Human compassion has produced the usual generous outpouring of aid to devastated Haiti. Meanwhile, Obama has shown himself in a statement today to be a standard American politician, having included among the admirable qualities of the Haitians the fact that their faith has been unwavering. Why is holding on to religious faith in the face of contradictory evidence a virtue? In any other field—climatology, say–maintaining a belief despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary would be seen as a lamentable failure of rationality. If a human being had foreknowledge of, and the capacity to prevent, a coming disaster like the Haitian earthquake and yet did nothing, he would be viewed as a monster. Pat Robertson’s interpretation of the Haitian earthquake as divine punishment for voodoo and for an alleged “pact with the devil” has been universally mocked, but it at least represents an effort to explain why God, who had both knowledge of the earthquake and the capacity to prevent it, nevertheless chose not to act in this particular instance, though he acts to save other lives all the time, such as when keeping America safe since 9/11 or answering a family’s prayers for a cancer victim. Interpreting the source of divine displeasure that gave rise to natural disasters was a regular function of preachers before secularism cut religion in the West down to size (on May 26, 1703, for example, during the most destructive storm in British history, the vicar of Cheshunt preached a sermon entitled: “The Necessity of Repentance Asserted: In order to Avert those Judgements which the Present War, and Strange Unseasonableness of the Weather at Present, Seem to Threaten this Nation with.”). Obviously, anyone who interprets God’s will is going to fill it in with his own biases (if seeing retribution for breaking the first two commandments is a bias). But I’d rather have consistency in the inclination to ascribe meaning to events in God’s universe than a retreat into obscurantism–“the human mind cannot fathom God’s reasons”–when the candidates for a meaning are unacceptable. The mind cannot supply any possible reason for God’s inaction here that doesn’t either grotesquely violate one’s sense of fairness or imply fault on the side of the sufferers, yet a reason there must be, according to our demand for a God who rules the world not by caprice but according to good cause. And however politically incorrect Robertson’s interpretation of the consequences of idolatry currently is, that interpretation has an impeccable pedigree in the Bible and has never been officially repudiated. Contrary to the assertions of believers, it is easier to understand how unmerited suffering can arise in an undirected universe than in a directed one and requires less torturing of reason and perverse implication of fault. And though we may live in a universe of random injustice, the human capacity to conquer such injustice grows by the day, thanks to the tireless application of the scientific method to nature.
Many are undoubtedly now praying to God to save the earthquake victims, an act of empathy arising out of human love that thousands of other humans, believers and unbelievers alike, are acting on.
Where is Colonel Sir John Yardley when you need him?
Heather Mac Donald writes:
True, but I think the problem wasn’t with what Robertson said, but with his authority (or lack thereof) to say it. Traditional religions require some kind of authority to make these assertions about God’s will: you have to be a prophet, or a sage, or something other than a TV preacher-entrepreneur.
The truly unfortunate part about this is that it masks all of the good work that his relief organization has done. I used to volunteer with DWB, and occasionally ran into those guys in OB. They are always on the ground first and well-prepared. He’s maiming the fundraising efforts of his own organization, which in my opinion is very competent and is absolutely needed at a time like this.
“the tireless application of the scientific method to nature.”
Tell the Haitians with squashed children to take consolation in the Large Hadron Collider.
“Why is holding on to religious faith in the face of contradictory evidence a virtue?”
Faith can mean ‘belief’ and it can be ‘trust.’ Religious people often conflate the concepts, but, nonetheless, it should be pointed out that faith in the sense of trust IS commonly felt to be virtuous when it implies a willingness to give some person that you have known the ‘benefit of the doubt.’ For example, we might say, ‘that’s for having faith in me.’ Or we might have faith that so and so will ‘do the right thing’ … whether or not Faith as trust itself makes sense in the context of religion and virtuous ‘holding fast to’ in another issue.
edit “thanks for having..”…is another issue.
@Aaron
How does one distinguish a real from an ersatz prophet? Certainly not by the use of television to spread the message. Presumably Jeremiah would have used it, had it been available.
I will be meeting a group of old friends this weekend, who are almost to a man believers and liberal democrats. I know they’ll bring up Robertson’s idiocy, and look forward to observing that once you start putting faith in crackpot theories (God and religion) this is what you often end up with.
And “tell” them you would have to do, since a very large portion have failed to learn how to read.
Galatians, Chapter 6, Verse 7 would seem relevant here.
@Narr
Why not substitute (Cultural Marxism) for (God and Religion) — and see what kind of response you get.
@Lesacre
Mostly because they wouldn’t know what I’m talking about, and they won’t be making their remarks on Cultural Marxist grounds anyway (if I understand the phrase as you mean it). FTR, I find Marxism of any stripe to be baseless.
Heather:
“But I’d rather have consistency in the inclination to ascribe meaning to events in God’s universe than a retreat into obscurantism–“the human mind cannot fathom God’s reasons”–when the candidates for a meaning are unacceptable.”
Why is this a uniquely religious “retreat” into obscurantism? You make precisely the same point in your very next sentence. The only possible meanings you can comprehend are unacceptable to you:
“The mind cannot supply any possible reason for God’s inaction here that doesn’t either grotesquely violate one’s sense of fairness or imply fault on the side of the sufferers, yet a reason there must be, according to our demand for a God who rules the world not by caprice but according to good cause.”
Your own desire for consistent explanations of what I suppose would be called “God’s will” seems not entirely dissimilar to the scientific search for the elusive unified field/theory of everything — known as God in religious circles. I suspect you have no problem assuming that there is, indeed, a unified field which we will eventually understand. The New Testament could conceivably be described as advancing our understanding of the divine.
To characterize the issue here as one of explaining God’s inaction, however, is to frame it somewhat inaccurately, I think, when it is really a question of explaining God’s actions. It is not a matter of God’s capacity to anticipate and prevent an earthquake. He is seen as the agent of destruction. It seems to me that there are three, equally powerful, strains of religious thinking on that subject.
The first is devastation as punishment, both as a consequence of waywardness and as a deterrent. Those who reject Robertson’s assignment of blame for the earthquake, itself, and its results, as scientifically and socially unacceptable, are often perfectly willing to assign blame for hurricanes on human arrogance, or ascribe the post quake consequences in Haiti to U.S. foreign policy. “Magical thinking” is hardly confined to religious quarters. You will also find large swathes of believers who reject Robertson’s diagnosis on the assumption that even he cannot presume to know God’s will. Democratization and individualism are not strictly secular phenomena or trends!
The second longstanding strain in religious thought casts human suffering — and the cruelty or cataclysms from which it derives — as a test which takes many forms. While it may be described as a test of faith, the desired results include everything from surviving the worst with one’s humanity intact to doing good in the face of evil, to forgiving others for their imperfections.
The third is that there is a higher purpose in all things which “the mind cannot supply.” The (decidedly imperfect) analogy which occurs to me is that of a young child getting an inoculation who cannot understand why his loving mother would let a doctor hurt him with a needle. When that sort of higher purpose is clear enough, it is perhaps not such an “irrational” leap to believe there are similar workings writ large. Are we not hard wired to seek, assume and recognize patterns? I’d even suggest that it’s not entirely irrational to believe the world is flat, when you would never put your martini glass down on a beach ball, but I digress.
In any case, if God is the agent of punishment, or testing, or of preparation for the unknown, there is nothing inconsistent in the idea of special pleadings, loosely construed.
A good analogy is a difficult thing to construct, and is as likely to derail a discussion as advance it, so I’d just note that mine are intended as descriptives, not argument. This whole post, in fact, simply represents my understanding of the answers to the questions posed, not my own personal beliefs, or lack of them (which I have no interest in sharing).
It’s enough to make a guy wonder just exactly how a Godless universe would differ from one in which God interacts – or conspicuously chooses not to interact – in such a way that no consistent or meaningful pattern can possibly be perceived by an intelligent observer.
Heather… white space! Please! It’s almost impossible to read such a chunk of text on a computer screen.
Just a thought: There ought to be some blogs of this kind where nobody under 28 or so is allowed to comment.
A lot of the witty and bright but incredibly shallow comments based on some cock-sure ideology almost certainly come from kids in their 20s who are well-endowed cognitively but who have yet to have their ideologies burnt by reality and therefore speak with a surety about things without feeling any need to have known anything about the particular subject on which they’re commenting and without paying any attention to what the people they’re arguing with have actually said.
Again, I love these guys and on some days I’m one of them but it gets annoying to see it in the same commenters over and over again and sometimes I just feel like shouting for them to get the hell off my lawn.
And to approach the subject of the post (but only with a logical parallel), a semi-worthwhile article by Jacob Sullum that I just read: http://townhall.com/columnists/JacobSullum/2010/01/13/roeders_rescue?page=full&comments=true
I far prefer to schmooze with an actual abortion clinic bomber than someone who claims that: 1. Abortion is murder 2. Killing mass abortionists is equally murder and 3. it’s morally right to kill someone who is likely to kill someone else – i.e. your average Republican.
Same here, I’m with Heather in preferring Pat’s religious take on the thing than the religious take of some 85% of the American populace who believe in God’s omni-everything but who refuse to let their minds go there when attempting to locate God while 50,000 people die in torturous terror.
mnuez
@mnuez
“A lot of the witty and bright but incredibly shallow comments based on some cock-sure ideology ”
My response to such people, and progressives in general (whether on the left or right) is to transform into this fellow:
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DosNote.html
And thumb my nose at them.