Given that a recent poll says 25 percent of us expect the Second Coming of Christ to occur in this calendar year, it's only natural that Pat Robertson isn't laughed out of the country for claiming God has warned him that several million people are going to be obliterated in some sort of terrorist attack this year. We can, however, scratch our heads over the nature of the warning Pat supposedly got, and draw a broader lesson from it. According to the AP:
“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”Keep in mind that Pat's god is supposed to be omnipotent--somebody whose eye is on every sparrow, who knows how many hairs are on my head (not enough anymore, dammit), and what you're going to have for lunch on March 19, 2009. And so, he should have been able to tell Pat which cities will be devastated, and how, and when, down to the minute, but he didn't.
Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.
Why be so stingy with the details, which are, after all, the most important part of the warning? Pat and those who buy his line will chalk that omission up to the whole "mysterious ways" bit--that we're not meant to know precisely why several random millions of God's dear creations must perish horribly, so all we can do is trust that he loves us and that he has a reason for it. Perhaps pondering the mystery of God's love is intended to make a person keep from begging for death during the several days his body is racked by the bloody diarrhea and vomiting that comes from serious radiation exposure, if he wasn't among the lucky ducks who were instantly vaporized in the attack. (Although I suppose I could be wrong about that.)
There's an argument that the nonspecific nature of God's revelation to Pat actually proves that whoever Pat talked to, it wasn't God. In fact, it may prove even more than that. What if it proves that the Christian God doesn't exist? In a massive, fascinating, and important 2006 article at the Secular Web, Professor Richard Carrier contemplated the great tsunami of 2004, but his observation also applies to the sort of attack God supposedly warned Pat about.
A tsunami approaches and will soon devastate the lives of millions. A loving person warns them, and tells them how best to protect themselves and their children. And a loving person with godlike powers could simply calm the sea, or grant everyone's bodies the power to resist serious injury, so the only tragedy they must come together to overcome is temporary pain and the loss of worldly goods. We would have done these things, if we could--and God can. Therefore, either God would have done them, too--or God is worse than us. Far worse. Either way, Christianity is false.If God were the deity Pat insists he is, he'd have the decency to be specific. So whoever Pat talked to is a fraud. That's probably not the message Pat was hoping to deliver.
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