Boston.com’s Big Picture has – as always – an excellent spread of photographs of the rescue mission yesterday. And I know that one of my Big Internet Rules is “Don’t read the comments,” but I noticed a theme in a lot of them. For example:
“Thanks Boston Globe for bringing these pictures of hope, joy, courage and the protection given by the Lord to these miners. I am deeply touched by photos especially #32 of Mario Gomez who remembered at once to thank the Lord for making it.”
“… este es un milagro de Dios de un ser superior”
“Praise God!!!!!!! I feel this brings the world together!”
There seems to be this need to invoke God for this success, but here’s how I see it: assuming God as any place in this at all, He is the one who tried to kill them. A sudden, unforeseen cave-in sounds like the kind of thing a deity might do because He was bored or feeling capricious that day.
The rescue operation is a testament to the intelligence, creativity and skill of the human engineers and specialists who managed to design that capsule system and who had the foresight to put an emergency shelter in the mine. It is a tribute to the human miners, who were able to keep their heads about them and live together in, let’s face it, a hole for ten weeks without killing each other. It’s a credit to the humans of Chile who supported the effort, and who made sure that their government never even considered letting the miners die down there.
Giving all credit to God is an insult to the humans who actually did the heavy lifting.
Besides, what kind of malicious God would trap the miners underground for ten weeks just to see if they could be rescued? I mean, I might do something like that in The Sims, but those aren’t what experts refer to as “Real People.” If your God is the kind who tortures people for His own amusement, you might want to look into getting a better class of God.
Lost in the Labyrinth 