Earlier, as you probably heard, it was reported that the twelve trapped miners in West Virginia were found alive. Now, it turns out that the report was erroneous; that all but one perished. We feel bad for the men who were killed and bad for their family members who lost them twice in about three hours.
When I heard this latest development — just as I was posting about Dave and Bill — I logged onto a couple of Internet discussion forums and read a batch of postings. When it seemed all had survived, people were posting, "This proves there's a God. He answered our prayers." Someone was quoting noted psychic Sylvia Browne, who'd been on the Coast to Coast radio show saying that her powers had told her the men were all alive. Then it turns out they weren't all alive.
I don't think their deaths prove there is no God any more than their survival would prove there was. I wish people would stop linking Him to specific events and deeds like that. We have tragedies and non-tragedies all the time in this world and neither means that God exists or doesn't exist or wants to smite down some state for its morality or anything. I once had a friend tell me that if the Dodgers didn't win the World Series, it would prove that there was no God. I could only wonder if there was some guy who was rooting for the other team and saying it would prove there was a God if the Dodgers lost.
On the other hand, Sylvia Browne's faulty reading proves plenty about her. How long are people going to fall for that snake oil?
And now on CNN, I'm watching them rerunning a clip of Anderson Cooper finding out on live TV — from a person he's interviewing — that the reports he and everyone else had been giving for hours about the miners being all alive were untrue. A woman came out of the church where the deaths were announced and told Cooper what was said in there. Amazing to see how this unfolded. Cooper is stunned, and you can almost see him worrying if he should be putting this out on the network without more confirmation. But you can also see him realizing that the woman couldn't be making this up. So one thinly-sourced report corrects another. Once upon a time, when TV news wasn't 24/7 and so competitive, both accounts would have been checked better before being released to the world.
Hold on a second. I'm going to flip channels.
Well, everyone's saying the same things about how awful it is for the families. I heard the term, "emotional roller coaster" on two different stations in the same sixty seconds. Everyone's saying they don't know how the miscommunication happened. At the same time, they're reporting on how the miscommunication happened and saying that there will be investigations into how the miscommunication happened.
A reporter on Fox News just said, "The miracle has been snuffed out," as if there really were a miracle earlier instead of just a bad news report. And with that, I think it's time to go to bed. Good night.