The devastation from tornadoes in Alabama and the shootings in Arkansas and the crucifixion of Jesus

News reports from Alabama inform us that many of the destroyed buildings (a school, a fire station, some of the houses) were constructed to withstand winds of 150 mph. This is evidence that the tornadoes that destroyed them must have had winds of at least 200 mph. Other news reports from the weather service indicate that tornadoes average winds from 100 to 300 mph.

One might conclude that the property destruction resulted from builders knowingly or unknowingly choosing to build structures not capable of withstanding the maximum known winds in the area. By economizing on the construction costs, they took a calculated risk of possible destruction. If the relative construction costs were to be made known and the chances of such a storm striking any given structure, most reasonable people would probably choose the cheaper construction costs and take their chances. To the extent that we just did not have enough information when these buildings were constructed, then we could conclude that as science learns more, we will be able to avoid this kind of destruction in the future. But if we already knew enough but chose to build more cheaply, then the destruction of these structures may have been the price of the decisions to use cheaper construction methods.

It was reported that one lineman was killed when a live wire blew over and hit him while he was attempting to restore power to a hospital. He was a victim of the decision of his dispatcher to send him out on emergency repairs while the storm was still active. Whether the hospital in question had back-up power available or was completely without power, we do not know. And whether any patients in the hospital were on critical life support and would die without immediate restoration of power, we do not know. We could conclude that the previous decisions to place patients on life support, and to not have back-up power available for the hospital contributed to the pressure on the dispatcher to send out a lineman to repair live wires during a wind storm. Again, this death may have resulted from too little information available to the right person at the right time, or his life may have been the price of a chain of decisions, some of which were based on relative costs.

Does this line of thinking help us in understanding the shootings in Arkansas? Some people say that these shootings could have been prevented if their parents/neighbors/teachers/classmates/acquaintances had properly observed and reported suspicious signs about the two boys who did the shooting. This implies that we should have a law requiring the reporting of any suspected mental health problems to a "Mental Health Hotline" similar to laws we have about suspected child abuse. And this further implies that we have a Mental Health bureaucracy in place ready to investigate and take action within 24 hours of notification, etc.

Others say that we should have a law restricting persons under 18 from owning or handling guns. Others say that we can selectively protect certain places like schools (or government buildings, e.g. the Oklahoma City Federal Building) with special construction, metal detectors, armed guards, barricades, etc.

There may be many more ideas about how this could have been prevented, but let us assume that these two examples are typical in that they imply that we need ADDITIONAL KNOWLEDGE and must accept ADDITIONAL COSTS to our society to avoid or prevent unwanted events. The fact that we have chosen not to do these things shows that we consider our present state of knowledge inconclusive and/or that these costs are unbearable. The lives of the four school girls and their teacher may be the price we pay to enjoy the kind of society we currently have. If we choose to impose additional costs on ourselves in the future to minimize (eliminate?) these types of shootings, we will test our current definition of Liberty. [One could imagine such a society — be in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, or Huxley's Brave New World or other disutopias.]

Regarding the crucifixion of Jesus, whose death we commemorate today (Good Friday), could one find any parallels in terms of Knowledge and Cost and Liberty?

Traditional Christian doctrine about Free Will and God's Will would explain that the execution of Jesus was inevitable because of man's sinfulness and God's Plan for the salvation of the world. The execution of Jesus is the price God paid to redeem the world. From this viewpoint, no more Knowledge would have made any difference. And the willingness to accept more Costs would not help, either. Finally, neither more nor less Liberty would matter. Thus, we get no guidance from this about how to deal with tornadoes or shootings.

The Christian heresy of anti-Semitism was an attempt to guard against future events like this by purging the world of the "guilty" parties. The intellectual roots of anti-Semitism can be traced to the Passion stories in the New Testament which blamed the Jewish high priests and Jews in general for the execution of Jesus. To the extent that Hitler developed this theory to its ultimate extent in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's, we can see the fallacy of this line of thinking. No matter how high the costs in Liberty and in human life, no utopia could be created. And as a matter of fact, the reverse occurred. The one thing we gained from this experiment is that our Knowledge increased and has cautioned us from proceeding down this path again.

From a secular understanding of Jesus's execution one might advocate the abolishment of Capital Punishment to prevent future events like this. Or if Pilate as representative of an authoritarian government were identified as the problem, then authoritarian governmental structure could be singled out as the basic evil. Democracy or anarchism might be advocated as solutions to avoid similar future executions. From this viewpoint, information and costs would make a difference in helping guide our decisions. Whether to increase or decrease our Liberty, or to manage it in a particular way, would in theory, make a difference.

Thinking in this way about the death of Jesus is new to me, and I imagine to many of us. If it doesn't make sense to think about Jesus in relation to tornadoes or shootings, then is it worth thinking about tragedies of any kind?

We have the expression, "not to die in vain." We hope that the victims of the tornadoes and the school girls and teacher in Arkansas have not died in vain. We also hope and believe that Jesus did not die in vain. But this implies that we do something to learn from their deaths and to make changes that will be better for humankind in the future. And the question remains, what have we learned, and what can we do to learn more?