ACTS OF GOD

From Philosopedia

ACTS OF GOD

An “act of God” is generally understood to include any extraordinary interruption of human life by a natural cause (such as an earthquake, perils of the sea, tornadoes, a severe flood) that, even with care, could not have been avoided. However, if events can be foreseen (that, for example, rain will leak through a defective roof and do considerable damage), failure to take the necessary precautions constitutes “negligence.” Legal cases may arise if a fire in a building with lightning rods has been caused by lightning, in which case insurance companies may claim that the fire was caused by an act of God and is, therefore, not indemnifiable.

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a leading Baptist minister, objected in 1997 to language describing such natural phenomena as tornadoes and floods as “acts of God.” “I feel that I have indeed witnessed many ‘acts of God,’ but I see His actions in the miraculous sparing of life, the sacrifice and selfless spirit in which so many responded to the pain of others,” he explained.

State Representative Shane Broadway, who is aware that the term has been in insurance policies for ages and insists that the term be continued and included, retorted, “I’m just as much a Baptist as the Governor is.”

Historically, theists have not complained about the expression. Survivors of events involving an Act of God, such as a hurricane, often respond with “thanks to God” that they were saved, overlooking Who it is analogously that they are blaming for killing the others or else implying that God wreaks havoc without reason. As for those unfortunates who were hurt or killed, shamans or other divines are quick to declare that God is punishing man for something specific, and various explanations are offered as to how now to regain God’s love.

Voltaire, commenting on the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 in which 30,000 perished, many of them in their churches, wrote, “Unhappy mortals! Dark and mourning earth! / A frighted gathering of human kind!/ Eternal lingering of useless pain! . . . . God holds the chain: is not himself enchained. . . . Under a just God, no one is miserable who has not deserved misery. . . . Why suffer we, then, under one so just. . . . “ He then asks, “. . . how conceive a God supremely good / Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,/Yet scatters evil with so large a hand?”

{Chemistry and Industry, 8 April 1997; The Freethinker, June 1997}

Examples of such acts involving Muslims include the following:

• 1980: A Pakistani airliner caught fire and crashed after taking off from Jeddah, killing 301;

• 1987: In Mecca, when security forces clashed with Iranians demonstrating against the United States, 402 were killed and 649 were wounded;

• 1990: Pilgrims numbering 1,426 were killed in a stampede;

• 1991: An air crash killed 98;

• 1991: In another stampede, 270 pilgrims died as worshippers surged forward for the ritual “stoning the devil”;

• 1997: More than 200 were killed and 1,000 injured as fire engulfed an encampment outside the holy city.

Freethinkers, who have no need for such an expression, use the scientific method to elucidate such occurrences.

{CE}