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About Japan and God and Lilita

As ev­ery­one knows, there was a big quake in Japan, then a Tsunami, then a vol­cano erupt­ed, then a nu­cle­ar plant caught fire. All things con­sid­ered, a re­al­ly crap­py week.

Then again, if I were ja­pa­nese and I had to read id­iots telling me this was be­cause god is pu­bish­ing me be­cause of (what­ev­er the id­iot does­n't like about Japan), I would be sore­ly tempt­ed to find the mo­rons and ... ok, con­sid­er­ing the ja­pa­nese are show­ing they are very rea­son­able peo­ple, prob­a­bly just tell him some­thing po­lite­ly.

OTO­H, I am not ja­pa­nese. Which means I can ex­plain in great de­tail why those who say "maybe it's <what­ev­er> pun­ish­ing | telling japan <some­thing>" are a com­plete waste of oxy­gen.

I will fo­cus on one ex­am­ple, be­cause it's a very spe­cial re­li­gious mo­ron: a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in Ar­genti­na, called Lili­ta Car­rió.

Here's what she said (s­pan­ish is the orig­i­nal, of course):

"Dios nos es­tá di­cien­do que debe­mos cuidar el plan­e­ta, que no sig­amos de­struyen­do la tier­ra, que vi­va­mos en la ver­dad, en la de­cen­ci­a, en la jus­ti­ci­a, que no use­mos la tec­nología, aunque sea de man­era pací­fi­ca. Hay que leer los sig­nos de los tiem­pos"

"God is telling us that we should take care of the plan­et, that we should stop de­stroy­ing the earth, that we should live in truth, in de­cen­cy, in jus­tice, and stop us­ing tech­nol­o­gy, even if it's peace­ful­ly. We should read the sign of the times".

Let's con­sid­er that lit­tle by lit­tle.

"God is telling us that we should take care of the plan­et"

I must con­fess I am amazed that an almight­ly be­ing is less ca­pa­ble of com­mu­ni­cat­ing ideas than my 3.9 year old kid. When he wants me to play bal­l, he brings the ball and tells me "Dad, let's play bal­l".

On the oth­er hand, god ap­par­ent­ly, to tell us to stop us­ing tech­nol­o­gy, caus­es a se­ries of cat­a­stroph­ic events in the oth­er end of the world, then brings us the news over the In­ter­net (a tech­no­log­i­cal mir­a­cle), so that Lili­ta can di­vine god's in­ten­tions and then re-broad­cast them to us over the ra­dio (of course, an er­ar­li­er tech­no­log­i­cal mir­a­cle).

Now, does that make sense to any­one? I mean, why does­n't god just, you know, say what he means in a rea­son­able man­ner? Be­cause for re­li­gious peo­ple, the fun is in the div­ina­tion. They are act­ing like ro­man priests di­vin­ing the fu­ture in the en­trails of an an­i­mal, ex­cept they are us­ing the life and suf­fer­ing of peo­ple.

Oh, look, suf­fer­ing in Japan, that means we should stop us­ing the Wi­i!

Not on­ly is that ap­proach com­plete­ly against ev­ery­thing chris­tian doc­trine teach­es, from with the virtue of char­i­ty (if god did it to tell us some­thing, by def­i­ni­tion they de­served it!) to the in­junc­tion against di­vin­ing god's mes­sages in por­tents (yes, it is for­bid­den, go ask a priest).

"[­God is telling us] that we should stop de­stroy­ing the earth"

Oh, gee, ok then! OTO­H, maybe a more sub­tle way than half-break­ing ev­ery­thing in a whole coun­try to let us know next time? Please?

"[­God is telling us] that we should live in truth"

Ok, yes, let's do that. I will start by not be­liev­ing in god, who tru­ly does not ex­ist. When you catch up to that we'll ar­gue some more, ok?

"[­God is telling us to] stop us­ing tech­nol­o­gy, even if it's peace­ful­ly."

I would love if this pres­i­den­tial can­di­date did­n't use tech­nol­o­gy be­cause it would mean I would not have to see her sanc­ti­mo­nious stu­pid­i­ty ev­er again. OTO­H, if we would­n't have tech­nol­o­gy, we would prob­a­bly not know about the earth­quake yet. I sup­pose she may have been say­ing "nu­cle­ar tech­nol­o­gy" and this is out of con­tex­t.

OTO­H, num­ber of peo­ple killed by peace­ful nu­cle­ar tech­nol­o­gy since 1950: 1000? 10000?

num­ber of peo­ple killed by earth­quakes and tsuna­mi in the last 5 years: 100000? 200000?

Yes, those are num­bers I just made up, but I am bet­ting they are more right than wrong, so, ba­si­cal­ly, god has killed more peo­ple this week telling us not to use nu­cle­ar pow­er, than nu­cle­ar pow­er has killed in the last 50 years. Not ex­act­ly good com­mu­ni­ca­tion skill­s.

"We should read the sign of the times"

Ok, here it is:

The New York Times

Don't vote for this blither­ing id­iot. She's dan­ger­ous, and prob­a­bly men­tal­ly il­l.

Tomas Zulberti / 2011-03-18 19:10:

Te olvidas que dios ya indundo todo el mundo para poder empezar de nuevo. Si, este dios no da señales muy claras que diagamos....

Comparto tu opinion en el articulo

Roberto Alsina / 2011-03-18 19:16:

Eso del diluvio fue el "no vale, pido gancho" mas forro de la historia.

Guilherme / 2011-03-18 19:29:

God is telling us to stop destroying the world by... destroying the world Himself! Makes sense right!

Fernando Sisul / 2011-03-19 16:53:

God doesnt destroy the world, just some cities and kills bunchs of people.

Its the Sodoma and Gomorra behaviour, why are we so amazed right now?

Roberto Alsina / 2011-03-19 17:10:

Well, it would mean there are not 10 good men in the city and that everyone else there will die, but maybe the old guy has lots precision.

Maxi / 2011-03-18 19:37:

Es una opinión bastante Pelotuda (sí, con mayúsculas) lo que parece que dijo «Lilita».
¿Cómo carajo llega una persona así a donde está? ¿Es responsabilidad nuestra?

Roberto Alsina / 2011-03-18 19:46:

Es culpa de los que la votaron. Yo la voté una vez, lo que demuestra que soy razonablemente pelotudo.

Lisandro Pérez Meyer / 2011-03-18 21:41:

Lo más cómico es que los japoneses son los mas lejanos a pensar que es algún tipo de castigo.

Roberto Alsina / 2011-03-19 00:34:

O a creer en algo que Lilita reconocería como dios.

emegeve / 2011-03-19 02:18:

We are not worthy! We are not worthy! (Wayne's world). En serio. Me saco el sombrero.

patricio / 2011-03-19 13:15:

Lo que pasa es que Lilita tiene la sangre en el ojo. Viene pronosticando apocalipsis por todos lados y no predijo éste. Se le escapó la tortuga...

Roberto Alsina / 2011-03-19 17:11:

Me acuerdo un economista que decía que un determinado indicador había pronosticado 20 de las últimas 13 recesiones :-)

Santiago Cabezas / 2011-03-19 15:08:

Muy bueno Don Alsina... Lo tenía en "to read later" este artículo, y valió la pena dedicarle el tiempito.
Como dije por Twitter, me preocupa que esta gente pueda llegar al poder. O sea, la gente es tan pelotuda que seguro vota, si no es a esta a otra más pelotuda aun.

Leo Molas / 2011-03-19 15:14:

Otra cosa es que si fuera por la tecnología, Haití ahora debería estar joya.

Fernando Sisul / 2011-03-19 16:01:

Entonces lo que Dios nos dice es que la violencia (y no cualquier tipo de violencia, sino el mejor tipo, la masacre y muerte de mucha gente) es la respuesta a todos nuestros problemas.
Es muy claro, si para que dejemos de contaminar mata 100.000 personas, entonces para que dejen de robar, tendriamos que matar a unos cuantos... por poner un ejemplo

Paul21 / 2011-03-28 00:24:

I'd like to hear the original audio though...

Angelus_ira / 2011-04-11 16:46:

Siempre leo el post por los excelentes artículos sobre Python, pero esto debería merecer un premio. No puedo creer lo que "Lilita" dijo, opina solo porque está lejos del hecho y es más fácil hablar y hacer política que trabajar en hechos. Con lo de Haití todo el mundo mando ayuda, con japón todos sacaron a sus habitantes del lugar.
Es fácil usar el nombre de Dios para "justificar" hechos, justamente porque Él no va a salir a decir que el piensa eso o no.
"Lilita" debe tener delirio místico, si una persona así fuese presidente, no sería raro que haga guerras porque "el de arriba" le susurra al oído.
Sobre si Dios existe o no, eso en mi parecer queda a merced de cada persona en particular. Creer en algo es un derecho, al menos por ahora XD

employment background check / 2011-12-27 23:33:


Well, the write-up is truly the freshest on this laudable topic. 


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