December 26, 2012
Why Must the Nation Grieve with God?
Lawrence M. Krauss over at CNN:
All of us who have had children in primary school at one time or another stopped in our tracks when we heard the news, just as President Barack Obama did, as we tried to imagine how we would have coped had something so horrendous happened in our own child's school.
But why must the nation grieve with God? After Newtown, a memorial service was held in which 10 clergy and Obama offered Hebrew, Christian and Muslim prayers, with the president stating: " 'Let the little children come to me,' Jesus said, 'and do not hinder them. For such belongs to the kingdom of Heaven.' God has called them all home. For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on."
Why must it be a natural expectation that any such national tragedy will be accompanied by prayers, including from the president, to at least one version of the very God, who apparently in his infinite wisdom, decided to call 20 children between the age of 6 and 7 home by having them slaughtered by a deranged gunman in a school that one hopes should have been a place or nourishment, warmth and growth?
We are told the Lord works in mysterious ways but, for many people, to suggest there might be an intelligent deity who could rationally act in such a fashion and that that deity is worth praying to and thanking for "calling them home" seems beyond the pale.
Let me be clear that there may be many grieving families in Newtown and around the country who have turned to their faith for solace in this difficult time. No caring person would begrudge them this right to ease their pain. But the question that needs to be asked is why, as a nation, do we have to institutionalize the notion that religion must play a central role at such times, with the president as the clergyman-in-chief?
Posted by Robin Varghese at 04:08 PM | Permalink
Comments
Why must in a school system where
religious prayers are prohibited grieve with God ?
Posted by: Nasreen R | Dec 26, 2012 4:24:07 PM
I understand your point but the answer is simple: because that is what the vast majority of Americans think of as being appropriate in the wake of such tragedies. Most people do not think at all during those moments: they feel. And memorial services are what "feels" right to probably 90% or more of Americans whether or not they believe in God. In the television age Presidents have come to be expected to show up for things like this which I think is an error, but not a surprise. by phusically showing up the President conveys his personal concern and the concern of the nation. It is just one of numerous ceremonial acts expected of the head of state now where all news stories are personalized. In times pre-Oklahoma City the President could issue a statement from on high and that would be that. Now, if a President failed to do as Obama did he would be criticized heavily and that would have an impact on public perception of the whoever is Pres. at the time. I thought the bible verse about the little children was out of place too but many Christians who know little about their religion in the first place would find the sentiment comforting sad to say.
Posted by: Lee | Dec 26, 2012 5:09:21 PM
As sad as it is to see what happened in Newtown, it's equally as sad to see the shallow and simplistic way of thinking so common of so many Americans, today. Why? Because our education system doesn't even begin to give it's citizens the tools needed to understand spirituality, but it's become all too clear what it does give us, instead. You think you have a new thought. I recommend Mark Twain's 'The Mysterious Stranger' to you. I see little difference between this authors mental acuity and the shooter's. Doubly sad.
Posted by: David Mason | Dec 26, 2012 6:12:28 PM
Poor situation and timing for Krauss to pick on grieving people.
Posted by: Raza Husain | Dec 26, 2012 6:20:11 PM
To David Mason : Comparing Mr. Krauss to the shooter is just outrageous. What do you know about either's "mental acuity".
I think Mr. Krauss knows that his is not a new thought, and I would certainly defend his ability to express it. He has a point, though his timing could be better.
Posted by: John redican | Dec 26, 2012 7:34:01 PM
Lawrence M. Krauss might want to check out several thousand years of theology before he writes about these subjects. He might start with the copious literature on theodicy, free will, and the many writers who have thought more profoundly than he has on these issues, and been troubled by them.
His idea of religion as a "solace" is part of the problem.
Krauss might also start with a holiday that began not only with the birth of a child in a stable, but also with the slaughter of about a score of children in Jerusalem, at the orders of a despot.
Posted by: Cynthia Haven | Dec 26, 2012 7:41:40 PM
This is an unusually shallow and even creepy article. As Cynthia remarks, it betrays much ignorance, too.
But, David Mason, you are the really unusual one. You have equated "a shallow and simplistic way of thinking" with the slaughter of children -- on the sadness scale. Um.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 26, 2012 10:19:56 PM
I agree that our public gatherings should be relatively free of religion. It is absurd to suggest that every time something bad happens, the only possible reaction is for the citizens to come together and pray. What good does that do? Absolutely nothing.
I disagree with the comment that most Americans feel most comfortable with a religious ceremony at a time of tragedy. I certainly don't. Most of my friends are not religious and feel quite uncomfortable and awkward being expected to sit through ceremonies in which the minister, pastor, priest, rabbi and other leaders from all the local churches show up and pretend to lead. If they really were leaders in our communities, they would be out every day working for the citizens to fight poverty, end war, get jobs, and stop the proliferation of guns in our communities. But most of them do none of that, and instead just show up for the photo op. Like the politicians.
Personally, I would like this country to stop this pious nonsense of genuflecting every time something bad happens to us, insisting that we are a religious nation, while turning our backs completely on the victims of the violence we inflict through the rest of the world. Get it consistent folks. You cannot wage war against many nations to steal their resources, murdering their children, then claim to be god-loving people entitled to some magic protection from harm.
I won't say that the chickens come home to roost, but I will say that we, as a people, should decide once and for all to renounce violence at home and abroad. Or, if not, at least stop pretending that we kill in the name of some mythical being in the sky, who will save us from our own violence if we stay on our knees long enough.
Posted by: NABNYC | Dec 26, 2012 11:16:13 PM
As an atheist, I do not begrudge any community or person taking comfort where they can.Rituals help people get through the first hours and days of the horror they experience, and one of the drawbacks of unbelief is that it cannot offer ready comfort. Even if we, as individuals, reject the religious aspect as unreal, it does off a great many people real comfort when they need it.
Posted by: Judith | Dec 27, 2012 6:25:21 AM
Am I the only person left who heard of Joseph Campbell? Or was he so Seventies that he was "disappeared"? Gimme a break.
Posted by: John Ballard | Dec 27, 2012 7:22:28 AM
A Process view of religion doesn't hold that God is omnipotent, and that S/He could have stopped a madman from his awful acts. The universe is open and contingent. Much of the good which can and should be done is done by us, in part because we have a base of good from which to learn and love. This gets into our very form of life which includes our ideals and goals not only for ourselves but to others as well. Some believe the source of that moral/beautiful 'fellow-feeling' is God-a God who knows, loves, suffers and may even urge 'the better angels of ourselves.'
Posted by: Richard H. Randall | Dec 27, 2012 10:50:03 AM
Quite fitting. In a nation where our elected representatives (especially those from a certain party) take part in 'prayer breakfasts', and all politicians end their speeches with "God bless America", we can expect no less.
And if the prayers helped the grieving parents,even in a small degree, then let them pray and cry out. Who are we to question whether there is someone up there listening.
Posted by: waqnis | Dec 27, 2012 11:34:56 AM
I will parrot Ned Resnikoff who said on Twitter about this: "As a fellow atheist let me be the first to say Lawrence Krauss needs to stop speaking".
I realize that's glib, but seriously dude, there are times and places for things. Nobody's really interested in whether you feel flip enough to present your atheist bona-fides at this time of year and in the immediate wake of a tragedy like Newtown. Instead of making yet another tone-deaf plea for people to stop practicing what is likely the only manner of grieving that they know, perhaps he could make an actually useful argument about guns and the role they play in our society. Or how the focus on guns is pointless and that we need to look at our mental health facilites and our country's predilection for prescription drugs. Or whatever. Anything other than another essay that appears shocked, shocked I tell you, that some members of the clergy believe that faith is essential to proper moral behavior.
Y'know it's funny, for someone who has spent a lot of time deriding supposedly pompous and ineffectual philosophical ideas, Krauss sure doesn't seem to be offering anything even close to a practical policy solution. He'd rather argue about the metaphysical commitments of our media than deal with the social and cultural causes of such tragedies.
Posted by: Ben Schwartz | Dec 27, 2012 1:52:11 PM
Ben calls it!
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 27, 2012 2:37:23 PM
Bravo to Lawrence Krauss. As an academic person and Higgs aficionado well familiar with Krauss' work in theoretical physics and cosmology, I applaud his boldness in bringing the rational to the irrational.
And to Raza Husain: Krauss is not "picking on grieving people." He is suggesting that while their grief is horribly sad and while each individual has the right to seek solace wherever it is found, relying for solace in a deity that's not going to change anything is a habit that needs serious questioning.
And to Ben Schwartz who writes, "[Krauss]'d rather argue about the metaphysical commitments of our media than deal with the social and cultural causes of such tragedies": Bah. Consider Krauss' concluding paragraphs from the original CNN Opinion Page:
"Why can't we as a nation focus on consoling the families in their grief by focusing on the most important realities, the lives of the children they have lost, celebrating their memory and sharing our common love of family, of children, and of our common humanity and perhaps most importantly arguing that this tragedy may one day not be completely in vain: That a shocked nation might rationally decide that assault weapons are meant to kill many people in a short time, not to hunt for deer or defend one's home.
"If instead of automatically assuming that prayers to a deity callous enough to allow this sickness, or worse, to encourage it out of divine retribution, are what families in grief need from their president and from the media, that we focused on rational grief counseling and community support, including better mental health care combined with sensible gun control, we as a society might ultimately act more effectively to stop this madness."
Several of the postings here have complained that Krauss' timing is poor. I disagree. What better time to challenge something seriously skewed than when it is happening? And remember, his audience is not the grieving community, but those of us with the power and the voice to challenge reliance on delusions.
I applaud Nasreen R's original short comment above, which points out the hypocrisy. Sure. Keep god out of the classroom, but bring him in anywhere else you feel like when you can't figure any rational way to deal with something irrational. Bah. Read Krauss' last paragraph (above) again: it's sensible.
Posted by: Higgs | Dec 27, 2012 3:03:08 PM
Higgs,
I appreciate that Krauss acknowledged what we all here likely already assume: that this country needs better gun control laws and better funding for mental health education and facilites. Yet what he's offered is no more than the generic liberal boilerplate that could be found anywhere right now (boilerplate that I mostly agree with, mind you). Hardly anything authoritative or innovative. And I imagine that if pushed on the matter he would say something about how he's not a politician or policy expert. However, he seems to feel completely entitled to assuming his authority with respect to peoples beliefs about the divine. Because he feels that his rational method for selecting beliefs uncovers the contradictions of certain articles of faith he can then dismiss the religious beliefs of others as callous or unthinking. Well, the problem is that he's not an authority on these matters. He's a very smart guy who knows a lot about physics. But the idea that this specialist knowledge entitles him to sweeping pronouncements about other people's metaphysical beliefs is simply arrogance. Scientific fluency is not a license for philosophical condescension.
Also, the phrasing of this,
"Why can't we as a nation focus on consoling the families in their grief by focusing on the most important realities, the lives of the children they have lost, celebrating their memory and sharing our common love of family, of children, and of our common humanity and perhaps most importantly arguing that this tragedy may one day not be completely in vain: That a shocked nation might rationally decide that assault weapons are meant to kill many people in a short time, not to hunt for deer or defend one's home."
makes it sound as if religious belief is incompatible or antagonistic to these suggestions. That's just not the case. Krauss might prefer a world where we console a community without reference to the divine, but he's mistaken if he believes that that world would automatically be better because of its absence.
Posted by: Ben Schwartz | Dec 27, 2012 4:21:21 PM
Higgs, I don't see that it's rational to derogate from the way people to whom the worst has happened seek solace. It's more intelligent to bow to the truism that the heart has its reasons of which reason knows not than to applaud someone for bringing the rational to the irrational -- the more so when he has done no such thing. Publishing smirking, fingerwagging remarks about people who grieve piteously is not a good example of clearing up the mental fog that your intellectual inferiors walk around in -- especially the ones whose children have just been murdered at age 6. When will Lawrence Krauss learn? It's okay to be a rationalist with nothing to offer; it's not okay to be a rationalist with nothing to offer who yet offers that -- precisely nothing.
I'm sure he would run like hell if the religious came at him, had his children been murdered. Let's hope he never gets the chance to find out. But, by writing these words, at this time, he is doing little more than afflicting the wretched with values they don't share. For the sake of fellow feeling, he should have held back -- at least for now.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 27, 2012 4:36:12 PM
"Smirking?" "Arrogant?" "Hypocritical?" Really? Reading the comments of you so-called 'believers' is enough to show why rational people like Krauss don't believe. And good for you if you've had a theology class--my God, talk about arrogance.
Posted by: g. o. | Dec 27, 2012 7:46:26 PM
g. o.,
Not sure who you're even referring to. Doesn't seem to me that anybody here is defending any particular belief outside of Krauss' unconstructive criticisms of them.
Also, the point is not whether anyone in particular is an "authority" because of a theology class or otherwise. The point is that Krauss' specialty as a physicist does not lend his opinion about religion any more credence than any other random person's opinion. What if he were an architectural engineer or a performance artist? Would his opinion be treated with the same weight? Why does a physicist's opinion about religion count any more than any other intelligent professional's? Because of his profession's use of rationality? Surely rationality is a mental tool accessible to any person willing to practice it, no? Why should someone like Krauss feel it necessary to deign himself the ambassador of rationality?
Posted by: Ben Schwartz | Dec 27, 2012 8:20:02 PM
It should be, but is apparently not, needless to observe -- this is not about believers and unbelievers (including me) lining up separately and hurling whatever they can at one another. It's about respect for unimaginable sorrow, for pain beyond naming, and for any form of solace that can be found in those circumstances. Readers here will likely not be tested like the parents of those twenty dead children. Frankly, we do not know what we would think or do if... I for one can be pretty sure I'd be grateful to be unjudged and unmolested by an importent chucklehead of a physicist keen to point out where I was screwing up.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 27, 2012 8:45:06 PM
Elatia,
Did you mean important or impotent. Krauss is clearly out of his element in theological matters, maybe so too in any area demanding of sensitivity or subtlety. I suspect he's never seen a godless argument he didn't like. These people who believe the rational is the limit of knowing have a very Dunning-Kruger'ish aspect about them.
Posted by: David Mason | Dec 27, 2012 9:37:39 PM
David, I didn't want to write the word but I like it better your way...
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Dec 27, 2012 10:19:23 PM
Why Must Larry Krauss Be Such A(n).....? [PART 1]
Policeman of public thought, and science fundamentalist Larry Krauss has done what so many brilliant and accomplished people are want to do. He steps outside the boundaries of his competence, nay near genius, and with self-righteous satisfaction proceeds to offend and/or amuse. All the time he believes he is propounding a great truth, or at least a call to ponder the greatness of his ideas and petulant ruminations.
Somewhere there is a bible of scientific terms that says that God should only be comprehended as a silly, illogical, unfeeling, and punishing delusion that impedes hypothesis generation and experimental design - not to mention stupid, nonsensical allusion at a public ceremony for mourning and comforting. God should not be understood as a thought, an idea, a construct, an abstraction, a concept that has been, and continues to be, an important source of guidance and recourse for so many people - especially in times of great personal AND national tragedy.
As one who chides believers, especially those who prefer literal readings of sacred texts, Krause can only give a humorless reply to President Obama's scriptural reference from the Christian testament. God is literally the incompetent who couldn't think of a better way to bring 20 children home to heaven. And pray to God in a public gathering? To thank him for his incompetence?
Of course literalist Krauss can only see prayer in the literal sense of begging for intercession, or giving thanks and praise for being good in a mysterious and supernatural way. It will never dawn on him to see that prayer has a very natural power to transform the one who prays. Richard Dawkins says he joins his colleagues in prayer before meals at University, not for any supernatural reason, but because it does other things for him. Praying gives a sense of tradition, of community, an attitude of being thankful, and a valuing of tolerance. [END PART 1]
Posted by: Norman Costa | Dec 28, 2012 9:27:03 AM
Why Must Larry Krauss Be Such A(n).....? [PART 2]
One doesn't have to be a believer to internalize the sentiments in The Prayer of Saint Francis. "Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace...". Does he, do we, want to get all tied up in our underwear because of the reference to a supernatural deity at the beginning of a phrase? "O Divine Master...where there is injury, let me sow the seeds of forgiveness....For it is in forgiving that I am forgiven."
Prayers being led in public by our President can invite the participation of believer and skeptic alike in a ceremonial mourning and in the comforting of those who grieve. Apparently, Krauss is not able to go beyond the specific words in prayers - here's the literalism again - and join in an expression of feelings and sentiments that are very hard to express, otherwise. He could never hope to compose, himself, an intellectually appropriate set of verses that so invites and moves others to join in and show solidarity with those who suffer. Perhaps other secularists can and have, but Krauss wouldn't recognize it if jumped up and whacked him on the shallow, non-science part of his brain. (See his last paragraph for confirmation of this.)
Five and more decades ago, religious people from many faiths, marched to end discrimination and promote justice. Secular Jews, humanists, atheists, skeptics and academics joined hands and linked arms with believers and sang their songs, lit candles, and prayed their prayers to express support, solidarity, and endure the punishing assaults by the police. When you are going to be confronted with assault, indignity, and a threat to your life, praying for strength with your comrades, for any non-believer, can help you face great adversity.
As Larry Krauss said of the philosopher thorns-in-his-side, and I paraphrase, "Why don't you guys go talk to one another, and leave us go about our business?" [END PART 2]
Posted by: Norman Costa | Dec 28, 2012 9:30:04 AM
Hear, hear!! Elatia and Norman. And a hat tip to David for the Dunning-Kruger reference.
Posted by: Ben Schwartz | Dec 28, 2012 3:00:13 PM
As an agnostic, I don't mind public prayers in the face of such horror. I have long (meaning, for a couple of decades) wondered why presidents are expected to personally appear at tragedies and disasters. I would like to think we can assume that any president feels compassion for the victims, but wonder whether all the expense of a personal appearance really has much effect.
Posted by: Sarah Doyle | Dec 30, 2012 11:44:41 AM
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