God is Not Dead

This is a thought that just occurred to me, so I'm going to make this one quick and pretentious; I suspect my reach is exceeding my grasp, but let's give it a try anyway.

A few days ago, Jon Stewart interviewed Jim Cramer and took him to task for his, and CNBC's, failure to see the financial crisis coming; more specifically, for their continued insistence that everything was just fine when in fact, obviously, things weren't. While CNBC clearly completely failed to correctly read the economy, I don't understand why anyone would expect them to, when the investment bankers who actually had billions of dollars riding on the economy couldn't see it coming, either. I mean, seriously; if the chairmen of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, et al, couldn't foresee their future bankruptcy, how could a cable channel with considerably less interest in the banks' continued health see it coming?

The truth is that no one could see it coming, and this is what people find so hard to accept. So much of life is random and unpredictable, and yet we continually insist on trying to put a framework and predictability onto it. And, so, I would say that Nietzsche was wrong when he said, "God is dead." When he said that, he meant that humans are no longer able to believe in some grand cosmic order, or overarching structure, and are doomed to resort to relativism and nihilism (Wikipedia has a good summary). However, to me, it appears the opposite is true. Humans instinctively believe there is an overarching order; when a financial crisis strikes, it seems impossible that it could not have been foreseen, and if anyone didn't predict, it must be due to their ineptitude, not to any inherent unpredictability. People are frightened by the idea of a true chaotic randomness, and continually resist it. Until they accept it, God will never die.