Front Page: spring 1993 GOD WAS WITH HIM In January, newspapers in Central Illinois report

Front Page: spring 1993


                GOD WAS WITH HIM 

   In January, newspapers in Central Illinois reported the tragedy of a 
young man who was seriously maimed in a train accident.  Wearing Walkman 
earphones as he strolled along a railroad track, the boy was apparently 
unable to hear a slow-moving train approaching in reverse from behind him. 
Despite frantic shouts from people nearby who tried to warn him, the boy 
stepped onto the tracks at the last moment and was struck by the train.  He 
survived but lost his left arm and right leg in the accident.

   One of the witnesses who tried to warn the young man said, if quoted 
correctly  in a local newsarticle, "He could have been killed.  God was with 
him."

   A tragedy like this needs no commentary; the sympathy of everyone goes 
out to the young man.  The comment of the witness, however, is quite anoth-
er thing.  Unfortunately, her reaction is too typical of those who are parties 
to incidents like this one. If a tornado or earthquake devastates a community 
or if an airplane or train crashes, those who escape death are often too eager 
to think that the hand of God reached down especially to aid them.  "The 
Lord was with me," or, "Somebody up there must like me," are typical 
comments that the survivors make.

   Reasoning like this (if we can even call it "reasoning") fails to recognize 
that if the hand of God reached down to aid the survivors of a tragedy, then 
it is necessarily true that the hand of God did NOT reach down to aid those 
who died. If someone whose home escaped serious damage in a tornado at-
tributes his good fortune to the providence of God who directed the funnel 
around his house, then surely he can see that God cared more for him than 
those whose houses were destroyed. In the case of the young man who was 
maimed in the train accident, if God was truly with him, then why wasn't God 
with him in a way that would have spared him the crippling injuries he suf-
fered?  Why couldn't God have influenced him in some way to remove his 
earphones a minute or so before the accident?  Or why couldn't God have 
caused a power failure that would have taken the radio off the air or any one 
of a dozen things we could think of that would have enabled the boy to hear 
the witnesses yelling at him?  The logic of this witness requires her to be-
lieve that God wanted this boy to go through life permanently crippled, 
because she believes that "God was with him" but not with him enough to 
spare him completely from crippling injury.

   The purpose of this article isn't to argue the question of divine provi-
dence but to take notice of the appalling lack of logic in the thinking of Bible 
believers.  The woman who thought that God was with the boy who was 
maimed in this accident identified herself as a Lutheran, but she could have 
been a Baptist or Methodist or Catholic as well, for in matters concerning 
traditional theistic beliefs, we hear such irrational thinking as hers from all 
brands of Christians.  The more of it we hear, the more we wonder if there 
is any hope at all of ever building a society that is relatively free of super-
stition.

   To say this is not to retract what was said in "Living on Borrowed Time" 
(Winter 1993, p. 1).  We still believe that Bible fundamentalism will continue 
to wane until it ceases to exist, but, as we noted in the article, its extinction 
will be a long time coming.  We live in a tabloid society that makes astrology 
and physic predicting profitable enterprises to engage in.  The same mentali-
ty that sustains them sustains Bible fundamentalism, so certainly Bible funda-
mentalism is going to be with us for a long time .

   When we consider the  damage that religious fundamentalism inevitably 


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inflicts upon the societies in  (see GOD, p. 16) which it thrives, it isn't very 
comforting to think that social progress in our country will continue to be 
impeded by those who seek to impose their interpretations of "God's inspired 
word" upon us all. Something that rationalists can do that might  hasten the 
demise of Bible fundamentalism is to get involved in teaching people how to 
think.  A regrettable characteristic of our society is the emphasis that we put 
on teaching what to think.  Certain ideas and attitudes become socially, polit-
ically, and religiously correct, and children in particular are indoctrinated in 
them with little or no attention to logical analysis to determine if they are 
indeed the most suitable and beneficial ideas and attitudes to espouse.  For 
this reason, people grow up to believe that God exists, that Jesus of Naza-
reth was his son, that the Bible is his inspired word, that God is responsible 
for the apparently fortuitous events that happen to us, etc., etc., etc. 
They believe these things not for sound rational and well thought-out reasons 
but simply because these ideas represent what they have been taught to 
believe.

   In this publication, we have identified and discussed more than enough 
problems to convince rational thinkers that the Bible just cannot be "the 
inspired word of God."  We will continue to publish articles with that inten-
tion in mind, but perhaps it is time to devote at least some space to articles 
that discuss how to think and how to apply logical thought processes to the 
biblical text.  Some of the articles in this issues have been written and se-
lected with that intention in mind.  Similar ones will follow in later issues.

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