so what is the opposite of a miracle?

[datasuspect]

the media couldn't stop dragging divine intervention into the feel good plane crash a few weeks ago.

why don't they impute evil spirituality to the crash in buffalo? i guess if it wasn't a miracle, then it was cursed by satan.

[Deep13]

1. divine wrath

God must have hated those people.
:eyes:

[datasuspect]

3. the lord works in mysterious ways . . .

what is so puzzling is, how are we lowly balls of walking clay especially endowed to discover god's motives when good things happen and not when bad things happen.

i'm really curious.

[8 track mind]

53. Nagging little paradoxes like that is why i started questioning

the whole "man upstairs" thingy.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

2. This will be chalked up to that other line......

......."God has a reason for everything".

[datasuspect]

4. maybe he likes some types of planes

and not others.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

6. "It's all part of his plan...."

Pretty easy to say if you didn't lose anyone.

[patriotvoice]

5. miracle is its own antonym.

While "miracle" denotes "an extraordinary event that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause", it connotes benevolence. I think that is a particularly inaccurate connotation, since most religions assign to the, or a, God the idea of "jealous and vengeful".

[Avalux]

7. There's never mention of god's will in a catastrophe.

You're correct to notice it - no one comes out and says "God must have been angry with the people on that plane" or "God must have had his reasons for making that plane crash".

Nope.

[datasuspect]

8. i wish they'd get more 13th century about it and say it was the work of demons

of distempers and imbalances of the humours or something.

[JVS]

28. How about "God, in his wisdom, decided not to intervene"?

[DeepBlueC]

21. ahem.. Jerry Falwell?

I remember this little thing about 9/11...

[Avalux]

23. Yeah - Jerry and Pat Robertson too.

I guess there are a few vengeful god proponents out there although their views aren't widely accepted by the public. You won't hear CNN reporters wondering if God was angry at the people who lived in the house and made the plane crash into it.

[treestar]

52. Yeah, maybe it was a penalty for the stim bill's evil interference

in the economy and Obama doing away with the gag rule and thus funding those evil abortions.

And of course letting gays serve openly in the military.

:sarcasm:

[TahitiNut]

41. Nonsense. (Natural) catastrophes have long been called "Acts Of God."

:shrug:

[remoulade]

46. True but if you look closely, it's invariably called that by actuaries who're trying to minimize

insurance claim payments.

[TahitiNut]

48. They'd be able to minimize payments by finding fault and subrogating instead of blaming 'God.'

"Acts of God" are entirely recompensible under most policies, afaik.

[panzerfaust]

57. Not entirely true: Australian Pastor blamedrecent lethal wildfires

on Oz allowing abortion - thus leading to being smitten.

Widely reported that NOLA was smitten because of immorality.

The tidal waves (the day after Christmas) which killed hundreds of thousands were reported to have been brought by God as a warning to 'Merica to get tough on sin ...

The common pattern, of course, is that God kills hundreds, thousands, tens-of-thousands, to take out a few sinners, or to simply warn others; so, you may be right, there was not enough death and suffering caused by this terrible tragedy for it to count as an Act of God. Likely just a pissed off angel was responsible, or Satan (oh, that's right he IS an angel too).

My thought is that this was an awful accident, and leaves many suffering people, but it just happened. There was no supernatural intervention one way or the other, as there is no supernatural.

But you are right, had there been an unharmed survivor thrown clear - the media would be filled with frenzied reports of that act of God.

Good job being the Christer God, all credit, no blame.

[ThomWV]

9. God loves people in New York City, and despises people in Buffalo

Pretty obvious, if you believe in god.

[datasuspect]

11. is there more sin in buffalo?

why hath god forsaken their village?

or are they beset upon by a foul plague of demons?

[Marrah_G]

16. Doh

:spank:

BAD BAD THOM !

[SidDithers]

37. Who doesn't?...

ba dum bum.

Sid

[Lost in CT]

55. Pretty obvious if you follow football as well. nt

[.... callchet ....]

10. Plays no favorites.

Lucky feel blessed unlucky have to fight to pay the bills. Do you notice that the lucky are far more willing to accept being blessed than the poor are willing to complain.

[MineralMan]

12. Miracles and disasters are two sides of the same thing...

random fate. One plan manages to get landed on the Hudson River. Another has mechanical difficulties that are impossible to overcome. Randomness. A tornado destroys a town, while on the same day, in the same locality, others watch a spectacle of nature. Randomness.

Trying to assign meaning to such things is a waste of time. We mourn the disasters and celebrate the good times. There it is.

[datasuspect]

13. i don't care about meaning

because it's all random.

i just want to hear the newsbots imputing god's hatred or satan's will to this as easily as they claim miracles for good shit that happens.

[MineralMan]

24. You'll wait a long time for that...

[cpamomfromtexas]

25. There was nothing Random about Sully's skill--however

are you aware that the starting salary for the airline that just crashed is $392 a week?

[MineralMan]

31. You're right, of course.

However, he had a plane that was still controllable, despite the loss of both engines. That was the lucky part. I'm in no way diminishing his skills as a pilot.

Such is not always the case. There are many ways a plane can have a mechanical failure that eliminates control by the pilot. From the description given of this crash, that appears to be the case in this one.

Invisible, supernatural entities have nothing to do with either situation.

[panzerfaust]

58. pilots make miracles

If they get paid 20,000 or 500,000 a year.

The one plane was controllable, the other likely was not.

Pilots are likely the single most competent group of professionals in the world. After all, each time they take off THEIR lives depend upon their skills.

Expect they got ice on a critical surface, it suddenly built up (it can in seconds) and caused an upset that was not recoverable, especially at low altitude. No one even had time to key the mike.

SO DO NOT DIS the crew of the Dash 8, how much they were being paid is not a measure of their skill, but of what YOU, the public, will that they be paid though what you are willing to pay for an airline ticket.

[CrispyQ]

14. It's the same with sports teams, Oscar winners, etc.

They thank god when they win, but never blame god for losing. God has a pretty good deal. God gets credit when things go well & isn't mentioned when things go badly, or at most, given a pass with a "it's in god's plan."

:eyes:

[Marrah_G]

15. I would call it a tragedy

Alot of people use the word miracle with the particular religious emphasis that you are giving it.

[malaise]

17. No No No

They're about to declare that it's a miracle several more homes weren't destroyed.
Get with the program. :rofl:

[LanternWaste]

18. normalcy?

As the word miracle also means 'a wonderful or surpassing example of some quality' (unless one adheres to a dogmatic instance that the word may only connote religion), I imagine that the antonym would be 'normalcy' or some such...

[stray cat]

19. A miracle is if people cared more about 50 people dying than making political hay

[raccoon]

20. To answer your question, GWB. nt

[cobalt1999]

22. I'd love to see someone say "They were doing great until God intervened"

You are so right.

[DeepBlueC]

34. lol

[cherokeeprogressive]

26. Don't you wish more people would die in accidents so you can gleefully deride "faith"? n/t

[La Lioness Priyanka]

45. yeah cos thats clearly what's going on. data suspect is waiting for people to die horrifically

to point this out.

:eyes:

[JVS]

27. A smiting at the hands of the Lord.

[Javaman]

29. Opposite of a miracle? reality is a bitch. nt

[safeinOhio]

30. Planes go up, they come down

Now a miracle would be if one just stopped in mid air and stayed up.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

32. Can You Provide Some Links To Verify Your Claim That They Couldn't Stop Dragging Divine Intervention

into the crash a few weeks ago? Can you provide any supporting evidence that the media consistently injected such a concept?

Thanks.

[Name removed]

33. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[B o d i]

42. Let me google that for you

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22miracle+on+the+hudson%22

[La Lioness Priyanka]

44. oh my god. c'mon even YOU cant pretend to be so disingenuous

[B o d i]

51. Yet, they did. Funny, that.

Not "funny, ha ha", but the other kind.

[JonLP24]

35. Well the media calls this a tragedy so I guess the opposite of a miracle

is a tragedy.

[4 t 4]

36. God is good

when he's good, when he's not I guess he belongs to us non believers. Ya know the God that gives people awards and wins them ball games that's their God I guess. Sorry I don't mean to offend anyone.

[JonLP24]

38. I always found it funny

That a QB never points to the sky after he throws a pick or when a player is stopped on 3rd down.

[TahitiNut]

39. It's an "Act Of God" of course.

That's the traditional way of referring to a (natural) catastrophe.

:shrug:

[Marr]

40. If god wanted to save them, couldn't he just have moved that bird a couple of feet?

Makes me think of this guy I knew who got in a bad car accident, but walked away with just a broken arm. He said he was "so lucky" because he could've easily been hit on the door and killed.

Here was a man in cast who would be walking to work early the next morning because his car was totalled-- a maimed pedestrian-- and the best descriptor he could come up with for himself was "lucky".

Haha.

[EFerrari]

43. Cause and effect?

[Mike 03]

47. Some phenomenon in nature that can be explained as the consequence of something

that can also be explained.

In other words, what we consider ordinary reality.

[NuttyFluffers]

49. unnatural disaster.

just because English uses 2 words for the same antonymic concept doesn't mean it does not exist, let alone in other languages.

[SoCalDem]

50. reality..n/t

[ifuseekamy]

54. There is kindergarten spirituality, which is the good/bad dichotomy

and then there is a more sophisticated understanding of karma, Ultimate Reality vs. trascience...

[panzerfaust]

56. Islam

Of the three Abrahamic religions that share a common omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent god (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), Islam gets my vote for being the most brutally honest about that god, and accepts that that which happens as His will ... indeed "Islam" meaning something along the lines of "Submission to the will of the one God, Allah, His Name be Praised"

The Jews come second, in my opinion, in accepting both good, and bad, as being the result of the actions of their god. It is only the Christers who want to give their god the credit for the good, and either pass the bad off as the actions of another superbeing "Satan" (who, by the very definition of their god, can only exist because god allows it), or as people's failure to understand God's greater plan, or who even blasphemously claim that God had nothing to do with it, one way or the other (blasphemy as this denies the very nature of their god).

Of course, another view is that there are no supernatural beings, that nature and this life is all that we have - so there is no need to look beyond the choices of ice, sudden structural failure, a bomb, or pilot suicide (a la Egyptian Airlines) for what tragically happened to that Dash 8.

Still, it is possible that someone was having such impure thoughts that god decided that s/he needed to be instantly smitten by the His Hand. Tough, though, about the collateral damage.

However, I am putting my money on ice causing an unrecoverable upset, rather than divine intervention in this terrible accident.

Datasuspect, thank you for starting this thread. It does always irritate me when god gets credit for good, and never is held to account for the bad. If you want an imaginary all-powerful friend, at least have the courage and honesty to take the bad with the good.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

59. Not a miracle.

A miracle can be understood as a divine intervention which defies the laws that normally govern the universe. In a Catholic understanding, God is the only power capable of overriding these laws. As for the devil, the traditional answer is that it has a very limited scope of influence in the world - human actions. The devil can influence, tempt and suggest, but not directly cause evil actions outside of outright possession.

So in a way, asking if there's an opposite to a miracle is like asking if there's an opposite to a color. The opposite of blue isn't red, it's not-blue. So the opposite of a miracle is not-a-miracle, that is, the normal functioning of the universe, whatever that may be.

[panzerfaust]

60. Ice, near certainly

From an av-site http://forums.jetphotos.net/showthread.php?t=46480&page=4

What we know:
1. Icing conditions were prevelant at the time, all aircraft reported some kind of icing, and it appears the worst band was between 6500 and 3500ft.
2. The aircraft had been operating normally and the crew had not discussed or reported any problems.
3. The fact that the crew promptly read back ATC instructions, and did so correctly would support the fact that there was no previous problem or that they were in any difficulty.
4. The aircraft was descended from 11000ft to I believe 2300ft and given a series of radar vectors towards the 23 localiser at KBUF.
5. The aircraft was turned onto a 260 heading to join the localiser and cleared for the approach. The aircraft was then transferred to Tower, and never checked on.
6. Whatever overcame the crew did so without warning and suddenly. In most cases even in a certain death situation one of the crew usually blurts out some kind of transmission on frequency, even if its to say they are going in. This crew could not even do that, which almost certainly implies the above situation.

What the NTSB have told us:
1. The aircraft de-icing system was on - this confirmed by the DFDR
2. The crew were discussing icing and were aware of a significant build up of ice on the windshield and wing leading edges.
3. sixty seconds before impact the landing gear was lowered
4. forty seconds before impact the flaps were selected to 15
5. "Within seconds of flap selection" the aircraft experienced "A series of severe pitch and roll excursions"
6. The crew attempted to retract the flaps and landing gear just prior to the end of the recording.

Unedited ATC-Plane com: http://event.liveatc.net/kbuf/KBUF-Feb-13-2009-0300Z.mp3

If there were a God of the Christians, he only had to stretch out his hand to save these terrified people ... If there is a God of the Christians, they only died in terror because He so willed it either as punishment for sin, as an example to others, or because it is "all a part of His Plan."

If you are a Believer, then you must say Praise be to God for his Mercy and Wisdom!

Not being one, I can simply say that I am so sorry for this tragic loss, the terror of their deaths, and the agony of the families and friends.