God Is Great...But Can S/He Pitch a Shutout?

The Pinkerton & Corn Show on Bloggingheads.tv is back--and it's gone big time. BHTV has cut a deal with The New York Times to feature segments of BHTV conversations regularly, and first at the plate is the PinkerCorn pairing. Watch it here.

The Times' editors chose a slice of our most recent taping during which we considered this critical question: is God backing the Colorado Rockies in the World Series? Several of the Rockies wear their Christianity on their baseball gloves and have suggested that their impressive success on the field is payback for their faith. We teed off on a remark that the team's general manager, Dan O'Dowd, made to USA Today:

You look at some of the moves we made and didn't make. You look at some of the games we're winning. Those aren't just a coincidence. God has definitely had a hand in this.

I observed that such statements strike me as arrogant. Does God--if there is a God--really care about strikes and balls in sports stadiums across the country? Pinkerton poked at atheists and agnostics for being peeved by the Rockies' public display of Christianity. I pressed Pinkerton: do you believe God controls pitches in baseball games? He could if he wanted to, Pinkerton replied. "Well, I would hope so," I replied. "Otherwise, what's the good of God?" We then proceeded with a theologically minded discussion of religious and politics.

Unfortunately, New York Times visitors missed the setup to this conversation. Earlier in our diavlog, Pinkerton and I had a fierce debate over an article he has in The American Conservative --a magazine founded by Pat Buchanan and other paleocons--in which he argues that the West should adopt as a guiding principle the revival of "Christendom." By this he means, we gotta stop the Islamic hordes that are poised and eager to overrun Western civilization. Literally. They will destroy us, unless we keep them back. I was surprised by Pinkerton's pro-Christendom extremism and his equation of all Islam with Islamic fundamentalism. To see that debate over fundamentals, you can watch our entire diavlog here.

By the way, the Boston Red Sox clobbered the Rockies in the first game of the World Series last night, 13 to 1. I'm sure God arranged that loss only to make the Rockies' inevitable comeback even more glorious. After all, wouldn't you expect God to have a sense of the dramatic?

Posted by David Corn at October 25, 2007 09:56 AM