A Tale of Two Weather Gods

As I’ve said many times, those who mock and deride religion when it wears a cassock are the first to fall on their knees and worship when it wears a grass skirt. We’re seeing the truth of that observation, yet again, in the latest pile-on on Brian Tamaki.

Tamaki interprets the recent deadly storms in New Zealand through a religious lens. But he’s not the only one.

Yet, one religious interpretation of the weather not only doesn’t attract vicious media mockery, it’s paid for by New Zealanders and peddled by a government agency.

Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki claims God sent Cyclone Gabrielle to Aotearoa because of our “extreme” abortion laws, “queerest parliament” and Gisborne and Hastings’ porn habits.

If I wanted to pettifog, I’d point out that Gabrielle was not a cyclone when it hit New Zealand. It had been downgraded days before. But that’s just small potatoes in the media’s lying narrative.

And while it’s been widely accepted recent significant weather events are a direct result of climate change, the Destiny Church founder told his churchgoers last month God “can’t take this any longer” and sent Cyclone Gabrielle to Aotearoa.

In fact, it’s not accepted. Indeed we know that the weather events are a direct result of natural climate cycles, such as La Nina, coupled with last year’s cataclysmic Tongan volcano, which ejected 145 gigalitres of water into the southern stratosphere. Water which was predicted to rain down in torrents on the south-western Pacific in summer 2023.

Which is exactly what has happened.

The lies of the legacy media doesn’t justify Brian Tamaki’s loony gibbering, of course.

“I see the perversion that is linked to bad weather,” he said.

NewsHub

Dutifully, Newshub honks and hoots that Tamaki is “bizarre”, “baseless” and “disinformation”.

Which is odd, because they completely ignored an equally bizarre, baseless farrago of religious disinformation that was peddled, not by a minor preacher, but at the taxpayer’s expense by a New Zealand government agency. According to MetService:

Kia tau te aio
Tawhirimatea and all our Atua Maori are just doing their thing!
Respect the natural laws and natural behaviour of our Atua and our taiao.

For the vast majority of New Zealanders who suddenly find themselves needing an interpreter to understand most of what their own government agencies are saying, MetService is telling them, Let the world rest. In other words: relax!

Not content with dangerously downplaying the impending disaster, MetService went on to gibber a slew of religious nonsense to beat Brian Tamaki.

“Atua Maori” are gods, or supernatural beings, including “ancestors with continuing influence”. That’s right: MetService is saying that the natural disaster was caused by a bunch of spirits and ghosts sending bad weather.

One god in particular. According to MetService (a taxpayer-funded government agency, remember):

Tahwirimatea is the god of winds and storms…

In the creation story, the children of Ranginui and Papatuanuku wished to separate their parents so that light could come into the world. The only brother who did not agree to this was Tawhirimatea, the god of wind and storms. When Ranginui and Papatuanuku were separated, he ascended to the sky to be with his father. Together they plotted revenge against the other brothers.

MetService Blog

Imagine for just a moment if MetService told New Zealand taxpayers that God had caused “all the springs of the great deep [to] burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened”. The media would lose their mind. Porch atheists would go ballistic. Whoever was responsible would almost certainly be sacked amid a cacophony about “separation of church and state”.

But religious bollocks in a grass skirt get a free pass whereas religious bollocks in a cassock never do.