Newtown Shooting

If you were dropping off your child at their school, and you saw a shady looking character with a couple guns walking around and starting to shoot at innocent children, what would you do?

It’s a tough question.  Would you duck and run for cover?  Would you attempt to tackle the guy?  I find hard to know how I’d react.  I like to think that I’d act heroically, but I also know there’s a good chance I’d just duck and run for cover.

Now, what if you somehow magically were granted knowledge that you wouldn’t get hurt in the incident.  Then what would you do?  I think it’s probably safe to say that we’d take out the gunman as soon as we possibly could.  Any decent person would, right?

What if you had absolute, airtight knowledge that this event was going to occur before it actually happened?  I think any decent person would call the police or otherwise get the authorities involved before it happened, right?  That’s a no-brainer.

If you accept that an omnipotent and omnipresent god exists and watches over us, then we must accept the fact that he ALLOWS these events to happen, while having the power to stop them.  I think this is referred to as “the problem of evil”.

On a very surface level, we could say “God had the power to stop this event, and he didn’t.  Therefore, God was complicit in the crime.”

This is a simplistic view, and there are some responses to this:

1)  We have free will.

I don’t buy this argument.  Every description of the Christian god that I’ve read compares him to Santa Claus.  He knows what we’re thinking, and whether we’ve been bad or good, and what is “in our hearts”, whatever that means.  He also, apparently, has the power to influence people and to make actual changes in the world.

So while we might have free will, God also supposedly has power and influence over us.

2)  Evil exists as a test or lesson to humanity

A few evangelicals have come out and blamed the shooting on our godless society.  Mike Huckabee said:

“And since we've ordered God out of our schools, and communities, the military and public conversations, you know we really shouldn't act so surprised ... when all hell breaks loose.”

James Dobson said:

“…but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.  I think that’s what’s going on.”

So there it is.  Gays, abortions, and atheists make God angry, and therefore he allows innocent children to be slaughtered as a punishment.

Or this jackass:

The implication here is that God is spiteful for being kicked out of public schools, and therefore allowed the shooting to happen as a response.

Do people really think that?  I can’t see how anyone would want to worship a god who would do such a thing.  If God had a problem with gays or abortionists or atheists and did something SPECIFICALLY to punish those people, that would make a little more sense to me.  But allowing innocent children to die and putting their families through agony and torture as a result of the sins of someone else doesn’t make any sense to me.

But then again, punishing someone for the sins of someone else seems to be central to Christian dogma.

3)  “Part of a bigger plan”

Another possible response is basically “We don’t know why this happened, but we have faith that it must be part of a bigger plan.”  This, in my opinion, is just giving up any rational thinking and succumbing completely to faith.  Like me, they can’t comprehend how something could happen, and just have to assume that God is in control and things will work out ok in the end.

There is a final response, which is the “hands off” God, who created the universe and set it into motion and then let things progress how they may.  Mentally disturbed people do bad things.  Good people do good things.  People live and day and life happens as it may.  I submit that a “hands off” God is indistinguishable from God not existing at all.

As an atheist, how do I approach the shooting?  Obviously with horror and disgust.  So much so that I’m actively not following the story too closely as an act of informed ignorance.  Reading about the children who died, and looking at their little faces is painful to me, and I don’t believe that it will change my behavior or teach me anything I don’t already know.  I already love my daughter and tell her that every day.  I can’t possibly hug her more than I do.  I don’t think this shooting has changed my stance on guns, violence, religions, or school safety.  Looking at raw statistics, the number of people killed in mass slayings is far outnumbered by death by car accident, not wearing a bike helmet, and other poor decisions that are very preventable.

In the end, it just sucks.