disenchantedbunny.

It’s hot down here in the lower parts of Australia, with bush fires that have managed to burn up a large portion of the state that I live in. While giant infernos got within a couple of hundred metres to my girlfriend’s farm back home we sit in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, and ash is filling the air from the other large fires that are thankfully much further away.

No one I know has died, but friends of friends have. Death toll is huge. Someone I know had their family home completely destroyed and many others are still threatened. All in all, the atmosphere is uneasy and it’s pretty apparent what a terrible thing has happened over the past week and a bit.

So this is apparently global news (an early Al Jazeera article referred to Gippsland, a large section of the state of Victoria , as a ‘town’ - but it’s the thought that counts). News that’s also spreading around rather quickly is that a previous Family First Candidate (the largest Australian political party that preaches supposed ‘Christian Values’ Danny Nalliah has put the fires down to the work of satanically corrupted individuals that are the result of Victoria’s abortion laws. The media release can be found here.

These types of crazy-ass politically motivated prophesies happen pretty much everywhere there is a natural disaster or a large loss of life. We all hear about them. But it’s not because they’re widespread. There is no rapidly expanding circle of devout fundamentalism devouring the average Australian’s religious inclinations. A huge pool of donations have been collected by charity events, media promotions and corporate donations, not to mention the many religious organisations such as the Salvation Army that do their massive part (almost $50million AUS, last I heard). There’s always only a small batch of these people who prefer to spout a message of anger over the overwhelming majority who preach compassion among people.

So is it that these fundies have louder voices? No doubt that communities who endorse such a message are tightly nit; fundamentalist religious communities, in order to keep their strict readings of texts, are usually pretty self-confined, hostile to outside influences (Yes, Harry Potter will lead your children to pagan religions). A close community speaking with one voice can often evoke a lot of noise.

The other side of the coin is that this sort of message is just disgusting to a majority of people. News like this spreads not because it has a positive message of God that people can hold on to, but the idea that someone can try to sell their religiously motivated political snipes on the suffering of others causes a revolt in the taste of many. Even conservatives like the people at Fox news react this way to such groups. While it’s one thing to ignore/downplay the problem of reconciling the suffering caused by such an event with an all-loving deity, it’s another to think that such carnage can be the result of a completely unrelated political event that the suffering communities were probably not even fully aware of (also, it’s safe to say that most smaller communities scattered across Australia hold associations to some Christian denomination). Even the Old Testament Yahweh would blush at such an accusation.

So as the fundamentalists keep giving themselves a bad name, let’s be thankful that even religious moderates are on the side of us various species of rationalists and naturalists (most of the time). Long live separation between church and state!

And let’s all feel sorry for Danny Nalliah, who probably won’t have many friends left for a while (even former Australian Treasurer Peter Costello has given himself a bit of distance from his old friend).