Hitchens Rebuts Brooks

On the subject of the righteous wrath of God, and its relationship to the tragedy of Haiti, I consider this to be an effective rebuttal of this. Read both.

Blaming what one considers to be a "bad" religion for human misfortune is a very tricky thing at best. If the issue is that the voodoo religion promotes a view of the temporal world as capricious, and in the process discourages foresight and planning against misfortune, as Brooks argues, is that not an argument that can be laid at the footstep of all religions (including Christianity)?

This is not to say that other religions don't promote "good works" in the here-and-now. But, from my own experiences as a (now former) evangelical, I have often seen a connection between the anti-government conservatives and the heaven-or-hell believers. After all, if perfect peace, justice and prosperity are impossible in this world, and you otherwise consider yourself to be "saved," why bother to try? And why be taxed to try, when you can give that money to the church? Never mind the fact that the church itself is a temporal institution, and not one that is invulnerable to temporal frailties. Thousands of examples, from the Swaggart-Bakker sex scandals of the 1980s to the Catholic Church's blind eye to child abuse under its ecclesiastical nose, sadly illustrate that point.

Poverty is a complicated issue, and the complicated nature of it often brings the people who fight to their knees. When that happens, however, the moral and spiritual thing to do is to get up and keep on fighting, and not to point fingers of self-righteousness.