An Atheists Take On The Haiti Situation

My boy Phil ran across a blog from uber-Atheist, Richard Dawkins, who shared his thoughts on God's role in the Haiti Situation. Phil picks apart Dawkins' points like Manning did the Jets' secondary. Well done my man!

(Dawkins points in bold. Phil's smack downs, not bolded)


An Atheists Take on the Haiti Situation


I was browsing around on one of the blogs I frequent to kind of wind down from the state of the union address when I came across a ranking of the top religious blogs on the net at http://teampyro.blogspot.com/

So it turns out, rather unsurprisingly, that one of the top "belief" blogs is one led by an atheist. So I thought I'd check it out, and this is what I ran across:
http://friendlyatheist.com/2010/01/26/haiti-god-evil-and-richard-dawkins

The blog begins on the next line. I'll "bold" the blog.


Blog begins:
Richard Dawkins is responding to Christians who are looking in all the wrong places for some sort of supernatural “reason” that the earthquake in Haiti caused so much devastation. Obviously, Pat Robertson isn’t helping any Christian PR campaign, but neither are pastors who say “God did this for a reason”:

You nice, middle-of-the-road theologians and clergymen, be-frocked and bleating in your pulpits, you disclaim Pat Robertson’s suggestion that the Haitians are paying for a pact with the devil. But you worship a god-man who — as you tell your congregations even if you don’t believe it yourself — ‘cast out devils’. You even believe (or you don’t disabuse your flock when they believe) that Jesus cured a madman by causing the ‘devils’ in him to fly into a herd of pigs and stampede them over a cliff. Charming story, well calculated to uplift and inspire the Sunday School and the Infant Bible Class. Pat Robertson may spout evil nonsense, but he is a mere amateur at that game. Just read your own Bible. Pat Robertson is true to it. But you?

First comment: This won't come as a surprise to Christians reading this, but yes, scripture does tell us that Jesus did these things. I have a hard time, however, understanding how Pat Robertson's claims that the Haitians "had made a pact with the devil centuries ago" has any relation to Jesus Christ exercising control over demons and healing those afflicted by them. Also, there's an implication here from Dawkins that pastors are preaching things they don't themselves believe. I'll acknowledge that there most likely are pastors out there who say things from the pulpit that they don't believe, but this just means they're normal fallen sinners in need of the same grace as the rest of us. Preaching what you don't believe should definitely disqualify someone from the pulpit, but there's no sense in denying that it happens. Accountants shouldn't cheat on their taxes, but some do. Lawyers and judges shouldn't break the law, but some do. Doctors and nurses should never seek to harm their patients, but some do.

This is what Christian pastors do best. They instill this (false) belief in people that awful occurrences like natural disasters don’t just happen randomly or in certain, pre-determined parts of the world; instead, they occur in placed where God wants to make a point. And if you live in a Christ-filled, God-fearing area, you’ll be spared.

People who want any sort of hope will cling to that like rope on a cliff.

I'd love to see a link or some sort of reference that shows where a pastor has said that living in a "Christ-filled God-fearing area" is some sort of holy shield against disaster. Matthew 5:45 in the bible clearly says -- and this is quoted often by secular and religious folks alike -- that God "causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." We read in Job that God allowed the devil to bring great ruin on one of the most righteous men who ever lived. Cancer strikes within the church just as often as it strikes those who don't believe.

The bible clearly tells us that this is God's world, and He can do with it whatever He chooses to do for whatever His purposes are. We also know that God does things on a much greater time scale than our feeble minds can comprehend, and what may seem like a short-term disaster can eventually become an event of great healing and power. Jesus showed us this EXTREMELY clearly with His death on the cross, taking a symbol of capital punishment, despair, loss, and extreme pain and converting it to a symbol of hope, resurrection, and life.

It’s a shame. There are reasons Haiti (or New Orleans or Southeast Asia) was susceptible to such disasters. We can understand this better with scientific knowledge.

Bad things happen. Sometimes, there are no reasons for it. Other times, there are understandable reasons. The Haitian earthquake falls into that latter category. There’s no need to bring a god into the mix.

So which way is it? Does "scientific knowledge" give us all the answers, or doesn't it? Which makes more sense...that science can occasionally give us the answers to life's questions, or that a God who made everything have the right to use His creation in ways that we don't understand? Dawkins et al often attempt to elevate science and rational thinking to the level of god-hood, but suggest that there might actually BE a God who controls every single solitary thing that goes on in the world, and suddenly it's people of faith who are ignorant?

Daniel Dennett is especially frustrated by God getting a pass when disasters occur:

The idea that God is a worthy recipient of our gratitude for the blessings of life but should not be held accountable for the disasters is a transparently disingenuous innovation of the theologians. And of course it doesn’t work all that well… All the holy texts and interpretations that contrive ways of getting around the problem read like the fine print in a fraudulent contract — and for the same reason: they are desperate attempts to conceal the implications of the double standard they have invented.

Maybe some pastors don’t believe this characterization. If that’s true, then they need to be the voice of reason when members of their congregation say that God had any type of role in this tragedy, good or bad.

Otherwise, they’re just part of the problem.

By my way of thinking, Mr. Dennett's frustration is completely misplaced. If he's acknowledging that God did indeed create everything we know, see, feel and touch...everything we can even possibly conceive...then why is it not that very same God's right to do whatever He wishes to do with what He has created? Why (again) is it not conceivable that God is telling the truth when He tells us via scripture that He knows who we are and what we will be before we are born, that He knows the length of our days, and He knows how they will end.

God indeed has a role in the tragedy of Haiti. He created Haiti. He created the people who live there. He created the people who are rushing there to offer hope, healing, rescue, and restoration to those injured or rendered homeless by the disaster.

I acknowledge this: that it is impossibly hard for me to understand why bad things like Haiti and 9/11 and cancer and war and death and divorce and hurt and all the bad things in the world happen. I also acknowledge, however, that if we believe that God created all this, we must recognize His right to do whatever He wishes to do with it, and that in the long run, that He has reasons for doing things that I am not able to understand. I also know that this same God knew in creating us that we as human beings would someday come to understand that we are imperfect, that we need a Savior, and it was God's plan that once we acknowledge that aspect of our humanity, He would provide an alternative to the punishment we deserve for the evil that we've committed. It's this alternative, in the form of His perfect Son, that allows us into the presence of His holiness.

It's normal and natural to question why bad things happen. I'd hope that it would also be comforting (and convicting) to know that there are answers to these "why" questions that only the Creator of the universe could provide.