SteeleRedux,
The children at Bourke etc were not faced by loosing their homes by fires. However Jesus said, it rains on the just and the unjust alike.
For Toni,
There was no prediction in January that the Blue Mountains would receive record rainfall for February.
Remember the mantra that Warragamba Dam would never be full again, so the Desalination plant was again being prepared for use.

Flannery said in 2007:
Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming. Similar losses have been experienced in eastern Australia, and although the science is less certain it is probable that global warming is behind these losses too. But by far the most dangerous trend is the decline in the flow of Australian rivers: it has fallen by around 70 per cent in recent decades, so dams no longer fill even when it does rain

I note that the ABC and SBS want to again promote Climate activists agenda again for next summer

i do not know where you think the water of the Blue Mountains runs to?

Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery in 2005 said: “But since 1998 particularly, we’ve seen just drought, drought, drought, and particularly regions like Sydney and the Warragamba catchment – if you look at the Warragamba catchment figures, since ‘98, the water has been in virtual freefall, and they’ve got about two years of supply left, but something will need to change in order to see the catchment start accumulating water again…. So when the models start confirming what you’re observing on the ground, then there’s some fairly strong basis for believing that we’re understanding what’s causing these weather shifts and these rainfall declines, and they do seem to be of a permanent nature…” :

Josephus,

So, in your "Half-Wit's Guide to God", when something happens, it means that someone has prayed for it ? All manner of events happen because someone's prayed for them ?

So who, amongst your flock, prayed for Covid-19 ? For the typhoons that have hit the Philippines and India/Bangla Desh ? For our bush-fires ?

Or do bad things happen, outside of god's control, while all of the good things that happen are because of god's will ? Devils and gods have about the same powers ?

Hmmmm. ....... need to tweek that analysis ......

Until then, I'll stick with the probability that neither gods nor devils actually exist - that much of what happens in the world is up to us. We're alone: us and nature. Scary, but exciting :)

And surely, if there IS a god of some sort, he/she/it wouldn't mind anybody thinking like that, using their own initiative. He/she/it is probably sick and tired of wiping people's backsides for them, after six thousand years.

Joe

//They spent a day praying for rain; within two days they witnessed 200 mm of drenching rain.//

That's what you said at the start of the week, Josephus. Within two days. Two day forecasts are highly accurate.

//Either I am called a lier, or I have to defend my ability to have rational and sane observations.//

The veracity of your observations is not what is in issue, NNS. It's the manner in which you draw conclusions from those observations, then claim those conclusions are valid even though the underlying reasoning is unsound, that is the issue. Please note that employing unsound reasoning implies that you are neither a lunatic nor a liar, and speaks in no way to your character. It just means you've employed unsound reasoning and your conclusions cannot be accepted as necessarily true.

//If you believe in Thor, then it is not ridicule. If you don't believe in Thor, then praying to him as a comparison to praying to God, is ridicule.//

If using prayer as evidence for a God only works if you start by assuming the existence of God, the evidentiary power of prayer drops to zero and you are begging the question.

I'm starting to wonder if your persistent question begging isn't your own form of ridicule.

Life is how you live and it. And it is worth living if your making the most of it every second.