OMENS AND IDIOTS: Lee Harris has a response to people who think that the Columbia explosion was a message from God. Excerpt:

The essence of human intelligence is the search for pattern. We seek it everywhere; and, if we are not terribly careful, we succeed in finding it everywhere—even where it is not. Yet it would be folly to condemn this instinctive craving for an imagined order that would mirror the true order of things, since this is the same drive that has produced the great edifice called Western science.

And nowhere is the distinctive Western-ness of Western science made clearer than in Arab response to the shuttle disaster. It is not that they feel the ominous whereas we do not, since I am convinced that, however inarticulately, we do—but that is where the similarity ends. We feel it—but we insist on going beyond the mere evidence of own feelings; and how hard this is to do is nowhere clearer than in the case before us. Yes, we see all the signs, but we must force ourselves to step back and to ask, “Does it really make sense to see this disaster as somehow magically attached to the fate of our nation—no matter how strongly we may make such a connection at the visceral level? Is it possible that the world could really be organized like that?”

The answer we give is a resounding, No. But this answer is only forthcoming because we exist in a civilization that has achieved the unique distinction of having successfully banished magical thinking from all those critical realms of life that were once and everywhere haunted by the spooks and spirits of primitive mind.

Well, mostly. There’s a lot of “magical thinking” in contemporary politics, even in Western nations.

The Stirrer has some observations on this subject, too. And my rather uncharitable response to such concerns can be found here.

UPDATE: Meryl Yourish has more.