Monday, June 21, 2010

Pray it away

No doubt the oil spill in the Gulf is causing a lot of despair among folks, especially those in the coastal states directly affected by the oil reaching their shores. Despair leads to desperate measures and, as would be expected, the government is always willing to oblige the public's cry to do something. Problem is, nobody really knows what to do. What can be done is supposedly being done to the fullest extent possible by the most capable people...or so we're told. Yet the oil still flows. So now what?

As humans have done for pretty much its entire existence, when something is out of our control, we resign to putting it in the hands of whatever deity we subscribe to. So, in all its willingness to help, but not having legitimate means of doing so, the Louisiana legislature unanimously passed a resolution - SR145 - "To recognize and declare Sunday, June 20, 2010, as a Statewide Day of Prayer for Louisiana and for the population and region surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, in particular those people affected by the environmental and economic disasters that erupted in the
aftermath of BP Deepwater Horizon oil leak."

By golly, that ought to fix it! Because I'm sure God didn't really grasp the full magnitude of the disaster. Several million people all saying prayers asking for more or less the same thing should get his attention. I don't know exactly what everyone expects him to do. Should he part the Gulf in a circle around where the oil slick is, the divinely suck the oil out of the waters before letting them settle back in place? While he's at it, maybe he can suck up the BP execs whose greed helped spawn the problem in the first place. That would be divine justice right? I suspect the result will be more fitting to the natural functions of the planet He supposedly created. Like a Category 5 hurricane to disperse and dilute the oil. After all, we've proven time and again that the solution to pollution is dilution...not prayer.

Sidebar: Isn't it a bit ironic that the legislators that proposed this Resolution are the same (conservative) lawmakers who are screaming for the President to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling? I wonder how much of BP's money helped put those legislators in power?

1 comment:

strangeloop said...

Did you hear a U.S District court judge ruled the temporary ban on offshore drilling is a no-no? The Obama administration is going to appeal it but it doesn't look good. Anyway...
I think we can pray our way out of disasters. It's got to be a good method of fixing things, I mean c'mon, the Muslims do it, the Buddhists do it, the Jews do it, the mormons do it, why can't we? Wait a minute...how many Gods are there again?