As every respected blog with which I'm familiar in the libertarian and conservative blogosphere is criticizing Pat Robertson's attempt to blame an alleged Haitian pact with the devil (and thus today's Haitians) for the earthquake, it would hardly seem worthy of another post. Except that I'm feeling devilish enough to play Devil's Advocate, and in the interests of fairness apply some simple rules of logic to Pat Robertson's argument under the assumption that everything he says is right.

In that regard, I think Gay Patriot asks a good question:

How Did Pat Robertson Learn Details of Pact with the Devil?

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. . . . They were under the heel of the French ... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.'

Pat wasn't around two hundred years ago when the Haitians threw off French tyranny. So, I don't think the Haitians around back then would be able to inform him. And when I studied Haitian history (for a paper on the Vodou mythology) and didn't find any details of such a pact. And, well, since it's not in history books, the only way Pat could know is if . . .

As Jake Tapper explained, Robertson's contention seems to derive from a legend about Haitian leader Jean Jacques Dessalines:

Robertson's tale stems from a legend that Jean Jacques Dessalines, who led the Haitian revolution against the French Army, entered into a pact with Satan disguised as a voodoo deity in exchange for a military victory, which finally happened in 1803.

While I am not so arrogant as to claim that such a thing is impossible (because there is such a thing as infinity, and infinite possibilities might include anything), I have to say that if it is true, the implications about the nature of the god that would do such a thing are hardly reassuring. To call such behavior arbitrary and tyrannical would be understatement. Yet if Pat Robertson is right, the god in which he believes did just that. And apparently, Robertson thinks monstrous retaliation against innocent people for an act done by someone long ago is OK, and that a God who does that is worthy of worship.

IMHO, it's a hell of a way to sell religion, but there must be people who want God to be like that (a sort of great terrorist in the sky, if you will) or else they wouldn't be buying.

At the risk of sounding like a moral relativist, I'm inclined to say to each his own, but again, I wish they'd join the Democratic Party so they could be with the believers in other nutty deities.

MORE: In his roundup of Pat Robertson links, Glenn Reynolds notes that he is "proudly pro-sodomy" and agrees with the following contention by Ilya Somin:

As a fellow Yale Law School graduate, I'd have to say that the Reverend Robertson isn't one of our alma mater's more impressive products.

Fortunately, it's not my problem. Nor is the recent announcement that they've put the actual skull and bones up for sale. That's an old issue here, and I dare not question the timing of the sale.