Religious family abandons U.S., gets lost at sea

[hgc]

Have they now renounced their god - or was it all their fault for not being true enough?

Free will. It's all the rage. God gets credit for the good stuff; the bad stuff is the misuse of God's gift of free will.

 

[ddt]

I know we're not taking this story in any way seriously, but there is a danger here. Drawing too many conclusions from the fact that these poor navigators happened to be religious might just be seen as gloating at the misfortune of a group we don't agree with. Imagine finding the converse: some religious forum somewhere gloating over an atheist skipper who sailed around in circles for weeks, somehow connecting the irreligiosity with the navigational issues. See what I mean?

Mike

I don't think anyone in this thread is somehow saying they had poor navigation and/or sailing skills because of their religion. However, they whole ludicrousness of their endeavour is because of their religious nuttery. Let's compile a small list:

1) they start with the fallacy that they're somehow persecuted. Nowhere in the world is freedom of religion so well safeguarded as with the US 1st Amendment.

1a) subsequent to that, their pointing to US law allowing abortion and gay marriage is fallacious: it doesn't mean they'd have to abort their children, or to gay marry?

2) apparently, they hadn't researched what hellhole (per Agatha's post) their destination was, and how unwelcome they would be there.

3) they certainly were not up to the task of sailing across the Pacific, nor had they researched the issue.

4) it's not that they didn't have time to do that research and preparation.

5) and in the end, the same government that they despised had to help them get back. I hope, in any case, that the US government sends them the invoice for the plane tickets.

 

[steve s]

Have they now renounced their god

Of course not. He's the one who sent the fishing boat to rescue them. They'll probably tell everyone what a miracle it was that they were found.

Steve S

 

[tsig]

Of course not. He's the one who sent the fishing boat to rescue them. They'll probably tell everyone what a miracle it was that they were found.

Steve S

At one point a fishing ship came into contact with them but left without providing assistance. A Canadian cargo ship came along and offered supplies, but when they pulled up alongside it, the vessels bumped and the smaller ship sustained even more damage.

God had already sent a fishing boat and a cargo ship so maybe they finally saw gods' plan?

 

[GT/CS]

I know we're not taking this story in any way seriously, but there is a danger here. Drawing too many conclusions from the fact that these poor navigators happened to be religious might just be seen as gloating at the misfortune of a group we don't agree with. Imagine finding the converse: some religious forum somewhere gloating over an atheist skipper who sailed around in circles for weeks, somehow connecting the irreligiosity with the navigational issues. See what I mean?

Mike

I have no sympathy for potential Darwin Award nominees, especially when they include their children in their idiocy.

 

[icerat]

I have no sympathy for potential Darwin Award nominees, especially when they include their children in their idiocy.

I have sympathy for the poor children

(the existence of which, btw makes them ineligible for the Darwin Award, though I suppose if you kill your children as well you should be eligible as the end point is the same ...)

 

[Mark6]

some religious forum somewhere gloating over an atheist skipper who sailed around in circles for weeks, somehow connecting the irreligiosity with the navigational issues.

Get back to us when this actually happens.

 

[Ray Brady]

While it's conceivable that an atheist could choose to abandon his native land for similar reasons, it's hard to imagine him crediting the decision to taking a leap of a lack of faith to see where a lack of God led him.

 

[GT/CS]

I have sympathy for the poor children

(the existence of which, btw makes them ineligible for the Darwin Award, though I suppose if you kill your children as well you should be eligible as the end point is the same ...)

Excellent point. I hadn't thought of that.

 

[Shiner]

At one point a fishing ship came into contact with them but left without providing assistance. A Canadian cargo ship came along and offered supplies, but when they pulled up alongside it, the vessels bumped and the smaller ship sustained even more damage.

God had already sent a fishing boat and a cargo ship so maybe they finally saw gods' plan?

I don't know. Obviously god's plan was for them to go to Chile. They're ignoring that and going home.

 

[Resume]

These people remind me of those Defend Religious Liberty bumper stickers I started seeing pop up around the time of the last election for POTUS. On the sticker, the Statue of Liberty is holding a cross rather than a torch. Kinda obvious with which religion's liberty they're concerned.

 

[poblob14]

Hannah Gastonguay, 26, said Saturday that she and her husband "decided to take a leap of faith and see where God led us" when they took their two small children and her father-in-law and set sail from San Diego for the tiny island nation of Kiribati in May.

But just weeks into their journey, the Gastonguays hit a series of storms that damaged their small boat, leaving them adrift for weeks, unable to make progress. They were eventually picked up by a Venezuelan fishing vessel, transferred to a Japanese cargo ship and taken to Chile where they are resting in a hotel in the port city of San Antonio.

Reminds me of the time we were prosecuting a baby killer. His mother was adamant that he would be acquitted. "God will show you the truth!" she said, repeatedly.

After he pled guilty in the middle of the trial, our (very religious) victim-witness coordinator said, "Well, I guess He did."

 

[CORed]

Religious family abandons U.S., gets lost at sea



Awfully decent of the government you hate to help you out, I must say. If they wanted to leave so badly, why come back at taxpayer expense? If Chile doesn't want them, then let them get another boat and sail off again. If they hate the U.S. so much, why aren't they resisting repatriation?



How far out there do you have to be to believe that all churches in the U.S. are under government control? Maybe this belongs in Conspiracy Theories?



I hope that plan doesn't involve any more taxpayer expense.

It seems, as is usually the case with Christian fundies, that their real beef is that the government allows other people to do things they don't approve of. In other words, they are being persecuted because they are not allowed to persecute people who don't share their beliefs.

 

[Puppycow]

Among other differences, she said they had a problem with being "forced to pay these taxes that pay for abortions we don't agree with."

That's another thing: tax money does not go to pay for abortions. Well, essentially it doesn't. There are caveats.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Amendment

In U.S. politics, the Hyde Amendment is a legislative provision barring the use of certain federal funds to pay for abortions with exceptions for incest and rape.[1] It is not a permanent law, rather it is a "rider" that, in various forms, has been routinely attached to annual appropriations bills since 1976. The Hyde Amendment applies only to funds allocated by the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services. It primarily affects Medicaid.

The original Hyde Amendment was passed on September 30, 1976 by the House of Representatives, by a 207-167 vote. It was named for its chief sponsor, Republican Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois. The measure was a response to the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade which legalized abortion, and represented the first major legislative success by the United States pro-life movement, also known as the United States anti-abortion movement. Congress subsequently altered the Hyde Amendment several times. The version in force from 1981 until 1993 prohibited the use of federal funds for abortions “except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term.”[2]

On October 22, 1993, President Clinton signed into law the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1994.[3]  The Act contained a new version of the Hyde Amendment that expanded the category of abortions for which federal funds are available under Medicaid to include cases of rape and incest.[4]  

Still, only a negligible fraction of a percent of tax dollars would go directly to fund any kind of abortion. I suppose to an absolutist that doesn't matter. It's hard to be an absolutist about anything in the real world.

 

[Foster Zygote]

So they object to perceived State interference in the Church, yet the primary examples of this they offer are abortion and homosexuality? Wouldn't this indicate that their problem is that the government hasn't outlawed abortion and homosexuality?

I suspect that their true grievance is that the State isn't interfering MORE in people's lives.

Bingo! Having been raised an evangelical Christian, I was fed a steady diet of indignation that "God's law" is not the highest law in the land. In their minds, anything that is not of "God's law" is, by default, corrupt and evil. They fantasize about an America, even a world, that is set up as an evangelical theocracy. To them, other religious beliefs, or the lack thereof, are not simply different views that deserve equal protection by our society, they are all the work of Satan, and any compromise or tolerance is itself an act of evil.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Have they now renounced their god - or was it all their fault for not being true enough?

They'll probably conclude that it was God's way of telling them that he needs them to stay and fight the good fight.

 

[Foster Zygote]

These people remind me of those Defend Religious Liberty bumper stickers I started seeing pop up around the time of the last election for POTUS. On the sticker, the Statue of Liberty is holding a cross rather than a torch. Kinda obvious with which religion's liberty they're concerned.

The irony is that if they got their way they'd soon be fighting among themselves for power. It's funny how many Christians seem to assume that all of Christianity is going to act as a homogeneous entity. History shows that they couldn't be further from the truth.

 

[rwguinn]

It seems, as is usually the case with Christian fundies, that their real beef is that the government allows other people to do things they don't approve of. In other words, they are being persecuted because they are not allowed to persecute people who don't share their beliefs.

Which was, of course, the major driver for the Pilgrims/Quakers/etc to come here in the first place.
It wasn't so much "Religous Persecution" toward them as it was they weren't allowed to persecute in return over there...

 

[Foster Zygote]

Which was, of course, the major driver for the Pilgrims/Quakers/etc to come here in the first place.
It wasn't so much "Religous Persecution" toward them as it was they weren't allowed to persecute in return over there...

Just a few decades after establishing Plymouth they were persecuting and even executing people for the "crime" of being Quakers.

 

[hgc]

It wasn't so much "Religous Persecution" toward them as it was they weren't allowed to persecute in return over there...

To be fair, it was a little of both.