Another response, again from John Stuart Mill.
By no means all believers would think themselves "special" (as against "lucky") if they were spared from the consequences of a natural catastrophe. The question is -- do believers, in a pinch, truly believe in an omnipotent God? Mill thinks the best of them do not (emphasis mine):
There is no subject on which men's practical belief is more incorrectly indicated by the words they use to express it than religion. Many have derived a base confidence from imagining themselves to be the favorites of an omnipotent, but capricious and despotic deity. But those who have been strengthened in goodness by relying on the sympathizing support of a powerful and good Governor of the world have, I am satisfied, never really believed that Governor to be, in the strict sense of the term, omnipotent. They have always saved his goodness at the expense of his power. They have believed, perhaps, that he could, if he willed, remove all the thorns from their individual path, but not without causing greater harm to someone else, or frustrating some purpose of greater importance to the general well-being. They have believed he could have done any one thing, but not any combination of things; that his government, like human government, was a system of adjustments and compromises; that the world is inevitably imperfect, contrary to his intentions. And since the exertion of all his power to make it as little imperfect as possible leaves it as no better than it is, they cannot but regard his power, although vastly beyond human estimate, yet as in itself not merely finite but extremely limited. |
