Religious bookseller struck by lightning
Posted on: July 15, 2007 - 9:49am
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Religious bookseller struck by lightning
| Religious Book Seller Struck By Lightning (CBS) HIALEAH A man making a trip from Puerto Rico to South Florida to raise money for his religious education remains hospitalized Monday after he was struck down by a bolt of lightning which flew from clear blue sky on Sunday. He was selling religious materials when he was hit. Hailu Kidane Marian was working with members of his religious group, selling religious materials door-to-door in a Northwest Miami-Dade neighborhood, when the bolt from the blue struck him down. "I heard a boom, and I looked and the guy jumped back, and he just laid there, stiff," said witness Maria Martinez. Paramedics say Marian was not breathing and his heart was not beating when they arrived, but they were able to revive him and rushed him to Jackson Memorial hospital, where he was in critical condition Sunday night. Members of his religious group waited outside the hospital throughout the night for word of his condition. "He's unconscious, he's in a coma," said Francisco Perez, leader of the Puerto Rico-based group. "It's difficult what happened, you know, but what can we do? Things happen in life, but we still believe in God." This is the second incident in as many months of someone being struck down by lightning from a clear sky in South Florida. Last month David Canales, a gardener who worked in the Pinecrest area, was killed when lightning apparently struck him from a rainless sky. Two co-workers standing nearby were unhurt. CBS Miami Meteorologist Jeff Berardelli said 'dry lightning', which can strike even when the sky is clear, can be very dangerous because victims are not expecting it and don't prepare as they might with a storm threatening. Measurement of lightning strikes in the area Sunday showed only a few bolts compared to the last few days, making Marian especially unlucky to be struck by one of them. Nobody else was injured when the bolt flew from the sky. (© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.) |
I guess god didn't like those particular books. Also, doesn't this show paramedics are more powerful than God? He killed this guy but the paramedics basically said "fuck you, God!" and brought him back! :
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i'm sure the xian argument would be that god worked through the paramedics. or maybe god worked through the teachers at EMT school to give the paramedics their skill? or maybe god spoke to the parents of the teachers of the EMT school to tell them to send their kids to med school? or maybe god was working through the inventors of emergency medical supplies? hmmmm.
why didn't god just send the lightning bolt a few inches to either side? or why didn't he just not send it at all? or why didn't he strike the house of one of the people that refused to buy the guy's religious books?
ok, this could just go on and on and on and on and on....
www.derekneibarger.com http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=djneibarger "all postures of submission and surrender should be part of our prehistory." -christopher hitchens
Too bad you never see after this sort of thing the people there say "Fuck. Guess God really doesn't exist."
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
i guess if you wanted to get technical you could say that since a lightning bolt is created by the bolt coming from both the sky and the ground, obviously god and satan conspired to strike this guy down. what theistic implications this would have is beyond me.
it's just so much easier to admit that this sucker was in the wrong place at the wrong time
www.derekneibarger.com http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=djneibarger "all postures of submission and surrender should be part of our prehistory." -christopher hitchens
If god thinks it's a good idea to zap door-to-door salesmen with lightning, then maybe this is a god I could get behind.
"The powerful have always created false images of the weak."
It's very easy to admit that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, seeing as how that's the most logical explanation. I'm not really sure how the existence of God factors into it, though.
Kind of makes you wonder why people want to factor god into it when good things happen, doesn't it?
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
God doesn't factor into it.
If god takes life he's an indian giver
Well sure, a lot of people do that, but that's a very infantile, primitive way of approaching the idea of God. I try to separate the good and bad things that happen in my life from the idea of God. I know as well as anyone that life on earth is unpredictable, senseless, and largely devoid of any meaning that you don't create yourself. Of course it's tempting to praise God when things are going well and curse him when things fall through, but I really do try to avoid that. God doesn't owe me peace and prosperity just because I decided to follow him. I didn't become a Christian so that I'd have a better life, I became a Christian because I was seemingly compelled beyond my will and good sense to "follow Him", whatever that may mean. I guess I'm still trying to figure it out 10 years down the line.
So, if both the good and the bad stuff aren't god, what exactly is left?
I surely can't help you. There's this being who doesn't do the good stuff, isn't responsible for the bad stuff, and wants you to believe that he killed himself so that he could forgive you for the way he made you, and you feel compelled to follow him.
I can understand your confusion.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Generally speaking, I don't view God as being "stuff" at all. Or more precisely, I try not to equate the idea of God with the things that I experience empirically. Good and bad things are going to happen to everyone at any given point, more good to some folks, more bad to others, and the phenomena really don't distribute themselves exponentially from a standpoint of spiritual belief (i.e., it's quite clear that some atheists do well in life, as well as some Christians; and conversely, some atheists have quite shitty lives, as well as some Christians). Myself personally, I feel as though I've experienced more bad things in the world than good, and while I'd be lying if I said I didn't curse God from time to time, my cursing God makes no reasonable sense within the framework of my own belief system (this unreasonableness of course being separate from the unreasonable nature of my belief system in general, as perceived by some).
What is left? Well, I guess that's what I've been trying to pin down for the past decade that I've been a Christian, haha. For the sake of avoiding the trap of rattling off a list of what is not left, I'll just say that I really don't know.
I surely can't help you. There's this being who doesn't do the good stuff, isn't responsible for the bad stuff, and wants you to believe that he killed himself so that he could forgive you for the way he made you, and you feel compelled to follow him.
I can understand your confusion.
I didn't know that I needed help, haha.
I'm not saying that God doesn't do good and bad things - indeed, I think that he does both - it's just that it doesn't take a genius to figure out that spiritual beliefs have little to no bearing on the nature of your experiences.
And of course I've struggled with the absurdity of the seemingly self-righteous suicide of God. At times God has seemed like such a narcissist to me - someone who can only love me if he sees himself in me. I mean, why did God create us with this whole "sin glitch" in the first place? Couldn't he have just, I don't know, created us in a way that was satisfactory to him, and then bypassed the whole blood atonement thing? It certainly seems like that would have made things far simpler, but at the risk of copping out, I'm not particularly interested in a God I can understand. It's incredibly easy to ascribe human attributes to God, especially in light of the symbology of Christ, but I think that is a dead end, because at the end of that road all we end up with is a big giant douchebag with a white beard screaming "fuck you!" from the heavens, and other popular caricatures. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but something tells me that it's a tad deeper and more paradoxical than that.