There is no “act of God” anymore

Why do disasters happen?

The ancient Greeks had an all-purpose explanation, as I’m learning from my Greek myth-crazy 7-year-old son: the gods.

Bad harvest? of the gods The plague? of the gods Drought? of the gods Did the sea monster destroy your city? The gods, of course—especially that jerk Poseidon, who once sent a sea monster to destroy Troy because its king Laomedon refused to pay him To build the city walls.

At a time when understanding of the mechanics of the natural world was as poor as its cosmology was rich, the idea that catastrophes were the result of the actions of a higher being must have brought with it some sense of insensitivity to suffering. And this idea—that we should distinguish between events that had a clear human cause and those that did not—stuck around, even as paganism gave way to monotheism, and people developed legal systems and codes to judge responsibility and guilt.

By the 16th century, the term “act of God” was Enter the English dictionarymeans any natural event or disaster beyond human understanding (or prediction) and a direct expression of divine will. An “act of God” meant that no person or business could be held legally liable for any loss resulting from such an event—a distinction that became increasingly important as the modern insurance industry took root in England in the late 17th century.

Originally, an “act of God” was essentially a way for insurers to get out of paying claims. At a time when risk assessment and prevention were still primitive, natural disasters and other acts of God were generally not covered, as there was still no way to insure against the unexpected.

But as both the insurance industry and risk forecasting matured, this segment began to shrink. Storms may be forecast; Seismic zones can be identified; The flood zone can be calculated. Insurers can price specific policies for specific risks with greater and greater confidence; If we can’t always prevent a disaster, increasingly we can at least see it coming and know why and prepare accordingly. It wasn’t gods or gods who moved the earth – it was the movement of tectonic plates.

The risk still existed, just as it had for the ancient Greeks. The difference is that it was understandable. God was mostly out of the picture. right?

not right

Whose fault?

The wildfires still burning in Los Angeles are becoming one of the costliest disasters in US history. Initial estimates put the toll at $250 billion or more. The question of who will ultimately pay that bill and what can be done to prevent such catastrophes in the future is a huge one, with no shortage of possible answers.

Perhaps it’s the fossil fuel companies that helped create the climate change that turbocharged the fires, ie Many environmentalists argue. Or maybe it’s the federal government’s fault Decades of fire suppression This has led to excessive accumulation of combustible fuel in forest areas.

Or it could be the government of Los Angeles Failure to properly fund Water infrastructure and firefighting. Or perhaps it’s California’s fault for restricting housing construction, which has pushed More and more development In fire prone areas or Insurance companies To take away coverage linked to climate change?

Or maybe we can trace it back to William Mulholland’s decision in the early 20th century to build a massive aqueduct to bring water to parched Los Angeles, directly enabling the rapid growth of what would become America’s second largest city. Basically what a site Roulette wheel of various natural disasters?

What all these factors have in common is that they are rooted in human action or inaction. Which is comfort in a sense. There is no known antidote to divine vengeance, but if human action is at the root of this and other disasters, human action can remedy it. We are far from blaming the gods here, unless by the gods we speak of ourselves.

The problem of evil

I was an English major with a concentration in creative writing, which meant I could parse some iambic pentameter and, if I was feeling particularly sad, I wrote a 400-page novel as my senior thesis. But my most memorable class during those four years was the only one I took in the religion department. It had the very metal name “Ominous Trouble,” which I think was the main reason I signed up. (That, and it satisfied my moral thinking requirement.)

In its formulation, the The problem of evil is a simple one: How can an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God allow evil and suffering in the world? Why, in other words, do disasters happen — or perhaps better, are allowed to happen?

To the ancient Greeks the problem of evil was not a problem at all. Their gods were not omniscient, not omnipotent and Definitely All was not well. They were like us – immortal and powerful, but admittedly haunted by human emotions and passions. After all, they can and have made mistakes, just as much as we can and do make mistakes.

In the post-war era, the The problem of evil is increasingly a secular problem. It wasn’t just humanity becomes less religiousOr that war itself, and especially the Holocaust, revealed evil on such a titanic scale that the premise of an all-powerful and all-good God seemed absurd to many. Rather, because scientific and technological progress has become central to humanity.

Whether it was creating nuclear bombs capable of ending life on this planet or astronauts leaving footprints on the moon, we were now gods. When things happened – good, bad or otherwise – they were the ones who made them happen.

We are as gods

Environmentalist and technology thinker Stuart Brand has a quote That always stuck with me: “We are as gods, and may be good at it.” It first appeared in the opening statement Whole Earth Catalog In 1968, at the height of the space program and the Cold War, when the first glimpses of what would become the modern technology industry born in California were becoming visible. It was a celebration of human agency and creativity.

In 2009, in his book The whole world is in orderbrand changed Line: “We are as gods, and it will get better.” 1960s egotism was the mood in that earlier look. We had to accept our power in the world and we had to use it wisely. We have to be good gods. The alternative was destruction.

The problem is, we are no It’s good. Being a god, I mean—not yet. I believe that the Los Angeles fires were largely the result of human action or inaction. The greenhouse gases we pump into the atmosphere contribute toHydroclimate whiplashThat burned down the forests of LA. Housing and insurance policies that put many homes in fire danger zones, many of which were built to burn down. The government response to the fires included small errors of judgment and large errors of overconfidence that made it possible to believe that a place like Los Angeles could exist and everything would be okay.

But the precise combination of the causes of the fires—and the precise sequence of steps to move Los Angeles toward a safer future—is much more difficult to know. Which doesn’t stop the avalanche of voices who are absolutely confident about who exactly is to blame and what we should do. This is a pattern in global challenge after global challenge, from artificial intelligence to pandemics to climate change. And I believe that’s why the attitude, increasingly, after a disaster is not unity, but division. Each side is convinced that they alone know who is to blame, and they alone know how to fix it.

But the truth is that our power to influence the world is much greater than our ability to understand and anticipate the effects of what we do, as we might otherwise be sure. So if we are gods, then we are blind gods, but so shrouded in pomp that we believe we can see.

The ancient Greeks knew hubris well and they knew what it did: “nemesis” or divine revenge. But there is no god to punish us. Instead, we have to live with mistakes, if we can. So perhaps, as we drive through the ashes of Los Angeles, we can embrace the opposite of embrace: humility. Not about our power, but about our vision.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect Newsletter. Sign up here!

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