[Acrylic-bob]

An athiest, a person who does not, and is unlikley to ever, believe in the existance of a deity, is as shocked and dismayed at the terrible loss of life which occured over Christmas as anyone else. And is further dismayed to hear others pronounce the event an "Act of God". Indeed, is actually quite annoyed at the logical inconsistancy of such an argument, bearing in mind all previous statements by believers that the deity they profess to believe in has only the good of humanity in mind and is all caring and all loving etc.etc.
In an attempt to convince the believer of the folly of their illogical opinion the athiest asks the question "How can your all caring, all loving God, permit this to happen to people whom you claim he cares about?

The believer, of course cannot answer the question in anything like a convincing manner and has to resort to specious arguments about the unknowability of the divine etc. The athiest, observing the believer with egg on his face feels thus further justified in his un-belief. The believer resents the athiest for pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes, but, patronisingly, forgives him anyway and continues to pray in the desperate hope that the deity knows what it is doing. The athiest sadly shakes his head at the believer's inability to accept the proposition that we are alone in the universe, that death is the end of life and that bad things happen to good people for no other reason than that the universe is random and chaotic in nature.

At no point in the argument does the athiest EVER admit that there might be even the remote possibility, under any circumstance, of the believer being right, to do so would mean that he is an agnostic, which he is not.

Thus, the recent Earthquake and Tidal Wave were merely random events. The consequent loss of life, however shocking and regretable are, likewise, random events. There is no more meaning to them than that. In this light, all attempts to explain these events as the actions of a wrathful deity on a section of the population that the believer might consider sinful or degenerate are deeply flawed since the laws of physics are not perturbed by individual human actions.