I get my first news of the day from BBC Radio 4, specifically the Today Programme. Yesterday regular host John Humphrys asked1 the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, why God allowed such terrible suffering to be inflicted on the innocent people of Haiti. The Archbishop didn't have a coherent answer, though he did at least condemn Pat Robertson's ugly accusation (that the Haitians had it coming because their ancestors made a pact with the devil):
"Stories of survival are emerging from the rubble in Haiti. Troy Livesay, of the Christian charity World Wide Village, lives with his family in Port au Prince and has written a moving account in the Guardian about his family's survival. He begs people to prey for Haitians. Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, comments on how people turn to God during times of disaster."
When disaster strikes the innocent, theodicy is revealed as the empty wailing of those who know they have no excuses for their supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God, but this morning on Thought for the Day theodicy's guilty vacuity was brought to a new low by Giles Fraser:
"...at a moment like this, I prefer to leave the arguments to others. For me this is a time quietly to light a candle for the people of Haiti, and to offer them up to God in my prayers. May the souls of the departed rest in peace."
Well thanks a bunch Giles! I'm sure your candle and prayers will be so effective in helping the Haitians in their dire plight, and might even convince them that — despite appearances — God loves them after all! (I'm sorry, but when I heard this execrable peroration this morning I uttered an extremely audible profanity.) This isn't the first time the Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser has used Thought for the Day to hide behind verbal obfuscation, and it illustrates precisely why the slot should be opened up to secular humanist viewpoints.
UPDATE 2010-01-19: On Saturday's Today Programme, atheist philosopher A. C. Grayling was asked to respond to both John Sentamu and Giles Fraser. He was calmly rational (as always), but scheduled at the very end of the programme he had insufficient time to deal in full with the idiocy that is theodicy. The vacuous blatherings of Messrs Sentamu and Fraser last week have been rightly castigated across the blogosphere — Manic Street Preacher's recent post contrasts similarly reprehensible, knee-jerk statements in response to tragedy with those displaying a more compassionate outlook.
1UPDATE 2010-01-22: A transcript of John Humphrys' conversation with Archbishop John Sentamu is available at the JREFSwift blog.
The theodicy of Haiti doesn't bear thinking about (so let's not)
2010-01-15T23:49:00Z
Paul S. Jenkins
A. C. Grayling|BBC|Giles Fraser|God|Haiti|John Humphrys|John Sentamu|Manic Street Preacher|Pat Robertson|Platitude of the Day|Radio 4|theodicy|Today|Troy Livesay|
Paul S. Jenkins, writer, podcaster and tech-enthusiast (and atheist and skeptic) lives and works in Hampshire, UK. Notes from an Evil Burnee is his blog about things skeptical.
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