Poll: One in Five Americans say God Uses the Gulf Coast as a Bowling Alley

I promise, this was intended to be a very short post, but it sort of took on a life of its own.

According to an ABC News poll, 23% of respondents say that Hurricans Katrina and Rita are “deliberate acts of God.”

I have two problems with this position.* The first, are all hurricanes “deliberate acts of God” or only the ones that are memorable. If the former, why does God like to throw us the occasional large to catastrophic storm? Does he get bored by mainly hitting the US with category two storms and having the bulk of all tropical cyclones hit absolutely nothing and dissipate at sea? Either God must seriously dislike places that are disproportionately hit (e.g., Jamaica, Florida and Haiti), or He likes to randomly shoot them in all directions (if this is case, how can randomness be a “deliberate” act of an omnipotent power?).

If only certain hurricanes are the will of God, more problems arise. As a threshold matter, how can we divine the divine and tell the natural cyclones from the supernatural? Statistically, New Orleans is likely to get dinged a time or two. If a hurricane hits an uninhabited place (or fails to make landfall), it is just an ordinary hurricane; if a major city is hit, however, it must be because God was aiming for it. This position would make a large coastal city remarkably safe from hurricanes as they would be protected from all normal hurricanes (presumably the majority of all hurricanes) and only be at risk whenever God is in a smiting mood (this is because a storm hitting, for example, New Orleans or Houston is inevitably attributed to some divine plan and never to standard weather patterns).

Assuming that The Big Guy is taking pot shots at the US (and Gulf Coast in particular), why does He seem to particularly dislike (or at least enjoying hurricaning) certain groups. Honduras, Haiti and Florida are routinely hit, and New Orleans and Beaumont are believed by 23% of Americans to be targets of the Almighty. These areas have diverse religious practices (pagan, Protestant, Jewish and God’s One True Church: Catholic). All have varying degrees of political tumult and all have varying levels of poverty (from the crushing poverty of Haiti to the endless trailer parks of East Texas and Florida). The good folks at the Volokh Conspiracy noted that, if God is sending these hurricanes, He must really hate poor people; this is drawn from the fact that, overall, the incredible majority of hurricane victims are extremely poor (trust me, Haiti makes the worst parts of New Orleans look like the Hamptons).

To use New Orleans as an example, God had plenty of potentially ripe targets. New Orleans has the remarkably hedonistic and pagan Mardi Gras festivities , the gay-pride Southern Decadence celebration and a fair number of water-borne casinos. I am in no way stating that these groups should be killed or injuried by God, this is simply a list of what various people have claimed to be potential Katrina targets.

If He were indeed aiming for these potential targets, let’s check His accuracy (bearing in mind that, being all powerful, he should probably be pretty friggin’ accurate). Katrina hit well before Mardi Gras and more or less missed the French Quarter; Mardi Gras will likely go forward in 2006 without much slowing down. Not only was Mardi Gras as an instution stopped, but the offending celebrants were missed altogether (remember, Mardi Gras is purported to be a religious celebration that is screwed up by the bead-toting tourists). With the exception of Tulane and various small colleges, virtually no drunken frat guys were adversely affected by the storm. Not only will the partying continue, but the people debauching the occasion will return.

As for the Southern Decadence extravaganza, Katrina hit a week or two before everything kicked off. Granted the parade was very subdued this year, but it will continue next year and all of the homosexuals (the elusive and contemptable group of taxpayers) weren’t in the city to face The Almighty’s Wrath. I think Sodom and Gomorrah were nuked not to inconvenience the sinners, but because destroying the city was an effective way to kill the people in it.** Furthermore, I would think that there are more accurate tools for eliminating a certain group; lightning is a much more efficient means for dispatching a discrete group than a 250 mile wide storm. I think it’s fair to say that gays weren’t a target of Katrina given the storm’s abysmal job of doing anything to harm them.

Finally, the casinos were effectivally destroyed; I don’t think very many coastal casinos survived the storm. Unfortunately for the divine plan, all of these casinos are insured and their management will not lose much money as a result of Katrina. The only up side is that the people of Louisiana will not be able to gamble for several months. Furthermore, I’m going to have to raise the overkill problem again: floating buildings may be destroyed by much simpler means than a giant, city destroying hurricane. I don’t see the benefit of killing 1,000 people to get rid of a few casinos the hard way.

If there was aiming involved, it could only be directed at one group: poor people. Mardi Gras revelers are typically wealthy college students, gays are disproportionately rich and your average food stamp user doesn’t spend much time at expensive casinos (local illegal bookies, maybe). Whereas the casinos, bars and hotels are all insured, poor people typically have no such safety net; if your apartment or government supplied housing is flooded, you lose everything you own. Also, at least 100,000 people were left in the city when the storm hit. Most of the Mardi Grasers and gay pride marchers live all across the country, so they were safe. The people who were left were too poor to own a car for the evacuation. Thus, the great majority of the 1,000 or so people who died were poor and did not fit into any other targeted group (though the looters didn’t help the aggregate innocence of those who stayed behind, it is worth noting (1) that the huge majority of the group didn’t commit any crime and (2) the looters, by definition, survived the storm and thus is another example of God missing a smitable target). This fails the rule God set before dealing with those punks in Gomorrah when he noted that he would spare the city (and the sinners) if 10% of the population is righteous; since I think its fair assumption that at least 100 of those killed were innocent, the Lot test is satisfied.

* Though I am attempting a logical argument, I am presupposing the existence of an all powerful God as defined by the Holy Catholic Chruch.
** As a papist, I don’t take a literal reading of the Jehovah v. Sodam, et al.; it is, however, a useful tool for (1) showing God’s power and (2) showing that he isn’t into indiscriminate killing.