Flight 1549: Too Busy Flying to Pray

God had nothing to do with saving Flight 1549, as I've argued.

Recently the pilot of the plane, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, explained to Katie Couric just what did save the day:

Asked if he at any point prayed, he told Couric, "I would imagine somebody in back was taking care of that for me while I was flying the airplane."

"My focus at that point was so intensely on the landing," he said. "I thought of nothing else."

There were just three and a half minutes for Captain Sullenberger to accomplish what only a few commercial airline pilots had ever done, and he was determined to avoid the fate of an Ethiopian airliner, which landed in the Indian Ocean in 1996 and broke into pieces, killing most of the passengers on board.

"What were some of the things you had to do to make this landing successful?" Couric asked.

"I needed to touch down with the wings exactly level. I needed to touch down with the nose slightly up. I needed to touch down at a descent rate that was survivable. And I needed to touch down just above our minimum flying speed but not below it. And I needed to make all these things happen simultaneously," he explained.

And he had to keep his cool. "The physiological reaction I had to this was strong, and I had to force myself to use my training and force calm on the situation," he said.

He told Couric that wasn't a hard thing to do. "It just took some concentration."

This is an amazing story of human courage. To pretend that God somehow saved the plane (apparently after allowing it to crash land) only detracts from the true causes of the happy ending: thoughtful action by pilot, crew, and passengers.

Haggard's Miracle

"[Former New Life Church pastor Ted] Haggard said that as a Christian, he believed his faith could make him a new man. He was seeking a miracle, said Haggard, who described himself as 'not gay' but a 'heterosexual with issues' who was deeply in love with his wife."

Obviously I do not wish to speculate whether Haggard is really gay or "heterosexual with issues." What he himself has admitted, however, is that, as a married man, he hired a drug-dealing male prostitute (for something or other) and engaged in inappropriate sexual acts with a church volunteer. Clearly the guy has issues.

The practical lesson is that hoping for a miracle to reform one's character is not a good idea. Reforming one's character takes a lot of hard work, self-reflection, and moral pondering (and I've had some practice). Psychological issues require deep introspection, and possibly the help of real psychology (as opposed to, for example, the quackery of Bible-based psychology).

Hoping for a miracle to make you a better person is just an excuse to avoid doing the hard work yourself.

Speculations about Jesus' Birth

How did Mary get pregnant? Fox reports new speculation:

In his upcoming biography of Jesus, "Basic Instinct" director Paul Verhoeven will make the shocking claim that Christ probably was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Catholic League President Bill Donohue called Verhoeven's claim "laughable."

"Here we go again with idle speculation grounded in absolutely nothing," Donohue told FOXNews.com. "He has no empirical evidence to support his claim, which is why they say 'may have.'"

I basically agree with Donohue's criticism.

But what is Donohue's alternative account? The Gospel of Luke claims (1:35): "And the angel said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God."

Because the claim that Mary was impregnated by a supernatural being is supported by so much more empirical evidence than the claim that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier.