The Detestable Cruelty of Ted Cruz's God
Taking a page from the preacher's book, Ted Cruz said, "God allows things to happen sometimes."
His staff lets Ted Cruz speak, and so he does, invoking his version of God while describing the hard cruelties under a Texas regime that worships oil, money, and a blisteringly evil God, in no particular order.
Trigger warnings: Religious sentiment and distressing news and opinion about a Texas tragedy.
When asked by someone I’ve never heard of, Real America's Voice host David Brody, how God could let dozens of young Christian girls get swept up by a river on a night they should have been roasting marshmallows and kidding about awkward boys, Cruz responded thusly:
"Why does God allow bad things to happen to young children?" Cruz opined. "I don't know that I have any additional insight other than saying God is a good and loving God, and He will help us through this."
"And all I know to do is to lean on God, to lean on prayer, to lean on family, to lean on friends, and just grieve," he continued. "We have a good and benevolent God, but God allows things to happen sometimes that defy human explanation, and that's where we need love and where we need grace."
"I do think Texas has benefited [from] such a strong community of believers in Texas that you have churches that step in and do the role we should."1
Cruz put on his virtual preacher’s outfit and declared that Darwinism shall win the day when it comes to matters of human welfare. That’s a little strange, since he believes his God, after creating the world in six days, was so tuckered out by adding a little blue ball to the hundreds of billions of solar systems in our galaxy, that he needed to take a break and sleep for a day.
Was the formula for Earth that much more complicated than those billions of other planets? Was he just too exhausted after forming billions of galaxies like ours first?
I’ll posit that Cruz doesn’t believe any of the nonsense about God that spills out of his mouth. It’s an excuse to impose draconian, awful legislation and strip people of basic government welfare services that help keep them alive. If you can’t handle it, it’s because you aren’t the kind of survivor the Christian nation needs as it prepares for yet another final battle in the 2,000-year-old Abrahamic Wars.
The Abrahamic Wars, from the Crusades until now in Gaza, have caused more death and destruction than any other war in history. But those wars aren’t limited to the Middle East. Muslims, Jews, and Christians continue to fight each other on multiple fronts across the world.
Much of that war is about to expand right in front of you as Republicans increase ICE’s budget by hundreds of billions of dollars (from $8 billion). Much of the warfare they wage will be done in the name of God.
It won’t be long before you see poorly trained shock troops recruited from the most right-wing dregs of society descending on your neighborhood and snatching men, women, and children from their Bible (but Mexican) study classes.
To understand the Christian belief system of someone like Ted Cruz, you need to understand his politics. Texas-style Christian fundamentalism and Texas politics are closely linked. Cruz may not believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution, but he and other Texas preachers are loud proponents of Darwinism: Survival of the fittest, or to put it in economic terms, survival of the rich and powerful.
Bible passages can be used to make any point you want. If you pluck out the right Bible passage, you can probably justify anything; from the cruelty foisted against the LGBTQ+ community by Christian fundamentalists, to genocide, to nuclear war.
Don’t believe me? Read my Laws of Waffle House Fighting:
With apologies to my many atheist friends, I’m a Christian. But I’m a little pissed, because the name of Jesus has been sullied by traditional Christian expression to the point that those of us who believe in, at least, his original teachings centered around love, compassion, and universal acceptance, are ashamed to admit it.
This has been a 2,000-year process, fueled in large part by the aforementioned Abrahamic Wars, of which Ted Cruz is an active participant through his toxic mouth.
The very fact that people like Cruz assign tragedies like what happened in Texas to God’s will is enough to make me want to scream from the rooftops.
God doesn’t “allow” shit to happen, no matter what the patriarchal barbarians tell you. It all happens through science.
When humans were just learning how to seed the ground and hunt for berries in the forest, sometimes they burned the forest down while they were seeking winter warmth.
That wasn’t God’s will. It was because some dumb ass dressed in a buffalo pelt let some kindling attach itself to some dry wood and spread through the pine forest, killing Bambi and anyone else in the way of the conflagration. It was science, the language God gave us to help us understand how he does things.
Imagine a universe where water didn’t always boil at 212°F or 100°C (okay, okay, high elevation dwellers, I hear ya’). What if it sometimes boiled at 50°?
Humanity would still be crawling up trees to escape lions because we would never be able to figure out how anything works.
There is no conflict between God and science. The opposite is true. Science, like music, art, and mathematics, is one of God’s languages all Christians should happily embrace. There is perhaps no more illustrious example of God’s perfection, creativity, and genius available to us on this earthly plane than science.2
And look, if you’re an atheist, I get it. The hypocrisy of the Abrahamic religions is appalling. I’m not here to evangelize. I’m also not worried about your salvation, because the God I believe in focuses on people who need the extra help, not people who are already in good shape from a moral standpoint.
Maybe the reason you don’t believe in God is that you don’t need to. A sinner like me, who as a college kid thought having sex with his girlfriend (in my defense, later my wife) on a picnic table behind the local Catholic church was a good idea? Well, I need all the help I can get. (Also in my defense: It was dark, it was late, and we were horny and feeling rebellious).
There is a real tragedy in the efforts of those in religious circles who discredit science and scientific thought. Holy people should be among the most enthusiastic observers of the language God created to aid human understanding. Science is no more their enemy than the language they speak at dinner.
Cruz’s words are a loud proclamation of his ignorance and the inability of fundamentalist Christians in Texas to account for how the science of storms killed those kids in Texas. We can assign blame to various humans for insufficiently reacting to science for this tragedy, but it wasn’t God.
Clergy attacks on science are nothing new, of course:3
In February-March 1616, the Catholic Church issued a prohibition against the Copernican theory of the Earth's motion. This led later (1633) to the Inquisition trial and condemnation of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642).
The odd thing about these attacks on science was that there is nothing in the Bible regarding Copernican theory one way or another (although I bet I could find something and adapt it as necessary if pressed into service).
If anything, the mistake the Catholic Church made in those days was to over-emphasize the importance of humanity as being the center of the universe. Humanity is critically important in God’s eyes (but so are dolphins4 and dogs), and maybe that is what prompted such thinking, but in the physical space of the universe, we are obviously quite small. This smallness doesn’t need to be confused with insignificance.
In Defense of Darwin
In my humble opinion, the DNA molecule is one of the rare pieces of evidence regarding God’s existence. It is almost more an art project than it is science, because the science behind it is so intricately woven throughout the family of life, and is such a magnificent piece of science, that I find it impossible to attribute to chance (no, I’m not an Intelligent Design adherent).
President Bill Clinton, while taking a break from chasing women, described the importance of the “language of God” when he presided over the unveiling of the human genome’s sequencing with atheist-turned Christian Francis S. Collins, the leader of the Human Genome Project, and Craig Venter, who was leading private industry’s efforts to sequence the genome:5
Today, we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.
What would cause a president to say such a thing? Well, Collins and Venter were about to reveal a code sequencing instruction set consisting of 3 billion letters.
The four letters in the DNA alphabet – A, C, G, T - carry the instructions to make all living organisms. The meaning of the code lies in the sequence of the letters. All the instructions needed to make a human being are written using these four letters. There are three billion sequenced letters in the Human Genome.6
Many scientists and physicians like Collins have found religion because the complexity of design in DNA and the rest of biology is impossible for them to explain as chance.7
There are those in the “Intelligent Design” community who aggressively push this concept of DNA as evidence for intelligent design by a deity, but who then argue for the Bible’s Genesis creation story by claiming that Darwin’s theories don’t fit the model because he reckoned that evolution was governed by arbitrary mutation.8
Darwin may have been wrong about that – there seems to be little randomness going on in the world of biomolecular science, but that doesn’t disprove evolution as a whole, which, rather than being a random sequence of events, seems well plotted out.
Again, though, I’m not here to preach to non-believers. My message is to the fundamentalists who tell you that kids dying is God’s will, when, in fact, it is science.
I remember long ago reading about a poor fellow who drove his daughter to Chicago’s Loop in the dead of winter so she could take an important test for her future. What kind of a God would not cheer on such a dad?
He was impaled by ice while waiting outside for her to finish. His death was not ordained by some kind of hideous God. Science dictated that the long shard of ice that had been slowly melting along the top of a tall building above him finally released that piece of ice while he was trying to enjoy a cup of Joe.
When I had a stroke in November, God wasn’t punishing me for past deeds. No, not even the picnic table incident. Science fired up an AFIB situation in my heart, which pumped too much blood one day into the back of my brain, and screwed up my vision something fierce.
I’d ask God to help, and sometimes I do, but all he seems to do is say things like, “Here, take my strength.” That’s frustrating, because I want a lot more than that (Mostly, I want money). But it seems to be enough. It gets me through another day.
And on that point, Cruz could have been right if he had simply offered a quiet prayer of strength instead of trying to explain his twisted version of God.
But people like Cruz have a political agenda that is far removed from the God they claim as their own. Acknowledging the role of science in the deaths of the people in Texas would require presenting a bill before Congress proposing more money to help counter nature’s temper tantrums. Cruz won’t allow himself to do that, so he offers thoughts and prayers instead, telling us to pray for a more merciful God.
Cruz doesn’t even understand God’s language of mathematics, which tells us that having 300 million guns on the street increases the probability of another Uvalde.
If we are being honest, this kind of thinking probably sets God’s heavenly teeth on edge. God isn’t interested in human canon or scripture. He wants compassion.
I don’t need to have little personal chit chats with God to know he doesn’t approve of blowing each other into smithereens in his name as we enter new stages of our never-ending Abrahamic Wars.
Part of what makes me a Christian heretic is that I don’t think God gives a shit if you believe in him as Christ, Allah, Bhudda, or even Mister Potato Head with magical powers.
He/she just hopes that you’ll approach human endeavor with a loving attitude that embraces forgiveness and generosity, away from the kind of greed that governs people like Ted Cruz and his legion of corporate sponsors.
What kind of a God would send you to burn for eternity because you refuse to worship at the cross? Not the one I’m into, that’s for sure. The free will claimed by most Christian clerics only seems to apply to very specific scenarios. Punishing you for eternity for not giving God the proper creds would be a pretty idiotic thing to do.
God doesn’t strike me as an idiot.
And I don’t think the being that creates this is either demonic or selfish:
I like to keep my religious beliefs close to the vest, but when a politician causes mental, psychological, and moral distress to his grieving constituents, it’s only fair to call him out for it.
I’ve been close to death. I’m not afraid of it. The type of stroke I had kills 75% of us. I could have another one tomorrow. That’s not God. It’s science. If people grieve my passing, they better not blame God, or I’ll come back as a ghost and put antifreeze in their morning tea. No, really, I will.
Sometimes we burn down the forest to advance humanity’s cause. And sometimes we build MRI machines and inject each other with life-saving drugs. It’s called scientific progress. It has all kinds of consequences, both good and bad.
Was it a miracle that I survived my stroke? I don’t know, but if it was, it was the miracle performed by the dedicated, life-saving staff at Emory Hospital, using the language of science given to them by a God that Ted Cruz doesn’t understand.
Footnotes
Edwards, David. 2025. “‘Allows Things to Happen’: Ted Cruz Blames God for Texas Flood Deaths.” Raw Story. July 7, 2025. https://www.rawstory.com/ted-cruz-blames-god-floods/#.
One could make a claim for music, but there are many theorists who point out that music is based on mathematics.
“February 2016: 400 Years Ago the Catholic Church Prohibited Copernicanism | Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.” 2016. Osu.Edu. 2016. http://origins.osu.edu/milestones/february-2016-400-years-ago-catholic-church-prohibited-copernicanism
“Text of the White House Statements on the Human Genome Project.” 2018. Nytimes.Com. 2018. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/062700sci-genome-text.html.
“Primer.” 2020. Thehumangenome.Co.Uk. 2020. http://www.thehumangenome.co.uk/THE_HUMAN_GENOME/Primer.html.
Collins, F. S. (2006). The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Free Press. Page 1
“Can DNA Prove the Existence of an Intelligent Designer?” Biola Magazine.” 2010. Biola.Edu. 2010. http://magazine.biola.edu/article/10-summer/can-dna-prove-the-existence-of-an-intelligent-desi/
Additional sources (bibliography)
[i] “Stephen James Anastasi’s Answer to If All the Mass of the Universe Came from the Big Bang, Where Did This Mass Come from in the First Place? - Quora.” 2019. Quora.Com. 2019. https://www.quora.com/If-all-the-mass-of-the-universe-came-from-the-Big-Bang-where-did-this-mass-come-from-in-the-first-place/answer/Stephen-James-Anastasi.
[ii] “What Was Pangea?” 2020. Usgs.Gov. 2020. https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-was-pangea-0?qt-news_science_products=0#qt-news_science_products
[iii] Hu, F. T. (2013). The Real God Particle. viXra. http://vixra.org/pdf/1305.0075v1.pdf
[iv] Powering CERN. (2018). Retrieved 5 18, 2020, from CERN: https://home.cern/about/engineering/powering-cern
[v] “Evidence for the Direct Decay of the 125 GeV Higgs Boson to Fermions.” 2014. Nature Physics 10 (8): 557–60. https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3005
[vi] (Emphasis on the word “practical”): “Does Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Imply That Interstellar Space Travel Is Impossible? - Quora.” 2019. Quora.Com. 2019. https://www.quora.com/Does-Einsteins-theory-of-relativity-imply-that-interstellar-space-travel-is-impossible
[vii] Nicoletta Lanese. 2020. “Unique Brain Signal Just Discovered. And It Might Make Us ‘Human.’” Livescience.Com. Live Science. January 8, 2020. https://www.livescience.com/newfound-brain-signal-discovered-in-human-neurons.html
[ix] Volk, Anthony A., and Jeremy A. Atkinson. 2013. “Infant and Child Death in the Human Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation.” Evolution and Human Behavior 34 (3): 182–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2012.11.007
[x] “Text of the White House Statements on the Human Genome Project.” 2018. Nytimes.Com. 2018. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/062700sci-genome-text.html.
I saw you Cruz, grieving in Greece,so much grieving.
Thank you.