Air crash survivor asks “Why did God do this to me?”
You’re alive, jackass, which 49 other people aren’t. And yeah, you’re jacked up, but it doesn’t sound like anything permanent. And I haven’t been following the aftermath very closely, but I’m fairly certain you’re not on the hook for this. And enough already with the god-is-personally-responsible-for-everything jazz.
Say it, sister.
Oh, lay off. He may have been lucky to survive but I’m willing to bet he’s a lot more traumatised than the dead guys. It’s been a week. Give him a break.
Hmm…well it makes a bit more sense than “Thank God for saving me while he was busy murdering all those other people…I am blessed.” But not quite as much sense as “Shit happens”.
Give him a little bit of a break, Rilchiam. They said it was one of his first full sentences after regaining consciousness - he may not even know where he is! If he says it during the inevitable weepy network news interview, then yes, he might be a selfish prick. As it is, he’s probably doped to the gills and shouldn’t be held totally responsible for what he says.
I dunno. I’d have to be doped well past my gills to start thinking the Lord of the Universe took time out from keeping the celestial orbs spinning just to fuck with me. If he actually exists I’d say he had better things to do.
Then again if he does actually exist I’m sure he can multitask.
The lone survivor may be suffering from Survivor Guilt and so feels that he should also have died.
What are you talking about, I thought he was supposed to be a guy 
.
I thought that was one of the main points with the whole God idea. You know, “no sparrow shall fall” and all that. (Of course personally I agree with betenoir that “Shit happens” makes a lot more sense.)
I totally agree that shit happens, but I think you’re being overly judgemental of this bloke, especially since he’d just come round.
It seems fairly obvious that the subconcious human condition is to think we’re somehow ‘chosen’ in the face of dreadful shit happening - and if one is religious, one is bound to ascribe religious motivation to that ‘choice’.
I saw a documentary of interviews with tsunami survivors (have I mentioned this before?) from India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka respectively. The Christian said “we’re holy so we survived”, the Muslim said “we have sinned against Allah so he punished us” and the Buddhist said “I must have done something bad in a past life”. People are just like that.
You know, it always worries me when people in positions of responibilty for others lives have such faith in God.
There’s a little part of me that imagines a pilot saying “Oh well, the plane is going to do down. I guess that’s God’s will”. :eek:
“no sparrow shall fall”… without Him knowing, not “without Him deliberately pinching the bird’s wings broken”
Different concepts altogether.
Ask the survivors of Auschwitz or any war or the Twin Towers about survivor’s guilt. This isn’t new. Poor guy.
My heart goes out to this guy - he’s going to have a tough time of it… 
I don’t read that as “Why did god allow me to be all broken and bloody and laying helpless in a hospital room while racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills” but rather “Why did god allow me to live instead of any or all of those other 49 people (and live with the horror of having taken part in killing said 49 innocent people).” IOW, survivor’s guilt. He may not be formally charged, but he certainly is “on the hook for this”- he was the first officer, and as such had a part in taxiing the plane out to the proper runway. He failed in that task, and now 49 people are dead. He’s going to be feeling this one for a while.
Unbelievable. The next time you live through something a few clicks more traumatic than having to live rent free at your mother-in-law’s for a few weeks, let’s see how rational your first thought is.
There was an incident in Teterboro NJ a while back when a plane was trying to take off and didn’t get off the ground. Instead it went through six lanes of rush hour traffic and crashed into a warehouse. When they got the pilot out, his first words were “I lost control of the plane.” Ya think?
What severely traumatized people say should not be held against them in a court of law or anywhere else.
This is the context I read his words in as well. Well said, bobkitty.
I feel like this is the second time in recent months that an accident victim has been pitted for being too selfish in the heat of sorrow and/or realisation.
Er, the other I think was a guy whose family had died and he was quoted as saying something along the lines of “why me?”
Give people a break. Survivors have to, well, live with various consequences of their circumstances. I think we ought to let them express that.
BETENOIR AND MEBUCKNER PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
Yes, yes, of course. But now, take the next step. Look around you at the infinite amount and variety of shit that happens in the universe all the time, 24/7, to all its creatures animate and inanimate: shit so detailed and specific, so perfectly random-seeming, so finely tuned to its purpose and irreducible in its complexity, shit that has existed since time immemorial, and you have to (if you are a thinking man) do as others have and postulate the existence of an Intelligent Shitter.
Since Aristotle, philosophers have speculated on the “Prime Mover” behind the universe – they just weren’t clear on the nature of the “movement” involved. Now we know. The most insuperable prima facie objection to the Intelligent Design argument has been the Teleological Premise: that it’s senseless to suppose an intelligent design that has no discernable purpose. Well, now we know: we were made to give The Creator somewhere to take massive, Godlike dumps. A watch may not imply a watchmaker, but it sure as hell is a hint that somebody cares what time it is. Similarly, while an outhouse cannot speak to events before its own existence, its present presupposes a set of bowels in need of relief. Scale up to a privy a trillion times larger than the Milky Way, and we’re talking serious, celestial-size crapping, the evidence of which is all around us. The basic principle is so obvious it’s really not open to question; all we’re left with are the more subtle debates like “Can God create a magazine large enough to last through the results of Tuesday Taco Night, and how can it be that he hasn’t done the crossword already?”
And that, betenoir and MEBuckner, is why we need minds like yours, for every question answered brings us closer to God’s…to God.