Using the language of heaven inadvertently betrays the skeptic

While watching the news today (June 19), the commentator was reporting on a tragic event in the U.S. A fire had claimed the lives of 9 firefighters. These firemen had wives, children, siblings, parents and other loved ones. The loss and the grief that surrounds this event is immeasurable.

The news commentator said something interesting and telling. She referred to the event as something incomprehensible. My ears perked up. Incomprehensible? Why incomprehensible? The fire was tragic; heart-rending, but it is totally comprehensible. It’s pure physics. Everything about the fire and the deaths of these men is indeed comprehensible.

“Ahh, but wait a minute,” you say. "She is not talking about physics." She is talking about the ‘why’ question. Why did this have to happen? The assumption behind it is that there is some purpose to the lives of these men, the fulfillment of which lies in some transcendent being’s control.

We cannot escape it, can we? No matter how hard our secular institutions purge themselves of religious language, we smuggle metaphysical terms in anyway. It can't be helped. An event like this can ONLY be incomprehensible if there is a transcendent purpose to life that demands comprehensibility. If life is nothing more than a long chain of genetic accidents and only the strong survive, and if that belief comes naturally, then the last thing you might say about this horrific accident is that it is incomprehensible.

It is very telling that it’s incomprehensibility is one of the first things that naturally occurs to us. News announcers raise the transcendent Why? question all the time, as if there is someone out there who needs to justify it all. Often you will hear skeptics say that we are all atheists by birth and thus it is our default belief. That's not quite right. We are all sinners by default, but instinctively we know that there is a road we OUGHT to be on. We've just lost our way and we are bluffing. But our language gives us away.