Archives for January 22, 2010

Pat Robertson recently claimed, in effect, that God has struck Haiti with an earthquake because of the practice of Voodoo. This is, of course, based on the 1st Commandment that folks are not to have any gods before God.

As a hypothesis, this seems rather implausible. After all, if God was in the practice of smiting people who violate His rules, then there would certainly be much more smiting going on. God’s rules are routinely violated, yet God does nothing. It seems rather odd that if God enforced His rules, He would just elect to strike Haiti and ignore so many other violations.Or perhaps God works in arbitrary ways, punishing violations of His rules randomly or just when He feels like it. While this is a possibility (and seems to match the Old Testament in some ways) such behavior seems to be inconsistent with a God who is rational and good.

Also, if God is good then He would presumably strike only those who deserve to be struck. Yet, the earthquake has harmed young children and infants, who surely have committed no offense against God. Since God is supposed to be all powerful, He surely could smite with greater precision. After all, we have precise weapons in our arsenals, so the supreme being should be able to at least match our capabilities. Or perhaps God only has weapons of mass destruction on hand and hence has to slaughter the innocent in order to smite those who have earned His wrath.

As such, it seems rather unreasonable to claim that God has struck Haiti as punishment. The most plausible hypothesis is that the earthquake was a purely natural phenomenon and, having no will or purpose, struck everyone impartially.