GOD, RE-INCARNATION & NATURAL DISASTERS

As a New Year resolution I had made a vow to keep away from the net, at least for a couple of days. It was one of those put the technology aside gigs, that we humans in the West recurrently attempt. Without much success, however; I was tuned to the radio instead.

This brings me to the title of this post. Yesterday evening I popped to BBC radio 4. There was a debate going on, regarding God and natural disasters. The theme was pretty much like this: If God is omnipotent, all-powerful, then how comes he allows for natural disasters that claim the lives of so many innocent victims?

In the program there was a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu and an Atheist. The Muslim said: earthquakes, tsunamis and the likes are God’s will. We should accept God’s will and question not is wisdom. Fair enough, if you want to be that a critical about God’s will. The Christian retorted: No, we should question God; we should seek for Him and ask why this has happened. Again, it seems ok, just hope God sends you a telegram with His answer.


Now, the Hindu was a different matter altogether. According to him, God was being just and fair in killing so many people, including children. The gist was that for Hindus souls re-incarnate on and on in time. Therefore, those killed in natural disasters must have done wrongs in their past lives; they were just paying a long due bill for their wrong doings.

Me, as a listener, could almost fell that, confronted with such rift raft, the Atheist was about to explode. Fortunately he did not. First, he pointed out to the re-incarnation freak a subtle philosophical objection: when you re-incarnate you completely lose memory of your past selves and become an entirely different person; if so, how can you be held accountable for the wrong doings of your previous selves?

To the Muslim and the Christian he rebutted: I cannot make any sense of what you are saying; if God is omnipotent and if He allows for so many innocent victims to perish, then either He is selfish or plain evil.

To sum up, I say: natural disasters happen, (that's why they are natural) it has nothing to do with God, he does not interfere at all, that is if he exists. All you believers take a good reality check before even trying to make a case for God using natural disasters! If natural disasters tell us something about God is that he is not behind the motions, or if he is he lets them run free.