Joel Osteen,televangelist and preacher, posted a comment to Facebook back in April comparing Titanic and Noah’s Ark. The comment has garnered criticism here and there around the Internet. He wrote:

The experts can be wrong. Experts built the Titanic and it sunk. Amateurs built the Ark and it floated. Don’t let the experts talk you out of what God has put in your heart.

Like many who use Titanic for spiritual matters, his perspective is his faith in God. His point is that experts can be wrong while God points in a better direction. He cites Noah’s Ark as an example of a ship built by an amateur that survived. Now many will point out there is no proof of a worldwide great flood and so far nothing has been found to prove such an ark ever existed (occasional tantalizing clues aside). Just like no one has found Atlantis although now it is believed Plato drew upon the ancient Minoans (who were a major bronze age civilization that went into serious decline after the Thera eruption and likely suffered catastrophic damage from the tsunami that followed).

Now he is not saying, as some might suggest, that God punished for building Titanic. It was men who steered the liner right into the place where the iceberg hit Titanic. And men who did not put enough lifeboats for everyone. Just like on the General Slocum, it was men who decided not to have proper safety equipment, no fire drills for the crew, or had lifeboats tied up making them unusable.

His comment is not a cliché but a moral lesson and nothing more.

Source: Joel Osteen Ministries (Facebook, 11 april 2013)