On October 13, 2010, 33 miners in Chile were rescued after 70 days trapped underground. Their rescue was hailed as a 'miracle' with churches and Faiths competing to claim 'credit' for the 'miracle.'
On November 24, 2010, a little over a month later, 29 miners in New Zealand are presumed dead after a second explosion deep in the mine shifted efforts from 'rescue' to 'recovery.'
While God's alleged intervention in the 'miraculous' Chilean mining rescue was widely hailed and cited by even secular media, God's lack of intervention in the New Zealand tragedy receives strikingly different coverage. Why does God hate New Zealand? Why did he not intervene to help those in the exact same circumstances as those in Chile? Did they not pray hard enough? Did they churches not work hard enough to curry God's favor? What did New Zealand do wrong?
If those questions sound insulting, good. They SHOULD sound insulting. Because the idea that those poor men in New Zealand did anything to deserve abandonment by God, or that their lives were sacrificed for God's glory or any other religious nonsense is likely cold comfort to a woman who has lost a husband or a child who has lost a father. The very idea is despicable.
The fact is that God had nothing to do with either event. Because God is imaginary.
There was nothing miraculous about the Chilean mining rescue. Those men were kept alive via an incredibly heroic, complex, laborious and technologically demanding effort made by HUMAN BEINGS who worked tirelessly to free their fellow man. In Chile, the conditions were such that human action, human ingenuity, human effort and hard ass human work was enough to save lives. In New Zealand, unfortunately, the conditions were not so favorable, and tragically, equally heroic, complex, laborious and technologically demanding human efforts proved insufficient.
The way in which Religionists cite God as the cause of favorable outcomes, but conveniently discount God and forget about him when unfavorable outcomes occur is shallow, intellectually dishonest, logically inconsistent and morally suspect. It was wholly unsurprising to hear the media talk about the 'miracle' in Chile. I do not suspect that we will read any stories about how God FAILED to rescue the New Zealand miners. Or how the New Zealand miners didn't pray hard enough. Or how God didn't bother. Those stories are NEVER written, because Religionists ONLY count hits. They always discount misses. Just like astrologers and horoscope devotees.
Religionists cannot help but fall all over themselves whenever there is an opportunity to give praise and credit to an invisible sky man for the dedication, ingenuity and hard work of humanity. I just wish that if they are going to give credit for the good, that they would at least be honest enough to assign blame for the bad. Their double standard is killing me.
i hear you, fellow human. i agree with you 100%
ReplyDeleteCoincidence is the most powerful force in the Universe.
ReplyDeleteIf the Chilean miner's escape was "miraculous" then surely the 1 in a million set of circumstances that took 26 of my countrymen (and a South African and 2 Scots) to their deaths in an instant are just as miraculous.
A men to that!!
ReplyDeleteToo sad to hear the interpretation... This was everytime atleast by few who behaved after receiving a great blessing from God. But i join the Chilean people who has not forgotten God, after the incident. Please dont comment on what you dont know. Your ignorance will not be accounted when a misleading comment is charged against you. Please resist from this and I pray for you to get it realized for you. God's love for people. Please pray for Newzeland people who lost their lives there..That is most ideal now... Thanks brothren...Use technology and media for God. It all belongs to him.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant post and well written however you forgot the usual 'God works in mysterious ways' or 'it was the Devil's doing' excuses that religious people use in sad times like these.
ReplyDelete'God has a plan for us all'.
Pfft, whatevs.
If only people spent less time praying and more time thinking.
Hey anon above...I'll go ahead and post something that I hope hits you directly in the part of the brain that makes you believe in the tooth fairy as an adult. (Which I can only assume you do.) I can only hope my decendants, even if it's ten generations out...live in a world that the Easter Bunny, jolly ole Saint Nick, Jesus, and Allah are all in the same category. Used only as childrens bedtime stories, and exposed as fairy tales early in life. Please try to explain how what you commented is anywhere close to sane.
ReplyDeleteAs a person who normally respects peoples beliefs, and has never spoke out before...I guess ya caught me in a mood. I read this, and just couldn't help myself. I lived through 18 months in Iraq, where two countries across the world from each other are fighting to the death. BOTH believing fully that their god is on high. BOTH banking on the words of a book that more than likely started from the same text, only to be interpreted and translated differently. BOTH thinking they are in the right...but BOTH so wrong. I saw way too many people on both sides die horrible deaths...and for what? All because...
Ya know what? I could sit here for the next six hours and debate theology (and trust me, I have enough to fill that much time). But nothing will ever make a dent in your weak mind. Don't know why I've spent this long honestly. I guess I will just agree to disagree. You live your life for your god, thanking him for the good...and convenietly looking past the bad. Get yourself into heaven. I will live my life as a good, morally sound human being on the planet earth. When I die, I will be buried and eventually decay back into the earth. Someday I'll become nutrients for a tree, and you will play hopscotch with Mother Theresa on streets of gold. Tell me which one sounds less crazy?
(Hilarious thing is, you will probably rebute this with as much sarcasm and slander as I have, claim you will pray for my damned soul, and go back to trolling /b. Have fun, see ya on the flip side.)
Well said Justin but I doubt you will get through to the brainwashed people easily led and kept down by religious leaders. They don't or they can't think for themselves.
ReplyDeleteDo they ever look up and see how vast is the universe and how insignificant is our little speck of dust we call planet earth.
Regarding the mining disasters and other similar situations calling for divine intervention ...
To quote Woody Allen, "The worst that you can say about God is that basically he's an under achiever".
Lynne
Life is a miracle all its own and we have no control (input yes, but not control) over the outcome of our circumstances. To believe that our complexity and the intricacy of our own brains evolved from nothing takes more faith than trusting in the inerrant, inspired word of God. If this life is all there is, then those who believe will have spent it living well; if the eternal heaven and hell do exist, those who have lived for themselves alone will be dismayed with where they end up.
ReplyDelete@ Allonia
ReplyDeleteYou make several completely unrelated arguments.
1. Your contention that our neurological biochemistry is more readily explained by magic than through the process of evolution is patently false and readily disposed of. Brain function did not simply pop into existence. It is the result of billions of years of gradual changes - the distillation of uncountable iterations over innumerable species. Any learned theologian George Coyne for example, would laugh at your simplistic and ignorant statement that evolution requires more faith.
2. To say that the Bible is inerrant is to prove that you have not actually read the Bible. The Bible is filled with factual errors, logical errors, factual inconsistencies, logical inconsistencies, descriptive and narrative inconsistencies, not to mention the innumerable statements made in the Bible that are not supported by a single shred of evidence or are directly contradicted by biology, geology, palentology, cosmology, chemistry, astronomy, etc.
3. Your final argument is essentially a thinly veiled reiteration of Pascal's Wager which is invalid for the following reasons:
A) It assumes a binary choice between atheism and your chosen brand of theism. This is invalid because belief in god is NOT limited to just atheism and YOUR preferred revelatory dogma. There are approximately 2780 different dieties that exist in human history, of which YOU reject 2779 and I reject 2780. So this is not a simple flip of a coin.
B) It assumes that all religious faiths are equally valid. This is manifestly not so. Atheism is actually FAR more likely given the fact that there is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever for the supernatural.
C) It assumes that the TRUE religion (1 out of 2780) is actually one that embraces the concept of heaven and hell. MANY of the 2780 do not embrace either.
D) It assumes that humans have accurately translated or understood the alleged revelation of one or more of the 2780 divinities. There is no evidence whatsoever for this proposition.
E) It assumes that the 2780 divinities desire sycophants who will believe without a shred of evidence, when in fact, the opposite might be true - perhaps it is the skeptics who will be rewarded.
In short, Pascal's wager is not a simple binary choice, but a clever dodge away from the fact that frankly believing in the Christian God leads to all manner of debilitating beliefs, self loathing, belief in inherent sinfulness, excessive and unnecessary guilt, etc., and offers only a minimal chance at any reward, EVEN assuming that all faiths are equal.