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FRONTLINES
SIDE LINES The Mythical
The Pope and Harry Potter—The popu- larity of the Harry Potter books has not ‘Miracle’ Plane Crash escaped the notice of Pope Benedict XVI. Two years before ascending to the On August 2, 2005, amid heavy rain acle” label for Flight 358 was a great papacy, he complimented Gabriele Kuby, and lightning, Air France Flight 358 news handle and a great silver lining in a a Catholic sociologist who had written a from Paris to Toronto, Canada, dark storm cloud. But aviation experts book criticizing the series. “It is good crashed. The plane had attempted to said that, while the outcome of the crash that you are throwing light on Harry land at least once before, but the pilot is certainly fortunate, there was little Potter, because these are subtle seduc- had pulled away for safety. When the miraculous about it. Mark Rosenker of tions that work imperceptibly, and because of that deeply, and erode plane finally touched down, it struggled the U.S. National Transportation Safety Christianity in the soul before it can to slow down but failed, overshooting the Board (NTSB), was quoted in an MSNBC grow properly.” Kuby claimed that the runway by two hundred yards and even- article as saying that “There is this myth stories about the British boy wizard tually slamming into a ravine. out there that says if you’re involved in a impair young people’s ability to distin- Flames emerged from the aircraft catastrophic aircraft accident the odds guish between good and evil. body as the twelve crew members evacu- [of survival] are extremely low. [In fact], ated the 297 passengers. Most of the pas- the odds are extremely high.” According Sin and Save a Life—A Saudi woman sengers were out of the plane in less than to an NTSB study of 568 crashes between driving from Damman to Riyadh with her a minute, many of them taking time to 1983 and 2000, only 5 percent of passen- husband saved his life by defying the grab their belongings (a no-no, by the gers were killed; the remaining 95 per- ban on women driving and taking the wheel when he developed trouble way) and taking photographs of dazed cent escaped unharmed or without life- breathing and lost consciousness. Hav- fellow passengers and the smoldering threatening injuries. In another study of ing learned to drive on trips to the wreckage. (These would later be sold to more serious crashes, the odds were bet- desert, she took the car ten miles down evening news programs.) When the ter than fifty/fifty that passengers got out the road and got treatment for her hus- smoke cleared and the passengers were alive. And crashes that occur on the band at a gas station. There was no word counted, to everyone’s relief, every single ground, as Flight 358 did, often have very on whether she would be punished for person survived. high survival rates. her actions. A recent proposal to lift the Canada’s transportation minister, The word miracle comes from the ban was blocked. Muslim scholars say Jean Lapierre, proclaimed the event Latin word miraculum, meaning a won- women would be more likely to mix with “nothing short of a miracle.” Passengers, der or a marvel. Merriam-Webster’s men from outside their families if they could drive. The ban is enforced in cities pundits, and the news media quickly Collegiate gives two definitions: “an and on main roads but often ignored in adopted the “miracle” tag, with hundreds extraordinary event manifesting divine rural areas. of headlines around the world touting the intervention in human affairs” and “an miraculous nature of the crash. London’s extremely outstanding or unusual event, It Had to Come Someday—Graphic Daily Mail called it “The Miracle of thing, or accomplishment.” With survival images and religious sentiments are Toronto”; The (Montreal) Gazette dub- rates hovering around 95 percent, clear- being combined to produce a new line of bed the event, “Toronto Crash Miracle,” ly the fact that people survived the plane T-shirts that will offend some, satisfy while Reuters (probably desperate for crash was something shy of a miracle. others, and will perhaps be a money- some new permutation) called it “The Biblical miracles seem truly miraculous: maker for marketers of Christian-themed Toronto Miracle Crash.” Toronto Sun walking on water, turning water into items. Some samples: The “Lord’s Gym T- shirt” shows Jesus Christ straining under columnist Mike Strobel wrote a piece wine, that sort of thing. In modern hyper- the cross, then the words, “The weight titled, “Flight 358 was a 2nd miracle,” bole, however, a miracle often simply of the world’s sins. Bench press this!” lamenting the news media’s overuse of means unexpected good fortune from the Also from the Christian apparel company the word miracle. “In the news game, we labeler’s perspective. Living Epistles is the “spiritual warfare” use it to death,” he wrote. “Our [Toronto The fact that all the passengers of shirt: under the slogan “Razing Hell” a Sun] clipping file lists the word 240 times Flight 358 survived is almost certainly demon is shown getting beaten up. this year alone and 239 times, it did not due to science, pilot skill, and, yes, ran- Marketers are hoping the shirts will fit. Except today. Miracle Flight 358. dom circumstance. Attributing the sur- boost clothing sales, which now account Paris to Pearson. We all saw that awful vival of the passengers to a miracle is an for 2 percent of the $4 billion in black smoke. A funeral pyre, surely.... insult to the bravery, skill, and experi- Christian retail sales, although this fig- ure does not include online sales of T- No one gets out of that alive.” ence of the crew, who trained for years to shirts or at festivals and concerts. Also As Strobel points out, the news media handle just such emergencies. By all to watch is reaction from school admin- loves miracles. They love miracle babies accounts, the Air France crew acted istrators, who may be in a quandary over rescued from wells. They love miracle quickly and professionally during the whether to allow the shirts, with their medical recoveries (even when brought emergency. They made sure that all pas- overtly religious messages, in schools. about by nonmiraculous modern medi- sengers were buckled in for the landing cine). They love miracle drugs. The “mir- and then evacuated quickly.
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Creationist Museum Opens Doors—The Akron Fossil and Science Center has commenced operation, the first museum in Ohio dedicated to presenting Gen- esis’s account of creation. It is funded by financial planner and former middle- school science teacher William Sand- erson, who also donated office space to house the museum and artifacts from his personal collection for the displays. The message is that all humans and animals, including dinosaurs, as well as the earth and the stars came into being 8,426 years ago. There are exhibits and hands- on activities, including a pool table and blocks that visitors can toss and retoss while predicting the likelihood that the
Firefighters and recovery workers look over the fuselage of Air France Flight 358 at Pearson International Airport in patterns formed by the blocks will be Toronto on August 9, 2005. Investigators have said they had eliminated a number of mechanical factors that could repeated. Sanderson says the point is to have caused the jet to overshoot the runway and crash into a ravine. All 309 people on board managed to escape show how unlikely it is that complex life relatively unharmed, even after the jet burst into flames and a number of the escape hatches were unusable. forms could have formed by chance, REUTERS/Frank Gunn/Pool [Photo via NewsCom] even over millions of years. The “miracle” designation also ignores director of trauma services at Northeast the countless engineering safety mea- Regional Medical Center, said, “We see Where to Lay the Blame?—First there sures and devices built into the Airbus car accidents with worse injuries coming was a stain—a yellow and white stain A340. After all, the airplane design is the in here every week. This is truly a mira- on a wall under a Chicago highway that result of decades of safety engineering. cle.” Zeman’s comment on the miracu- road crews said had been caused by leaking, salt-laden water. But others saw With just under a century of commercial lous nature of the accident was quoted in it differently, and soon hundreds were flight, airplanes are safer than ever, and a CNN headline story. coming to view what they believed was remain far safer than the autos that are The comment, though perhaps an image of the Virgin Mary. Fed up, a operated on the nation’s highways. The offhanded, is interesting, because it thirty-seven-year-old man used black 100 percent survival rate on Flight 358 demonstrates the low standard of mod- shoe polish to write “big lie” over the was fortunate and wonderful, but it was ern miracles. Using the term miracle to stain. He was charged with damage to not an accident or a miracle; it was the describe this crash seems strange, given state property and crews painted over result of careful preparation, thorough that nearly everyone aboard the crashed the stain. training, and modern technology. plane died a horrible and fiery death. It If God did indeed have a hand in sav- seems that the opposite circumstances Islamic Religious Police Tackle Indo- ing the passengers, it’s not clear where would more likely be considered miracu- nesian Transvestites—The Miss Waria the miracle occurred. Also, of course, the lous—if only two people had died and 2005 contest in a Jakarta nightclub was question arises as to why the survival is thirteen had survived such a crash. interrupted by ten members of the considered a miracle, yet the accident is Random chance and safety engineering Islamic Defenders’ Front, who urged that considered a tragedy. As one wag, on account for the fact that the two sur- the event be halted “before Allah pun- http://gods4suckers.net, wrote: “Thank vivors avoided life-threatening injuries. ishes us with a second tsunami.” Waria you, God, for slapping our plane out of The pair were seated next to the emer- is a combination of the Indonesian the air, yet rescuing us from it at the gency escape door, which popped open words for male and female and refers to same time. You truly work in mysterious on impact. As miracles go, this one was transvestites, who make regular appear- ways!” pretty mundane. ances on Indonesian television and are Less than a year earlier, on October Beware of media-fabricated myths generally tolerated there. The beauty pageant continued after the FPI contin- 19, 2004, another “miracle crash” and miracles: they have a way of dissolv- gent, dressed in white tunics and prayer occurred. A commuter plane carrying ing under close inspection. caps, departed. The winner received a doctors to a medical conference took off —Benjamin Radford $250 plane ticket to Thailand to com- from St. Louis and crashed in a wooded pete in an international transvestite area near Kirksville, Missouri. Thirteen Benjamin Radford wrote about competition. “Transvestites should not passengers and crew were killed; the media-fabricated myths in his book be made into a role model,” said one FPI only survivors were hospitalized but sus- Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, member. “We are worried it could influ- tained relatively minor injuries such as Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us ence our children.” broken bones. Dr. Charles Zeman, the (Prometheus Books, 2003).
27 http://www.secularhumanism.org Oct./Nov. 2005