Greg Clarke, and never mind the science or the independents, let's get stuck into some gormless theology ...

(Above: I know, I know, I've run it before, but simple minds love simple things).

Moving along from contemplating the independents, as we must, Greg Clarke punches on in The Punch, and provides a terrific distraction in the form of Blaming God for the Pakistani floods.

By way of context, Clarke is a director of the Centre for Public Christianity, a media and research organisation dedicated to the public understanding of the Christian faith, as opposed to the pond's centre for private Christianity, dedicated to the proposition that Christians should be seen but not heard.

Clarke takes to brooding about god's responsibility for the floods in Pakistan, perhaps wary of the standard US fundie Christian's explanation that Hurricane Katrina was visited on New Orleans because it was a vile, sensual, music loving, gay friendly, boobs for beads, witchcraft voodoo practising den of sin, up there with Sodom and Gomorrah and deserving to be struck down.

When Christians get to grappling with disasters, and the power of prayer, and other such tomfoolery, the first essential thing to do is to throw logic and rationality out the window, and yearn for some higher metaphysical explanation. Go for it Greg:

When such things happen, atheists have a simple response: we are simply witnessing indifferent, impersonal nature at work. The disaster is, as the term suggests, natural; it’s cause and effect, chance and necessity. End of explanation.

But for most human beings, this is an inadequate way of understanding natural disaster. It explains very little. Our sense of sadness, injustice and fury requires something more satisfying than ‘(sh)it happens’. We long for explanation, or a context within which we can place these events, or some hope that it is not mere accident. We look for intention and purpose.

Yes metaphysical delusionism will always garner an audience, thereby explaining the success of long running cults, as well as the more recent offerings of brand new 'convert a showbiz mug and make squillions' cults like Scientology.

Luckily we have a handy clue to intention and purpose. After all the long absent genocidal god flooded the world in a bid to wipe out all of humanity, save for a chosen few and a handy stock of creatures over which we might come to have dominion (bugger off dinosaurs, the boat's too small).

Yep, if it was an Agatha Christie novel, you'd have to be fingering the god that produced the first holocaust, and in the usual way, after a triple deceptive play with abundant red herrings, Christie would have laid everything at the feet of the homicidal maniacal god ...

Faced with this kind of dilemma, Clarke produces an exemplary example of futtockry:

There are perhaps three ‘non-natural’ ways of looking at disaster such as the Pakistan floods: 1. God did it. 2. Someone evil did it. 3. We don’t know whom to blame, but we know it’s bad.

I particularly loved the evasive quality to 2. Why not 1. god did it, and 2. god being evil did it, and 3. we know who to blame, it's god, and damn sure, we know he or she's one bad ass dude, but ssssh, let's not point the fickle finger of fate at the all powerful deity.

I keed, I keed, it's 'dancing on the head of a pin while counting the number of angels that will fit' time:

Explanation 1 finds support in many religions, with God bringing judgement on a wicked world by some form of natural terror. It is an explanation with some satisfaction, except that it condemns the people who are suffering, because it suggests they must have displeased God. Or it suggests that God killed ‘them’ to teach ‘us’ a lesson and call us into line, which brings into question God’s attitude to ‘them’.

Phew, that's a relief. It's nice to learn we have a non-interventionist god, remote, distant, uninvolved, and unwilling to take responsibility for anything. No judgmental floods, just a cry for a bowl of water and a washing of the hands (towels please, for me and Pontius Pilate).

Naturally this gets the long absent god off the hook with Noah:

Sometimes Christian leaders ‘borrow’ the Great Flood story from Genesis to suggest that one natural disaster or another is a sign of God’s condemnation of a nation or people. I haven’t yet heard anyone making such claims about Pakistan, thank goodness, because it is a wrong-headed way of thinking and a terrible misuse of Scripture. The true parallel with this ancient account of God’s judgement is the account of God’s final judgement, recorded at the other end of the Bible in Revelation, not any particular flood in any part of the world at any particular time in history.

Yep, in the usual way of ostriches, and never mind that the particular flood with Noah in a particular part of the world at a particular mythological time in history is quoted by creationists, it seems Clarke hasn't heard about god being given the credit for the current floods. How about this thought bubble from the Taliban?

The foreign aid "is deceiving the nation. It will not reach the affected people, but will be pocketed by corrupt rulers," Azam Tariq told The Associated Press by telephone, adding that the disaster was God's punishment to Pakistanis for accepting secular leaders. (U.S, Pakistan warn of militant plots over floods).

Along with hundreds of comments from US Christians, with this one being the most succinctly stupid:

ALLAH=666
Muslims=Children of Satan

You have to hand it to Christian and Islamic fundies, fighting to show who's the most stupid to the bone. And we have a winner. The lot of them.

But back to Clarke:

Explanation 2 looks to another agent, whether human wickedness (e.g. the Pakistan floods were caused by human-generated climate change) or an evil spiritual reality (e.g. Satan caused it). This, too, offers some degree of satisfaction, because it locates the agent of suffering, but it also runs the risk of making God look a bit diminished. If God is powerful and good, why couldn’t he intervene and overrule human or devilish wickedness?

Hmm, tricky. God's off the hook, but Satan's a hard sell, and if Satan's winning, it puts the long absent god in a bad, impotent, half-assed light.

That said, it's a very tempting explanation, since it explains climate change has nothing to do with science, but should simply be seen as human wickedness, because humans have wickedly generated climate change by indulging in all sorts of wicked things. You know, long hot showers after sensual sex, and then a ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in the hair, or perhaps running naked through the shady street screaming all the way ...

Steady, steady, you wicked, red wine sipping, chocolate eating people, here's the capper:

Explanation 3 appeals most to me. It involves an anguished cry of the heart; a profound expression of the wrongness of human tragedy. It doesn’t identify the cause, but it does acknowledge the effects of disaster. It says that this state of affairs, where young children drown and grandmothers starve to death in front of their families is deeply, painfully wrong and should not be so. “This shouldn’t happen,” is as far as the explanation reaches.

Pardon me, but is it wrong to suggest that if this is as far as the explanation reaches, it's a pretty fucked up and totally useless explanation?

One recent theological effort to talk about suffering has struck a chord with me. David Bentley Hart, an Eastern Orthodox theologian, wrote a short book following the 2004 Asian tsunami in which he outlined a response to it from a Christian standpoint. In summary, he viewed the whole thing as a terrible waste. A waste of life, a waste of potential, a waste of goodness. He thinks God would see it that way, too. A wicked waste.

Well then surely god takes pleasure in such wicked waste, or perhaps he or she should do something about it? Or maybe we're just stuck here on earth, and we should do something about it?

Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol you are there. Even there your right hand shall guide me. (Psalm 139)

That damn all seeing eye of god, prying and peeking and peering like a voyeur, and yet when it comes to the crunch singularly impotent and useless.

Clearly there's a need to read the fine print. God's presence everywhere, except in case of floods, fire, cyclones, thunderstorms, hurricanes, earthquakes and other acts of god, in which case, cover is void, and expect a waste of life, a waste of potential, and a waste of goodness.

Yes, waste. That's a good theme for a sermon, way better than the cheese makers being blessed:

This seems to me the best way to think about natural disasters. They are a sign that the world is cursed with waste. Wasted opportunities; wasted potential; wasted lives. Although we can only speculate about the physical, moral or spiritual causes of the Pakistani floods, can we not say with certainty that they are a terrible waste, a wrong and horrendous state of affairs, and something we deeply regret, long to come to an end, and wish to put right whatever the cost?

Unless you believe only in nature, in which case you can only say “it just happened”.

Or unless you think that we live in a natural world in which natural events happen, in which case you can correctly say 'things happen', loosely translated as 'shit happens', which can sometimes can be good shit, and sometimes exceptionally bad and uncool shit, dude ...

Or unless you happen to be a scientist, and suspect that global warming might have had a hand in the exceptional severity of the flooding, in which case instead of mealy mouthed piety and wringing of the hands and blathering on about waste and seeking refuge in metaphysical meandering nonsense, you might roll up the shirt sleeves or don the white coat, and work out the how and the why of why it happened, and then ... gasp ... do something about it.

Feeling at a loss? How about joining Epicurus again? Wisdom from 341-271 BC, and still the average Christian or Muslim has a way to go to catch up:

Haec ego non multis (scribo), sed tibi: satis enim magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus. I am writing this not to many, but to you: certainly we are a great enough audience for each other.

He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.

You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

It is vain to ask of the gods what man is capable of supplying for himself.

Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and when death is come, we are not.

If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished; for they are forever praying for evil against one another.

That last one is handily available in T-shirt form for the T-shirt generation.

And can someone explain what was wrong with hippy badges with a message? Dammit, did the absent god have something to do with their decline? Sheesh, that bloody god, she's to blame for everything ...