NPR reports: Potential tornado victims claim God’s power to divert storms

December 29, 2015 • 10:00 am

A short bit on National Public Radio’s “Around the nation” news report was brought to my attention by reader Tom. Bill Zeeble from NPR was reporting on the deadly tornadoes afflicting Texas, and interviewed Garland, Texas resident Sabrina Lowe. You can hear the piece at the site, and here’s a bit of the transcript. Remember, Zeeble is the reporter (my emphasis).

ZEEBLE: Murray, who’s 69, would love to be back in her apartment. But it’s not safe. In a nearby Rowlett suburb, Sabrina Lowe says she was luckier because of her faith. Ten relatives were at her home when the tornado threatened.

SABRINA LOWE: We actually went outside and started commanding the winds because God had given us authority over the winds – the airways. And we just began to command this storm not to hit our area. We – we spoke to the storm and said, go to unpopulated places. It did exactly what we said to do because God gave us the authority to do that.

ZEEBLE: Others weren’t so lucky or blessed. Officials say many as a thousand North Texas homes were damaged or destroyed. Garland was the hardest hit. Meteorologists say a powerful tornado hit the town with winds exceeding 200 miles an hour. For NPR News, I’m Bill Zeeble in Dallas.

Somehow Zeeble’s last statement doesn’t sit right with me. I doubt that “lucky or blessed” is sarcastic.  What would he had said if Lowe had averred that Zeus, or Satan, had given her power to divert the winds. And why would she have that power rather than others? Should Zeeble have asked her to answer that question, or why God decided to destoy the homes of others? As Reader Rik wrote, who also called my attention to this piece:

While I’m glad she and her home were unharmed, it’s hard to imagine the arrogance it takes to believe a loving god spared you when others were killed or had their lives devastated by the same storm, supposedly caused by the same god.

Maybe I’m being overly captious here, but I’m not quite sure why NPR would present these delusional rantings without question. Are they just trying to show how crazy Texas is? Or are they deferring to faith, as NPR is wont to do.

76 thoughts on “NPR reports: Potential tornado victims claim God’s power to divert storms”

  1. “I doubt that “lucky or blessed” is sarcastic.”
    Yeah I don’t know that it was sarcastic, but it certainly had an air of skepticism to it.

  2. I don’t know what NPR is really about in this kind of reporting. I’m pretty sure though that Zeeble thinks about the same as I do about Christian culture in America – it’s batshit crazy.

    1. If Zeeble had wanted to do some serious investigative reporting he should have talked to the survivors of the high impact area to see if any of them had tried to deflect the storm over Lowe’s neighborhood.

      1. It was Texas, so I think we can be pretty sure that many of those affected were praying a lot as the storm bore down on them.

  3. Mr. Zeeble couldn’t ask a follow-up question because he put the report together, but someone else collected the quote. My guess is that he was skeptical of the claim and that his comment was meant ironically.

    1. Good comic! 😀

      Perhaps if Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, or Rick Santorum makes it to the White House, we’ll see the idea implemented. It’ll be something to do with all those people who are no longer allowed to serve in the US military!

  5. The well known ‘authority’ that commands the winds and the paths of tornadoes are simply regional differences in air pressure. Anyway, if I am reading it right, Ms. Lowe was not entirely unpunished by the spiteful God of Storms since her home was damaged, right?

  6. “…we spoke to the storm and said, go to unpopulated places. It did exactly what we said to do.”

    It did? Is she using a definition of “unpopulated” that somehow jibes with thousands of homes being damaged, at least 11 dead, and who knows how’s my injured?

    Religious people are so good at denial/self-delusion/wishful thinking/whatever you want to call it.

    2. Is she using a definition of “unpopulated” that somehow jibes with thousands of homes being damaged, at least 11 dead, and who knows how’s my injured?

      I would strongly suspect that the operationally acceptable definition of “unpopulated” which was in use was “unpopulated by ME.”
      And indeed, it does seem that the desired result was achieved in that the prayer (prayee? as she was also the beneficiary of the prayer)wasn’t seriously harmed. So that’s alright then. God has clearly protected his own and condemned … what was the count – 11 apostates dead and a number of lesser sinners injured / devastated / rendered homeless.
      I feel an attack of the Panglossitis coming on. “All is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.”

  8. If we play along a little, the claim that a righteous person can command the path of storms still seems without precedent from any source. Is there a passage in the Bible somewhere that says that a believer can do such things on their own? I mean, she really did claim that she diverted the storm, not that God didit.

    1. Yeah, that part made it even more bizarre than most religious claims – God gave her the power. She didn’t beg Him to redirect the tornado He presumably created in the first place, but was handed the wheel. Why didn’t she just ask Him to stop sending tornadoes? That would be far more efficient.

      1. She’s using the tools god has given her. She knows that she has been given the power – sorry, “DA POWAH!” – because she’s obviously God’s best possible executioner. In such cases, the roles of judge and jury are always combined with that of executioner. So, she has tried, convicted and executed nearly a dozen people, with the authority of god.
        Does anyone have the phone number for the FBI. I think we’ve found a spree killer. Ah, here we go “020 8771 9511” …

        1. There are examples of belief in the power of weather control in Jewish literature (such as the books the Christians call the Old Testament.) Hony, the rainmaker, was one such person. I don’t recall any tornado averters. Of course, Joshua made the sun stand still through the power of God. Right?!

          1. So (playing De’il’s Advocate), there is a documentary record of such weather modifications. And of the potential negative consequences of applying them. therefore if the weather modifiers – even if given the “Authoriteah” – actually performed this intercessory prayer. they should have known of the possibility of down-wind negative consequences and taken steps to mitigate those consequences. and if people have been injured (killed or financially harmed) as a consequence of the prayer-makers inexcusable negligence …
            I’m no lawyer, but I can see there is a case to answer there. Even for someone who is just casually side-swiped by this runaway truck with dodgy brakes. If there was actually a Satanist injured down-wind then there’s a whole criminal injury case to be opened up too. And if there’s a Hindu, or Muslim, or Voodoo practitioner you can throw “racially aggravated onto the pile of charges too. If there’s a Native First Nations AmerIndInuit been injured, there’s another metric shitload of trouble queueing up for our prayer lady. For once, the idiomatic error of “cueing up” isn’t particularly wrong.
            What is wrong with the landsharks of America? Such a whole family of opportunities!

          2. Of course, “making the sun stand still” actually is saying that he stopped the Earth’s orbit. That requires a hell of a lot of energy to bring a six sextillion ton object to rest when it’s moving at 30,000 m/s. What a waste of resources, instead of solving Earth’s future energy crisis, Yahweh simply stops the Earth from moving for a couple of hours…

          3. In fact he would only have to stop the Earth’s rotation, a much smaller task. Doing it without killing everybody would require some fine motor control, but I’m sure he’s up to it. He is omnipotent, after all.

  9. He should have said, “Thanking god for sparing you in a natural disaster is like sending a thank you note to a serial killer for stabbing the family next door.”

  10. I wonder if Wolf Blitzer is currently out and about in the Texas tornado wreckage, and if he will serendipitously happen upon (as he did a few years ago) a young atheist mother and seek to “frame” her response to her act-of-nature (act of God?) ordeal.

    1. Yes, I remember that. And on that past occasion a women just answered ‘Oh, I’m an atheist.’ He was rather stunned.
      I do not entirely blame him for assuming that a person in the middle of the bible belt would be a bible thumper.

  11. I thought according to fundies it was gay people who controlled the weather with their abominations being the main targets of god’s storms and earthquakes. I have trouble keeping up with their etiological theories.

  12. If you are downstream of the person who “diverted” the storm and your property suffers damage can you bring a lawsuit for damages? There must be a lawyer out there prepared to take that on.

    1. In the most litigious society in the world, I’d hope there would be a lawyer willing to take that on too. Just think of the FREE PUBLICITY!

        1. Wasn’t that a Billy Connolly film … yes. It’s been on my “to see” list for some years. I’ll have to get the wife to put it on her DVD library wish list.

          1. Yes, Billy Connolly playing it straight.

            It wasn’t very kind to the organised Church. Billy’s character (forget the name) actually sued the Church as God’s representative, since his insurance company claimed the disaster was an ‘Act of God’. Which put the church in an interesting position…

            cr

          2. Like I said … on my “to watch” list. Coming from ecumenical (“a chip on all 3 shoulders”) Glasgae, I can well envisage there being …. splatter … from an encounter between $Church$ and 🍌 (Connelly).
            Setting myself up for an HTML fail here …

          3. Oh, second re-load, and old BBB gets his yellow footware. $SHRUG$ (for which there is probably a Unicode too)

      1. Is the plural of solo “soloes”? 😉 (I notice spellcheck here accepts both solos and soloes. By what warrant?)

    2. Yes, that would be a magnetic thing, due to all the metal in the trailers. That’s just the scientific reason. The other difficulty is that there is no such thing as a basement in Texas. This is because there is no need; most of the praying is done in the bathroom.

    3. Probably it’s the absence of power (fiscal, political) that guarantees trailer parks (and more specifically, the trailers and their inhabitants) the absence of storm shelters and such like things.
      Since the UK is suffering another (5th or 6th, this year ; I don’t keep count) bout of people living on FLOOD PLAINS getting FLOODed, I’m not going to get into the political complexities of FLOOD insurance, save to say that if I have to buy it again, I shall be looking very carefully at the appropriate parts of the policy.
      But, as I have said regularly to the call-centre person when shopping for home (buildings) insurance, “I’m a EXPLETIVE geologist! Of course the premises are not subject to flood or subsidence! Do you think that I’m a blithering idiot?”
      I shall have to remember to NOT subsidise people who buy on FLOOD plains by buying insurance from a company involved in the FLOOD re-insurance scheme. The problem is avoidable.

      1. Consider yourself lucky. My wife and I intentionally bought a house far enough from the coast of Long Island (3 miles, 45 feet elevation) to avoid flooding issues. Lo and behold, when Hurricane Sandy destroyed a sizable portion of my town’s tax base in 2012, my already high property taxes jumped 8% for the year. And property values happened to decrease at the same time, whaddya know?

        1. Well, I’m writing this in the lounge of my daughter’s new house in Christchurch. The 2011 earthquake damaged their old house – it was only mildly damaged, quite livable (they did for a couple of years while waiting their turn for insurance settlement) – the floor had a slight slope, front door jammed shut, that sort of thing – but unrepairable as if the earth under it (literally) moved again, any repairs would have been nullified.

          This is a new house on deep pile foundations on the same site. Could turn out to be a prime site, since many areas by the river (like this) have been ‘red zoned’, unsuitable for building, the houses demolished and their owners have moved to new subdivisions on more stable ground. When, eventually, the damaged areas have been cleared and vegetation grown up, this could become a really nice suburb, surrounded by areas of green. This will probably take 10-20 years though.

          The thing is, before the first (2010) earthquake, Christchurch would have been considered one of the safest locations in the country – 80 miles from the Alpine Fault. I think the Darfield Fault (cause of the first quake) was unsuspected, buried under thousands of feet of alluvium on the Canterbury Plains. That quake (probably) strained the hard rocks in the Port Hills which then let go with a very short sharp shallow quake very close to Christchurch.

          In Goddy terms, the first quake was a sighting shot, God got the second one bang on target. (He also knocked down the cathedral. Bit of an own goal, that).

          I guess the only moral is that nothing is really certain.

          cr

          1. I’d say the increase cost me roughly a pint of Guinness per day.

            Not that my complaining here isn’t at least partially tongue-in-cheek. I’ll begrudgingly accept higher taxes and lower town property values in exchange for having an intact house. The low taxes on the damaged lots along the water aren’t so attractive looking even 3+ years later. It’s just one of many odd irrationalities in human economic systems that the most desired, and thus most valuable, places to live are those more apt to be ransacked by the wrath of Poseidon.

          2. Those places may be desired by those iggorant of the wrath of Poseidon. (You do remember that Poseidon’s balliwick was both the seas AND earthquakes?)
            The UK press has been filled with the moaning (and occasional heartbreak) of repeated flooding. That is because people BUY properties on FLOOD PLAINS, thinking that they aren’t going to FLOOD because it’s now an INHABITED FLOOD PLAIN.
            In the words of the immortal (or at least, very long-lived) Marvin, it gives me a headache to think down to that level.
            The same goes for beachfront. If you’ve got it, sell it ; if you’ve not got it, don’t buy it. If you’ve got it and can’t sell it … tough. You took a risk getting in on the ground level of that particular Ponzi.

  14. Why does the storm have to hit unpopulated areas? Why don’t we have the authority to simply stop the storm from forming to begin with? Unpopulated areas still contain infrastructure that could get damaged and beneficial plant life that gets wiped out.

    But, there’s really a simple test that these religious people could perform to see if we can command storms. Show that the percentage of storms that hit populated areas is significantly lower than the overall percentage of the surface area that is highly populated. Maybe God is only capable of launching storms where the pre-existing natural conditions are right? He seems to send a lot more strong tornadoes to the Bible Belt of the U.S. than he does godless Sweden…

    1. Why don’t we have the authority to simply stop the storm from forming to begin with?

      Because a tornado that doen’t happen is less of a threat of divine retribution than a storm which kills a few unimportant people (i.e. not me, and not members of my congregation).

    2. considerin how many people have likely prayed “oh god don’t let it hit me” and failed, would seem to indicate that these selfish twits are just telling more lies like usual.

      1. I just prayed for a tornado not to hit me and it worked! For at least three minutes now and counting…

        cr

          1. Now what makes you think I get any *unwanted* advances? 😉

            (Come to think of it, I’m trying hard to remember last time I got any advances at all… 🙁

            cr

          2. I invite you to visit NYC then. There’s an advance for all types here. Unless of course you want to advance forward on the sidewalks this time of year. Navigating the crowds is nearly enough to turn one to religion. Or, at least whatever screaming out “Jesus Fucking Christ”* means as you try to navigate a wall of people 8 deep who can’t comprehend walk signs.

            *This is not hyperbole. I actually did this today. Loud too, and within earshot of a nut walking around with a “Jesus saves” sign.

  15. NPR is a product of their audience when it comes to faith. They do not guide, they follow and want to be followed.

  16. Yeah, Zeeble should’ve probed Lowe on the scope of her God-granted power over the “airways” — was it a plenary grant of authority extending from God’s good brown Texas terra firma all the way up to His firmament? Or was it more, like, troposphere-specific?

    Zeeble’s readers, and NPR’s listenership, want to know!

    The moral of this story is what exactly, that the 11 Texans croaked by the twister must’ve been heathens and homos?

      1. Yet He keeps missing P-town and Key West, with their (to put it in Rumsfeldian parlance) “target-rich environments.”

        1. What’s His problem, anyway, He can’t pick off that low-hanging fruit, what with each town sitting out there in the ocean exposed, at the tip of its own respective archipelago?

          Plus, I mean, He’s God, right? He could ram a Category 5 right up The Castro, He wanted to show the gays what’s what, couldn’t He?

  17. so emblematic of the sick sad arrogance of so many Christians. Indeed, I would suspect that they are quite sure that those who were hurt or killed deserved it because their god said so. These are the sadists who get their jollies from the revenge fantasy called the bible.

  18. Would that Zeus were to grant me his power over lightening for just 15 minutes, I bet I could make a righteous nonbeliever out of Ms. Lowe, bless her heart.

  19. Given the complex ways in which air-currents and pressure-gradients affect the movement of a tornado, Lowe would’ve had as much chance of steering that twister around her house after God handed off the helm of his airways to her, as she would have had of landing a 747 if the pilot had locked her alone in the cockpit.

  20. When I heard the story on NPR I wondered how they could be so irresponsible for airing such an ridiculous story. Geeze… encouraging people to stand in the middle of a tornado to test their faith. How many people have done the same thing and not live to tell about it? The other thought – as so many have mentioned – is the fact they sent the storm elsewhere – gee, how nice (I enjoyed the comment about the serial killer). NPR, as much as I enjoy it, puts way too much emphasis on faith and that it is somehow a really good thing to possess. In the end, I turned off the radio because the story irritated me so much. I wonder if NPR ever thought about how many potential secular donors don’t donate because of such stories? My year end money is going elsewhere. I just can’t stomach the bowing and scraping to religion by NPR any longer. It was sort of the last straw (and yes, every year for the past 12 years I have donated to NPR).

  21. Now I know who to blame for the ice storm that knocked out my power for 30 hours. Sabrina, as I clean up all of the downed branches in my yard tomorrow, I’ll be thinkin’ ’bout ya. You need lessons in what “unpopulated areas” are.

  23. Reminds me of Nash’s play Rainmaker, about a quack nicknamed “Johnson the Tornado” who claims to avert tornadoes by psychic power and collects money from residents.

    1. I expect it would work, in most cases.

      Even if he only collected on a ‘successful results’ basis, he could still collect from 90% of the population (the 10% that got hit, of course, wouldn’t be paying).

      cr

  24. “Wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us, come because actually deserve them? So now I take comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.”

  26. This is why those philosophical thought experiments of diverting railcars with switches or pushing someone off a bridge are relevant – because there really are people who think they made a moral decision to send a tornado to kill someone else – and are then proud enough of their choice to say it out loud.

  27. I wonder if this person could consider that her arrogance in claiming she had the power of God to divert the storm she is committing the sin of pride!

    Pride, one of the seven deadly sins, arguably the worst, is the sin of Lucifer, aka Satan, the devil, and it got him consigned to hell fire for all eternity. Her pride could condemn her to hell.

    But, I doubt that occurs to her or those like her.

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