On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 03:54:39 GMT, Matthew Johnson 
wrote:

>In article , Steve Hayes says...
>>
>>On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 02:23:49 GMT, gospelhall81{at}yahoo.co.in
(gospelhall) wrote:
>>
>>>Why god fail to save 30,000 lives in asian countries?
>>
>>Ask not why God did not save 30000 lives in Asian countries.
>>
>>Ask why George Bush and Tony Blair destroyed 30000 lives in Asian countries.
>
>Are you taking the Lancet figures for granted? I would not recommend that.

No, I was simply using the same figure as the original poster. 

>
>>And then think on this:
>>
>>"Every year about 3m people die in southeast Asia from infectious and
>>parasitic diseases  most curable with cheaply available medicines. In any
>>fortnight more people will have suffered these preventable deaths than the
>>total toll of the tsunami."
>>
>>The Sunday Times, January 02, 2005
>>http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2763-1423085,00.html
>
>It does not do much good to give us an article that is accessible only to those
>with registration.

But the article was also posted in the NG, so it was accesible to those
reading it. 

>
>>Remember, Asias old stealthy killers claim more victims than any
>>catastrophe
>
>>Calls for costly tsunami warning systems are misguided when 
>>so many are dying of everyday diseases, says Bjorn Lomborg
>
>Who is this guy, and why should we take his word for it? I suspect he is
>misquoting statistics, a common enough practice among political 'scientists'. We
>_know_ many are dying of "everyday diseases", but this is
going to get a lot
>worse in those areas affected by the tsunami.

Who he is was stated at the end of the article. 

I posted the article mainly to illustrate the point that there is little point
in blaming God for deaths caused by natural disasters, when there are as many
or more deaths that can be attributed to human negligence, ignorance,
belligerence or lack of compassion. 

Obviously there is a difference, in that these deaths were concentrated in
limited areas, and were accompanied by destruction of property, thus
destroying the homes and livelihoods of the survivors. Over a year, more
people probably die in road accidents than in the tsunami. But because these
deaths are spread out, they are less noticable, less horrifying,. And also,
while a firm may lose one or two personnel over a year, they don't suddenly
lose such a high proportion. 

More than a million people die of malaria each year, but because they don't
all die on the same day, it is less noticable. 

It has been interesting to me that where Western religious leaders have spoken
about this, they have nearly all said that their faith is only clinging on by
its fingernails. An exception was an Orthodox priest, whose comment was
something to the effect that for years we have abused the earth, why should we
be surprised when the earth fights back. 

Those whose faith had gone to their fingernails don't seem to have been
similarly affected by the deaths from malaria. 

But the deaths from Aids and road accidents and wars outnumber the deaths from
this tsunami, and in those deaths there is a greater and more direct element
of human responsibility. Blaming God when we allow that to continue is really
a bit odd, to me, anyway.


-- 
The unworthy deacon,
Stephen Methodius Hayes
Contact: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
Orthodox mission pages: http://www.orthodoxy.faithweb.com/
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