Somali pirates kill couple distributing Bibles

It's a tragedy when four Americans on a yacht are killed by Somali pirates.

But when I heard about them being taken hostage, I thought, "Who would be crazy enough to sail by themselves into such a dangerous area, given all the other well-publicized hijackings in that part of the Indian Ocean?"

Then I learned that one of the couples had been distributing Bibles around the world. My suspicion is that they felt they were under God's protection.

Mistaken feeling, obviously.

However, I've little doubt that countless Christians are now saying, "It was God's will that they were killed." I also have little doubt that if they'd managed to survive, countless Christians would have said, "It was God's will that they were saved."

This is the nice thing about religious belief: it can't be proven wrong, because it's a belief. True believers can make reality into whatever they want it to be.

Comments

[twitter.com/seanobrien]

I would agree that it was God's will, no matter what happens. It could be a belief, or just an interpretation of my lack of belief in free will. Because I adhere to no particular faith, I'm free to re-define "God's will" as the will of the Universe. It seems to me that the problem, as far as there is one, is not the belief that certain things *are* God's will, but rather that certain things are *not* God's will. If one is going to believe in an omnipotent, ever-present God, it would seem wise not to second-guess Him.

I don't, but this is a good way to explain how I feel - in deistic terms.

[Karl Coryat]

Sadly, these days religion isn't the only area where conclusions are drawn based on beliefs. I'm currently reading Lee Smolin's "The Trouble With Physics," and you wouldn't believe how insidiously belief has crept into the physical sciences. Some of the top theoretical ideas today are intentionally designed such that if there's a future disagreement with experiment, a free constant can be tweaked, dimensions added or subtracted, etc., to make everything work again. That's essentially a "scientific" version of what Brian described among believers. Smolin's book is a strong indictment of the almost-faith-based direction that science has been headed since the 1980s.