Earthquake

[liv]

rho explains (at a basic level) how nuclear power stations work and enumerates the likely consequences of earthquake damage. It's probably not news to most of you, but I'm linking as an example of impressive popular science writing.

Meanwhile there is a really stupid Twitterfight going on about whether prayer is an appropriate response to the disaster. azurelunatic wrote a really thoughtful response to this non-controversy. It's in the middle of a long post about her response to the tsunami warning in force on the Pacific coast of the US, so I'll quote the relevant section:

Making law that flies in the face of science is just stupid; not taking practical action but trusting in a supernatural force to bail one out is likewise stupid. But, in the middle of all the twitterchaos, someone said "Prayer is a way to focus will & intent", just as someone else mentioned that they knew they needed to be doing things other than being glued to the news, but they didn't know what.

All of those things came together in my head just then. Just as funerals are for the living, prayer in times of disaster is for the people who are not dealing with it. (The people who are dealing with it, maybe they're also praying while they're dealing, but that's their thing.) Regardless of whether one believes in good vibes or supernatural involvement, prayer is a clearing and focusing of the mind upon the topic at hand. Ideally it is a form of meditation, with a twofold benefit. First, it sets the mind in the direction of helpful action, such that when disparate items are presented later, maybe they will come together in the head in a helpful way. This could take the form of innovation, charity, volunteerism, or what-have-you. Second, after it is done, it clears the mind of the immediate all-consuming worry, the obsession, about the catastrophe, and prepares the person for actually going about their life. A student glued to the news cannot study. A worker glued to the news cannot work. (Well, unless the study or work involves being glued to the news.) A body suffers when it's under tension and strain, even when the tension comes from situations thousands of miles away, when one's already given blood, given money, given time and attention, signal-boosted. Even if the prayers do nothing directly for the people suffering, as long as prayers are not used as excuses to avoid other forms of contribution, they can be generally helpful.

My theological stance is somewhat different from Azz', but I did like that explanation of what prayer is "good for". She also quotes rm to the following effect: Using disasters to proselytize is tacky. Atheists, this includes you. Believe as you wish; help if you can.. Also, I don't think posting a Tweet saying "My heart goes out to all those poor Japanese people!" is particularly superior to including them in your prayers; either can be smug slactivism and either can be a way to emotionally prepare yourself to actually do something positive.

More annoying than the people who are Tweeting Don't #prayforJapan are the ones who are Tweeting Earthquakes are an act of science, not an act of God. Really, people! Science doesn't "act", science is a method of studying the world! It doesn't cause earthquakes, srsly.

FWIW I chose to read out Ps 99 in synagogue on Friday. (We read it anyway as part of the normal Friday night liturgy, but I drew attention to it rather than just letting the congregation run through it on autopilot.) I didn't do this because I think reading a Psalm about earthquakes is "magically" going to make God help the earthquake survivors or reduce the level of devastation. I did it because I consider that religion which is completely insulated from events in the real world is bankrupt. I assume that people who disapprove of religion will anyway think that I shouldn't be leading religious services at all, but if I do lead a service, am I doing any harm by referring to the earthquake and its victims and survivors?

Comments

[cleverthylacine]

I guess what I don't understand is why you care so much whether I believe that there is a G-d or not. (For the record, I do, and I am not interested in debating my subjective experiences to you because I could not possibly explain them nor do I think they should apply to anyone who isn't me.)

I would understand why you'd care if I voted for political candidates or measures that were anti-science, anti-environment, sexist, homophobic, &c, but I don't. And I've met a fair amount of loudly atheist Libertarians who DO, mostly because they think their personal property (and/or the privileging of their preferred family structure) is more important than a fair society, the continued health of the planet or other people's civil rights. And that also seems to me to be the main reason many so-called religious people vote that way.

[nameandnature]

I guess what I don't understand is why you care so much whether I believe that there is a G-d or not.

I'm not sure I much care whether you personally believe there's a God or not. There's a liberal minority of theists who don't do much harm other than lending some respectability to theism, and if you're in that minority, fair enough.

I do care whether people in general believe there's a God or not. I care because:

I used to be a theist. I was an evangelical Christian, which in Britain is generally less barking than in the States, from what I can tell, but still means holding to a bunch of conservative positions on sexuality, for example. It's bad for a society to take those positions, I think we both agree. It was also bad for me, since I spent a lot of time feeling guilty about trivia. I wish I had found out that there is no God earlier, so I'm doing what Jesus said and doing unto others as I would have them to do me :-)

In general, I'm in favour of people holding accurate opinions about the world. Theism is of a kind with homeopathy, astrology and all that stuff. Because of my previous experience, I know much more about theism than I do about those other things, though, so I think I'm better placed to argue against it.

I'm in favour of people holding accurate opinions at least partly because, as Wrongbot puts it, we have a moral imperative to stop being wrong, because, as C.S. Lewis puts it, sometimes it's entirely right knowledge rather than moral reform which leads to better behaviour: "surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things... You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house."

[cleverthylacine]

I don't think you need to believe that there is no G-d to stop believing things that are harmful to you or to others. All I think is needed is a bit of logic: if G-d had anything at all to do with the origins of this world, evolutionary processes or not, then G-d would have to be a pretty rotten sort to want you to believe, for instance, that gay people shouldn't exist.

I often do wonder at people who manage to believe in entirely vicious gods. (I'm Jewish, and have occasionally told believers in particularly sociopathic Christian fundamentalisms that if I believed their god existed I'd consider it a moral duty to oppose him even if it meant I went to hell.)

Actually I rather think atheism is a natural consequence of Christianity and the equation of religion with belief; Christianity was the first world religion to become deeply concerned with what people believe, and people who have grown up being taught that belief is what matters will of course become atheists once they no longer do believe. I do not know much about Islam, which seems to share some of the emphasis upon belief, but generally other religious systems do not seem to revolve upon whether you're willing to believe ten or more impossible things before breakfast and try and force other people to behave as though they were true, whether or not they even agree with you.

There are of course atheist Jews, a lot of them, don't get me wrong, but religions that are also cultural identities, or that focus more on practise than on belief, seem to have more room for people who don't think of their gods as omnipotent fairies (i.e. dangerous beings who bless people they like and must be kept appeased lest they take a whim to destroy you.)

Now homeopathy, that's scary. :) (I, ah, work in academic medicine.)

[nameandnature]

I think we're in violent agreement here: I'm not complaining here about religious culture insofar as it's divorced from attempts to describe the world. Some anthropologists, like Scott Atran and Pascal Boyer, think that it's a mistake to see any religious language as an attempt to describe the world, but I think if I were religious, I'd find that a bit patronising. Certainly, when I was both believing and observant, I thought my beliefs were attempts to describe the world, though I admit they may not have been: as philosophers and anthropologists have pointed out, those beliefs don't work in the same way as more mundane beliefs.

The anti-gay theists have a rationalisation against the "God didn't make no trash" argument, which is that the world is somehow broken and contains things which God doesn't want but permits for mysterious reasons (free will gets mentioned at this point, as does the Christian idea of the Fall and original sin). I think your own idea runs into the earthquakes objection if you think that God had something to do with the natural world: clearly in that case, God wants earthquakes to exist :-)

I agree that if FundieGod exists, the right thing to do is join the resistance. I suspect we both agree that luckily, he doesn't.