Undoing A Miracle
In the wake of the tragedy in West Virginia, I’d love to see the press take a step back and try to examine how hearsay gets transformed into fact. (Sounds like a good assignment for Judy Miller.)
Looking through the front pages on Newseum, I’m struck with how often the exact same photograph is used to convey opposite meanings. With a simple change of headline, relief turns into frustration and tears of joy become tears of grief.
Also, I can’t let the Boston Herald’s awful (and in retrospect, horribly inappropriate) headline go without comment. Now that we know the twelve miners were killed, does this mean America’s prayers weren’t answered? Just like gambling addicts remember their big wins but not their losses, the fate of the twelve miners has transformed from a faith-inspiring act of God to another horrible tragedy in which it’s impolite to mention religion at all. Cute little sayings like “the Lord works in mysterious ways” are cop-outs for the logical conclusions that many of us draw from experiences like this. If something fantastic and improbable can be used as proof that there’s a benevolent god, doesn’t the reverse point toward the conclusion that a higher power is indifferent at best? If you believe in a god that could have saved these men’s lives (which I don’t, btw), why didn’t he? People are quick to throw around the word “miracle” when something wonderful happens, so what the hell do we call this?
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Sago and the Press
SAGO AND THE PRESS….Over at Courant, Roger Catlin examines television coverage of the West Virginia miner-miracle-turned-disaster and comes away unimpressed. Greg Saunders does the same for newspaper coverage, and he’s not impressed either. So what r…
Trackback by Political Animal — January 4, 2006 @ 11:37 am
If you believe in a god that could have saved these men’s lives (which I don’t, btw), why didn’t he? This was a conundrum Rabbi Kushner in his book ‘Why Bad Things Happen to Good People’ tried to explain.. His response was that “God, who neither causes nor prevents tragedies, helps by inspiring people to help…Our responding to life’s unfairness with sympathy and with righteous indignation, God’s compassion and God’s anger working through us, may be the surest proof of all of God’s reality.” Does that help?
Comment by Steve Crickmore — January 4, 2006 @ 12:06 pm
Great blog bost, BTW.
I was thinking similar thoughts. Let me expand a little, as well. The rationale goes something like this:
If a good thing happens, it is a miracle. An act of God.
If a bad thing happens to a Red state (hurricanes, tornados, freezing snowfalls), only glimmers of good things in there are an act of God.
Unless, of course, something bad happens to Blue States. Then it is an act of God punishing Liberals, lesbians, gays, secularists, etc. Why doesn’t some televangelist claim that these miners are being punished for damaging the Earth, HIS CREATION?
Personally, I don’t know if there is a God. However, if there is, I doubt It has any influence over what the hell happens here. Only WE do. We fail time and time again. Sometimes we do amazing things as well.
The more we credit or blame stuff on a higher power, the more we ignore the fact that only WE can stop this sort of thing from happening (stop mining), or at least, decrease the suffering involved (respond properly to Hurricane Katrina).
I’ll stop ranting now. :)
Comment by A Lerxst in Wonderland — January 4, 2006 @ 12:43 pm
Steve: No, it doesn’t help at all. it’s all meaning less dribble.
All of this nonsense is based on 2000 year old (plus) mythologies, and none of the rabbi’s word games are going to change that fact.
Comment by Mr Fiddlehead — January 4, 2006 @ 12:45 pm
“…so what the hell do we call this?”
I call it an abomination. The lack of control flow over information at the scene was appalling. But, fine, someone misinterpreted something they heard, and blabbed. The mine company knew within twenty minutes that the rumor was out there spreading like wildfire, and that it WRONG. OR at least unconfirmed. They waited three hours to correct it.
But the media is culpable. the can’t fucking print front pages based on a game of telephone at the site of desperate people looking to grasp upon anything they can. It’s their responsibility to confirm information, not just repeat it. I don’t care if they gently couch with words like “unconfirmed reports”. there’s nothing to imply any doubt in any of those headlines.
This deathwatch circus mentality is abhorent.
Comment by Mr Furious — January 4, 2006 @ 12:49 pm
I’m more annoyed when people use the word “miracle” to describe the heroic actions of people. Like when a pilot lands a damaged airplane, that’s not a miracle. That’s years of training and experience paying off, and we should celebrate and thank the pilot, not God.
Comment by branden — January 4, 2006 @ 12:55 pm
How about:
GOD FEASTS ON THE SOULS OF 12 MINERS
13th MINER APPARENTLY UNWORTHY
Comment by Dave — January 4, 2006 @ 1:39 pm
After his bout with cancer Lance Armstrong spoke to a group of students at Stanford University. Someone in the audience asked him how his belief in God had helped him as a patient, he replied with: “Everyone should believe in something, and I believed in surgery, chemotherapy and my doctors.” I’m assuming the questioner was disappointed and prayed for Lance anyway.
Comment by austropithicus — January 4, 2006 @ 2:05 pm
When the mine incident was first unfolding and beginning to dominate cable news, the thought that occurred to me was: What will the WH do to take advantage of this? Would Bush make a recess appointment, or would the Admin quietly issue some executive order? Surely Rove would take advantage of the fact that the media spotlight was fixed on some other story. Now that God’s ‘miracle’ based on modern rumor-mongering has evolved into mere human tragedy and outrage, is there still time to pull some strings?
Comment by buma — January 4, 2006 @ 2:08 pm
Bush, as ever is focused on the war on terror, pardon me, the global war on terror.
Comment by Steve Crickmore — January 4, 2006 @ 2:30 pm
They interviewed several miners today who said what a great job mining was. I am sure the ones responsible for starting the rumor feel like heels. To the families, who were being prepared for the worst, their men died twice.
Comment by Becky — January 4, 2006 @ 5:31 pm
There is a difference between what those families were doing in that church and the media watching what those people were doing.
The fascination, voyeurism and freak show curiosity that animates the media absoulutely distorts any good, positive and healthy resort to prayer those people exhibited.
It reduces every raw emotion of what hope and despair is down to a cause and effect vaudville that either validates or negates the worth of the human soul. It is truly sickening, outrageous, pitiful.
Your deeper or more metaphysical questions about “why?” if there is a God, I can’t answer but its a damn good question we have to keep asking.
Comment by edsdet — January 4, 2006 @ 8:33 pm
why must there be a meaning to life? or to death? a purpose or a reason? what’s that all about? can’t life just happen? and death,too. it does you know! is that too easy? it is, isn’t it? ok-nevermind!
Comment by fumes — January 4, 2006 @ 9:01 pm
What Dave said.
Comment by Lisa — January 4, 2006 @ 11:35 pm
When I was 9 yrs old a similiar event occured, my grandfather said it was worse than an tragety it was an error. I spent 3 years underground and brought out one dead and a number of injured…they were the result of Company errors, workers on Monday morning with hangovers, inexperienced, or taking risks to get “the bonus increase for the day.” I never experienced the need to consider God but to stay aware, alert and cautious and hope that I stayed lucky…my grandfathers advise has been a reality check.
Comment by john Tanton — January 5, 2006 @ 6:54 am
I’d be careful about making the same mistake “they” do with these sorts of tragedies; don’t assume that there is no God simply because the modern-day Pharisees and their zombie minions proclaim that they know His Holy Essence(TM). Bad Things have always happened, sometimes to Good People, and we simply can’t know why. Believing in a benevolent overseer comforts some, and I won’t deny them that, even if I worship in a slightly different way. I also won’t deny your frustration and feelings of atheism, or agnosticism, or whatever you believe. (I am a good liberal, after all!) It’s completely understandable to feel as you do, and I certainly don’t know any more about the workings of the universe than anyone else.
I can, however, offer my personal opinion, which is in line with the whole Free Will mode of thought expressed above. It’s possible that God doesn’t interfere with our behavior, believing that meddling would make our lives less meaningful. Or there may be another reason. The point is that when tragedies occur, it doesn’t negate the existance of God. (It’s not something that can be proven anyway, which is also why the whole Intelligent Design “theory” is so ridiculous, but that’s another story.) We humans can’t know much more beyond what we empirically observe.
Comment by Ben — January 5, 2006 @ 6:56 am
That curious religious asymmetry
The awful, tragic mining accident and the erroneous media response brings something into high relief. Greg Saunders noticed: I can't let the Boston Herald's awful (and in retrospect, horribly inappropriate) headline go without comment. Now th…
Trackback by Pharyngula — January 5, 2006 @ 7:48 am
I have to second Ben, and add that all the different world understandings of “god” can’t be reduced to the sort of slap-happy-paternalism of current thought in some schools of Christian America. Although being agnostic or atheist is a fine tradition in and of itself, a God-As-Santa isn’t all that, well, meaningful, and will lead to diminished discussions of that *atheist* understanding.
There are very few (serious, theological) traditions (and Christianity would be included in this), that have seriously believed that “god” would be some person interested in the outcome of the superbowl. To reject theological thoughts because of this sort of inanity is a little like rejecting music because of Britney Spears – obviously, she sells, but she’s not really representative of either the Beatles or Bach.
Anyway, obviously human tragedy used to be writ larger on the lives of each person: we’re pretty protected from disease and death and physical pain in the first world compared to other less medically advanced societies. And yet the god thing won’t go away. In some understandings, there’s this concept of the paternalistic genie handing crap out; but I think that overall that’s a pretty privileged interpretation. Frankly, most traditions don’t have such a blatent, non-metaphoric understanding of god – and those that do, the basic idea is that fuck-that-hurts is the default state.
Comment by Arwen — January 5, 2006 @ 8:10 am
By the way, the caption under the Kansas City Star photo reads that these were tears of joy for having been told hours before that the miners were alive. The same photo was not being used to show different emotions
Comment by jar — January 5, 2006 @ 8:18 am
A Preempted Miracle
Via Pharyngula, Greg Saunders picks up on an interesting set of similarities in the initial coverage of the tragic West Virginia coal mining collapse. Beside the clever observation that identical photos can be used to convey opposite messages, he makes…
Trackback by reality based community - scott pilutik — January 5, 2006 @ 10:10 am
Regarding the “Free Will” hypothesis – sorry, but it doesn’t cut the mustard. Most of the world’s tragedies have nothing to do with free will – disease, starvation, natural disasters, etc. If God exists, then s/he must be either sadistic, indifferent, or of very limited power – unable to create the universe in such a way as to prevent the inevitability of so much pain & suffering, and powerless to intervene in the universe post-Big Bang. I would prefer a powerless God to a sadistic one, though neither seems of much use.
Comment by Matt B — January 5, 2006 @ 10:17 am
In the judeo-christian Biblical tradition God IS interventionist, spectaculary so in the Old Testament. It clearly states that God does cause natural disasters, illness, defeat or victory in battle, political success or failure, etc. So, to state that it is inane to think of God as a being that actually does things, is to deny the very tradition that God is founded upon.
The idea of a non-interventionist God is merely trying to keep alive a primitive notion that there is a supernatural being behind everything. God used to at least fulfill the role of an intelligent agent that is behind every phenomenon. Nowadays, in the face of a mountain of evidence that a lot of stuff just happens without there being any intelligent force behind it, the non-interventionist God is a vestige of His former self.
Comment by Dave — January 5, 2006 @ 11:46 am
I respectfully disagree. I know about the biblical tradition, and the Old Testament Yahweh vs. the New Testament Groovy Jesus, and nothing that I’ve learned has lead me to believe that God is sadistic, impotent, or uncaring. Nor do I believe that modern problems disprove God’s existance or benevolence. As I stated before, Bad Things happen, have happened, and will continue to happen to Good People. Yes, the current political situation is dire right now, but let’s not succumb to that most insidious of modern diseases: myopia. Seems like lotsa folks nowadays want to immediately proclaim whatever Flavor of the Month as the “Best,” “Worst,” “Most,” etc. Let’s get some perspective; human history up until now can be viewed as a tapestry of sorrow, tragedy, cruelty, slavery, despotism, disease, and misery. We’ve come a long way; we have running water now!
Look, it’s all in how you want to perceive it. Yes, this tragedy is awful and I wouldn’t for a second blame anyone who questioned the existance of the Almighty due to this; however, my faith stands, as this latest of sorrows is no different thant the rest of human suffering. We just have to focus on the good sometimes (see Katrina, Hurricane; World Trade Center, attacks on). Not to get all cheesy on your heinies, but good can come out of bad, light can come out of darkness, etc. etc. I personally believe that God is in all of us. (Again, I know it’s cheesy, but bear with me.) Even in the course of normal events, I see simple examples of human kindness (and meanness too, obviously) that informs my perception of “God” – when tragedy strikes, these instincts come out even stronger, I believe. It doesn’t make it any less tragic, but maybe we can find it in ourselves to realize our capacity for goodness. That, after all, is the most important application of the idea of a “God” anyway; who has use for an old white dude sitting on a throne watching us make a mess of things? A much better (in my mind) way of thinking holds thusly: “God” is that part of you that wants to performs some altruistic act, some magnanimous gesture and/or make the world a better place. The evil residing in the hearts of men? Well, you can chalk that up to the Devil, human frailty, or whatever else you want. (I haven’t figured that one out yet.)
An aside: Channeling my wife (a very liberal Alabamian), I will say that this is one of the reasons Democrats/liberals have a tough time relating to the so called “Red-staters.” A candidate has to be able to talk about God in a way that they understand. You have to believe in something, after all. Some of you sound intelligent, thoughtful, caring, and yet arrogant, even narrow-minded. You really don’t get why “simplistic rubes” believe in some magical Santa? (Good analogy, BTW.) If not, then I don’t blame you, but we’re a long way from winning another election. Look, believe whatever you want, but isn’t being liberal about respecting everyone’s choices and being able to see things from more than one point of view? That works two ways, y’know.
Comment by Ben — January 5, 2006 @ 12:46 pm
Name one elected Democrat who isn’t religious.
It’s a nice, feel good way of thinking about God that you have, but it doesn’t actually jibe with the God depicted in the holy text. There is not one word in the Bible that says slavery is wrong. Yet, somehow, we all agree now that slavery is wrong. Why is that? Did God change His mind? Or did our morals evolve through the development of society and the expanding application of Enlightenment ideals?
See:
Why does God love slavery
That’s just one example of things in the Bible that were considered good and right at one time, but no longer.
As far as respecting magical belief systems of all kinds, I’ll leave that to the politicians. I’m kind of ornery that way.
Comment by Dave — January 5, 2006 @ 1:17 pm
Well, that’s (kind of) my point. Elected Democratic leaders are religious, so it would seem that (as I said) we need to “be religious” to get elected. But that’s not quite what I meant. I meant “talk about religion/faith/belief in Something” and talk about it in a way that connects with people. For a great example, see the late Jewish Senator Wellstone.
Switching gears, Sen. Kerry is doubtless a good, decent, sincere fellow who can be truly energizing (I’ve seen him speak), but who is more often enervating, and who can’t talk about his personal beliefs to save his life. Everything he said seemed like he was saying it solely for political advantage, even though I knew better. I wonder how that came off to the rest of America?
Comment by Ben — January 5, 2006 @ 1:59 pm
Kerry seemed to be remarkably lacking in political saavy to be a presidential candidate. It looked to me that he refused to defend himself a lot of the time, refused to go on the attack, and basically looked like he was taking a dive.
Comment by dAVE — January 5, 2006 @ 2:09 pm
dave – Huge difference between God-Is-Santa and an interventionist idea of God. Huge. Huge. Like Bach And Britney. Really. I’m not saying that God’s not been construed as interventionist in most traditions. ( I was trying to open up the discussion of God to all the different paths, too: there’s as much disagreement in theology between Quakers and Baptists as between Baptists and Buddhists, so words like “Christian” are somewhat meaningless, really…)
I’m also not dismissing atheism as a valid interpretation. However, don’t let the *pop culture* trick you into thinking it has anything to do with *real spiritual or religious thought*, and your arguments will become more cojent.
There’s a vast historical tradition of non-idiots who believed that yahweh could both intervene where he thought appropriate and not give a shit about the superbowl or 12 dead miners.
And then there’s other, non- Judeo-Christian tradtions, who take a totally different view of god entirely: interventionist, surely, but death and not death aren’t vastly different. Actually, that’s a pretty common spiritual theme: what we think matters, doesn’t.
Comment by Arwen — January 5, 2006 @ 2:32 pm
Oh, that’s phrased badly. In all versions of Christian or Jewish spirituality that I know of, Yahweh would give a shit about the 12 dead miners, but not in the way that people who want the miners to stay alive do.
Comment by Arwen — January 5, 2006 @ 2:35 pm
What’s most depressing to me about all this is the fact that we, as a nation, have come to point where we can’t even experience a disaster like normal people.
By way of having to IMMEDIATELY blame, educate, communicate and problem-solve any disaster (pick one: manmade or natural) we, inevitably, create our own mini disasters within the major disaster. And you know what, we’re ALL to blame: the public who just HAVE to know what’s going on RIGHT NOW; the media for spoon-feeding the ever-hungry public’s desire for the most minute details (“Nevermind if it’s conjecture. I need to be the first to know!”); the politicians for attempting to quickly solve ANY problem — no matter how difficult — to appease the public’s freakish demand for immediate justice (even if it’s justice for something Mother Nature caused, dammit, someone MUST PAY!).
It feels like we’ve become a nation of impatient spoiled brats who believe we have a right to everything without having to give up anything.
Frankly, it’s become embarrassing.
Comment by funfunfun — January 5, 2006 @ 4:15 pm
What’s most depressing to me about all this is the fact that we, as a nation, have come to point where we can’t even experience a disaster like normal people.
By way of having to IMMEDIATELY blame, educate, communicate and problem-solve any disaster (pick one: manmade or natural) we, inevitably, create our own mini disasters within the major disaster. And you know what, we’re ALL to blame: the public who just HAVE to know what’s going on RIGHT NOW; the media for spoon-feeding the ever-hungry public’s desire the most minute details (“Nevermind if it’s conjecture. I need to be the first to know!”); the politicians for attempting to quickly solve ANY problem — no matter how difficult — to appease the public’s freakish demand for immediate justice (even if it’s justice for something Mother Nature caused, dammit, someone MUST PAY!).
It feels like we’ve become a nation of impatient spoiled brats who believe we have a right to everything without having to give up anything.
Frankly, it’s become embarrassing.
Comment by funfunfun — January 5, 2006 @ 4:21 pm
. . . felt so good, I had to say it twice. . .
Comment by funfunfun — January 5, 2006 @ 4:23 pm
Like Greg says, I appreciate the good intelligent discussion. As a liberal Christian myself I sometimes find it hard to hang out where I hang out (on leftwing blogs) and hear people give the same old atheist “God can’t exist if bad things happen.” But its not nearly as hurtful as having to put up with anti-Christians spouting their hate and supporting a “conservative” viewpoint that frankly is nothing more than a thinly veiled rationalization for personal selfishness (you know, the kind that the 2/3s of the Bible that no one ever reads condemns over and over and over).
I go back and forth from a Unitarian to a Trinitarian view. I remain convinced that there is real power in the “good news” of Jesus but that much of his story as we possess is “revelation” only in that which is contained in the story as we possess and that any relation between that story and history as we think of it is purely a coincidence.
The best way to address the question of where is God when bad things happen is the Jewish conception of the empty vessel. In order for God to have created our universe, it was necessary for him to absent himself. Hence, we live in a chaotic universe of weather and death and imperfection. Further, it is our duty to fight against this chaos by praying (or meditating or thinking good thoughts) for redemption. Some of that prayer needs to be action. I myself try to fund as best I can relief projects and have volunteered to work with the homeless.
The fact is sooner or later, we all die and it is never convenient when it happens (as I found out last month when my 97 year old Grandmother starved herself to death). I couldn’t say goodbye to her. I said “a la prochain”, which means “until we meet again”. I read once a phyisicist who said “energy never dies, the part of us that is energy must live on. And that’s why I believe in Life After Death.” My faith is built on good works, but I also believe in life after death in some fashion. We in NA are too insulated from death, that’s why disasters freak us out so much. But having seen death, I can’t believe that it is the end. And that stands whether I believe in a prime creator or not.
Comment by gordbrown — January 5, 2006 @ 8:36 pm
Honestly, I’m not particularly interested in whether or not there is a god, because from what I’ve seen of the world, it’s far more important to do what you can to help your fellow man right now, even if it’s only a little bit, because no one else will.
So right now, I couldn’t give a damn whether Jesus, Buddha or Ahura Mazda let the miners die. I just hope that the families of the victims get all the help that is possible. And if there’s a fund being set up to aid them, I’d like to contribute.
Comment by Nick J. — January 5, 2006 @ 11:13 pm
Nick, Buddha is not a deity, just a philosopher whose teachings form the basis of Buddhism. The religion’s major foundations are peace, seeking enlightenment and rejecting materialism. Thus, a Buddhist neither seeks nor expects any time of godly intervention.
I agree with your point, though.
Comment by DT — January 6, 2006 @ 7:47 am
The real question which should be asked after the deaths of these people is: Why was a mining company allowed to continue operating a mine which had three recent cave-ins with only a meeting scheduled with regulators to discuss ways of improving mine safety?
Comment by Kamachanda — January 6, 2006 @ 9:42 am
I was being flippant. I understand fully that Buddha is not, in the strictest sense of the word, a deity. One is allowed poetic license when one is employing hyperbole.
Comment by Nick J. — January 6, 2006 @ 1:11 pm