God’s Hand? 44 percent of Americans see natural disasters as sign of End Times
By Stephanie Pappas
25 March 2011 According to just over half of Americans, God is in control of everything that happens on Earth. But slightly fewer are willing to blame an omnipotent power for natural disasters such as Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. A new poll finds that 56 percent of Americans agree or mostly agree that God is in control of all Earthly events. Forty-four percent think that natural disasters are or could be a sign from the Almighty. The fire-and-brimstone version of a vengeful God is even less popular in America: Only 29 percent of people felt that God sometimes punishes an entire nation for the sins of a few individuals. Nonetheless, the desire to turn to God for an explanation after a disaster is a widespread human urge, said Scott Schieman, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who studies people’s beliefs about God’s influence on daily life. “There’s just something about the randomness of the universe that is too unsettling,” Schieman told LiveScience. “We like explanations for why things happen … many times people weave in these divine narratives.” [Read At God We Rage: Anger at the Almighty Found to Be Common] The poll surveyed a random sample of 1,008 adults in the continental United States in the few days after the Japanese disaster. The sample was weighted by age, sex, geographic region, education and race to reflect the entire population of U.S. adults. The poll found that evangelical Christians are more likely to see disasters as a sign from God than other religious faiths. Of white evangelicals, 59 percent said disasters are or could be a message from the deity, compared with 31 percent of Catholics and 34 percent of non-evangelical Protestants. The margin of error for the survey was plus or minus 3 percent. Forty-four percent of all Americans said that recent natural disasters could be a sign of the Biblical end times, with 67 percent of white evangelicals holding that view. (In comparison, 58 percent of Americans attributed recent severe natural disasters to global climate change, as did 52 percent of evangelicals.) …
God’s Hand? 44% of Americans See Natural Disasters as Sign of End Times [And in Nigeria…]
By Etim Imisim (This Day, March 11, 2009) Abuja, Nigeria – A British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service Trust research has revealed that many Nigerians think that climate change is caused by God. The reason cited for this view was that divine punishment was being meted out for the basket of sins of the world. The finding shows the pervasive influence of religion on the perception of the environment. It will be recalled that Pope John Paul was progressively ‘green’. His successor, Pope Benedict, has been speaking up for environmental protection. The Vatican under him has hosted a scientific conference and discussed global warming and climate change, which are blamed on human use of fossil fuels. The findings of the BBC survey fitted into the ‘God-frame’ thinking. Religious leaders and groups as well as local people said since change in the whether pattern had been ordained. The logic of what had been planned and set on course by divine agency naturally led to an iron-cast fatalism. People saw themselves as powerlessness and could do little or nothing to change events. Outside the God-frame, the report also notes that the understanding of climate change is hazy among every segment of society. The knowledge of private sector people spoken to linked impacts from their own activities on the environment only in terms of waste disposal and pollutions. They did not link climate change to carbon emission. In general, Nigerians understood climate change in terms of change in weather pattern. And this was limited to their sensual awareness of abnormal increase in the level of heat and effect it had on farm yield in a rain-fed agriculture. …
Nigeria: Citizens See Climate Change As an Act of God -BBC Survey Cf. “We blamed God”
This article demonstrates that superstition rules the minds of a large majority of Americans. Lacking any proof, they turn to the supernatural as the most obvious reason these events are taking place.
This also means that they refuse to admit their own culpability (responsibility) on what is now taking place. Many natural disasters are actually human-caused. Some like most earthquakes (but not all) are natural, but drought, floods, hurricanes, landslides, sinkholes, sea level rise are in many instances human-caused.
There is the natural — and according to many millions, the "supernatural", which lacks any evidence or proof. This means that this 40%+ are basically gullible fools who are willing to believe anything, especially if it means they can abdicate any responsibility for what is happening.