As Doug Chaplin argues, both miss the same point with an untimely appeal to metaphysical post-hoc in order to draw attention to themselves.
These are not payback for human sin in the sense that Dawkins or Robertson (surely mirror images of a modernity that only deals in facts and mechanisms) mean it. But the extent of the devastation caused by these natural events is certainly a consequence of that easy selfishness of all of us who in part at least enjoy our lives at the expense of a system that doesn’t think the poor of distant countries are a significant moral problem. The huge death toll of Haiti is not a punishment for their sins, but it’s certainly in part a consequence of ours.
Continue with my argument discussing why I find their sort of self-aggrandizement destructive theology. Not destructive to theology, but a kind of theological framework that would destroy life rather than support it.
Robertson’s claim is that Haiti has been under a curse since a slave rebellion against the French in 1791 where voodoo rituals were performed to secure Haiti’s freedom. He makes the comment that the Dominican Republic, on the same island, is prosperous and healthy by virtue of their resort culture while Haiti is in “desperate poverty.” Robertson’s mis-interpretation of poverty aside, the claim is that God rewards material prosperity and health to those who follow a set of rules and allows those to suffer who do not to follow the same rules. If we reverse this cause and effect relationship using the same post-hoc (il)logic above – the suffering are condemned of God and the prosperous are favored. If you are suffering, poor, abused, struggling, lost a job, lost a family member, lost a home, get a really bad disease, etc. it is not a leap and actually working within the same framework to say that those who suffer, those who are afflicted, are not favored by God.
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testify.
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