The Honest Chilean Miner October 13, 2010

The Honest Chilean Miner

By Guest Contributor
October 13, 2010

I’m just waiting for one of the Chilean miners to say this…

If not one of them, at least a reporter?

Someone?

Anyone…?

(via Atheist Cartoons)

Previous Post
Well, That Explains It
Next Post
Becoming an Atheist at a Christian University
Browse Our Archives
What Are Your Thoughts?leave a comment
  • WishinItWas

    I have been very frustrated with all of the “miracle” references in the media and comments on the coverage of this rescue.

    This is purely a collaboration of humanity and technology across the world at its finest. If everyone just stayed at home and prayed, they would still be in that mine.

    side note- that cartoon image of the minors appearance / condition is inaccurate as they looked healthy, clean(for being underground for 70days) and shaven

  • Heidi

    They even have those shirts thanking the lord, Jesus, whatever. I’d be thanking the rescue crew, personally.

  • Hitch

    It’s more like: Thanks the rescuers for saving me. People should really start thanking those who put in the hard work to help others…

  • That is very typical of human nature. Give God no credit for the 1,000 days that go by without a tragedy like a mine collapse. But blame him (or screw him) for the day that it actually happens.

    LORD, forgive us for our arrogance and pride.

    jason

  • Don’t hold your breath.

  • Paige Ray

    Great cartoon. Can’t wait to share with my family. LOL

  • Aaron

    That is very typical of human nature. Give Dad no credit for the 1,000 days that go by without child rape. But blame him (or screw him) for the day that it actually happens.

    Dad, forgive us for our arrogance and pride.

    Fixed it.

    I love it:
    Dear God,
    Thanks for not crushing me under tons of rock today.
    Love,
    The Kids.

  • This is what I just wrote on my facebook lol.

    James “Ok, so this won’t be popular at all but here goes.
    We have 33 miners trapped in a mine, as of now 25 have been rescued, and they are all thanking god?
    WTF? Did they thank god for trapping them there in the first place? They should be thinking the tireless efforts of hundreds of scientists and engineers that made this possible.”

    Then I come here and see this.

  • Luther

    And the Media is thanking God for the calamity and the story of the rescue to fill the airwaves.

  • mikespeir

    God had nothing to do with either the trapping or the saving.

  • justanotherjones

    Oh, good, then it’s not just me who is frustrated with all the “miracle” bullshit?

    I even heard someone go so far as to say that the whole thing, from the entrapment to the rescue is a message from God. And I heard someone else, a reporter, talking about how the numbers “all fit”. Sheesh.

  • Rich Wilson

    Y’all catch the bit over how three different religious types are all claiming credit for the miracle?

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/11/chilean-miners-rival-churches-tussle

  • Vanessa

    Hey, did you hear about one of the miners who wanted his wife and his mistress to both be there when he got out? Hahahaha.

  • SecularLez

    In class today, someone said that “god” put the miners through this ordeal in order to prepare them for another life event.
    My goodness, you mean “god” wants to punish these poor men even more?

    I questioned, “If there is a god, why would he allow these men to be trapped in the first place?”
    Of course I know there isn’t a god but I like to preface some of my questions with, “If there is a god.”

  • I have to admit that I am not happy with the physical depiction of the miners in the cartoon. It will detract from the message.

  • it always amuses me that believers think that “god” gives a crap about the little stuff that happens to humans. i mean, if i’m the all powerful creatrix of the universe, i’m pretty sure i’d have more interesting things to focus upon than football games and even trapped miners, for all the latter is a moving human interest story. it’s just so ridiculous to look for “meaning” in events like these, and as others have said, if it were me, i’d be thanking the scientists and engineers who got me out, not blaming or thanking god.

    not speaking of religion, i can’t wait for the movie and book about their experiences. i don’t have cable or watch TV, but i’ll rent it when it comes out, for sure.

  • Richard P.

    This is what you get when you have desperate people cling to a belief that has no evidence. It’s grasping at straws.

    Kinda makes a person feel sorry for them. so desperate to justify their faith, they rob the real heroes of the credit that’s much deserved.

    Personally, I think their fucking with gods plan to see who starved last. Wait till god sends an earthquake, that will teach them not to fuck with god.

  • Robert

    I would venture to bet that the rescuers will be thanking God as well. They know they couldn’t do it without Him.

  • They did it just fine without him, Robert. If your god had wanted to do something, he had 69 days to do it. Oddly enough, the result is precisely what we would expect if he does not exist.

  • As much as I hate the god contingent in this rescue, I do think it cheapens the human achievement during the rescue operation, to use it as a cause to further atheism. And I’m speaking AS an atheist.

    We should be recognising it as a wonderful humanistic occasion, and not using it as a platform to deride.

    We should be better than those preaching the word of “god”.

  • I love it:
    Dear God,
    Thanks for not crushing me under tons of rock today.
    Love,
    The Kids.

    LOL, according to those kinds of Christians, we all deserve the tortures of hell, each and every one of us, so what’s a few tons of rock in comparison? It’s no wonder that people like Jason apparently have no problem excusing their omnibenevolent and omnipotent deity from any moral responsibility.

  • Ben

    Maybe that last guy is the only one without Stockholm Syndrome.

  • AxeGrrl

    oh man, did anyone else watch the live/continuous BBC coverage?!

    They had someone named Dr James Thompson on with the commentators (he was explaining the miners’ psychological ‘state’,etc), and after a specific question about prayer/belief (damn, i wish id been taping it), he basically undermined the entire idea! by using phrases like “fantasy of what they’d like to happen“. And he said something along the lines of “it’s natural to want to turn to something“…..

    Honestly, i almost spewed my drink as i listened to him, because he seemed to make NO effort to disguise his poo-pooing of the theistic/supernatural ~ which really caught me off guard, because there have been soooooo many ‘God’ references (including those annoying thanking-god-before-the-living-human-beings-who-actually-saved-me thanks) throughout the coverage.

    Damn, i hope someone posts a clip of Dr Thompson’s commentary on youtube!

    I feared that I might have exaggerated his tone, but when I went to the BBC message board, someone had posted this:

    “Along with the rescued men, I thank God for his grace and mercy to them. Dr James Thomson should not go into self defence by suggesting that their believe in God is euphoric because maybe he himself does not believe that God exist.”

    So, it wasn’t just me!

  • I find it amusing that a cartoon such as this is found on an atheist blog. The fourth guy’s angry comment about God is his indirect admittance to God’s existence.

  • AxeGrrl

    I think that THIS panel captures the entire miners’ rescue beautifully 🙂

    http://terrasol.home.igc.org/helping2.jpg

  • AxeGrrl
  • Greg

    Ah, but Hemant, if you turn from god because of hardship in your life, then you opinion is automatically worthless. Isn’t that what the fundies say? (I know I’ve been told more than once that the only reason I’m an atheist is because I had a particularly bad and uncomfortable experience at a church with a priest. Which is exceptionally odd, because, well, I didn’t.)

    You know, just like we wouldn’t listen to someone who railed against slavery, if they had been a slave themselves? Oh… wait…

    🙂

  • Guy G

    As much as I hate the god contingent in this rescue, I do think it cheapens the human achievement during the rescue operation, to use it as a cause to further atheism. And I’m speaking AS an atheist.

    We should be recognising it as a wonderful humanistic occasion, and not using it as a platform to deride.

    We should be better than those preaching the word of “god”.

    Absolutely. It seems completely tasteless to bend this event to one’s own cause, regardless of whether it’s churches fighting over whose god saved them, or atheists loudly pointing out that it wasn’t god who saved them at all.

  • Silent Service

    While I’m glad that the miners down in Chile have been rescued, I’d just like to move on. I’m tired of every Tom, Dick, and Yahweh trying to claim credit for the rescue. Let’s get back to condemning the mine owners and operators for dropping a mountain on 33 innocent men in the first place.

    And as for the miner who was greeted by both his wife and his mistress, don’t knock it. I’d want both my wife and my boyfriend to be there if it was me. 😛

  • Thegoodman

    Great cartoon. I was thinking the same thing when I saw them all thanking God for their rescue.

    If God had been on their side, they wouldn’t have been trapped.

  • Oops, I’ve now read the comments and can see that Rich Wilson got the link in first.

  • littlejohn

    As an old newspaper guy (and the son of an even older – dead, in fact – newspaper guy) I have long noticed the predictable response to disasters.
    Journalists talk about it a great deal among themselves: It’s the “surviving child syndrome.”
    I plane can crash killing 200 people, but huge numbers will proclaim god’s miracle in sparing the one child who somehow survived. It is as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise.
    The obvious response is “Why did god crash the plane in the first place?”
    I’ve never heard a reasonable answer. Apparently god doesn’t notice the crash in progress until the very last millisecond, when he has only enough time to save one kid.
    Gawd this is tiresome. Chile is highly Catholic. Expect a lot this sort of crap over the next few weeks.
    And don’t expect anyone to have an answer to “why did god collapse the mine in the first place?”

  • I find it amusing that a cartoon such as this is found on an atheist blog. The fourth guy’s angry comment about God is his indirect admittance to God’s existence.

    Did you really miss the point of the cartoon? It’s not suggesting that the fourth miner is an atheist, merely that he’s the only one who seems to understand that if his god is responsible for rescuing them, the deity in question is also responsible for putting them there in the first place.

  • Karen

    It’s so nice to have a place like this where we can be curmudgeons together!

    This “thank god” and “miracle in the mine!” nonsense has been driving me nuts the past couple of days.

    Very little reporting is focusing on the amazing technical/scientific advances that made a rescue like this possible – and that’s the great story, not the supernatural bullshit. Ugh.

    Even the L.A. Times story about how the initial contact was made, by a Chilean mining engineer using a new computer-guided drill bit, emphasized how he dropped to his knees in prayer when he heard the trapped men’s hammering.

    I’ve concluded that human nature is so evolved to attribute things to the supernatural that it’s almost pointless to fight it. A secular Jew who recently got lost in the desert here and was found six days later on the verge of death immediately told the story of how he prayed and god saved him and how his views on religion changed drastically during his ordeal. It’s almost inescapable.

  • I agree with Laudanum and Guy. I think the cartoon’s in poor taste. Now is not the time to be mocking these miner’s religious expression even if we do find them nauseating. Besides, it’s their free speech.

    Put yourself in their place. Having gone through that ordeal, would you come out of it wanting someone to respond to thank science for the modern technology that got me out of here with an angry don’t you also thank god? They’ve been through enough. Leave them the heck alone for thanking gawd for two damned seconds.

    The news tries to slant these things too. I was in an apartment building fire and went to the Red Cross for help. Most of the tenants turned to a local church instead though the Red Cross did far more. News crew had gone to the Red Cross to interview someone they helped and there I was with my 13 year old daughter. They tried so hard to coerce me to thank god. I insisted on thanking people and the Red Cross itself. The caseworker was grinning behind the camera. I think she for once liked getting the credit instead of gawd.

  • C

    The atheists who dismiss the idea of this rescue constituting a miracle forget one detail in particular: the white butterfly (white representing a guardian angel) that appeared in an environment in which it’s normally not found – the desert – and distracted the two relatives of a miner that were going to do something themselves. It helped them contribute to the efforts above-ground.

  • C, that’s just idiotic. “Something weird happened that made it so only 33 instead of 35 people were trapped, thus it’s a miracle!”

    Not to mention that the butterfly was supposedly 500 meters deep in the mine. I’d be willing to bet he made it up after the fact.

  • sc0tt

    Q: Why didn’t the butterfly conjure up a couple trunks full of food and water before flying out to provide drilling coordinates for the rescue workers?

    A: Because it was just a butterfly.

    BTW C, those butterflies are native to that desert. The legend is growing by the hour; perhaps a new religion will form around it.

  • Jude

    I wasn’t sure what to say about this yesterday, since I watched hours of the rescue on a live feed so I wouldn’t have to hear stupid translations. But this morning, I wanted more coverage, so I switched to Telemundo’s morning show. First, there was an inane interview between a hot chick reporter and a clown who’d entertained the children. Then someone explained the significance of having 33 miners. You see, Jesus was 33 when he was killed. And he was in the tomb for 3 days and 3 nights. And on the stupid analogies went which revealed that they were meant by God to be rescued. It made me want to show them Rives 4 a.m. on Ted.com http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_on_4_a_m.html

    This is the sort of insane Latino mysticism which has led my Georgetown-educated Mexican cousin to choose a Brazilian faith healer to perform psychic surgery on her breast cancer instead of going through chemotherapy and radiation. I get to not only mourn her death months ahead of time, but she’s going to be in so much pain during her last months. That’s what inane mysticism causes.

  • I guess I was thinking about the same thing with this morning’s cartoon.

  • respectingyourfaith

    If the miners want to thank God for rescuing them (or even for tonight’s meal), then that should not adversely affect your atheistic faith. Try not to proselytize in your daily life, and you will avoid being the same type of zealot about your faith as are the Jehovah’s Witnesses who occasionally knock on your door.

    This website is the “Friendly Atheist.” I take that to mean that your faith is a personal faith, and that it is not cool to proselytize by derision.

    The existence of God is not provable, nor is it disprovable. That is why theists and atheists alike are exercising faith. I welcome all who believe or disbelieve into this big family we all are. Try to get along in the spirit of tolerance and mutual respect, won’t you? Perhaps it will rub off on others.

  • weller

    Nobody noticed the 20 odd Chinese miners that just some days ago were blasted by a methane explosion? Or does somebody remember about the other 20 odd (or more) US miners that were dead at Virginia formerly this year? Or the other ones that were buried alive in Mexico some time ago? Why these Chilean ones were spared by some god and the others not? Of course the theists have no problem: all is in the inscrutable divine plan and we are not the ones to question it; all has a deeper meaning and significance than what the poor human reason can see up to. With this Joker in the sleeve they always land as the cats…
    On the other hand, the people here that is so annoyed because there are others that won’t put in the freezer their ungodly opinions because “the mankind spirit, yeah, spirit, manifested itself in this greatest solidarity and unselfish effort”, should see a bit that behind this is not the brotherhood of man, but is more really a political showcase for the Chilean government,too interested in cover the fact that precisely the President and his brother, former Minister of Pinochet, are supporters of the least expense for the corporations and they themselves are related to the mining industry, as well as a desperate intent of distancing themselves from the totally inefficient former President, who couldn’t do anything right about the seism and tsunami that occurred recently there, and a commercial one for the companies involved in the rescue, which will be receiving millionaire publicity for this.