Guess What? God Isn't to Blame for the Haitian Disaster!

We atheists do not revel in tragedy. We hate the fact that people suffer in this world as all people do. It's just that in times like these it's good to be an atheist. Earthquakes happen. That's all there is to it. What we revel in are attempts by Christians to justify God's actions. They are pathetic, all of them. And guess what? God isn't to blame for the Haitian Disaster! Nope. God is completely good and loving towards us all. His ways are perfect. Atheists like myself and Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins and Valerie Tarico have had a heyday with Christian responses so far. Now there is another one.

It's being claimed that the tragedy was due to something else. Greed. In 1804 Haiti fought for it's independence from France but as Peter Kirk tells us:

In July 1825, King Charles X of France sent a fleet of fourteen vessels and thousands of troops to reconquer [Haiti]. Under pressure, President Boyer [of Haiti] agreed to a treaty by which France formally recognized the independence of the nation in exchange for a payment of 150 million francs (the sum was reduced in 1838 to 90 million francs) – an indemnity for profits lost from the slave trade.

In other words, the Haitians were asked to pay twice as much for the freedom of their tiny mountainous republic than the USA was asked to pay for the Louisiana Purchase, of an area 77 times larger than Haiti. The people of Haiti did manage to pay the 90 million francs, estimated to be worth billions of dollars at today’s prices. But, according to this 2009 article from the Sunday Times (linked to by Avaaz.org), it took them over a century to do so:

In 1947, Haiti finally paid off the original reparations, plus interest. Doing so left it destitute, corrupt, disastrously lacking in investment and politically volatile. Haiti was trapped in a downward spiral, from which it is still impossible to escape. It remains hopelessly in debt to this day.

Then into this ongoing disaster zone came this month’s devastating earthquake. Was this a natural disaster? Well, yes and no. The magnitude 7.0 earthquake was of course a natural event. But that was not the main cause of the loss of life. I have lived through a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in a major city, in Baku in 2000. (Well, they said at the time it was magnitude 7.0, but the latest data gives a figure of 6.8.) In that earthquake “26 people died as a primary result, but only three people in collapsing buildings”. The latest (28th January) confirmed death toll in Haiti is 170,000.

Why the huge difference? Yes, there were probably geological factors which caused the ground acceleration in Haiti to be higher than in Baku. But surely there is far more here. It must be the poverty and overcrowding in Port-au-Prince, and the poor standard of building work in a known earthquake zone, which have greatly exacerbated the damage and casualty rate. In addition poverty and poor infrastructure have hampered relief efforts.

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So now, guess what? Based on the above, Christians like Glenn Peoples are claiming:

The reason for Haiti’s poverty is not their mythical pact with the devil but rather some unscrupulous lending by other nations.

I don't know what kind of mileage he's trying to get out of this fact, if this is all true. Keep in mind Peter Kirk also said what he wrote:

...is not an attempt to answer the question of why God allowed this natural disaster. But it is intended to put the disaster in perspective.

Yet, Christians still try to open any window to show their God is not to be blamed for anything. Do they think God could not have spoken to King Charles X not to charge the Haitians so much for their independence, like he supposedly did in the Bible? And do they think God could not have let the Haitians find gold, or oil, or diamonds on their land? Either one of these deeds would do the trick. Or, do they think God could not have inspired an industrial genius like Henry Ford or Thomas Edison to start a group of factories that would produce what the rest of the world needed? But no. God couldn't do any of this, could he? It would spoil the Haitians and they might be able to feed themselves and be well off like Americans have been, and that's worse than suffering through this earthquake, right? No, whatever I suggest God either could not do it or he knows what's best, right?

So then I throw my final trump card down and suggest the Perpetual Miracle Objection. Why didn't God just do a perpetual miracle by not allowing that earthquake to ever take place? If God wants to remain hidden then this kind of miracle would do the trick, for if the earthquake never took place we would never know God was involved precisely because it didn't happen. And if God can do perpetual miracles then the earth does not need fault lines which human beings have been attracted to from the dawn of our species before we knew they had dangerous devastating consequences.

Come on, at the very basic level of morality a God who revealed himself to human beings would at least point out where the fault lines are and warn us not to build cities on them, and in the process show us how to get what we need without living near them.

God cannot be exonerated no matter which way his defenders turn.

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