Math of God

Praying for rain isn’t new, but when the Governor of Georgia does it on steps of the state Capitol it is news. Last Tuesday, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue and 250 of the faithful held a prayer vigil asking God to end the drought that is plaguing the state and much of the southeastern United States.

Governor Perdue felt that Georgians were being punished by God for their failure to conserve their water resources properly. “But we’re doing better,” the Governor said, “and once we began to do better, I thought it was time to acknowledge that to the Creator,” suggesting, of course that the all-knowing God isn’t so all-knowing.

I wasn’t there, but I imagine the Governor said something like this:

“Lord, this is Sonny. No not THAT Sonny, I suspect He’s busy with pre-Rapture planning. This is Sonny Perdue. No, not THAT Perdue, he is busy with his chickens. This is Sonny Perdue, Governor of the all too sunny state of Georgia. Yes, the Peach state. Well, we are going to be the peach pit state soon because we’ve used up all of our water and You are punishing us for that by not letting it rain. I just wanted You to know that we are conserving more these days. We have learned our lesson. So could You please let it rain… a lot… for a long time? Not Noah long, but long.”

Did it work? Well, almost. As Sonny and the 250 sang Amazing Grace storm clouds formed and floated toward the Capitol (I am not making this up). Unfortunately the clouds dissipated quickly and no rain fell. Why? While I can’t prove this, I suspect that the clouds failed because (and this, too, is true) just around the corner from the prayer meeting, 20 members of the Atlanta Freethought Society, a band of atheists, agnostics, skeptics, and heretics, held a protest rally claiming the Governor was violating the First Amendment. I believe the heretics stopped the clouds from unleashing rain.

What do we learn from this? I think we learn something about the math of God. It takes 251 Georgians to get God to make a storm cloud and only 20 to get God to erase a storm cloud. The problem the Governor faces is not that Georgians failed to conserve water, or that God failed to notice when they began to do so, but that God favors atheists over theists almost 10 to 1. There is a drought in Georgia because there are too many freethinkers in Georgia.

What the governor should do is work with the Atlanta Freethought folks to identify, round up and bus out of state as many Georgia heretics as they can as soon as they can. With the heretics out of town, a second prayer vigil will certainly succeed. Then, as soon as enough rain has fallen, the Governor can invite the heretics back into the state to get the rain to stop.

If this works, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t, atheists around the country could form pay for service flood protection squads moving into areas with too much rain and thus getting the rain to stop. This would be a great way to raise funds for First Amendment legal battles. It seems like a win-win for everyone.