Religious Sacrifice
On September 13, 2001, Rev. Jerry Falwell blamed the Sept. 11 attacks on atheists and liberals. It was not that they piloted the planes or plotted the attacks. However, they offended God, and caused God and, as a result, God decided to do nothing to trip the hijackers up. If not for these liberals, God would have done something to protect America.
Specifically, he said, America was attacked by terrorists because God Almighty is lifting His protection from us. Rampant secularism, the occult, abortion, the absence of prayer in schools and insults of God at the highest level of our government had sent the Almighty over the edge.
Falwell later apologized for the specific remark. However, there is no doubt that he expressed a view that many in the religious right would agree with. Pat Robertson agreed immediately, and never apologized.
Recently, the Boy Scouts suffered a string of tragedies. Four men were killed while putting up a tent at the national jamboree in Virginia. The next day, over 300 scouts fell ill from the heat. Before the week was out, lightning strikes had killed scouts in California and Utah.
If atheists and liberals were responsible for the success of the 9-11 attacks, then what could possibly lie behind these tragedies afflicting the Boy Scouts? This is an institution that has made much of the intolerance that those who blame liberals for 9-11 praise as a necessary component to pleasing God. It would be strange to argue that God was punishing them because of their liberalism.
Perhaps the Boy Scouts were victims of forces of nature and random chance. These forces care nothing about the religious denomination of its victims. They do not check membership cards, either in the ACLU or the Baptist Church, before striking somebody down. Yet, it seems, God could not be bothered to protect them from accident, lightning, and heat. Many of these victims were children.
The argument could be made that the Boy Scouts are not working hard enough to drive these people from its membership. Perhaps the Boy Scouts needs to try harder to identify atheists and homosexuals. This is a famous problem with religious responses that blamed some segment of society for society’s misfortune.
Human sacrifices to appease an angry God do not work, so religious leaders demand even more sacrifice, which continues to have no effect in turning away misfortune. As the blind forces of nature and chance claim more and more victims, the religious leaders demand more and more in the way of human sacrifice to appease the God or Gods, adding human-induced misery targeting certain groups in society to that which nature and chance blindly inflicts on all people.
When the tsunami struck the nations around the Indian Ocean on December 26th, 2004, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindu, atheists, and others were all truly equal before the waves. Many of those who died prayed just as hard as those who lived, for as long as they were able. Many who lived were as faithless as some who died.
The Effects of Blame
What are the effects of words of blame such as these?
Ultimately, the consequence of this type of talk is consistent with saying, “Hate who I tell you to hate. Fear who I tell you to fear. Grant me the power to do away with those who do not accept me as their leader. Otherwise, God will make you suffer.” They want people to feel that they cannot be safe until their followers have turned against those who do not accept this priest as their leader.
Even those who do not accept such a connection between sacrificing these fellow humans and gaining the protection of a God are likely to be bothered by a nagging doubt. When the priest says to sacrifice the virgin to the volcano to keep the village safe, a person can understandably doubt that this will do any good. However, even if the odds that this will do any good are slight, the worst that will happen by following the priest’s recipe is the loss of one virgin. On the other hand, the whole village may be saved. Isn’t the sacrifice of one virgin worth the possibility, however slight, of saving the whole village?
This doubt, in turn, can feed any argument that aims to justify hating those that the priest then targets. Accepting the next assertion made against liberals, gays, atheists, secularists, and the like that identifies them as targets gains the benefit of also causing listeners to relax just a bit in the knowledge that if they accept this argument, they may also reduce the risk of becoming victims of a vengeful God.
Protecting Ourselves from Nature and Chance
In fact, harming fellow human beings does nothing to protect an individual, a village, or a country from the forces of nature and chance. The victims suffer, but only the priest benefits.
The best way to protect ourselves is to understand the forces of nature that inflict these harms. For the most part, this requires the work of scientists who study the phenomena and tell us how to change our behavior in ways that will help to secure our future safety and happiness. By studying tsunamis, scientists can create early warning systems by noting which events in nature most likely indicate that a tsunami is on the way. They can teach us how and where to build our buildings to minimize the damage. If we should fall victim to the forces of nature and chance, the scientist can provide the medical assistance that saves our lives or limbs.
These scientists can identify safety measures we should take to avoid accidental electrocution, how to protect ourselves in a lightning storm, and how to build a building to protect its occupants. They can tell us how to avoid the effects of heat, and what to do to help a person who suffers its effects.
They can even help us to identify terrorists and other threats, by creating the tools that detect weapons and explosives that might otherwise make their way onto an airplane or into a public building, and to create buildings that can withstand such an attack.
In one way, science is like the forces of nature and chance. It cares nothing for religious affiliation of the scientist. Nobody checks a membership card in a church before allowing the individual to publish a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. All that is required is that the article meets the standards of good science. This means that the article has to conform to certain standards that have proved highly reliable at creating propositions that can be verified, and that can lead to even more scientific progress.
As it turns out, the science of earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis is a science of an Earth that is 4.5 billion years old. It is the science of a planet with tectonic plates that have been slipping past, over, and under each other long enough to drive continents apart and back together again.
As it turns out, the science of agriculture that keeps us fed and the science of medicine to keep us healthy, are founded on the science of evolution.
It may be the case that a good doctor can mend a damaged body without understanding or even accepting evolution, just as an engineer or mechanic does not have to believe that Earth is 4.5 billion years old to build a building that can withstand an earthquake. However, the insight into new engineering practices and machines that will best protect us from earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, as well as those who will provide us with new foods and medicines, will come from those who understand plate tectonics and evolution.
These theories were not put forth by atheists attempting to destroy God. They were put forth by scientists of all denominations because these are the conclusions that best fit the available evidence.
In the mean time, the best defense we have against the random forces of nature and chance is to work together against them.
We gain nothing by promoting ignorance, because ignorant people cannot even understand the issues that confront them, let alone solve those problems.
We gain nothing by promoting a hatred and distrust of science. This only weakens our ability to protect ourselves by reducing the number of people who are capable of improving our understanding of the world in which we live.
We gain nothing by sacrificing our neighbors to try to appease a vengeful God. We gain nothing but the distrust of our neighbors — the very people we will need to turn to for help when the forces of nature and chance strike. The forces of nature and chance are perfectly indiscriminate, striking without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, or religious affiliation. Our best defense against them is each other.
So, let us shun those who blame our neighbors for these indiscriminate acts of nature and chance, those who say that our security demands sacrificing those neighbors to appease an angry God. Let us instead work with our neighbors against these blind forces who do not care about our religious affiliation, to understand the world around us, and what we need to do to best protect ourselves and our neighbors from its perils.