There are no atheists in foxholes - except when they need Someone to blame
Whenever there is a natural disaster, whether a hurricane or a swarm of tornados or an earthquake - or, as happened a few days ago in the Indian Ocean, tidal waves triggered by a massive undersea earthquake - one thing you can always count on is militant Christophobes coming out of the woodwork to harass the brethren with the age-old blasphemy, "If your God is a loving one, how could He let something like this happen?"
Right on schedule, Martin Kettle of, as you might also have expected, the British leftist tabloid The Guardian, answered the call.
I'll take the salient passages one at a time.
Earthquakes and the belief in the judgment of God are, indeed, very hard to reconcile. However, no religion that offers an explanation of the world can avoid making some kind of an attempt to fit the two together. And an immense earthquake like the one that took place off Sumatra on Sunday inevitably poses that challenge afresh in dramatic terms.
There is, after all, only one big question to ask about an event of such destructive power as the one that has taken place this week: why did it happen?
In fact, earthquakes and divine judgment do not require reconciliation. The former are a natural phenomenon, and the latter can (and have) come via many different avenues, of which temblors are but one.
Why the Sumatra quake happened is the same reason most quakes occur: sudden, catastrophic fault slippage. If Mr. Kettle knows somebody who has inside information that the Almighty directly caused this slippage, he didn't disclose this detail in his column.
As with previous earthquakes, any explanation of this latest one poses us a sharp intellectual choice. Either there is an entirely natural explanation for it, or there is some other kind. Even the natural one is by no means easy to imagine, but it is at least wholly coherent.
Note the implication that people of faith "must" believe that there is something other than "an entirely natural explanation" for the quake and resulting tsunamis. Again, I know of no theist, much less Christian, who is suggesting any such thing, and Mr. Kettle doesn't mention any.
But what do world views that do not allow scientists undisputed authority have to say about such phenomena? Where do the creationists stand, for example?
Well, speaking for myself, my "stand" is that "a massive tectonic rupture on the sea bed generated tremors through the ocean. These unimaginable forces sent their energy coursing across thousands of miles of water, resulting in death and destruction in a vast arc from Somalia to Indonesia." I don't know what other "stand" Mr. Kettle is expecting "the creationists" to take, unless his "stand" is really as arrogant as to believe that "scientists should be allowed undisputed authority," and that there is a necessary conflict between Christianity and science. If this is the case, he's living about five centuries in the past.
Note that he goes about half that far for a historical reference in his next graf:
For most of human history people have tried to explain earthquakes as acts of divine intervention and displeasure. Even as the churches collapsed around them in 1755, Lisbon's priests insisted on salvaging crucifixes and religious icons with which to ward off the catastrophe that would kill more than 50,000 of their fellow citizens.
Fine. Once Mr. Kettle manages to find a time travel device, goes to the eighteenth century, and brings back some interviews with Lisbon's priests, I'll be happy to peruse what they have to say. Meanwhile, the rest of us live in 2004 (for three more days, anyway), and for some reason he can't seem to find any theistic contemporaries to echo their priestly antecedents in Portuguese.
Others, though, began to draw different conclusions. Voltaire asked what kind of God could permit such a thing to occur. Did Lisbon really have so many more vices than London or Paris, he asked, that it should be punished in such a appalling and indiscriminate manner?
Voltaire was a [de facto] atheist. In the present context, that simply shows that Mr. Kettle's "camp" has changed far less over the centuries than the one it bitterly and obnoxiously persecutes.
Yet it is hard to think of any event in modern times that requires a more serious explanation from the forces of religion than this week's earthquake. Voltaire's 18th-century question to Christians - why Lisbon? - ought to generate a whole series of 21st-century equivalents for all the religions of the world.
Why? On what grounds are "the forces of religion" required to be held to account for the alleged actions of a Supreme Being which people like Voltaire and the author maintain does not exist? Indeed, that very premise is more irrational than anything such professional scoffers have ever attributed to their philosophical foes.
Why the Indian Ocean basin? Well, sir, where would you have preferred the quake to occur? Maybe if you'd spend some time "on your knees," the "Man upstairs" could oblige you.
A non-scientific belief system, especially one that is based on any kind of notion of a divine order, has some explaining to do, however. What God sanctions an earthquake? What God protects against it? Why does the quake strike these places and these peoples and not others? What kind of order is it that decrees that a person who went to sleep by the edge of the ocean on Christmas night should wake up the next morning engulfed by the waves, struggling for life?
Christianity is not "non-scientific." That is a typically false stereotype perpetrated by atheists to denigrate and marginalize believers as "non-intellectual."
In reality, the Bible abounds with references to nature and natural processes, and thus frequently touches on the various sciences. Those who say the Bible is not a book of science have not read it very attentively. The writers, of course, do not attempt to formulate these statements in the terminology of a modern chemical or biological treatise. They use everyday language comprehensible to all readers, describing the phenomena in simplest terms. Nevertheless, they are always amazingly accurate, even when tested by the most vigorous scientific requirements.
Note some of the anticipatory scientific insights in Scripture. It would take an entire book to discuss these in detail, so I will limit the list to those areas pertinent to the current context, with each listed as a key phrase, with pertinent Bible reference. Even then, the list is only a sampling of the many such passages that might be cited.
Hydrology
Hydrologic cycle (Ecclesiastes 1:7, Isaiah 55:10)
Evaporation (Psalm 135:7, Jeremiah 10:13)
Condensation Nuclei (Proverbs 8:26)
Condensation (Job 26:8; 37:11,16)
Precipitation (Job 36:27-28)
Run-off (Job 28:10)
Oceanic reservoir (Psalm 33:7)
Snow (Job 38:22, Psalm 147:16)
Hydrologic balance (Isaiah 40:12, Job 28:24-26)
Geology
Principle of isostasy (Isaiah 40:12, Psalm 104:5-9)
Shape of Earth (Isaiah 40:22, Psalm 103:12)
Rotation of Earth (Job 38:12, 14)
Gravitation (Job 26:7; 38:6)
Rock erosion (Job 14:18-19)
Glacial period (Job 38:29-30)
Uniformitarianism (II Peter 3:4)
God, in short, created science when He made the cosmos ordered and comprehensible and made man in His own image, with an intellect that could investigate and understand it.
Rather than playing semantical games, to say nothing of using the tragic deaths of tens of thousands, to score the usual points against the "fundies" by asking questions to which the only honest answer is, "I don't know," perhaps Mr. Kettle and his like-minded fellow travelers should take a peek at Genesis 3:17-19:
"And unto Adam [God] said, 'Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, "Thou shalt not eat of it," cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
This is the curse on nature brought about by original sin. And natural disasters are part of that curse.
But if Mr. Kettle just insists on blaming what he would otherwise dismiss as "the cosmic muffin," maybe he can settle for Phil Brennan's conclusion:
Nowadays we tend to blame natural disasters on God. "How can a merciful God allow such things to happen?" people ask. Well, Nature's God designed this universe to be self-regulating and most of the so-called natural disasters are simply part of that ongoing re-modernizing process.
Sure humans get hurt, humans suffer, but suffering and need are the LORD's way of drawing his erring children back into his embrace. There are no atheists in foxholes, the old saying goes. And there are damned few of them when trouble strikes and we fall to our knees recognizing God's supreme dominion over all things and the absolute dependence of everything upon Him.
Anyone with two cents worth of brains recognizes just how far this world has strayed from God over the past 100 years. We've been wallowing in a pit of slime. We can expect Him to do what must be done to draw us back into His embrace.
Keep in mind: what God wants is to have everyone of His children united with Him in eternity, which is all that matters. What happens here on Earth is transitory - sooner or later it comes to an end. Eternity is forever.
UPDATE: Janet Daley brings up the whole other side of this issue in her London Daily Telegraph column that I'm embarrassed to admit I left out. Here's the money graf:
In fact, there is no logic in the sceptic's argument - or, at least, not the logic that he assumes. If terrible events are to constitute evidence that God does not exist, then every wonderful event - every cured cancer patient, every child rescued from a fire - has to be evidence that He does. The unbeliever would, by his own reasoning, have to accept that all the fortunate things that have ever happened were proofs of God. [my emphasis]
Not that the rising number of unbelievers is linked to rationalism.
Very nice.
Once again, to the degree that this angle isn't purely cynical, it's a case of viewing God as the genie in the lamp. Rub it when they want something from Him, beat on it when they want to blame Him for their misfortunes (natural or man-made), but for pity's sake, don't offer anything in return, or thank Him for their blessings, or acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, they are morally accountable to Him.
Perhaps one lesson of tragic natural occurances like this one is that it just doesn't work that way. If so, that's one lesson Christophobes are determined not to learn.
After all, it's far easier to just blame "The Great Vacuum Fluctuation" instead.
Right on schedule, Martin Kettle of, as you might also have expected, the British leftist tabloid The Guardian, answered the call.
I'll take the salient passages one at a time.
Earthquakes and the belief in the judgment of God are, indeed, very hard to reconcile. However, no religion that offers an explanation of the world can avoid making some kind of an attempt to fit the two together. And an immense earthquake like the one that took place off Sumatra on Sunday inevitably poses that challenge afresh in dramatic terms.
There is, after all, only one big question to ask about an event of such destructive power as the one that has taken place this week: why did it happen?
In fact, earthquakes and divine judgment do not require reconciliation. The former are a natural phenomenon, and the latter can (and have) come via many different avenues, of which temblors are but one.
Why the Sumatra quake happened is the same reason most quakes occur: sudden, catastrophic fault slippage. If Mr. Kettle knows somebody who has inside information that the Almighty directly caused this slippage, he didn't disclose this detail in his column.
As with previous earthquakes, any explanation of this latest one poses us a sharp intellectual choice. Either there is an entirely natural explanation for it, or there is some other kind. Even the natural one is by no means easy to imagine, but it is at least wholly coherent.
Note the implication that people of faith "must" believe that there is something other than "an entirely natural explanation" for the quake and resulting tsunamis. Again, I know of no theist, much less Christian, who is suggesting any such thing, and Mr. Kettle doesn't mention any.
But what do world views that do not allow scientists undisputed authority have to say about such phenomena? Where do the creationists stand, for example?
Well, speaking for myself, my "stand" is that "a massive tectonic rupture on the sea bed generated tremors through the ocean. These unimaginable forces sent their energy coursing across thousands of miles of water, resulting in death and destruction in a vast arc from Somalia to Indonesia." I don't know what other "stand" Mr. Kettle is expecting "the creationists" to take, unless his "stand" is really as arrogant as to believe that "scientists should be allowed undisputed authority," and that there is a necessary conflict between Christianity and science. If this is the case, he's living about five centuries in the past.
Note that he goes about half that far for a historical reference in his next graf:
For most of human history people have tried to explain earthquakes as acts of divine intervention and displeasure. Even as the churches collapsed around them in 1755, Lisbon's priests insisted on salvaging crucifixes and religious icons with which to ward off the catastrophe that would kill more than 50,000 of their fellow citizens.
Fine. Once Mr. Kettle manages to find a time travel device, goes to the eighteenth century, and brings back some interviews with Lisbon's priests, I'll be happy to peruse what they have to say. Meanwhile, the rest of us live in 2004 (for three more days, anyway), and for some reason he can't seem to find any theistic contemporaries to echo their priestly antecedents in Portuguese.
Others, though, began to draw different conclusions. Voltaire asked what kind of God could permit such a thing to occur. Did Lisbon really have so many more vices than London or Paris, he asked, that it should be punished in such a appalling and indiscriminate manner?
Voltaire was a [de facto] atheist. In the present context, that simply shows that Mr. Kettle's "camp" has changed far less over the centuries than the one it bitterly and obnoxiously persecutes.
Yet it is hard to think of any event in modern times that requires a more serious explanation from the forces of religion than this week's earthquake. Voltaire's 18th-century question to Christians - why Lisbon? - ought to generate a whole series of 21st-century equivalents for all the religions of the world.
Why? On what grounds are "the forces of religion" required to be held to account for the alleged actions of a Supreme Being which people like Voltaire and the author maintain does not exist? Indeed, that very premise is more irrational than anything such professional scoffers have ever attributed to their philosophical foes.
Why the Indian Ocean basin? Well, sir, where would you have preferred the quake to occur? Maybe if you'd spend some time "on your knees," the "Man upstairs" could oblige you.
A non-scientific belief system, especially one that is based on any kind of notion of a divine order, has some explaining to do, however. What God sanctions an earthquake? What God protects against it? Why does the quake strike these places and these peoples and not others? What kind of order is it that decrees that a person who went to sleep by the edge of the ocean on Christmas night should wake up the next morning engulfed by the waves, struggling for life?
Christianity is not "non-scientific." That is a typically false stereotype perpetrated by atheists to denigrate and marginalize believers as "non-intellectual."
In reality, the Bible abounds with references to nature and natural processes, and thus frequently touches on the various sciences. Those who say the Bible is not a book of science have not read it very attentively. The writers, of course, do not attempt to formulate these statements in the terminology of a modern chemical or biological treatise. They use everyday language comprehensible to all readers, describing the phenomena in simplest terms. Nevertheless, they are always amazingly accurate, even when tested by the most vigorous scientific requirements.
Note some of the anticipatory scientific insights in Scripture. It would take an entire book to discuss these in detail, so I will limit the list to those areas pertinent to the current context, with each listed as a key phrase, with pertinent Bible reference. Even then, the list is only a sampling of the many such passages that might be cited.
Hydrology
Hydrologic cycle (Ecclesiastes 1:7, Isaiah 55:10)
Evaporation (Psalm 135:7, Jeremiah 10:13)
Condensation Nuclei (Proverbs 8:26)
Condensation (Job 26:8; 37:11,16)
Precipitation (Job 36:27-28)
Run-off (Job 28:10)
Oceanic reservoir (Psalm 33:7)
Snow (Job 38:22, Psalm 147:16)
Hydrologic balance (Isaiah 40:12, Job 28:24-26)
Geology
Principle of isostasy (Isaiah 40:12, Psalm 104:5-9)
Shape of Earth (Isaiah 40:22, Psalm 103:12)
Rotation of Earth (Job 38:12, 14)
Gravitation (Job 26:7; 38:6)
Rock erosion (Job 14:18-19)
Glacial period (Job 38:29-30)
Uniformitarianism (II Peter 3:4)
God, in short, created science when He made the cosmos ordered and comprehensible and made man in His own image, with an intellect that could investigate and understand it.
Rather than playing semantical games, to say nothing of using the tragic deaths of tens of thousands, to score the usual points against the "fundies" by asking questions to which the only honest answer is, "I don't know," perhaps Mr. Kettle and his like-minded fellow travelers should take a peek at Genesis 3:17-19:
"And unto Adam [God] said, 'Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, "Thou shalt not eat of it," cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
This is the curse on nature brought about by original sin. And natural disasters are part of that curse.
But if Mr. Kettle just insists on blaming what he would otherwise dismiss as "the cosmic muffin," maybe he can settle for Phil Brennan's conclusion:
Nowadays we tend to blame natural disasters on God. "How can a merciful God allow such things to happen?" people ask. Well, Nature's God designed this universe to be self-regulating and most of the so-called natural disasters are simply part of that ongoing re-modernizing process.
Sure humans get hurt, humans suffer, but suffering and need are the LORD's way of drawing his erring children back into his embrace. There are no atheists in foxholes, the old saying goes. And there are damned few of them when trouble strikes and we fall to our knees recognizing God's supreme dominion over all things and the absolute dependence of everything upon Him.
Anyone with two cents worth of brains recognizes just how far this world has strayed from God over the past 100 years. We've been wallowing in a pit of slime. We can expect Him to do what must be done to draw us back into His embrace.
Keep in mind: what God wants is to have everyone of His children united with Him in eternity, which is all that matters. What happens here on Earth is transitory - sooner or later it comes to an end. Eternity is forever.
UPDATE: Janet Daley brings up the whole other side of this issue in her London Daily Telegraph column that I'm embarrassed to admit I left out. Here's the money graf:
In fact, there is no logic in the sceptic's argument - or, at least, not the logic that he assumes. If terrible events are to constitute evidence that God does not exist, then every wonderful event - every cured cancer patient, every child rescued from a fire - has to be evidence that He does. The unbeliever would, by his own reasoning, have to accept that all the fortunate things that have ever happened were proofs of God. [my emphasis]
Not that the rising number of unbelievers is linked to rationalism.
Very nice.
Once again, to the degree that this angle isn't purely cynical, it's a case of viewing God as the genie in the lamp. Rub it when they want something from Him, beat on it when they want to blame Him for their misfortunes (natural or man-made), but for pity's sake, don't offer anything in return, or thank Him for their blessings, or acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, they are morally accountable to Him.
Perhaps one lesson of tragic natural occurances like this one is that it just doesn't work that way. If so, that's one lesson Christophobes are determined not to learn.
After all, it's far easier to just blame "The Great Vacuum Fluctuation" instead.
posted by JASmius at 1:14 PM
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