I've been reading Dinesh D'Souza's posts about atheism and the massacre at Virginia Tech with some interest. I'm not a big fan of D'Souza's, but sometimes he says things that mirror my own thoughts.
When I first heard about the prayer vigil at Virginia Tech following the murders, it occurred to me that atheists really don't have any similar sort of bonding experience after tragedies the way religious persons do. Typically, people of faith--regardless of what that faith is--reflect on the incident, mourn the loss, and turn to their God for meaning and inspiration. I'm not sure how this works if you don't believe there's anything higher than yourself.
Amanda takes after D'Souza with a vengeance, but doesn't really land a glove on him, even for all her ad hominem attacks.
Tbogg references the almost irresistible cheap potshot counter to that, which is the even more devastating question of where is your god when this massacre was going down? Off picking his nose? Yes, it’s rude to bring up the problem of evil in the equation, but how a supposedly good god allows so much evil on his watch is only a rude question because it’s basically a philosophical dead end. Either god is capricious and allows evil for the hell of it or he doesn’t exist. I’d go even further and suggest that the rush to starting talking god after some evil thing has happened is the way that religion manages to quell the inevitable doubts about what kind of god would let something like this happen. Start singing holy holy and don’t ask any questions, dammit.
Interesting train of thought, but sadly my first thought was how many other people who don’t do or believe something didn’t have some sort of organized presence. For instance, people who don’t believe in unicorns didn’t show up in an organized fashion to give condolences to those affected by the massacre. Does this mean that unicorns exist? I don’t think the Club of People Who Refuse To Watch “Friends” had an official comment on the issue, which hardly means that “Friends” is now a good show in retrospect. Meanwhile, Dinesh D’Souza could fall all over himself offering condolences and even mean some of them, but he’s still a prick.
There are surely philosophical questions about why God let this "bad thing" happen. Christianity Today has some articles (see here and here for starters). This is a typical trap atheists try to set, that a loving God wouldn't let bad things happen to people. But while there are times God intervenes in life, there are other times that His nonintervention is equally reasonable, as
an acknowledgement of our free will, as an opportunity for us to mature, and as a way to show His grace.
I don't expect atheists to understand this. Their worldview precludes the idea that tragedy and sorrow can lead to a personal and spiritual growth that would be impossible without such terrible events. This isn't to say atheists cannot grow and mature, but when you compare Christian beliefs with believing in unicorns, there really isn't much room for discussion.
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