Friday 13th

The terrible events on Friday 13th in Paris are all the news just now.

Surprisingly little reference is being made to Friday 13th.  As it happened, earlier in the day I was talking with a receptionist who randomly commented that she hoped I had a nice day even though it was Friday 13th.  As it happened I did.  But then I wasn't in Paris.

I take it that the unwillingness to identify the events that happened with this superstitious date is because of the awkwardness of the idea of bad luck.  Sometimes I find it amazing how the awfulness of the human situation brings people so much nearer the truth.  The awesomeness of evil forbids notions of luck in this case and by wise extension could reveal the same about so much supposed chance.  

Even though the atheist cannot believe in evil but only in fate/luck:  [In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.]  something deep in the human soul will not allow this.  This Friday 13th we can see (though we'd rather be somewhere we couldn't) that humanity is not only part of a system of genetic process but part of a moral and immoral universe.

The real bad luck this Friday 13th was not to be mowed down (that was a result of evil), but to embrace an unbelief that means that those who were mowed down didn't ultimately matter.