Asymmetrical Information

Jane,

Actually, Prof. Cole's post wouldn't make any sense even if NOLA had escaped any major damage. Nowhere does he provide any evidence that either Falwell or Robertson had, in fact, threatened God's wrath on New Orleans in particular. The fact that there was, by the good professor's own acknowledgement, widespread devastation would, if anything, tend to support the notion of divine retribution (And before anyone jumps up on their soapboxes, no I don't support the notion in any way). In effect all of the evidence he provides undermines his actual thesis. And this is from a professor???
Also, on a human level, for all my problems with Pat Robertson (and they are myriad), his organization has already donated six trailers worth of supplies to relief efforts. In looking over the good professor's site, I note that as of 8:53 Wednesday morning, he hasn't even bothered to provide any links to relief efforts. Its okay not to do so, but its more than a little inappropriate under those circumstances to be making comments about those who are doing something.

I sincerely wish that Professor Cole would stick to what he actually has some knowledge of (contemporary Middle Eastern religious movements esp. Iraq and Iran IIRC). Or he could translate the Arabic language media for us.

But on everything else he's just deaf, dumb, and blind. His political intuition is so off the mark as to be bizarre. For the encyclopedia entry on “Ivory Tower” as it applies to academe, his picture should provide the illustration.

What exactly is the point here? That Juan Cole was wrong about the wrath of God and Robertson/Falwell are right?

How's this? Given that natural devastation is randomly distributed, and given that bad human behavior is randomly distributed, all attempts to causally link the former to the latter are nonsense, and Fallwell is a horse's ass. Whether Cole gets this right by accident or through astute calculation, he still hit the mark.

Father Mocker,
Um, natural devastation isn't randomly distributed. It's not even close to randomly distributed.

And your second assumption- that bad human behavior is randomly distributed- seems at least a little more plausible, but doesn't hold up when you consider self-reinforcing group effects and the effects of parents. As a simple counter example, I doubt the populations of the state of California, the state of Alabama, France, Mongolia, and Bhutan are equally bad or good.

A quick edit of my previous comment-

I should have said that random devastation is randomly distributed, but it is not uniformly randomly distributed. Father Mocker's argument, as I understand it, depends on uniform random distribution.

"Juan Cole wrong" is the blogospheric equivalent of "dog bites man".

If Juan Cole was simply wrong on many occasions, it wouldn't be very notable. Juan Cole, however, in addition to being wrong a lot, is a despicable human being lacking even a shred of common human decency or courtesy. If there was justice in this Vale of Tears, he and Falwell would be stranded together on a island, where they could endlessly torment each other with their hideous personalities.

Cole's point, even if he had been right on the facts, shows a notable lack of reasoning power:
"2. God does not use natural or man-made catastrophes to punish people for moral failings."
Here he elides the distinction between every catastrophe being a punishment from God, and some catastrophes being such.

Alkali & Father Mocker,

I don't think the issue here is that Cole is wrong. That's become kind of a given. For me, at least, the fact that he gets his facts wrong while trying to hold other people up to ridicule merits any insults or ridicule that are laid on his doorstep.

Jim Clay corrects me: "natural devastation isn't [uniformly] randomly distributed. It's not even close to [uniformly] randomly distributed."

Ouch. Okay, but is it distributed in ANY way that correlates to any measurable regional variances in the quality of human behavior?

"As a simple counter example, I doubt the populations of the state of California, the state of Alabama, France, Mongolia, and Bhutan are equally bad or good."

That's intuitively plausible, but measurement looks to be a real bitch. Which is something I shoulda thought of before I posted my post. Damn. But how'm I supposed to pass up a good chance to call Jerry Fallwell a horse's ass?

Sammler admonishes: "Cole... elides the distinction between every catastrophe being a punishment from God, and some catastrophes being such."

To make that distinction, one would need a decision rule for deciding *which* catastrophes were divinely ordered and which were nonuniformly-randomly distributed. So how does a chap discern which catastrophes are indicative of God's wrath and which are just bad luck? Anybody have a consistent rule for that?

um, rather than relying on the distribution of sinners to predict flooding, isn't it possible that elevation relative to sea level, MS river, and lake Pontchartrain might have a better correlation in this case? or should we be betting that g-d will make water flow uphill to get 'em damned sinners?

simplistic, but you get the point:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9115279/

Let me know when Las Vegas floods to a depth of twenty feet, and then I'll believe there is divine intervention involved.

Juan Cole v. Pat Robertson. Who cares who wins or even what they have to say about each other?

God does not use natural or man-made catastrophes to punish people for moral failings

I wonder how Cole knows this? The literature is filled with examples of God doing exactly that sort of thing.

Jim: "um, rather than relying on the distribution of sinners to predict flooding, isn't it possible that elevation relative to sea level, MS river, and lake Pontchartrain might have a better correlation in this case?"

Oh pshaw! What if everyone thought that way?

Dan: "The literature is filled with examples of God doing exactly that sort of thing."

Hey, why's all this smoke coming out of my irony detector?

The most interesting point in Cole's post is his characterization of Robertson and Falwell as "Christian terrorists".

They may be nitwits, but terrorists? Please elaborate on this term, Juan.

The terrorism of idiotic comments I guess. But I suppose that this is a slippery slope. I mean, Falwell basically issued a fatwa on Chavez and look at all of the Christians ready to take action. Oh wait... There are none.

Would that Mr Cole hold Islamic clerics to the same standard.

Someone refresh my memory, please, on what kind of conclusions Juan Cole drew about religious figures from the Indian Ocean tsunami last December.

For example, I wonder how he would have responded to people mocking those Islamic leaders who claimed that the tsunami damage on Aceh was due to lack of attention to the laws of Allah?

This question is relevent if for no other reason than the damage to parts of the Gulf coast is on a par with the damage wrought by the tsunami...and where, by the way, are all the Hollywood and other lefties who were so eager to help victims of that disaster, I wonder?

Re-examining Cole's web page, I still don't see any modification of his asinine comment. Remarkable...

To make that distinction, one would need a decision rule for deciding *which* catastrophes were divinely ordered and which were nonuniformly-randomly distributed. So how does a chap discern which catastrophes are indicative of God's wrath and which are just bad luck? Anybody have a consistent rule for that?

Actually, the New Testament teaching since Christ's crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension is that grace is available to all, but evil continues on earth because mankind would rather have that than turn to God in wholesale. IOW, as best as I understand it, no specific bad event is an Old Testament-style "Judgement Of God" per se, albeit God still works through such events to awaken people to the perilous state of their own mortality.

Thus, Robertson, Falwell, and the rest of the paranoiacs can claim what they want, but they don't do so according to knowledge of the Bible they claim to believe. Nor does Juan Cole address them on those grounds; he mostly just snarks.

For those who missed it, Steven Vincent's widow's thrashing of Cole will save you the time and effort of ever reading his tripe again.

"Let me know when Las Vegas floods to a depth of twenty feet, and then I'll believe there is divine intervention involved." Considering the normal range of temperature in Las Vegas, one could argue that God knew millions of years in advance that the place was going to become a center of vice, and prepared by making it as close to Hell as possible. ;-) Not that you need any supernatural explanation; Nevada missed the Puritanical wave that swept over the rest of the country from about 1890-1930 because its small population of miners and cowboys didn't go for banning their only pleasures, and so it became the place for people from other states to go to when they wanted to gamble, etc. Las Vegas became the biggest center because it happened to be the nearest village to a huge federal dam project around 1930; when the construction workers left, the gambling dens had to transform themselves into tourist attractions to survive.

The funniest story I heard about Las Vegas' demise was done by Stan Freburg. It was about two competing casinos: The El Sodom and the Rancho Gomorrah. Each was competing to see who could come up with the biggest, most flamboyent money making attraction that would outdo the other guy. In the end, the Rancho Gomorrah outdoes all comers with a live demonstration of an atomic bomb on stage.
On a more serious note, it isn't God who is tormenting the poor and destitute in New Orleans and everywhere else affected by Katrina, the disasters are a result of human behaviours. But to the global warming crowd, I ain't talkin' bout the hurricane.

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