Peter Kirk Responds To Assure Us God is Not to Blame for Haiti's Disaster
I previously wrote: "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." Link. Peter Kirk showed up in the comments with some answers.
Kirk wrote:
Notice first the kind of biblical literacy Kirk puts on display. No, by these same standards God could not stop Abraham from killing his son, nor could God convince Moses to go to free the Israelites from slavery, nor could he free those slaves, nor could he convince Gideon to do as he wished, nor Jonah to preach to the people of Nineveh, nor Joseph not divorce Mary, nor convince Paul to stop persecuting Christians. Naw. God just cannot do those things without turning them into robots, ya see. For Christians are conveniently illiterate when it comes to the Bible and they see things in terms of black and white fallacies when defending their faith. Oh, I see it now. God cannot turn people from their ways unless they are made to be robots. Yes. That's the answer. You see, any answer will work when looking for one.
The fact is none of us have very much free will in the first place, so there seems to be little or no moral reason to limit it further when we seek to do horrendous evil. We don't even value free will when it comes to people who do wrong. Why should we? Just lock criminals up in jail, which is a much more humane way of treating bad people than killing them and sending them to hell due to an earthquake.
Kirk probably did not watch the video I linked to earlier. Human beings have always been attracted to live on fault lines around the earth, and this was so before they knew of the devastating consequences of doing so. We want what they give us and since we're risk-taking creatures we do so knowing the dangers. That's how God created us from the very beginning, they say. Still, I wonder if many people who live in these zones around the earth do so because they have faith that nothing disastrous will happen in their lifetimes. That's what faith can get ya. Los Angeles and Istanbul will probably be decimated within the next half century because of earthquakes. In any case, why do these fault lines offer us so much when a perpetual miracle working God could give us what we want without them at all? Why didn't God add wings on our backs to fly to safety when one took place?
Is this the only other option Kirk sees? Really? The only other option is to lock people up? Is that what good parents do who make their sons and daughters into good people? We know why kids turn bad. Sometimes it's due to faulty parenting and other times because of the influences in their lives. Is Kirk saying God cannot do what good parents do or that he cannot control the influences in our lives? Yes, that's the answer: God is perfectly good, it's just that he's impotent.
But the bottom line is that no parent will give a child more freedom than he's responsible for. Do good parents give young children a razor blade, or a shot of whiskey, or the keys to the car before they can handle this freedom? Of course not. And yes, parents do send their children to their rooms and ground them. They do so to keep their children from doing harm to others and to themselves. We do this with criminals too, but only for the most heinous of crimes not minor offenses anyway.
This is why I wrote earlier that Defending the Faith Makes a Person Stupid. It really does! Nothing personal Peter. It's just that these answers are really really dumb. That's what faith does to you.
Kirk wrote:
But in answer to some of your questions, yes, God could have for example spoken to King Charles X (or for that matter to today's bankers) and asked him to forgive Haiti's debts. Very likely he did speak to him. But the king, as a selfish and sinful man (like all of us), didn't do what God asked him, or would have asked him. God could have forced him to do it, but only by turning people into robots.
Notice first the kind of biblical literacy Kirk puts on display. No, by these same standards God could not stop Abraham from killing his son, nor could God convince Moses to go to free the Israelites from slavery, nor could he free those slaves, nor could he convince Gideon to do as he wished, nor Jonah to preach to the people of Nineveh, nor Joseph not divorce Mary, nor convince Paul to stop persecuting Christians. Naw. God just cannot do those things without turning them into robots, ya see. For Christians are conveniently illiterate when it comes to the Bible and they see things in terms of black and white fallacies when defending their faith. Oh, I see it now. God cannot turn people from their ways unless they are made to be robots. Yes. That's the answer. You see, any answer will work when looking for one.
The fact is none of us have very much free will in the first place, so there seems to be little or no moral reason to limit it further when we seek to do horrendous evil. We don't even value free will when it comes to people who do wrong. Why should we? Just lock criminals up in jail, which is a much more humane way of treating bad people than killing them and sending them to hell due to an earthquake.
And he did show the Haitians that their country was an earthquake zone, through devastating earthquakes in the 18th century. But they went ahead and built unstable buildings there anyway.
Kirk probably did not watch the video I linked to earlier. Human beings have always been attracted to live on fault lines around the earth, and this was so before they knew of the devastating consequences of doing so. We want what they give us and since we're risk-taking creatures we do so knowing the dangers. That's how God created us from the very beginning, they say. Still, I wonder if many people who live in these zones around the earth do so because they have faith that nothing disastrous will happen in their lifetimes. That's what faith can get ya. Los Angeles and Istanbul will probably be decimated within the next half century because of earthquakes. In any case, why do these fault lines offer us so much when a perpetual miracle working God could give us what we want without them at all? Why didn't God add wings on our backs to fly to safety when one took place?
How about this argument: Suppose you have a teenage child who goes out, with your permission, and commits some minor offence. Are you to blame? Well, you could have locked the young person up at home 24 hours a day, so yes, by the standards you apply to God, that anything you could have stopped is your fault, you are to blame. But is that responsible parenting? No, it is child abuse. Similarly God could lock us up 24 hours a day so we are unable to sin, but that would be to abuse us, not to be a responsible and loving Father.
Is this the only other option Kirk sees? Really? The only other option is to lock people up? Is that what good parents do who make their sons and daughters into good people? We know why kids turn bad. Sometimes it's due to faulty parenting and other times because of the influences in their lives. Is Kirk saying God cannot do what good parents do or that he cannot control the influences in our lives? Yes, that's the answer: God is perfectly good, it's just that he's impotent.
But the bottom line is that no parent will give a child more freedom than he's responsible for. Do good parents give young children a razor blade, or a shot of whiskey, or the keys to the car before they can handle this freedom? Of course not. And yes, parents do send their children to their rooms and ground them. They do so to keep their children from doing harm to others and to themselves. We do this with criminals too, but only for the most heinous of crimes not minor offenses anyway.
This is why I wrote earlier that Defending the Faith Makes a Person Stupid. It really does! Nothing personal Peter. It's just that these answers are really really dumb. That's what faith does to you.