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.

'Not a Meer Man'

Recently I pointed out the inanity of claiming that God saved the plane that recently crash-landed in the Hudson. Why did God allow the plane to go down in the first place, and why does God allow others to die horrible deaths in crashes?

I got my answer from an anonymous poster in the comments:

The answer is in your question.

Because it benefits all.

God makes His sun to rise on the good and the evil and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.

To you this may make no sense at all, as most would never send (or give) any type of benefit to anyone except to those who can benefit themselves in someway. God is not like this. God is not like you or me, as He is God, not a meer man.

If you will read the accounts of other Flight 1549 survivors, you will see that most have a "new lease" on life. It is no longer about themselves but about others, about living life to its fullest, in the few seconds before impact,there was no one saying, how many turns does the world make a million years, is the bail out plan going to work, I wish I could just divorce my spouse... or even the dreaded "I dont believe in God so it doesn't matter as I am smarter than most".

I seriously doubt anybody was thinking that, They were all thinking about if they were going to die. The rest of life was unimportant, God became vastly important,as it states all (most anyway) were praying to GOD.

I see; God made their plane crash because he was doing them a favor. Praise be to God! Think of how much greater favor God is doing for those who don't survive, but who burn to death in fiery crashes! They're really not thinking about normal daily life, at all.

Seriously:

1. While it's true that near-death experiences encourage some people to reevaluate their lives, very often that doesn't happen. More importantly, it doesn't take a near-death experience to prompt this. I and many other people I know have fundamentally reevaluated their lives without the "benefit" of a near-death experience. Here on Planet Reality, if somebody subjected others to a near-death experience in order to prompt them to rethink life, the person would rightly be sent to prison for a long, long time.

2. The idea that people aren't thinking about themselves in a near-death experience is ludicrous. The most common reaction, I suspect, the nearly universal reaction, is something like, "Oh crap oh crap I'm gunna die!" Those who pray to God are typically praying something like, "God, please save me from a fiery death!" Sure, people will, in time of death, regret losing any loved one who happens to be stuck in the same horrifying situation. This is expected. But the focus is still extreme fear of losing one's personal values.

3. The idea that one lives life to the fullest implies that one is living one's own life. Setting goals, establishing loving relationships, and enjoying one's life are the result of taking one's self seriously, not of forgetting about one's self.

4. The idea of the anonymous comment seems to be that anything God does is the right thing to do, because we cannot possibly understand what God is up to. Here I point out merely that this is the perfect self-reinforcing dogma. Anything whatsoever "proves" God's existence. Did a plane land safely? Well, God wanted it to. Did a plane crash land with no casualties? God wanted them to reevaluate their lives. Did a plane crash, killing all aboard, Again, God knows what he's doing, and he was doing it for the victims' benefit. God is "not a mere man," so we lowly humans cannot possibly understand him. We must simply believe that he exists and that he guides the universe, and human reason cannot possibly explain it. The only proper reply is to pronounce anonymous's claim to be vile nonsense.

Did God Save Flight 1549?

Karin Hill is a hero who helped other passengers evacuate the plane that recently landed in the Hudson River. Nicely done. We all can be grateful that nobody was killed, and that crew and passengers alike acted bravely.

However, I must point out the problems with a comment by Karin's understandably relieved and proud mother. She said, "Our whole family really attributes this to the grace of God. He protected her and the plane and everyone. We all feel that way." Not to take anything away from Karin's bravery, but let's think that one through.

If God was protecting the plane, then why did it crash land in the first place? Have you ever noticed that people tend to invoke God's grace only after something terrifying has happened? Where was God before the crash? Why didn't he, for instance, gently push the birds aside so that they didn't damage the aircraft? I have a hard time believing that God would be so vain as to allow the crash just so that he could take credit for preventing any deaths.

More to the point, what about all the people whom God does not save? The idea that God saved the passengers of this flight implies that God chose not to save the passengers on other flights who perished. The implication is that either these other passengers were not worth saving, or God acts capriciously, saving some and permitting others to die a fiery and horrifying death.

The passengers in New York got unlucky in that their plane went down. Then they survived through a combination of good luck and brave action. Out of respect for those who were not so fortunate, let's leave God out of it.