Quote Originally Posted by Saheli View Post
Why does God have to stop a natural disaster from occuring? Why is it that if he allows one to happen that all of a sudden he's hateful and doesn't give a shit about anybody?
If I were walking down the street and saw someone attacking another person, and did nothing to stop it, or even stood by and watched, I would be as guilty of a crime as the perpetrator, wouldn't I?

Or if I saw a man walking onto a plane with a bomb strapped to his chest, wouldn't I be guilty of killing innocent people if I failed to notify the authorities?

I look upon the idea of God in this same way. He COULD prevent the disaster. He doesn't, which implicates him in the suffering of the victims. Even if we assume that there is a reason for the disaster itself, God COULD protect the people, preventing unnecessary death and injury and all the horrors that the victims must suffer.

The fact that God does not intervene in these disasters leads me to two possible conclusions:
1 - Like a scientist testing bacterial colonies for resistance to antibiotics, God simply observes the results of these disasters, seeing which people survive and which do not. The suffering of those who survive in a damaged condition is immaterial to him. The survivors must live with the consequences.

2 - There is no God. Natural disasters happen, and people die and are injured. The survivors must live with the consequences.

In both cases the results are the same. Naturally, my opinion is that the second case is true, but even if I'm wrong and the first case is closer to the truth, this is certainly not the God of Abraham and Mohammad, and is most definitely not a being worthy of any kind of worship or adoration.

Now, one can probably come up with many other possible explanations for the apparent absence of any intervention by God, but they all seem to end the same way: The survivors must live with the consequences.