God is not happy?

[12th Doctor]

Perhaps God was trying to wipe out states where bad grammar is prevalent.

Or maybe he's trying to smite smug southerners who don't understand that non-native speakers of english don't always have flawless grammar.    But for real, I know Tennessee was getting it yesterday.. hopefully everyone is okay in your neck of the woods.

Everyone is fine in my world, though it was a tense, long night.

Fair enough, but I'm a smug English teacher, with actual grammar police credentials. I should have taken the poster more seriously, but, grammar aside, did you read it?

See... this is the difference between an English Teacher... which is what you are, and a Linguist, which is what I am... the linguist understands that there really is no such thing as "Blackboard Grammar" and that any fluently spoken human language is perfectly fine.

Either way, glad to here all is well.

[12th Doctor]

Interestingly, I have run into a few fundamentalist christians who have told me that God sent the hurricaine to destroy New Orleans to smite the homosexuals and depraved mardi gras partiers.

Of course, I don't believe that had anything to do with it: it's just normal gyrations of the earth's atmosphere made worse by global warming. 

Of course, when it happens to these people they are the first ones with their hands out claiming they are victims.  The sad part is, people like that make up about 1/4 of the Republican Party.

[12th Doctor]

Interestingly, I have run into a few fundamentalist christians who have told me that God sent the hurricaine to destroy New Orleans to smite the homosexuals and depraved mardi gras partiers.

Of course, I don't believe that had anything to do with it: it's just normal gyrations of the earth's atmosphere made worse by global warming. 

Of course, when it happens to these people they are the first ones with their hands out claiming they are victims.  The sad part is, people like that make up about 1/4 of the Republican Party.

The statistics I have and which often come back doesn't give 1/4 of GOP but more 1/4 of the US population with 70 to 80 millions of "born again evangelicals" for 300 millions of US citizens.

I need to ask her if the fundamentalist churches that were destroyed in the recent tornadoes were a punishment from her God.  My guess is she would say it was a Satanic attack -- or that the people in those churches were not "baptised in the Holy Ghost".

I also expect the argument of the "satanic attack" when peoples who think about such event to be a "punishment from God" are touched by it.

Well, in this way, unluckily, it is impossible to discuss, to argue,  there is just to hope that peoples who go in such convictions don't become a majority.

I have here an other statistic which says that the number of megachurches in the US which was 650 in 2000 has became 1210 in 2005 (data from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research). Such a 5 years progression!

To hope doesn't necessarily means to wait. I think it is really necessary to understand why more and more peoples take such "dark illuminated" full irrational ways and I think it is necessary in the way to try to find alighted solutions to create the best future possible. Wow! What a job for the years to come!

Not all evangelicals are like this, though, in their defense.