Perdue hosting a service to pray for rain
Gov. Sonny Perdue has invited leaders from various faiths to meet with him next Tuesday to pray for rain. As one reader of this blog pointed out, they chose to hold the prayer service the day before the only day in Weather.com’s 10-day forecast when it is expected to rain. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. Of course, the Accuweather.com 15-day forecast expects no rain for nearly two weeks so that likely won’t matter anyhow.
I’ve spoken with several ministers about the idea of praying for rain. God obviously knows the situation and doesn’t need to be told of the problem. In fact, some theorize that God has caused this drought in order to help us become better stewards of what we’ve been given. Certainly no one knows the mind of God, but it’s a reasonable theory.
If nothing else, prayer can help a person to better focus on the source of their prayer — in this case, to help people become more self-aware of their personal water usage and hopefully continue to cut back.
While many of you might think that this prayer session won’t provide any direct help for the drought (and you may be absolutely right), there are certainly some small victories that can be won as a result of this. In any case, it definitely can’t hurt.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Can’t hurt. Well, then–why don’t you guys just hold a Native American rain dance?
November 8th, 2007 at 10:55 am
We’ll take anything at this point.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
It’s clear: God is punishing the south: Hurricanes, Droughts, etc., etc., etc.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I’m definitely a better steward; down to 5 minute showers. Don’t think I deserve “punishment”. It was a hard road to get to where I am in my career and I’m happy in Atlanta.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Nothing wrong with a prayer unless it is taking the governor away from putting together contingency plans to deal with every scenario that could happen in the next year. If the prayer is his sole policy for facing the unthinkable (an Atlanta without water), then that is very troubling.
Thank you, Mickey, for a great site. I am moving down to Atlanta, and am getting pretty nervous about this drought. I plan to take all the steps necessary to conserve water, so don’t worry about that. Your site is an inspiration that there are in fact many Atlantans who get what is going on and are forward thinking in how to deal with it.
November 8th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
oh boy. perdue at his finest again. i think he should be using all time to getting federal money and state money setup to implement repairing bad pipes and infrastructure in atlanta that wastes/leaks as much fresh water as it delivers to your faucet. stopping growth in all water short districts, putting in reclaimed irrigation..telling industries to pay for their over use of fresh water to help with this list of need to be done things, and the list goes on and on. the one thing we don’t need is prayer…even if it rains, it won’t fix these problems…just delay them a little longer and we’ll all be back in the same boat again in a few months. in a time of crisis is when you can really see what type of leaders we’ve elected, and i think we all have seen what we picked.
November 8th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Well, a prayer vigil for rain could at least get more media coverage - living outside Atlanta I can tell you that you aren’t even “Section A” news elsewhere. There was a blurb last night about a big fire at a wood company(?) there and they didn’t even mention the extreme drought - something that’d go hand in hand you would think.
Everyone covers a prayer vigil. *shrug* It could be good press on the issue.
November 10th, 2007 at 11:22 am
[...] Atlanta Freethought Society plans to protest Tuesday’s upcoming prayer service. I’m not surprised that this is happening, as it clearly seems to be something that the [...]
November 10th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
I think it crosses the borders between church and state.
November 10th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
If I remember right Cobb county kicked God out about a year ago. Selman v. Cobb County School District. So he left, get over it. Its what you wanted wasn’t it? How much would have it cost to have stood up for God? A million? Five Million? Its separation of Church and State stupid not Separation of God and his Creation. Prayer? Good luck with that. I read about this Perdue Prayer on the Athiest website of Richard Dawkins. He’s having some fun with it. When you reconnect God and what he has created then it will rain. When you’re ready to listen then I will help.
November 13th, 2007 at 9:24 am
This is the kind of bewildering and naive behaviour that makes the South-East US a laughing stock.
Is Perdue thinking he can fail to do his job properly because he’s convinced God will be there to help him out?
He should be apologising and accepting resposibility, not playing rainmaker.
November 13th, 2007 at 9:25 am
[...] It was speculated that they planned the prayer vigil for today because it looked like rain for tomorrow. However, that forecast is gone now — Accuweather.com doesn’t expect rain for about two weeks, while Weather.com doesn’t expect rain until late this weekend (even then, just “a few showers”). [...]
November 13th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
[...] seems that many Atlanta area bloggers echo my sentiments of last week and are severely annoyed by Sonny’s rain-o-thon today. It’s been national news all morning. CNN TV and .com reported on it this morning. In [...]
November 14th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
It is about 11pm EST on Wednesday, November 14, 2007.
The National Weather Service has issued a severe weather statement for Atlanta.
Highways in the Atlanta area will probably get very wet over the next 4 to 6 hours by some very nasty thunderstorms with tops in the range of 40,000 feet to 55,000 feet.
Air traffic at the Atlanta airport might be affected by all this rain and wind.
There may be a number of trees down by the storm as well as power lines — as there are gusty winds with this storm.
Somebody said something about one should be careful for what you pray for…
Sonny appears to know that prayer can work — just as the true story in the movie “Patton” where the General asks the Chaplain to write him a “Good weather prayer”…
It looks like Satan has found some fans on this thread…
November 14th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Sadly, it appears we’ll only get about 1/10″ out of the storms.
November 14th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Guess what non-believers. It’s raining in Georgia! Say thank you to the Governor.
November 15th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Though Atlanta received not much rain from this event, the Atlanta watershed (water supply system) did receive much more rain.
Lake Lanier received about three quarters of an inch of rain. I have yet to find numbers on places like Anna Ruby Falls and Helen, which is part of the watershed.
But maps of the radar showing it raining very heavy on the watershed — areas North and East of Atlanta — but then a strange gap when the rain started in Atlanta.
This strange gap might have helped to prevent accidents. Or maybe it was some sort of message from God.
But a replay of the radar last night will show that there was a break in the line of weather showers and it occurred over Atlanta.
It was a very weird thing… It did prevent lawns and trees from getting more rain than they did.
But maybe God thinks that trees and grass are in God’s domain, and God is more concerned about the people of Atlanta… At least that is the thought that comes to mind…
November 15th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Actually, rather than attributing all this to some unseen mythical deity, a basic knowledge of geography and physics would have helped you.
Atlanta is a ‘hot spot’, because of all the paved areas and other heat producing sources. When a storm system encounters this rising column of hot air, it tends to break up and “go around” it.
Atlanta and several other cities create their own weather. For a basic explanation, read this: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/city.limits/story/cities.digest/nyatlslc/
If it really interests you, look back at historical radar loops. You’ll consistently see this behavior, particularly around the airport.
It’s also a very common occurrence around Lake Lanier when the surface temperatures of the lake are high.
Your last paragraph is nonsense.
November 15th, 2007 at 11:29 am
I think God is punishing the south for all the heterosexuality. When you start down the road of heterosexual marriage, there’s no telling where it may lead. You might buy a Chrysler station wagon, for gosh sake. Maybe you guys should start worshipping Satan instead. He’s down with heterosexuality. He loves straight people.
Seriously, I really want to know why you think being brainslaves to some far-off supernatural skybeing doesn’t make you a zombie. You might consider taking responsibility for your actions instead, and dropping the pretense that anyone else has control over your life.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
The POSTER jcwren says that this is all about a “mytical DEITY” .
It rained on Christmas day. Or should I say: CHRIST-mas day.
It has rained twice the week of Christmas (3 days after Christmas on Saturday — In Christian talk “3″ stands for the Trinity.)
Finally, there is the story of the passenger ship TITANIC. This ship was boasted as UNSINKABLE by the builders/owners. They boasted THAT GOD HIMSELF COULD NOT SINK THE TITANIC.
Does anyone know what happened to the TITANIC ON ITS FIRST VOYAGE? Is an ICEBERG considered an act of God or something that is MAN-MADE…
How smart is it to be going full speed through a field of icebergs…
There are dummies everywhere — back in the 1910’s and even now…