From here:
One thinks with sorrow of the hundreds of thousands whose lives have been horrendously lost or affected by the great Japanese earthquake and tsunami, which will put a black mark against this year 2011 in the annals, coming so soon after the earthquake that hit Christchurch in New Zealand. The events are almost certainly linked tectonically, reminding us of the vast forces of nature that are normal for the planet itself but inimical to human life, especially when lived dangerously close to the jigsaw cracks of the earth’s surface.
Someone told me that there were to be special prayers in their local church for the people of Japan. This well-intentioned and fundamentally kindly proceeding nevertheless shows how absurd, in the literal sense of this term, are religious belief and practice. When I saw the television footage of people going to church in Christchurch after the tragic quake there, the following thoughts pressed.
In the rest of the article, Grayling goes on to point out the absurdity of believing in a God who does one of the following:
- Creates a world where earthquakes have “awful outcomes”.
- Creates a world which he subsequently abandoned and left to fend for itself.
- “Inflicts violent and agonizing sufferings arbitrarily on sentient creatures” and is, therefore, “vile”.
The one possibility he doesn’t cover is the one claimed by Christianity: when God created the world it was good, without death and suffering. Both were introduced at the Fall by Man’s rebellion. God still did not abandon humanity, but sent his Son to redeem us; although suffering in this life still exists, God will eventually remake the universe and restore it to its original state – without sin, suffering or death.
Grayling would probably claim that this is absurd, too – yet it is significant that he chooses to demolish that which Christianity does not claim for God rather than what it does.
Other than that absurdity, Grayling’s railing against what religion doesn’t claim for itself is not rendered less wrong-headed by his evident belief that human suffering is in some way bad. A not particularly logical – one could even say absurd – view for a person who believes that sentient life is merely an accidental collection of interacting molecules – some of which conspired to write an article with A. C. Grayling’s name attached.
