What happened in Japan recently was terrible. The aftermath, and continued crisis is devastating. But is it "divine retribution," as one Japanese official put it? 38% of Americans seem to think so. So, with a well-deserved leap over the middle (the excluded one, that is), I have concluded that of those Americans polled, 38% of them are utterly insane.
What causes an earthquake is pretty basic: shifting of tectonic plates. It is a natural occurence not needing divine prompting. If God sees fit to dip his hand into the Sisyphean burden of pushing giant rocks, well then whatever. Who's going to argue? In the meanwhile, until we have some evidence of that reality, I'm content to take the operations of the planet on an evidentiary, naturalistic basis. Because I'm not insane.
*Thank you Atheist Media Blog for this gem.
3 comments:
The question is this: Would you want that kind of God to be in control?
J
J.,
Certainly not. That kind of God is better described as a devil.
In any case, whatever God is in control, I think, has some explaining to do: why withold the solution to the problem of suffering when (at least, according to Christian tradition) it is within his/her/its providence to accomplish it?
Hi Kane,
I have two comments:
1. I agree with you that an earthquake is due to the shifting of tectonic plates, which can be explained as the outworking of natural causes. But there may be more going on, especially at the initial conditions of the naturalistic causal outworking and with the very properties of nature itself. As an evangelical Christian who is sane and reasonably intelligent, and who has grappled with the problem of evil and suffering (philosophically and personally), I have come to think that there are good reasons for believing that God exists even when earthquakes and tsunamis occur. For a summary of such reasons, I have found the following two books helpful: William Dembski's The End of Christianity and William Lane Craig's On Guard.
2. I encourage us not to be quick to dismiss those people with whom we disagree as insane—even jokingly. In my experience, civility in discussion is an art too easily lost, and, once lost, especially difficult to find.
Best regards,
Hendrik
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