Ga. Governor turns to prayer to ease drought.

In an earlier post,Scientists a Step Closer to Steering Hurricanes I wrote a bit about the current drought in Georgia. A good deal of our rain comes as a result of hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico.After New Orleans was flooded by Hurricane Katrina, global warming alarmists predicted that the number of hurricanes would increase due to the rising temperatures.The opposite has happened and the decreased number of hurricanes in the Gulf has made the drought here worse.

Now, in an attempt to alleviate the drought, Georgia Governor, Sonny Perdue will host a prayer service tomorrow to ask God for relief from the drought gripping the Southeast United States. Perdue's office has sent out invitations to leaders from several faiths for the service, set for 11:45 am. on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 at the State Capital Building in Atlanta.

My own personal belief is that God chooses not to interfere with natural phenomenon. He will not make it rain just because we ask.It would serve us better if we were to pray for the guidance to be better stewards of the environment.

The Atlanta Freethought Society (AFS), along with the two national organizations for "freethinkers", the Council for Secular Humanism (headquarters in Amherst NY), and the Freedom From Religion Foundation (headquarters in Madison WI) will hold a protest against the prayer service from 11:00 to 1:00 the same day.

According to an AFS press release, which I clipped from their web site:

"A major reason for protesting is the egregious violation of church-state separation that the Governor of Georgia is leading at the Capitol at that hour flouting the First Amendment and the Georgia Constitution.

This protest will be directed at the Governor's actions on the basis both of violations of religious liberty and on the basis of absurd religious ideas.
Deeply religious Christians and other believers should take offense at this as bad religion and as a threat to religious liberty.

Deeply irreligious Georgians should take offense that someone representing us should engage in such illogical nonsense, with the potential to embarrass us all internationally.
Georgians of all religious or irreligious beliefs and of every political philosophy should take offense at this waste of our tax dollars and plain violation of separation of church and state and of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and straightforward violation of the Georgia Constitution, Article I, Section II, Paragraph VI:

"Paragraph VI. Separation of church and state. No money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, cult, or religious denomination or of any sectarian institution." ".

I'm not quite sure that a prayer service violates the First Amendment......no one is being forced to participate and I doubt that money is being taken from the State treasury to pay for this. What does it cost to pray?

I don't see this as a threat to my religious liberty as the AFS opines. The Governor isn't restricting my religious activities by holding this prayer.The State isn't preventing the AFS from holding their protest.

From a theological point of view, I don't believe Perdue should be praying for rain, but it doesn't upset me and I don't see the need to protest it.