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Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn’t care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.

The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.

Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, “this might be all part of God’s plan,” or “there are no accidents in life,” or “everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves” – these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this.

—Sam Harris

Transcript:

And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.” True story. And so, the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.”

And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other. Desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It’s cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti; on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, et cetera. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy, I’m optimistic something good may come. But right now, we’re helping the suffering people, and the suffering is unimaginable.

Just think, there are millions of people who listen to and respect this man. It’s unbelievable.

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I am a geek.

I sense your incredulity. As evidence, I hold up my screen name. VorJack was the name of my first roleplaying character — in the Marvel Comics Roleplaying game, of all things.

Have I established my bona fides? Let’s move on.

During high school, one of my friends was a fantasy geek. Like most teens of that type, he was working on a novel. Mind you, he wasn’t working on the plot or the characters. He was working on the most important part for a geek: the magic system.

Magical Realism

It was surprisingly difficult. At the time it was popular to treat magic as a science, and so the magic system had to be rational. No Harry Potter wand waving allowed. It had to start from some basic premises about the nature of magic, such as where magical energy came from and how people could manipulate it. From there it had to logically develop into magical practices, practitioners and traditions. The goal was a system of magic that was roughly self-consistent.

Everything should naturally flow from the premises: once you’d accepted them, everything else should make sense. But of course, my friend had complete control over what those premises were. This was, after all, fiction. These premises could also be vague. What is magical energy? Why, it’s energy that is magical. Nor did these premises have to be justified. Why does magic run in ley-lines and form pools of magic at the junctures? Because that is its nature.

The final result had to allow my friend to write the incredible scenes he had in his head, but not be so powerful that it threw the world he was creating out of balance. As long as he got that right, everything else could be molded to suit.

Wave Your Theological Wand

Pullquote: The goal of theology is to sound plausible without providing real information.

Now, at this point we were attending a Catholic high school with classes on introductory theology. Over time, I began to see a resemblance. Like a magic system, theology seemed to begin with certain premises. Like the magic system, these seemed to be vague. God is omnipotent. Well, what does the mean exactly? They claim God is timeless. How can something be timeless?

These questions didn’t have answers because these words didn’t have meaning. Like “magical energy” and “ley-lines,” their goal is to sound plausible without providing real information. These were the premises that the theologian could bend to suit the need. And the result of this process was to describe an active, interventionist God while still accurately describing the world we live in.

I think that’s why Stephen Law’s God of Eth example works so well. Law takes the “Problem of Evil” argument and turns it into the “Problem of Good” argument. The arguments the reconcile the premise of a good deity to our reality work just as well for the premise of an evil deity. The premises and the resulting arguments are unfixed from reality. Nothing pins them them down.

God will punish women by aborting their fetus through a miscarriage.

“Give them, O LORD–what will You give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.” (Hosea 9:14)

God teaches the use of a bizarre ritual using cursed “bitter water” to abort a fetus who was conceived through infidelity. (Numbers 5:11-21)

God orders Moses to kill every Midianite woman who was no longer a virgin. (many of these women would obviously have been pregnant) (Numbers 31:15-18)

God promises to destroy the infants of Samaria and rip open the stomachs of pregnant women.

The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open. (Hosea 13:16)

God allows the pregnant women of Tappuah to be ripped open.

At that time Menahem, starting out from Tirzah, attacked Tiphsah and everyone in the city and its vicinity, because they refused to open their gates. He sacked Tiphsah and ripped open all the pregnant women. (2 Kings 15:16)

God commands the killing of infants and nursing babies.

Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. (1 Samuel 15:3)

God repays your enemies by destroying their babies.

Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us. He who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. (Psalms 137:8-9)

The BEattitude makes a good point:

Apparently all life is precious to the god of the Bible, unless it is a fetus conceived out of wedlock or conception happens within an “enemy” nation that does not worship him. The Bible teaches that abortion is acceptable if God performs it or he commands it to be done through contaminated water or by violent force….

You can be a pro-life supporter, but leave your Bible at home. It’s horrific and violent stories against innocent infants and unborn children have no place in a discussion on morality and the value of human life.

Indeed. The “always pro-life” position does not come from the Bible, but from conscience. If a person really get their morals from the Bible, be afraid — you never know what God might tell them to do next, because God commanded just about every evil imaginable in the Bible.

When I believed in an interventionist Christian God, the universe didn’t make any sense at all. I just had to keep telling myself it didn’t make any sense because God’s thoughts were higher than my thoughts, and somehow it all made sense to him.

Once I abandoned supernaturalism in general, and god concepts as part of that, suddenly the universe made perfect sense. The universe is what it is. It offers no plans, no inherent meaning, and asks nothing of us in return. If a meteorite wipes us all out tomorrow, it won’t be an act of vengeance, or retribution, or any sort of malevolent act of any kind. It will just be the natural workings of well understood physical laws and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This freed me to accept bad things happening with no seeming explanation, and it also inspired me to create what comfort and happiness I can in the people I care about. The universe won’t do it for me.

Well said, Ty!

Part 4 of the Pillars of Faith series.

The name of this theologian may be unfamiliar, but most men of God are his heirs.

Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Howard Ahmanson, James Dobson, D. James Kennedy — almost every fundamentalist follows Rousas John Rushdoony, 1916-2001. Newsweek once referred to Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation as the think tank of the religious right.

But what you won’t hear in Sunday school is that Rushdoony is a racist, sexist, Jew-hating bigot who denies the holocaust. Don’t take it from me: The British Centre for Science Education refers to him as “a man every bit as potentially murderous as Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot or anyone else you may want to name amongst the annals of evil.”

Democracy Is of the Devil

Pullquote: To keep the secular indoctrination of sciences, arts, and feminism from poisoning society, Rushdoony advocated the death penalty according to Leviticus laws.

R.J.’s basic philosophy was that the Old Testament gave white man dominion over the earth, the animals, women, and heathen nations. Theocracy is God’s will, and democracy is apostasy — only Christians should be able to vote.

To keep the secular indoctrination of sciences, arts, and feminism from poisoning society, Rushdoony advocated the death penalty according to Leviticus laws. Among the 18 capital crimes were of course, adultery, witchcraft, homosexuality, and blasphemy.

Rushdoony is the driving backbone behind the home schooling movement, to guarantee kids would be brainwashed by the O.T. and not by history and literature.

Because R.J. sought to reconstruct the O.T. laws and overturn the apostate civic society, his work is called the Reconstructionist Movement.

Dominion and Stoning

R.J.’s foundation is a web ministry and magazine espousing Reconstructionist theology, promoting home schooling as defense against secularism. “The state, the school, the arts and sciences, law, economics, and every other sphere [is] to be under Christ the King. Nothing is exempt from His dominion.”

The magazine publishes thought provoking articles like W. Einwechter’s on stoning the rebellious child. “It displays the wisdom and mercy of God in restraining wickedness so that the righteous might flourish in peace.” (Jan. 99)

Slavery was Awesome for the Negro

Pullquote: “The move from Africa to America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro, materially and spiritually.”

R.J. is best known for Institutes of Biblical Law, an 800 page opus on “the heresy of democracy.”

Here are a few interesting statements from the book:

“The move from Africa to America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro, materially and spiritually.”

Lazy slaves were “an albatross that hung the South, that bled it.”

“The University of Timbuktu never existed. The only thing that existed in Timbuktu was a small mud hut.”

“Some people are by nature slaves and will always be so.”

“The urge to dominion is God-given and is basic to the nature of man. An aspect of this dominion is property.”

“The false witness borne during World War II with respect to Germany (i.e., the death camps) is especially notable and revealing…. the number of Jews who died after deportation is approximately 1,200,000 … very many of these people died of epidemics.”

“All men are NOT created equal before God.”

“The matriarchal society is thus decadent and broken… matriarchal character of Negro life is due to the moral failure of Negro men, their failure …to provide authority. The same is true of American Indian tribes which are also matriarchal.”

And here are some quotes from Foundations of Social Order:

“An employer therefore has a property right to prefer whom he will, and he can prefer whom he will in terms of color, creed, race, or national origin.”

“Selective breeding in Christian countries has led to … the progressive elimination of defective persons.”

“A ‘Litany’ popular in these circles identifies ‘God’ with the city, with the ’spick, black nigger, bastard, Buddhahead, and kike,’ with ‘all men,this concept runs deeply through the so-called Civil Rights Revolution… But …no society has ever existed without class and caste lines.”

The True Agenda of the Christian Right

But what about Christ’s softer love thy neighbour touch?

His son-in-law, North, explains for him that the Sermon on the Mount was clearly an ethical guide for slaves only!

Most of R.J.’s followers wisely keep his name out of their sermons. But careful examination of the Institutes on which their work is based reveals the truth: power and privilege for white men — God’s only true incarnation — is indeed the true agenda of the Christian right.

Lorette C. Luzajic writes about all kinds of interesting people at Fascinating People.

I have a confession to make. I went Catholic Mass on Palm Sunday. Lest anyone think the spirit has moved me, I went because I lost a bet with one of my non-believing brethren.

I took my medicine like a man, and dutifully sat through the service. Truthfully, I spent most of the service wondering things like: “How can this huge building not be taxed?” and “Some of the greatest classical music was written for the Catholic mass, why don’t American Catholics use it?”

“The Poor You Will Always Have With You”

Then through the fog of my own reason I heard the priest read the following from the Gospel of Mark:

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.

The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me.

She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Now this caught my attention: the “people” wanted to sell expensive perfume in order to feed the poor, and Jesus thought it was a better idea to anoint his body with it?!

What Would Jesus Do?

When asking WWJD, aren’t we all suppose to believe that he loves the poor and wants to help them? Yet here he is basically telling the poor to take a hike because his body needs to be properly anointed. Did Jesus really need that perfume?

Doesn’t seem like Jesus acted very Jesusy here.

But what about this “the poor you will always have with you” stuff? Isn’t Jesus part of the three in one all powerful creator God? Doesn’t that mean he can “poof” the poor away in an instant if he wants to? Why doesn’t he?

If Jesus is all powerful, the poor exist because he wants them to exist. Doesn’t seem very worthy of worship.

If Jesus is incapable of raising the poor from poverty, he isn’t all powerful. Doesn’t seem very God-like.

Either way, I’m not putting on my “Sunday best” to go worship him.

Bill Noorlander is a lawyer in Milwaukee, where he live with his wife and four kids. He blogs at Bill Post.