Christopher Hitchens tycker till om Haiti
Chris Hitchens är en person som jag har väldigt stor respekt för. Han är ateist, författare, skribent och samhällskritiker. Jag försöker läsa allt jag kan komma över med honom, inte minst följande artikel.
We live on a cooling planet with a volcanic interior that is insecurely coated with a thin crust of grinding tectonic plates. Earthquakes and tsunamis are to be expected and can even to some degree be anticipated. It’s idiotic to ask whose fault it is. The Earth’s thin shell was quaking and cracking millions of years before human sinners evolved, and it will still be wrenched and convulsed long after we are gone. These geological dislocations have no human-behavioral cause. The believers should relax; no educated person is going to ask their numerous gods “why” such disasters occur. A fault is not the same as a sin.
However, the believers can resist anything except temptation. Where would they be if such important and frightening things had natural and rational explanations? They want the gods to be blamed. After the titanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, the Muslims of Indonesia launched a hugely successful campaign to recruit terrified local people to Islamic repentance. Following the more recent Asian tsunami of 2004, religious figures jostled to provide every possible “explanation” of tectonic events in terms of mere human conduct.
The biggest work of all will be performed by carrier groups and airborne brigades of the United States, the taxpayer-financed forces of a secular republic. The vital next stage—beyond mere charity and rescue—will be to try and liberate Haiti’s people from fear of witch doctors of all stripes and to educate them in the family planning that their country so urgently needs. Let’s see how the various parties of God come out on that.
The biggest work of all will be performed by carrier groups and airborne brigades of the United States, the taxpayer-financed forces of a secular republic. The vital next stage—beyond mere charity and rescue—will be to try and liberate Haiti’s people from fear of witch doctors of all stripes and to educate them in the family planning that their country so urgently needs. Let’s see how the various parties of God come out on that.
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