One thinks with sorrow of the hundreds of thousands whose lives have been horrendously lost or affected by the great Japanese earthquake and tsunami, which will put a black mark against this year 2011 in the annals of history. The earthquake is a Tectonic phenomenon - caused when the earth's Tectonic Plates grind against each other where the plates meet. As they grind they sometimes get stuck, but the pressure continues to increase nonetheless and eventually they give - releasing vast amounts of energy, and that is when you get an earthquake. Earthquakes don't just happen anywhere - they happen at specific places where the plates meet - a 'ring of fire' that circles the Pacific and is also home to volcanoes. The whole affair reminds us of the vast forces of nature that are normal for the planet itself but inimical to human life, especially when lived dangerously close to the jigsaw cracks of the earth’s surface.
I read somewhere that there were to be special prayers in the local church for the people of Japan. This well-intentioned and fundamentally kindly proceeding nevertheless shows how absurd, in the literal sense of this term, are religious belief and practice. When I saw the television footage of people going to church in Christchurch after the tragic quake there, the following thoughts pressed.
It would be very unkind to think that the churchgoers were going to give thanks that they personally escaped; one would not wish to impute selfishness and personal relief in the midst of a disaster in which many people arbitrarily and suddenly lost their lives through ‘an act of God’. If they were going to pray for their god to look after the souls of those who had died, why would they think he would do so since he had just caused, or allowed, their bodies to be suddenly and violently crushed or drowned?
Indeed, were they praising and supplicating a deity who designed a world that causes such arbitrary and sudden mass killings? An omniscient being would know all the implications of what it does, so it would know it was arranging matters with these awful outcomes. Were they praising the planner of their sufferings for their sufferings, and also begging his help to escape what he had planned?
Perhaps they think that their god was not responsible for the earthquake. If they believe that their god designed a world in which such things happen but left the world alone thereafter and does not intervene when it turns lethal on his creatures, then they implicitly question his moral character. If he is not powerful enough to do something about the world’s periodic murderous indifference to human beings, then in what sense is he a god? Instead he seems to be a big helpless ghost, useless to pray to and unworthy of praise.
For if he is not competent to stop an earthquake or save its victims, he is definitely not competent to create a world. And if he is powerful enough to do both, but created a dangerous world that inflicts violent and agonizing sufferings arbitrarily on sentient creatures, then he is vile. Utterly vile and evil and a disgrace! Yes he is a disgrace - I challenge him to answer me! Either way, what are people thinking who believe in such a being, and who go to church and mosques to praise and worship it? How, in the face of events which human kindness and concern registers as tragic and in need of help – help which human beings proceed to give to their fellows: no angels appear from the sky to do it – can they believe such an incoherent fiction as the idea of a deity? This is a perennial puzzle.
It's also an act of utter stupidity and ignorance. There is no god. There never was a god. We were not created by some omnipotent - omniscient - omnipressent deity. We and the world are the product of random forces. Forces nonrandom enough to evolve life - but random enough to cause disaster. But the Tsunami and the earthquake were not random events were they? We know what caused them. The mindless, indifferent and fundamentally 'unconcerned-with-human affairs' forces of nature.
Grow up Mankind. I beseech you. Wake up from your childhood and face the cold hard indifferent universe like a man. Stop cuddling that warm blanket you use as a sop. Stand tall Mankind. You are alone in a universe that cares not for your fate. There is no eternal justice. No meaning. Only purposelessness and the glowing twinkle of the stars - in a vastness so black - it numbs the imagination - cowering you under the sheet of your blanket - where you hide. But don't hide. Stand tall. Stick two fingers up to the universe. Say "Fuck You" to the universe. Say "Fuck You" to disaster. Say "Fuck You" to suffering. I am alive - and it makes me cry - and I will continue to question, and seek...the answers. I will not be put down by religious bigotry or theological wisequakery. I will not. I am alive. And to be alive is to question and explore and always to live in utter awe...
