not sunday. It's also meant for the isrealites, not the gentiles.
"I'm not in a position to say this was the will of God. I don't have that information here.
You should have stopped there. Also, I don't know about the UK, but here in the US, tornados are a problem primarily in one of the most socially conservative, God-fearing parts of the country.
This could be the start of a whole new branch of meteorology. One could predict storms by the number of godless events in a locality, instead of using the really complicated methods of satellite images and in-depth knowledge. If one gay civil partnership plus a few dozen people working on the sabbath results in a tornado, I can confidently predict a hurricane with speed-of-sound winds to hit Brighton any day.
No, it's against what a bunch of ignorant, ancient men wrote down and claimed is the will of God.
But OK, as you seem to think they had it right, you shoul be observing Sabbath on Saturday instead of Sunday, and for that matter, let me see the fabric content labels on your clothing. Any mixed fibers there? If so, I guess you'd better be on the lookout for another tornado.
I LOVE this quote simply because he admits the flaw in all this bullshit about not hating gays=disasters.
Theirs no way to tell WHY 'god's wrath' struck this town.For every 1 gay couple getting married you can find a 100 straight couples working on sunday, strangely the 'good chrsitians' arent trying to take rights away from sabbath breakers.
It's the Outer Hebrides. Their time zone is GMT minus 250 years. Absolutely stunning landscape, but slightly behind the times. In fact I'd guess even the Amish would ask the Hebrideans to drag their arses into the 19th century.
You seen The Wickerman (the original one)? THAT'S the Hebrides.
@Zeus Almighty
So when I go to the mall on a Sunday and the Christian book store is open, can I shoot everyone there and tell the judge I was doing the Lord's will?
No, of course not. Don't be silly. You have to stone them, not shoot them.
And on July 8th, a tornado did extensive damage to Dickinson, ND, which didn't have a gay civil partnership ceremony.
your what? the only people on earth who still care about the sabbath other than the jews.
no one else gets shit like this, really. if god really did pick this ONE single infraction in a small little town to make a demonstration while ignoring every single other one...
try and listen to your self for once. please.
"Try and listen to your self for once. please."
Don't forget, the Lord works in psychotic, er, mysterious, ways.
I know what he means. Ever since they allowed same-sex marriage up here in Canada, as well as selling liquor on Sundays (horrors!), it's been one natural disaster after another. Rivers turning to blood, rains of frogs, plagues of locusts.
Oh, no. Wait...
Never mind. Wrong reality.
"We have also seen a clear breach of the Fourth Commandment, which regards keeping the Sabbath holy. Sunday sailings were also against the law of God."
The sabbath is Saturday, dumbass.
Scottish presbyterianism is in direct line of descent from Calvin, the man who burnt alive at the stake a former friend. What a man! What a religion! What a dour hypocrite! Man was not made for the sabbath. The sabbath was made for man!
BTW I have searched the Gospels for the place where Jesus demanded that people be burned alive - as human sacrifices, presumably - but so far cannot discover any place where is is enjoined of believers. Clearly it is a case of man, such as Calvin and Tallach taking upon themselves a godlike role. I call it blasphemy, in their own terms.
Strange. We have Civil Partnership ceremonies here in England all the time. No tornados here. The nearest thing to it? Early last year we had an over 5-pointer quake; the epicentre between Lincoln & Market Rasen (the first I've ever experienced! Quite disconcerting, but not unpleasant, I must admit). Or maybe it was merely the earth moving for them?!
image
'The ancient Romans believed that buggery caused earthquakes'
-John Sessions, "QI"
A couple years ago, the town of Greensburg, KS was almost totally destroyed (95% of the town was damaged) by a mile-wide tornado, yet there has never been a gay marriage performed in the community that anybody's aware of. Certainly not legal in the state. And the kicker is that the town is primarily Christian. No, I don't know if anyone there worked on Sunday before the tornado hit.
It's not divine retribution, it's just bad luck. And I don't mean cosmic luck, either, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I have to ask...why do CIVIL PARTNERSHIPS offend God? Marriage is supposedly a covenant between a man and a woman, so fine, they use a different name. But apparently, the mere fact of the LAW not oppressing the evil homosexuals sufficiently is enough to incur the Lord's (apparently quite impotent) wrath? Are you sure it's the LORD'S wrath we're talking about here, and not yours?
And as for Sunday sailings incurring His wrath as well...wouldn't that make the tornadoes practically a weekly thing...?
@messy
That was hilarious!
What a surprise about the Hebrides. There was a character on the radio in Australia a few years ago who came from there, talking about the place. He worked for the local government there before emigration. One of his jobs was to lock the swings in the playgrounds Saturday night to stop children playing on them on Sundays. No Levity!
Ah, bless, the Wee Frees are doing what they do best (when not chaining up the swings in the playpark on Sunday, that is), doom, gloom, doom, gloom, doom, gloom....
Heh, they always make me think of the Billy Connolly "Thou shalt not..." sketch :D
So, reverend Tallach, I have this dilema, I am sailing across the ocean, and..like...it will take over a week, which means that I will be sailing on a Sunday. What am I to do to avoid the wrath of gawd? Are sunday drivings, and flyings, also againts the law of gawd????
"If I remember correctly the day of the jewish Sabbath is saturday.
So most christians (asíde from a few christian denominations which still have saturday instead of sunday as Sabbath) are in constant defiance of "gods laws""
So true, Eden. good catch! actually, there is a group of people (isn't it the 7th day adventists?) that tried to "change" it back.
The Gaelic speaking people of the Western Isles have a phobia of anything that is of the "outside world". I can understand them wanting to preserve their culture, but allowing themselves to be paranoid to the extent that they fear God will destroy them if they allow changes... that is particularly sad. I live in Orkney, which is just a few miles North then East a bit... and the attitude is completely different. There is almost no fundisphere in Orkney. It is a very tolerant, liberal place. OK there are a few less progressive attitudes around (as anywhere), but the hung-up Sabbath-obsessed Hebridean attitude is remarkably absent. Perhaps if the Gaelic language was successfully revived throughout Scotland the Hebrideans wouldn't feel so defensive.
If extreme weather was a direct consequence of godlessness, then most of Western Europe would have been wiped clean off the map by now.
Not to mention huge chunks of Asia (China, North Korea, etc etc.)
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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