Reader Aaron points out the obvious: that when the Pope says that without faith, there can be no hope, he is referring to hope for “the most important reward of all: eternal life.” Pace my alternative suggestions for hope, the “Vicar of Christ on earth” is not referring to the steady improvement in knowledge, health, and comfort that human ingenuity keeps showering upon us.
Given that God can’t be bothered to lift a finger to insure that hundreds of Indonesians reach middle age before being buried by an earthquake, however, putting one’s hope in his willingness to deliver eternal life seems about as justified as handing over the remainder of one’s assets to an investment advisor who just blew the first portion at Atlantic City.
Oh, but what are a few mortal years here and there compared to eternal life, the response will come back. The difference between 2 years divided by eternity and 90 years divided by eternity is imperceptible. That would be a good argument, but it doesn’t square with the way most believers (and most people generally) usually approach matters of life and death. If the loss of a child to an earthquake is but an inconsequential thing compared to God’s promise of eternal life, why should we be worried about alleged ”death panels” deciding that tax dollars are not efficiently spent providing a bypass operation to an 85-year-old stroke victim? Yet many believers seem to think that an additional six months at the end of a long life, even if passed while barely sentient, are preferable to a natural death. That, too, is a perfectly respectable argument. It just doesn’t fit with the view that God’s failure to rescue all potential victims from a natural disaster (which he could clearly do, since believers pray to him on a daily basis for far more trivial things) should not be counted against him because he compensates for his inaction with the promise of heaven after death.
Perhaps then the argument is: Oh, well, preserving life on earth is the responsibility of humans; God can ignore the daily slaughter of the innocents and still be considered loving because mortal earth is not his domain. He is responsible only for the afterlife. That, too, might be a plausible rejoinder, but for saints, relics, and miracles.
Read the book of Job sometime. It’s the clearest statement of the problem I know and the most elegant literary resolution of the argument.
“The most elegant literary resolution of the argument”?
OMG!
The book of Job is a good source which proves that God allows Satan to test man as a guinea pig to see how a thoroughly indoctrinated moron desperately clings to God even in the worst “inhumane tests” permitted by God.
What would be the proper, or an acceptable, secular conservative response to a natural disaster such as these earthquakes?
Somehow I can’t imagine it being heckling the beliefs of those, who because of their religion, are digging through rubble or tending survivors. Shouldn’t we be joining them now instead of mocking their beliefs?
How about some thoughts on how secular conservatives can get their ideas considered more often?
Like I said in my comment, I can understand why you’d want to spread the message that people’s hope is unfounded. I think that would be cruel and destructive, but I can understand how some people might think it’s noble. And I do agree that hope for eternal life is unfounded, according to our modern way of thinking. And I agree with the arguments against theodicy which you’ve repeated here as well.
None of which is the main point of that comment of mine, though. Yes, most believers cling to life in this world, maybe more strongly than their religion says they should. That still doesn’t make improvements in this life much of a consolation for their loss of hope for eternal life in paradise. What you’re offering people is a life story that, however much it may be worth living, ineluctably ends in defeat. From that point of view – which we agree was the subject of the Pope’s remark – your gospel is tragic at best, dispiriting at worst. (What was it Kafka said? “Oh, there’s plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope – but not for us”.) The noble thing, then, is not to try and sugar-coat your message with happy talk about computers and Verdi operas.
@ Donna B.,
I did not mean that rationalists should not be joining the rescue effort.
The reason people are digging through rubbles or tending survivors are not because of their good religions. That is an instinct of man. Any man of any cult or non-belief can and should be joining such effort, of course. Donna B., do not think that those good works can be done only by God-believers. Human lives are precious than religionists or God thinks. Those who truly debase the dignity of human lives are religionists and their sky monster.
What we secularists should do is to let people realize the following facts:
Natural disasters have nothing to do with human sin or God’s wrath. So it is wrong for believers to interpret such natural disasters as the punishment from God against human sin.
(What believers do is to preach the opinion that natural disasters are the price for human sin.)
Religionists are always busy hating and killing each other when there are no natural disasters. So natural disasters are good opportunities for religionists to gather lot of money from people (including non-believers) and demonstrate that they are good people and by doing so they can whitewash the plain fact that religions are the greatest cause of man-made disasters.
Religionists are the greatest beneficiaries of natural disasters. I am against the religionists’ business of gathering lot of money (large portion of such money is used for their own use) and selling God in the time of natural disasters. Proselytization works best for those who are in disasters and panic. So religions accelerate the vicious circle.
I suggest that the job of gathering and distributing of relief money and goods should be done by government workers plus civilian volunteers under the close watch to prevent any misuse. I mean we should simplify and clarify the process of relief job without the intervention of middlemen (religionists). (Civilian volunteers should be given any type of reward or credit such as tax-deduction or tuition deduction, etc. (I do not believe in pure sacrifice. It is not proper to expect man to do good work in pure altruism. Note that believes believe in the most sumptuous reward—eternal life and paradise.)
Donna, what do you think is the cause of natural disasters? What you think secularists should do to help those victims maintain their mental stability and rationality in the time disasters? I think helping them maintain rationality and mental strength is not less important than material support. I do not mean we should proselytize the victims with secularism in the midst of their hardship. We should do such work in such a way that we do not aggravate their mental disturbance.
brian, I was responding to Heather and to what I re-chewing the cud simply to have something to chew on.
As far as religious beliefs go, I have none.
But, I’m well aware that not all Christians believe that natural disasters are the price of sin, though some of the more idiotic ones certainly do preach that.
Nor have I seen in the U.S. “religionists” busy hating and killing each other when natural disasters aren’t in play. Those who are busy hating and killing each other don’t stop for a mere disaster.
Natural disasters are just that — natural.
I suppose what really bothers me is that I was so hoping this would be a blog to discuss how secular conservatives can help the conservative movement. For religion bashing, there’s PZ Myers.
Oh, and I do think pure altruism generates feel good chemicals in the brain. That’s payoff enough for me.
Is it possible to create a political working relationship between secular conservatives and Christian conservatives?
The book of Job is a good source which proves that God allows Satan to test man as a guinea pig….!!!
Perhaps my comment was too concise. The problem resolves itself into a simple question: Why do bad things happen to good people?
What is really at stake here is not belief in God, or faith in Christ as God’s Son, nor even hope of “eternal life”. What is at stake is whether or not the world itself is “moral” in structure. If it is not, then the most rational behavior would be that of a successful sociopath, someone, say, like the Louis XIII’s minister Cardinal Richeleau.
If world is moral in structure, that fact is not self-evident, and the “literary resolution” I was referring to was to have God appear to Job so Job could ask him about it.
Not quite, you also have to abide by lefty political correctness which is as nauseating as the religionists balderdash.
@ Donna B
I know, from your words, that you are a good person.
You said, “I do think pure altruism generates feel good chemicals in
the brain. That’s payoff enough for me.”
But in reality there are many people who make the most of such good nature of other people. My elder sister, an ardent Christian, offers some money to church every time she makes good fortune and volunteers in many good works in her church. One day she said to me that people in the church ask her too much. So she learned how to say no.
Pure altruism is good. But we cannot run the reality or state relyng on good people’s pure altruism. And too much altruism may harm beneficiaries. Dambisa Moyo (Jambian woman studied at Harvard University) writes in her book “Dead Aid” that generous aid from Western countries to African governments has deteriorated the corruption and the dependency of the African nations on foreign countries.
So Western aid has contributed in making African people poorer and unhappier, according to Dambisa. Western people have been feeling good and producing good chemicals in the brain by giving lot of aids to African nations. That is a kind of superiority complex or self-praise or self-satisfaction. (“We are better people. We are good people. We are living up to the words of Jesus. We deserve paradise and eternal life.”) But they have not minded that the free money and goods are encouraging the corruption and laziness of the beneficiaries. See what Dambisa says here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5Pkk2sq9Cg .
What Moyo emphasizes is that to teach African people business (how to catch fish) is better than giving free money and food. Business is different from charity or social work. Business cannot and should not run with altruism or social work style. More often than not, too generous CEOs bankrupt their businesses whereas stingy CEOs succeed and create lot of jobs for many workers. I would say a stingy but successful CEO is better than one hundred social workers.
Sometimes (or frequently) too generous parents ruin their children’s lives with the same principle. I do not believe in Jesus’ type of endless love or endless forgiveness.
Leftists believe that the successful (rich people) should be punished (by heavy tax). But leftists forget that the successful are those who create jobs and wealth. Leftists are people of good-intention. The problem with leftists is that they know little about how wealth is produced. Leftists are good at distributing wealth. If a government is good at distributing wealth and poor at creating wealth and jobs, the government and the whole society bankrupt. It is as easy as A B C.
Leftists are dying to save the poor from the evil (the successful). But actually leftists kill the golden-egg layers and make the have-nots even poorer. The reason Sweden and other successful Western socialist countries are doing fine is that they allow and recognize the successful private business. Russian communists banned and persecuted private business and market.
————
American Christians may not hate others. But many American Jews hate Christians and that is why Jews helped elect Obama. Religion’s major job seems to indoctrinate people with hatred, prejudice, ignorance and superiority complex. Religionists can do small love. But in the big scale, they are really preparing Armageddon. Have you read “Infidel” by Ayann Hirsi Ali and “Why I am not a Muslim” by Ibn Warraq? Religions are far more harmful than most people think.
Leftists believe that the successful (rich people) should be punished (by heavy tax). But leftists forget that the successful are those who create jobs and wealth. Leftists are people of good-intention. The problem with leftists is that they know little about how wealth is produced.
Horse hockey.
If by “leftists” you mean the sort of folks you find in America who call themselves “progressives”, you simply do not know what you are talking about because you have been reading only opinion, and only opinion that scratches your back. You should get around more, and read more fact. Consider the two massive spikes in oil prices a year or so back. I defy you to show me that this phenomenon “produced” wealth anywhere.
What it did do was drain wealth from the less wealthy 3/5’s of America and dump it into the lap of most wealthy 2/5’s–the people who either own energy stocks directly or own them by proxy through mutual funds. In fact, in total dollar terms it was the two largest such predations of ordinary people in human history.
No new durable goods and services were produced by it, the economic activity of consumption of those goods that actually produces wealth was inhibited by it, and the quality of life of those from whom the money was extracted was made incrementally but genuinely worse by it.
If you actually take the trouble to study facts, real numbers and real data, what you find is that the last 28 years of deregulation of markets to supposedly “produce wealth” has been a general predation of the less wealthy 2/5’s by the most wealthy 2/5’s, and such wealth as this movement of money has actually produced has been largely in China and India and not here.
From 1950 to 1980 the wealth of all economic levels in America increased slowly but steadily at about the same rate for each. Nothing about the more intensive government management of markets of that period inhibited this. From 1980 to the present the only serious increase in wealth has occurred among the richest 2/5’s of us. The middle 1/5 has seen a small increase and the wealth of the lower 2/5’s has stayed flat.
In fact, the wild booms followed by the busts of 1987, 2000, and 2008 simply did not occur in that earlier period, because markets were sensibly regulated. The boom and bust pattern of unregulated markets destroys wealth rather than creating it. Everybody who invests in such markets with too small a capital cushion [functionally the middle 2/5’s of us] cannot ride out the busts and must dump their equities at a loss. The lower 2/5’s of us get booted out of jobs, sharply reducing their wealth, and, at best, return to new jobs that leave them at the same level of wealth as they managed to achieve before the bust.
The loss of wealth by the lower 4/5’s of us, either by selling equities at a loss or losing jobs and salaries, was an out-and-out loss in each bust. At best these levels of society merely made up ground when the recession moderated and the new boom began. The only people whose wealth increased were those with sufficient cushion of capital behind them to hold onto their equities during the bear market, i.e. the wealthiest 1/5 of us.
The point of a progressive tax is that the people who benefit the most from American life have the greatest stake in the services that those taxes provide. If you understand the facts of American economic life since 1980, the stake of the wealthiest of us in those services has actually increased during the interval.
And the services are real and benefit everyone. I have never heard a single person who complains constantly about taxes who had the least conception of how much government does for them with the money it takes from them. They act, for example, as if our American system of high-speed, high-volume expressways simply grew out of the ground like mushrooms, or that the chlorine that inhibits germs and parasites in their tap water appears there by magic.
That takes too much trouble. You actually have to read numbers and confront fact.
Yes, all that “deregulation” that occurred while the state and federal governments were growing exponentially. Right. Sarbanes-Oxley? Community Reinvestment Act? De facto racial quotas? Environ-Mental Retardation? All in my imagination, I’m sure.
Yes, all of those poor people who got poorer. All those welfare moms living in public housing with cell phones, flat screen TVs and cable. I weep for them. How angry they must be that we traded jobs they would never do to China, in exchange for dirt-cheap electronics.
Yes, that greediest 1/5 of income earners who only pay 85% of the federal income taxes, in addition to nearly all of the large-scale philanthropy. For shame. When they’re working 100 hours a week building businesses in order to provide products and jobs for the rest of us, they should be doing it out of the good of their hearts (or, preferably, at the crack of the whip!) rather than doing it in order to provide a better life for themselves and their children. Working for “a better life” is only an excuse for illegal Mexican invaders, capitalist pig!
And, worst of all, the perversion of the noble progressive tax. Did you know that only 47 percent of Americans pay zero or negative income taxes? How grotesque it is that only half of all Americans get to benefit from every government service without having to contribute anything. If only we could get those greedy capitalist pigs at the top to pay their fair share…
By the way, my comment was in response to Joseph Marstalin’s stirring indictment of the failed ethos known as capitalism. If the greedy capitalist pigs will not turn over their wealth to The People, then The People will take it by force!
@george
Don’t be surprised Joseph Marstalin is a professional troll, the lengthy obnoxious posts are typical, he will ruin this blog.
BTW, I did reply to some his crap but my reply has been censored, the Contributors should now better…
Well, I must apologize if someone disagreeing with you strongly, for thoroughly and carefully argued reasons, has completely ruined your fun here. But you just have understand that I can’t be a part of your mutual admiration society unless I think your views are correct. Nor can I quite adapt myself to the positive procedure of misstating someone’s name [or calling them another name] as a substitute for thinking about what they have to say and arguing either for or against it.