I heard this conversation between two women at a wine reception a while back:
Woman A: "waiting for you while you were getting wine, I heard way too much about this lady's divorce"
Woman B: "oh no! It's like 'stop, too much information, I didn't want to know that!'"
Woman A: "exactly"
Woman B: "so what happened with her divorce?"
The horrific earthquake in Haiti has brought out a familiar din from believers: "thank insert preferred deity here that I or someone I know survived"
Philosophers and atheists (not a mutually exclusive set) have often pointed out a problem with this thinking: does it mean that preferred deity wanted to kill everyone who did die? I find this one of the more perplexing things about our reaction to crises. Our brains flood us with a huge rush of relief when we or, in a sort of mental proxy, someone we know/care about, survives a dangerous event. By all means: be happy! Celebrate that survival. But at the same time, don't diminish the loss of others. Plenty of god-fearing people die every day. The stock response, by believers, to that is something about God having a mysterious reason for His capricious choices.
Without trying to address an age-old question about God and suffering, I have to say that such a response is a bunch of patronizing bullshit. Tell me to thank god when I survived while my spouse/sibling/parent/friend died and I might just punch you in the face.
If we step back and look at the statistics, believing in a god does not improve your odds of surviving a calamity like that. Rather, it is living in a structure that was built to withstand an earthquake, tsunami, tornado, hurricane, or whatever natural disaster is a risk where you live. Since it costs money to live in such a structure, you might be better off thanking money for survival, rather than god.
My heart (and money) go out to the survivors, let's leave God out of it.
