A Yemenia Airlines plane crashed into the Indian Ocean Tuesday. Of the 153 people on board, only one survived, 13-year-old Bahia Baraki of Paris. Said her Dad: “I can’t say that it’s a miracle, I can say that it is God’s will.”
I guess the relatives of the other 152 passengers, the ones who didn’t make the cut with God, are real glad to hear that.
Or maybe they made the cut? A question of perspective, perhaps?
Or maybe they made the cut?
Then why are so many believers so scared to “make the cut” and so sad and angry when one of their loved ones “make the cut”?
“Transcendental logic” at work again?
(nutcases…)
I’ve relayed this story as a joke before during my frequent rants on religion. I didn’t think it actually happened though. It’s sad.
Amen
What strikes me about survivors’ remarks such as “God loves me,” or “God was looking out for me,” or, as in this case, “it was God’s will” is not just their smugness and superiority but their cruelty to the friends and relatives of those who didn’t survive.
He explicitly denied it was a miracle, opting for the vastly less self-obsessed formulation, “It’s God’s will.”
This is almost circularly true (as in, “It happened; there’s nothing any of us can about it but accept that we have very little control over such things.”), and really shouldn’t get any of us atheos all fired up.
It is a fatalistic observation, and one that very well may be shared without any sort of implied recrimination by the relatives of those who found, “God’s will” less favorable.
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“God’s will” isn’t a fatalistic explanation to a theist. It’s an actual choice by an intelligent being, God. It’s the Problem of Suffering getting right up in your face: What kind of god wills *this*?
I know “it was God’s will” is an insult and even though I doubt the people who say it mean it as an insult, I cringe every time I hear it.
It may not be fatalistic to a (certain, particular) theist, but I think that is the spirit in which it is uttered by non-theists – i.e. 95% of the human race.
And that is how I think it should be taken.
Ack!
I misconstrued Chris’ point in my response.
I sincerely believe that “It is God’s will.” IS, for all practical purposes, a fatalistic observation, even for a theist.
It is how “they” do fatalism, and (to repeat myself), I do believe “we” would do well to take it in that spirit.
Yes, they believe God willed it and that is a bit weird, but without getting too literalistic about it, I think “they” are fallible humans and in this case, and fallible humans are prone to interpreting consequential events in theistic terms.
We can disagree with that, and we can push back when they get aggressive about it, but I don’t think its necessary to pick on them when they utter innocuous observations about extraordinary circumstances.
God has gradually decided to kill fewer people in airplanes and more by cancer and heart disease. God ha also decided to kill fewer by war.
God works in mysterious ways.
Snippet gives too much slack to God-invoking believers, in my view. Saving airline passengers from a terrifying death is not some neutral event, it is an obvious boon and what every believer would fervently pray for for his family, friends, and the rest of humanity. Attributing a personally happy outcome to God’s will *is* a tautology, but I would think that someone who sees God’s hand in his own reprieve from a fatal disaster would be at least troubled by the clear absence of any rational or just basis for his salvation over those of his peers.