Why God Why?
News such as this firmly resolve my view that I should really assail a determined position to come out and share my views and have a louder voice in saying that the world makes perfect sense without a God. We should focus more on humanity and the pursuit of changing our lives for the better instead of wasting our time worshipping an imaginary god. I do not know how to feel when I heard about the stampede in India. Call it apathy on religion, indifference on belief or anger on fanatics, the only thing I can do is sigh....
NEW DELHI (Aug. 3) - Thousands of panicked pilgrims stampeded Sunday at a remote mountaintop temple in northern India during celebrations to honor a Hindu goddess, sending dozens of people plummeting to their deaths and trampling scores more. Police carried bodies outside the famed Naina Devi temple at Bilaspur in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh on August 3, 2008. More than 145 Hindu worshippers (mostly women & children) were killed in a stampede during a religious festival, police said, most of whom died of suffocation with about 30 of the dead children. Iron railings leading to the Hindu temple broke, causing the stampede, senior police officers said. Thousands of worshippers gather at the temple in Bilaspur district every year to pray to a Hindu goddess during an annual festival. More than 3,000 people were trying to enter the temple premises at the same time when part of the railing broke, leading to panic, officials said..AFP PHOTO/ STR (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Rumors of a landslide apparently started the panic at the shrine in the foothills of the Himalayas, said C.P. Verma, a senior government official in the Bilaspur district. Pilgrims already at the Naina Devi Temple began running down the narrow path leading from the peak. There, they collided with devotees winding their way up. With a concrete wall on one side and a precipice on the other, there was nowhere to escape and they were crushed. At one point a guard rail broke and dozens of people fell to their deaths. The bodies of the devotees — many dressed in brightly colored holiday clothes — carpeted the path, intertwined with flattened iron railings. Many still held the flowers and food they planned to offer at the temple. Police said they used a cable car at the shrine to ferry some of the bodies down, and helicopters flew in to take the wounded to hospitals. CNN News.
It's the third deadly stampede to occur during a religious festival this year in India, though death tolls were a fraction of today's grim tally. One of the worshippers said, ""I fail to understand why God was so cruel to us."
I guess God is responsible for this tragedy, eh? Either that or they probably picked the wrong religion. I pity these fools!
By the way, that reminds me: I have to make sure that I will be very careful on my pilgrimage to Mt. Olympus to pay homage to the almighty Zeus.
posted by GFA @ 6:40 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
when there are many top headlines eminating from India (US-India Nuclear deal, bomm blasts from terrorists etc) why did US media choose to highlight this and show in top news.
This is the machinations of mainstream media and Christian lobby to undermine Hinduism and way it is practised.They want to show how back other religions are there and how best Chrishtianity is.
Well its not really God that caused the stampede, it was the rumor.
People who are barely educated, ineffective communication between the police caused this. I really doubt the creditability of one quote statement "I fail to understand why God was so cruel to us." that leads to your opinion that worshippers in general lost a part of their faith because of such incident.
The question is not whether there is a god or not, but to how can we improve, make a difference on the poorly developed systems in rural parts of third world countries such as India.
I hope you look at this with another perspective instead of just an ethnocentric view point.
I totally agree that god did not cause the stampede! Why? Because there is no god!!!!
FYI, the quote from one of the worshippers, " I fail to understand why god was so cruel to us," does not lead me to an opinion that these worshippers in general lost part of their faith - although, if you think about it, doubt is present when a man of faith utter these lamentation, nevertheless, there was nothing in my blog that specifically say these worshippers have actually lost their faith. Whether they did or not, the point of the matter is, religious belief played a major role in this tragedy. Although you have to agree that Ms Divine Intervention probably took a vacation, I would have been more amused if they said, "it's god's will."
You said, "The question is not whether there is a god or not, but to how can we improve, make a difference on the poorly developed systems in rural parts of third world countries such as India. I hope you look at this with another perspective instead of just an ethnocentric view point."
The question is not, "If there is a god or not," as you already know my position. Nonetheless, you totally failed to grasp the point of the blog. I was banking on dramatic irony when I wrote it....at least specifically for the Atheist readers. You were also way off to think that I would even touch the subject of ethnocentrism. Were you reading a different blog, perhaps? It's simple really - the world makes perfect sense without a God and that we should focus more on humanity and the pursuit of changing our lives for the better instead of wasting our time worshipping an imaginary god.
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