# Another of God's great works! \[Haiti earthquake\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 14, 2010, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936 "2010-01-14T15:09:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2010, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/161 "2010-01-16T21:18:20Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > The Stoic says, “Virtuous Haitians will not have their characters debased by this earthquake, and as such, they remain as _eudaimonistically_ happy as before. In fact, they will be improved by this crucible of character.” I would not fault anybody for having some misgivings about this way of thinking. Yes, because eudaimonia is impossible for the dead. As Nietzsche crucially recognized, only THAT WHICH DOESN’T KILL US makes us stronger. That which does kill us, kills us, which is generally considered to be an undesireable outcome … . ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2010, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/162 "2010-01-16T21:45:00Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Sure, but what do _you_ think about it? Who cares what _I_ think? I’m just putting the ideas out there so people have maximal choices of philosophies. But as to which of the many possibilities to believe—like the Kingston Trio sang, “You’ve got to walk that lonesome valley. You’ve got walk it by yourself. Oh, nobody else can walk it for you. You’ve got to walk it by yourself.” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2010, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/163 "2010-01-16T22:10:25Z")
What an utterly useless and implicitly patronizing comment. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/164 "2010-01-16T22:15:10Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > Who cares what _I_ think? I’m just putting the ideas out there so people have maximal choices of philosophies. But as to which of the many possibilities to believe—like the Kingston Trio sang, “You’ve got to walk that lonesome valley. You’ve got walk it by yourself. Oh, nobody else can walk it for you. You’ve got to walk it by yourself.” Did people not have maximal choices of philosophies before your interventions? Would their choices be constrained if you were not here? > [@](#): > > I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2010, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/165 "2010-01-16T22:19:07Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > Yes, because eudaimonia is impossible for the dead. > > As Nietzsche crucially recognized, only THAT WHICH DOESN’T KILL US makes us stronger. That which does kill us, kills us, which is generally considered to be an undesireable outcome … . I hadn’t thought about that. I got stuck at the part where they want to redefine words. When that happens, you know it’s only one argument away from equivocation (we’ve even seen it before on these boards over this very same subject) ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2010, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/166 "2010-01-16T22:38:16Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Did people not have maximal choices of philosophies before your interventions? Would their choices be constrained if you were not here? Well, people were going around starting facile threads like “Another of God’s Great Works! [Haitian Earthquake]” (a/k/a ZOMG…Where’s your God now, Christians???). And now, thanks inpart to what must be admitted is my prompting, we are talking about Seneca and Aristotle. So to answer your question directly: Yes, before my intervention, this thread never would have risen above the level of puerility exhibited in the first post. Do you really controvert that? ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2010, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/167 "2010-01-16T22:39:56Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > What an utterly useless and implicitly patronizing comment. No, unlike a lot of people on the SDMB, I know trying to win these kinds of arguments on the internet is a game for retards. So I’m not going to make myself an advocate for any religion or atheism. I do like talking about ideas though. ETA: And sometimes, advocacy gets in the way of talking about ideas, doesn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2010, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/168 "2010-01-16T22:53:26Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > I do like talking about ideas though. > > ETA: And sometimes, advocacy gets in the way of talking about ideas, doesn’t it? Well, it doesn’t help if you set yourself up as some kind of wise minstrel bringing ideas to the uneducated masses for their edification. We’re aware of religion, thanks; I daresay most of us were brought up in households where it was practiced to various degrees of seriousness. We were aware of the choices long before meeting you. ---
**Author:** ![bettyporkta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/71e660/32.png) [@bettyporkta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bettyporkta)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2010, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/169 "2010-01-16T23:00:54Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > When a massive tragedy like the Haiti earthquake strikes, Christians respond by sending relief and rescue workers, fundraising for survivors and the rebuilding effort, prayer, solidarity, and compassion. Atheists, or at least the ones in this thread, respond with nastiness. i know for a fact,that Australia, (ie. the government) like many other countries, always comes to the aid of places suffering from disasters, are you implying that the atheists who live in countries like Australia don’t pay tax ?. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/170 "2010-01-17T00:21:35Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > No, unlike a lot of people on the SDMB, I know trying to win these kinds of arguments on the internet is a game for retards. So I’m not going to make myself an advocate for any religion or atheism. Garbage. You’ve bashed atheism, defended religion, and mainly filled the thread with empty sneers at everyone else. > [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > So to answer your question directly: Yes, before my intervention, this thread never would have risen above the level of puerility exhibited in the first post. Do you really controvert that? Yes; you’ve dragged it down. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/171 "2010-01-17T00:49:44Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#): > > . . . could have been exactly the kind of quality-of-the-discussion-raising post that I have been asking for. . . . I don’t really see you asking for any such thing. What I see is a series of near-trolling comments that you are now claiming were intended to raise the level of discussion simply because, in retrospect, your correspondents chose to address your snide remarks more seriously than you posted. You will stop providing “critiques” of other posts and you will back way off on the sarcasm if you intend to continue posting to this thread. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/172 "2010-01-17T01:12:47Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Yes. Though I would read “purpose” here more heavily into _telos_ than just end or objective. Some Stoics believed that the universe had some purpose that people need to attune themselves to. To the extent that you are in sync with the universe, you practice virtue. There’s a great analogy of this in Cicero’s Dream of Scipio. It’s too long to quote at length. Scipio’s dead grandfather, inconveniently named Scipio, tells him to listen to the music of the spheres. Because it is all around you at all times, you become so used to it that it is very difficult to hear. Likewise, the purpose of the universe is all around you but is very difficult to discern and takes a great deal of practice. Since **Kimmy\_Gibbler** rose to actually have a real argument this suddenly became interesting. I always enjoy when you make an effort to take your mindset out of the formality you seem to usually impose and simplify it to a more fluid style. In response to the above paragraph, in relation to providence, I think the interesting thing to me would be how it regards the ability to perceive or the limits of our perception. The idea that providence is a matter of ‘punishment’, a la Pat Robertson, doesn’t really make sense to me. I have not read Seneca and know little of Stoicism, but I’ve given some of these ideas some thought. This is similar to my own practice. I try to listen to the Music of the Spheres. I am convinced that our minds can interpret subtle variations at levels that most people cannot comprehend. Though, I might be biased by what seems to be gifted physical senses that I have received. I can read far away. I can read 10 point font from 6 feet. I can hear conversations in other rooms just fine. I can feel variations in the fascia beneath your skin with my hands. My sense of smell I think is either normal, or even possibly not that great, not sure on that one. At the very least, it and taste are the least cultivated of my senses. I find myself often trying to ride the flows of the city around me. Particularly in parties and events I practiced this by changing the dynamics of social interactions by moving to different places in the room. Physically interjecting my presence socially can have an impact on a social dynamic whether I speak or not. People’s personal spaces or their ‘spheres’ push into each other like the Venn Diagrams of civilization. The ability of one to be guided by this Providence, is tied into one’s ability to discern the ‘music’ of the spheres. Basically, it’s one’s signal to noise ratio with the surrounding environment. The most difficult part of this is to quite your thinking. Oftentimes we waste precious processing power thinking and analyzing useless data, either out of context, or something that is simply just plain wrong. Much time is lost to repeating tasks, both mentally and physically, to no practical effect. How this relates to Haiti is again, not so much as a punishment reward system, but that our ability to discern the forces that surround us enable us to find the best available option. For instance, if Haitians in Port-au-Prince were attuned to the music of the plate rubbing together they might have been able to avert disaster. Of course, this is a level of attunement to nature, we either are barely capable of or are not capable of. Providence would be the act of intelligence correctly interpreting data, our ability to interpret the evidence of our senses improving our lot. I’ve begun referring to this personally as ‘surfing the concentration gradient’, because we are locked into objective reality by a series of concentration gradients both inside of our bodies and externally. It is through the manipulation of internal concentration gradients that we are able to convert different physical forces into kinetic energy in order to power action. Sodium in, potassium out, calcium in tropomyosin out, actin seeks myosin, muscle fires, action is accomplished. But we are limited by action potentials. There is a time-delay on the ability to act, so as such as complex intelligences, we have to be able to interpret data. You once told me the mind is an amazing ballistics calculator. This has stuck with me. We must calculate the ballistic trajectories of our bodies in motion in order to trigger the right combination of sodium in/potassium out in order to riposte with our foil. Calculating the ballistics based upon an intuitive sense of the rigidity of the blade, modified by its length, and the distribution of its weight. In so doing we can calculate where and when the tip of the foil will touch. Of course our opponent is making the same calculations, so whoever makes the best calculations wins in the resolution of the action. So the cultivation of interpreted perception can lead to a greater understanding of the spheres, a wider capacity to interpret the data of sensory input regarding physical processes that have been in motion for quite some time. So unlike a single-celled organism, we aren’t simply following the optimal concentration gradient in the here and now, we are following a complex game model of the optimum concentration gradient in a macro-environment. Delayed gratification being one of the hallmarks of discipline, and the capacity to accomplish more complex actions that lead to greater hypothetical rewards in the temporal future, or at a spatial distance. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/173 "2010-01-17T01:26:45Z")
So, science is good because it can extend our senses to realms where useful information can be gathered, and religion is useless because it doesn’t, then. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/174 "2010-01-17T01:39:31Z")
Peyote in season, eh? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/175 "2010-01-17T01:47:34Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > So, science is good because it can extend our senses to realms where useful information can be gathered, and religion is useless because it doesn’t, then. A shovel is good because it can use to bury shit. A snow-blower is useless because it just blows it around. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/176 "2010-01-17T02:00:45Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > A shovel is good because it can use to bury shit. A snow-blower is useless because it just blows it around. Be that as it may, your earlier statement argued that the Haitians could have benefited from seismographs, not divination, if they wanted advance warning. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/177 "2010-01-17T02:18:46Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > A shovel is good because it can use to bury shit. A snow-blower is useless because it just blows it around. Religion is more like someone running around yelling “VROOM! VROOM! I’m a snowblower! VROOM!” A snowblower at least moves snow. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/178 "2010-01-17T14:53:09Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Be that as it may, your earlier statement argued that the Haitians could have benefited from seismographs, not divination, if they wanted advance warning. Obviously. But I was responding directly to a particular post in a particular context. Which you’re not addressing. Just using as a chance to repeat yourself. No one said anything about divination. I was more talking about the limits of one’s ability to parse what they experience with their senses. While you’re correct that such monitoring equipment as a seismograph expands our capability to be aware, I was making a comment about providence specifically, playing off of **Maeglin** ’s comments about stoicism. About being able to listen. Yes, a seismograph improves our abilities to listen to Earthquakes, that goes without saying. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/179 "2010-01-17T15:06:09Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Be that as it may, your earlier statement argued that the Haitians could have benefited from seismographs, not divination, if they wanted advance warning. In addition. An axiom I find useful is, “Life is all about your optics.”, meaning we are limited by the perception apparatus. Optics in this case being a metaphor for whatever perceiving tool you have, whether it be a seismograph, an MRI, or the lens on your camera, or in your eye. I am convinced that people perceive limits on their own physical senses that are far far less than the actual limits, and as such we have the ability to cultivate. Any discussion of this ends up often with critiques of divination, or psychic phenomena, but that’s not really the point I am trying to make. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936/180 "2010-01-17T21:12:24Z")
Well, nevertheless, such points hitchhike along when you talk about how useful a scientific device is, the implicit point being religion as an information- and wisdom-gathering process is pretty useless by comparison. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-of-gods-great-works-haiti-earthquake/524936.md?page=10)