Tsunami
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Tsunami |
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The journalist and Roman Catholic Hugo Young once said to his colleague Martin Kettle that although much suffering could be explained by human evil, he had to admit he had ‘more difficulty with earthquakes’.
In Kettle’s view, therefore, the December tsunami urgently poses the question whether God exists. For ‘the scientific belief system’ Kettle says, this disaster poses no problem, but religious belief ‘has some explaining to do’.
Before we give in to doubt, however, let’s consider what science actually tells us about earthquakes.
We now understand that they result from the constant movement of the tectonic plates - gigantic segments of the earth’s crust. It seems, however, that although this movement occasionally produces an earthquake, it is vital to life as a whole, for when the sea floor slides below the continental shelf, it takes with it carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
As we know, carbon dioxide can cause the ‘greenhouse effect’. This is why the temperature on Venus is hot enough to melt lead, even though that planet is almost our ‘twin’ in other respects.
On Earth, however, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reacts to form minerals which are washed into the seas, where they sink to the bottom and are literally dragged underground by the movement of the tectonic plates.
This process, it is now thought, has helped regulate the temperature of our planet over millions of years.
But like everything else in this world, the very thing which makes life possible can also destroy it. Electricity, chemistry, gravity - they can all kill in a moment. Even the process of life itself can go wrong, leading to cancers and other diseases.
It is as if nature is telling us, ‘The world is a wonderful place, but there is also something deeply wrong.’ There is joy and there is sorrow, beauty and ugliness, pain and pleasure. Every coin, it seems, has two sides. Every silver lining has a cloud! Or as the writer of Ecclesiastes put it, ‘To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven.’
An earthquake, it turns out, is just another example of this universal truth. We don’t notice when the geological process of subduction keeps our planet inhabitable. But we notice very quickly when it goes wrong!
And so we should, for the message in this is that something is indeed wrong with the world. But an earthquake - even one that kills thousands - should not make us give up believing in God any more than a car accident that kills just one person. Both are tragedies. Yet what all tragedy should do is make us question our attitude to life and to God. Are we ever thankful for what we enjoy? Do we just pray to God when we need him or deny him when we are angry at him? Above all, do we really appreciate the meaningful nature of good and of evil?
On the other hand, if an earthquake is, as Martin Kettle suggests, just ‘a mindless natural event’, then so are we! For in his view, the same blind forces that destroy life also created it. And if that is true, then there is no ‘tragedy’, only chance - in which case the sooner we are all wiped out the better! If atheists are right, then a gigantic meteor striking the earth would simply be a form of cosmic euthanasia.
But if you think that makes sense of life, then there is surely something wrong with your thinking! The ‘God’ scenario is not without its problems. But the alternative is to give up any attempt to make sense of life at all.
Revd John Richardson
Last updated 17th January, 2005