Protected: Faith and Compassion

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Faith and Compassion

I was reading these points of view on the current world disaster and God’s role or not in this horror. It is difficult to see how you can believe in a perfect, all-loving and benevolent God that would allow innocents to suffer.

Waves of destruction wash away belief in God’s benevolence
December 30, 2004

Compassion is the best response when humanity faces the problem of evil, writes Edward Spence.

“Why did you do this to us, God? What did we do to upset you?” asked a woman in India this week, a heart-wrenching question asked in common these past few days by Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Christians. Nothing could have prepared us for what happened when the tsunami unleashed its terror. So we seek answers where answers are hard to come by, in either secular or sacred realms.

Traditionally, the Judeo-Christian God, considered the most supreme and perfect being in the universe, has been ascribed the following necessary attributes: omniscience (all-knowing), omnipresence (present everywhere at all times and at once), omnipotence (almighty and powerful) and benevolence (all good and caring).

How, then, did a God as powerful and benevolent as this allow such a thing to happen? If he is benevolent then he cannot also be omnipotent, for a God who has both these attributes would have wanted to, cared to and been able to prevent such a catastrophe.

Perhaps, though omnipotent, He is not benevolent. That might explain why, although it was within His power to stop the tsunami, He simply chose not to: God has His own reasons and we are not to ask why. However, this answer will not suffice since by definition God is perfect. Being perfect, He must of necessity not merely be omnipotent but benevolent as well.

A possible solution to this problem, traditionally known as the problem of evil, was offered by the heretical Manicheans, who believed not in one supreme being but two: one good God responsible for all the good things in life and another bad God, Satan, responsible for all the evil in the world.

St Augustine, a follower in his early 20s, became an ardent critic of this doctrine, thinking a weak God powerless to defeat Satan was not worth worshipping.

Philosophically, if God is perfect, then there can be only one perfect God, not two. In any case, evil is an imperfection and thus not a characteristic that can be attributed to God.

If the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are at play and the deaths caused by the tsunami are a cosmic payback in the form of karma, does that offer a solution, albeit a philosophical one, to the problem of evil? I think not. For how can children, some as young as a few months, who had not yet lived their lives, deserve to be punished so cruelly for their past sins – especially when they have not been offered the promised divine opportunity to atone for those sins through another life?

Even if solutions are forthcoming to these philosophical conundrums, humanely speaking they make little sense. Perhaps that is why some people remain sceptical about the presence of any divine providence ruling over us.

A compromise solution, between secular scepticism and a psychological need for the sacred, was offered by the Greek philosopher Epicurus. Although believing in gods, he claimed these divine beings would not want to diminish their heavenly happiness by mingling in the sordid affairs of mortals. For Epicurus, the gods were not crazy but simply indifferent to both human joys and sorrows. When it comes to social or natural evils, we are all alone.

But if natural disasters are merely random events caused by the uncaring and blind forces of nature, does this offer us any comfort or meaning in the face of the apocalyptic events on Boxing Day?

Even if our heads offer us such solutions, our hearts refuse to follow. For the problem of evil is an existential problem that confronts our own individual mortality and vulnerability to unknown and unexpected disasters.

Ultimately, heartfelt tears shed in earnest and with compassion, with offerings of charity for those who have suffered, are more meaningful than any theological and philosophical treatise on the problem of evil. Especially at Christmas when, according to the gospels, love is the single core message.

Perhaps this is the essence, if the legend is true, of what God learnt from us when He walked and suffered as a man among us. Ultimately, the problem of evil confronts us not as a puzzle to be solved but as a mystery to be experienced. And as Jesus and Plato before him indicated, the meaning of the mystery of life can be found only by experiencing another great mystery – the mystery of love.

Dr Edward Spence is a philosopher at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University.

Aerial view of the bodies of victims in the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh.
Is God to blame for this?
December 30, 2004

People may question their faith because of the random death and destruction caused by the tsunami, writes Kenneth Nguyen.

There are doubtless thousands of stories arising out of Sunday’s tsunami that are just like Satya Kumari’s. A building worker living on the outskirts of India’s former French enclave of Pondicherry, Kumari saw walls of water sweep his town, leaving behind a trail of wet corpses. That and grief, inconsolable grief.

“Death came from the sea,” he told reporters. “The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?”

It is a pertinent and challenging question for all those who believe in an interventionist higher being, an omnipotent God. What did the many thousands of victims throughout Asia and Africa do to deserve their fate? And what sort of God would sanction such apparently meaningless devastation?

After all, scientists who leave God out of the equation have a simple explanation for the tsunami. A completely random tectonic fissure in the seabed created jet-speed ripples that ultimately unleashed their energy upon various shores.

For those who believe in an interventionist God, however, there is little choice other than to come to that difficult-to-face conclusion: responsibility for the tsunami must be sheeted home to God.

The Book of Job, for example, states: “God sends earthquakes and shakes the ground; he rocks the pillars that support the earth.” Similarly, Psalms 104:32 states: “He looks at the earth, and it trembles; he touches the mountains, and they pour out smoke.” From such Biblical material there is one inference. The destruction, the misery, the shrieks of pain: these occurred as part of His design.

Indeed, on one interpretation of the Bible, the implications of the tsunami run even deeper: the victims were not simply chosen by God so they could be delivered to (a potentially heavenly) fate. They might have been chosen because an interventionist God actually regarded the Hindus of India and the Muslims of Indonesia and the Buddhists of Thailand as deserving of earthly suffering.

Notably, Romans 8:28 posits that “God works for good with those who love him”. (The truth of Romans 8:28 is said to be reflected in Acts 16:11-40, where God uses an earthquake to release Paul and Silas from jail in Philippi.) The flipside to this statement is, of course, that God has the power to punish those who do not love the Lord.

The Romans-derived view that earthquakes are an earthly expression of divine displeasure has a long history. For example, in the aftermath of the 1755 Lisbon earthquakes, which killed an estimated 100,000 people, Catholic priests roamed the city, blaming heresy suspects for the disaster and hanging them on sight.

Thankfully, the religious establishment, in its reaction to the Asian tsunami, has so far shown no similar signs of blaming the victim.

In a statement to faithful gathered in St Peter’s Square, Pope John Paul called for prayers for the victims of this immense tragedy and expressed solidarity with all those who are suffering. But the Pope’s statement did not tackle the tricky question of God’s role in the tsunami, nor did it address why the victims might have been chosen by God.

Similarly, on this page yesterday, Tim Costello noted that he had “(no) easy way of dealing with the question of what is termed an ‘act of God’ “.

We should not necessarily expect all other Judeo-Christian leaders and commentators to be so reticent or tactful. In the aftermath to last year’s Bam earthquakes, which killed more than 20,000 (mostly Muslim) Iranians, conservative American rabbi Daniel Lapin argued in the Chicago Jewish News that God dispatches natural disasters to punish those who have not embraced Judeo-Christian traditions. Noting that the US had been relatively untouched by natural disasters, Lapin wrote: “We ought to acknowledge that each day, every American derives enormous benefit from the faith of our founders and of their heirs.” So goes the pungent logic of one who believes in an interventionist God.

For agnostics, including me, the tsunami has highlighted just how unpalatable the idea of an interventionist God ultimately is. Of the thousands killed in the disaster, probably about one-third were children, too young to have a fully considered view on the existence of God. Did they deserve to die? And what of the many Christians and Jews, including charity workers, still missing? Do they, and their family members, deserve their suffering?

The truth is, the random destruction wreaked upon our earth by one tectonic shift fits uneasily with prevailing visions of an all-powerful, philosophically benevolent God. Sunday’s tsunami broke countless lives, hearts, communities. It would be little wonder if it ended up breaking many people’s faith too.

Kenneth Nguyen is a staff writer.
knguyen@theage.com.au

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For Once our Government is Doing the Right Thing

They’ve increased our initial aid package from $10 million for the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster by $25 million, taking the total commitment to $35 million. The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer announced this today. Mr Downer said $10 million would go to Indonesia, mostly to help the devastated Aceh region which was the most badly affected by Sunday’s tsunami. Another $5 million would go to help Sri Lanka, $5 million to non-government organisations, and $5 million for the broader relief effort for areas such as the Maldives. The good thing is that he deliberately mentioned that this was just the initial package and that there would be long term aid available to especially Indonesia and Thailand, our closest neighbours to aid in rehabilitation of these communities.

Disaster victim identification experts who worked in the aftermath of the Bali bombing have arrived in tsunami-ravaged Phuket and Australia’s new ambassador to Thailand. The specialists are among 40 government officials and professionals headed by new ambassador Bill Paterson who flew into Phuket at 7am (local time) aboard a donated Virgin Blue flight. Mr Downer said authorities were trying to contact some 5,000 Australians still missing in tsunami hit countries.

Also good news that the Indonesian Government is allowing Australian Military aircraft and personnel into Aceh and so they have been able to dispatch five Hercules aircraft with civilian volunteer and military medical personnel, medical supplies and water purification equipment to the worst affected province in Indonesia. Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla says an estimated 5 per cent of the 300,000 population of the Aceh’s provincial capital, Banda Aceh, had died. “Today our estimation is around 30,000-40,000 dead. Aceh’s population is about 4.5 million with 300,000 in Banda Aceh,” Mr Kalla told diplomats at a meeting. There are also islands off Sumatra near the epicentre of the quake, like Simeulue with a population of 100,000 all unaccounted for and there has been no contact with them since the earthquake. This island has also probably been moved up to 20 metres by the earthquake according to geophysicists.

Saw this satellite photo this afternoon –

This QuickBird satellite image of the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka, just south of the city of Colombo in a resort area called Kalutara, was made shortly after the tsunami hit on Sunday.

An aerial shot of Meulaboh city shows the aftermath of the quake and tsunamis that hit Indonesia’s Aceh province on Sunday. 10,000 people killed here as the city was almost entirely flattened. A ship with aid has just reached there.

This picture I think reflects the agony and grief of the people in all the countries affected. It was featured in all our papers this morning –

An Indian woman mourns the death of a relative who was killed when the tsunami struck Cuddalore, a town 180 km south of the southern Indian city of Madras.

It feels bizarre, sitting here surrounded by all the comforts that a rich society can provide seeing a continual stream of pictures of such desolation and deprivation. I suppose it is only at times like these where our eyes are forced to look on the poverty of the third world and we see the misery of the people’s situations, magnified a thousand-fold by the disaster which has befallen them but I wonder how soon we’ll forget them and another stream of images more beguiling, more interesting diverts our attention and these people will be forgotten again. Will the First World’s interest in them last till New Year? I can’t see there is much to celebrate in the New Year but I’m sure there will be many who will prefer to drink themselves to oblivion on the night.

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For Once our Government is Doing the Right Thing

They’ve increased our initial aid package from $10 million for the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster by $25 million, taking the total commitment to $35 million. The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer announced this today. Mr Downer said $10 million would go to Indonesia, mostly to help the devastated Aceh region which was the most badly affected by Sunday’s tsunami. Another $5 million would go to help Sri Lanka, $5 million to non-government organisations, and $5 million for the broader relief effort for areas such as the Maldives. The good thing is that he deliberately mentioned that this was just the initial package and that there would be long term aid available to especially Indonesia and Thailand, our closest neighbours to aid in rehabilitation of these communities.

Disaster victim identification experts who worked in the aftermath of the Bali bombing have arrived in tsunami-ravaged Phuket and Australia’s new ambassador to Thailand. The specialists are among 40 government officials and professionals headed by new ambassador Bill Paterson who flew into Phuket at 7am (local time) aboard a donated Virgin Blue flight. Mr Downer said authorities were trying to contact some 5,000 Australians still missing in tsunami hit countries.

Also good news that the Indonesian Government is allowing Australian Military aircraft and personnel into Aceh and so they have been able to dispatch five Hercules aircraft with civilian volunteer and military medical personnel, medical supplies and water purification equipment to the worst affected province in Indonesia. Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla says an estimated 5 per cent of the 300,000 population of the Aceh’s provincial capital, Banda Aceh, had died. “Today our estimation is around 30,000-40,000 dead. Aceh’s population is about 4.5 million with 300,000 in Banda Aceh,” Mr Kalla told diplomats at a meeting. There are also islands off Sumatra near the epicentre of the quake, like Simeulue with a population of 100,000 all unaccounted for and there has been no contact with them since the earthquake. This island has also probably been moved up to 20 metres by the earthquake according to geophysicists.

Saw this satellite photo this afternoon –

This QuickBird satellite image of the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka, just south of the city of Colombo in a resort area called Kalutara, was made shortly after the tsunami hit on Sunday.

An aerial shot of Meulaboh city shows the aftermath of the quake and tsunamis that hit Indonesia’s Aceh province on Sunday. 10,000 people killed here as the city was almost entirely flattened. A ship with aid has just reached there.

This picture I think reflects the agony and grief of the people in all the countries affected. It was featured in all our papers this morning –

An Indian woman mourns the death of a relative who was killed when the tsunami struck Cuddalore, a town 180 km south of the southern Indian city of Madras.

It feels bizarre, sitting here surrounded by all the comforts that a rich society can provide seeing a continual stream of pictures of such desolation and deprivation. I suppose it is only at times like these where our eyes are forced to look on the poverty of the third world and we see the misery of the people’s situations, magnified a thousand-fold by the disaster which has befallen them but I wonder how soon we’ll forget them and another stream of images more beguiling, more interesting diverts our attention and these people will be forgotten again. Will the First World’s interest in them last till New Year? I can’t see there is much to celebrate in the New Year but I’m sure there will be many who will prefer to drink themselves to oblivion on the night.

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Protected: Too sad for words to adequately describe

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Too sad for words to adequately describe

The stories of babies and children being ripped from their parents’ arms as they tried to escape the unstoppable surges of water was some of the more heart-breaking of the stories to come from this tragedy of mammoth proportions. I shuddered when I heard that landmines left over from the civil war in Sri Lanka have been dislodged and they will add a further danger to the disease that is already threatening the survivors. There have also been stories that the Indonesian Government has not requested International Aid for the province of Banda Aceh (the worst affected) because they don’t want to have outsiders in that province to find out what the military have been doing there for the last few years in suppressing the separatist movement.

Children the greatest victims

Eighteen-month-old Hannes Bergman of Sweden is held by a carer at a hospital in Thailand’s tourist island of Phuket. Hannes, his three-year-old brother and father survived the tsunami but his mother, Cecilia, is missing.

A Sri Lankan man carries body of his son out from hospital at the town of Galle, 117 kilometers south of the capital Colombo. The death toll from massive tidal waves that struck Sri Lanka’s coastline leapt to more than 12,000.

The buzz of grim conversation in the darkened morgue was broken by a man’s shriek as the small body was lowered on a bed. “My son, my king!” wailed Venkatesh, hugging the limp shrouded bundle.

Thousands of kilometres away in Indonesia, farmer Yusya Yusman aimlessly searched the beaches for his two children lost in Sunday’s tsunami. “My life is over,” he said emotionlessly.

In country after country, children have emerged as the biggest victims of Sunday’s quake-born tidal waves – thousands and thousands drowned, battered and washed away by huge walls of water that have decimated a generation of Asians.

“The power of this earthquake, and its huge geographical reach, are just staggering,” said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. Hundreds of thousands of children who managed to survive in the affected coastal communities now “may be in serious jeopardy”, she added.

The UN organisation estimates at least one-third of the tens of thousands who died were children, and the proportion could be up to half, said UNICEF spokesman Alfred Ironside in New York. He said communities were suffering a double loss: dead children and orphaned children. “Our major concern is that the kids who survived the tsunami now survive the aftermath. Because children are the most vulnerable to disease and lack of proper nutrition and water.”

Children make up at least half of the population in Asia. Many of them work alongside poverty-stricken parents in the fishing or related industries in coastal areas, so they were in harm’s way when the tidal waves came. Many children from more affluent families would also have been on the beaches for a stroll or for Sunday picnics.

In Sri Lanka, which suffered the biggest loss of life in the tsunami, crowds had come to the beaches to watch the sea after word spread that it was producing larger-than-normal waves.

Thousands of children joined their elders to see the spectacle. The waves brought in fish. The old and the young collected them. Many waited for more fun.

Then the 6-metre tidal waves hit the tropical island of 19 million people.

“They got caught and could not run to safety. This is the reason why we have so many child victims,” said Rienzie Perera, a police spokesman who said reports from affected police stations indicated children made up about half the victims in Sri Lanka.

Parents wept over the bodies of their children in streets and hospitals across the island, even as dead children dangled unclaimed from barbed wire fences.

The scenes of unimagined grief and mourning were repeated across Asia.

“Where are my children?” wept 41-year-old Absah, as she searched for her 11 missing children in Banda Aceh, the Indonesian city closest to Sunday’s epicentre. “Where are they? Why did this happen to me? I’ve lost everything.”

On the day disaster struck, Malaysian Rosita Wan recalled watching in horror as her five-year-old son was gulped by the sea while he swam near the shore at Penang.

“I could only watch helplessly while I heard my son screaming for help. Then he was underwater and I never saw him again,” said a sobbing Rosita, 30.

About half of the nearly 400 people who died in Cuddalore in India’s Tamil Nadu state were children, leaving the town stunned.

Under Hindu tradition, children are buried instead of being cremated like adults. For the grim task in Cuddalore, two pits, together about half the size of a basketball court, were dug near a river at the edge of this coconut palm-fringed town.

After one couple laid the body of their daughter in the deep pit, a bulldozer shoveled in sand and the little girl disappeared from view. They then stepped aside for others to bury their children, denied any chance for a service or private mourning.

Most of the children, ages 5-12, were buried as they were found – in their Sunday clothes – without the luxury of a shroud.

Local officials wanted to quickly finish the burial, and the cremation of adult victims, so they could turn their attention to helping those left alive.

“There will be a time for crying, but that will come later. Now the priority is to shelter those who survived,” said fisherman Akilan, 28, who lost two nephews when waves struck their house. Akilan uses only one name.

Bodies of young and old lay unclaimed at the town morgue, awaiting identification by relatives. Doctors called them in one by one over a public address system, while vans with wailing sirens brought in newly discovered bodies.

Many emerged from the morgue shaking their heads in silence after failing to identify any of the bodies as that of their loved ones.

Venkatesh, who uses only one name, found his 11-year-old son Suman as his body was lowered on to a gurney.

The 37-year-old man had been in Dubai, where he went three months ago as a construction worker. When his wife called from Cuddalore to tell him their boy was missing, Venkatesh flew home immediately and went straight to the morgue.

There, he found his wife and daughter minutes before Suman’s body was brought in.

“I never thought I would only see my son’s body,” cried Venkatesh, refusing even a sip of water.

Within moments, an identification tag was tied to the boy’s hand and his body taken inside.

As one of his relatives pulled him away, Venkatesh kept asking: “How can I go, leaving behind my son?”

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Protected: A Proud Christian Hacks to death an Unbeliever

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A Proud Christian Hacks to death an Unbeliever

How come it’s always those who are so supposed to be led by the superior moral laws laid down by religion that end up the ones hacking to death the unbeliever. Atheists rarely kill for religious reasons.

Religious axe killer jailed
December 23, 2004 – 1:48PM

A man was jailed for 18 years after he went berserk and killed a man when he and his wife told him they were atheists.

Ashley John Appoo, 40, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court in Brisbane today to the manslaughter of John Leslie McDonald and causing grievous bodily harm to his wife Alois during a frenzied axe attack on November 18, 2001.

Appoo, a drifter, who was heading to Goondiwindi in far south west Queensland, was hitchhiking near Woodford, north west of Brisbane, when Mrs McDonald picked him up and took him home for lunch.

He spent two days drinking and socialising with the McDonalds before Mrs McDonald told him she was an atheist.

Appoo, a proud Christian whose bible was one of his most precious possessions, went berserk and began punching her, and turned on Mr McDonald when he tried to intervene.

Appoo then went outside and grabbed an axe and began attacking the couple.

He stomped on, punched and kicked Mr McDonald in the head and stomach before bludgeoning him with the axe in the head and leg.

He sustained severe internal injuries and died, sitting next to his wife, as Appoo smashed up their house before police arrived.

Mrs McDonald sustained fractures to her jaw, ribs and ankle and and axe wound to her leg.

The prosecution had asked for an indefinite sentence, on the basis that Appoo was an ongoing danger to the community, but Justice Ros Atkinson said she believed the risk he posed did not need such a sentence.

“There is a risk of harm to the community, but I am not persuaded that risk cannot be met by a long determinate sentence,” she said in handing down the sentence today.

By imposing a sentence of 18 years, Justice Atkinson found Appoo was a serious violent offender which means he will have to complete 80 per cent (more than 14 years) of the sentence before he is eligible for release on parole.

Appoo is prone to outbursts of intense irrational anger due to an organic personality disorder caused when he was hit over the head with a didgeridoo in 1995.

He has to be continually medicated, and avoid alcohol and cannabis.

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Protected: Bid to save Cutty Sark from sinking

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Bid to save Cutty Sark from sinking

Saw this in the paper. Hopefully they’ll be able to get the money together to save her.

Bid to save Cutty Sark from sinking

Once the fastest vessel on water: the Cutty Sark at Greenwich Village.

Time and tide are taking a toll on one of London’s most visited attractions. By Richard Baker.

The Cutty Sark, the last of the 19th-century tea clippers and one of the most visited sailing ships in the world, could be closed to the public in little more than 12 months because of rot and rust.

A campaign is under way to raise more than 25 million ($A63.5 million) to repair the historic ship that once raced across oceans carrying valuable cargo such as tea and wool. Generations of people have visited the Cutty Sark at Greenwich Village.

But time is beginning to ravage the ship. Built in 1869, its iron framework is corroding, the planking is decaying and the bolts holding it together are failing. The structure designed to support the ship is now distorting its shape and needs replacing.

The chief executive of the Cutty Sark trust, Richard Doughty, says that although the ship is a popular heritage attraction, it needs urgent funding if it is to remain open to the public.

“Our plans have been formulated now because of the physical condition of the ship. Unless we act quickly, the trust will be forced to close the ship as a public attraction in 2007,” he says.

Prince Phillip, who played an important role in preserving the ship in the 1950s, has written a letter to support the trust’s application for heritage funding from Britain’s national lottery.

Declaring that “time has taken its toll”, Prince Phillip wrote: “Her importance to future generations is greater now than it ever has been and I hope local enthusiasm and a sense of history ensure she gets the treatment she richly deserves.”

Under the rescue plans, electrolysis would be used to stop corrosion, the deck and keel would be replaced and the ship would be cradled in a new, high-tech support system. The structure, protecting the ship’s hull from the elements, would be made from glass and designed to resemble a wave.

The Cutty Sark is the last remaining tea clipper in the world. Once the fastest vessels on water, the tea clippers competed against each other to bring tea from China to Britain and Europe.

In the 1880s, the ship visited Melbourne and Sydney, bringing goods from London and taking wool back. Renowned for her speed, the Cutty Sark once made the return journey from Australia in 72 days and travelled up to 363 nautical miles in one day.

Despite its deteriorating condition, the public still are able to tour the ship and do so in great numbers. Beautifully built, it has a long, expansive deck and tremendously tall masts. Standing on the deck, it is not difficult to imagine how fast the ship could move if the sails were unfurled and allowed to capture a strong wind.

The captain’s quarters, the dining room, the kitchen and the less salubrious rooms for the ship’s crew are able to be explored and are made to appear as they would have when the Cutty Sark was in her heyday.

For more information on the Cutty Sark, the fund-raising appeal and plans for her restoration, CuttySarkOrg

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