Tsunami: Please Explain God's Wrathful Intent

Plate tectonics is pretty well-understood; the forces we're talking about here in the Earth's crust are well larger than the scope of any human influence.The laws of physics are pretty clear - no amount of sinning on our part, nor the eating of forbidden fruit, could possibly have a causal relationship to earthquakes, tsunami, or any other natural disaster. What exactly is in the Earth that you think "misfires"? What mechanism do you believe exists to keep the Earth from wrecking itself with all the earthquakes you seem to believe are stored up, waiting to kill us all?Your analogy fails because we can analyze the engine and discern how the loss of a spark plug is related to the failure of the engine. What you're describing is like removing the hubcaps and blaming that as the source of the engine trouble. They have nothing to do with each other; human sin has nothing to do with the laws of physics and the motion of the Earth's crust.

No "if". We observe that the mechanics of plate tectonics are solid and predictable; we observe that the laws of physics seem to be the same, everywhere, at every pont in time. I haven't seen any reason to, or any evidence that there's more at work in the Earth's crust than we observe.

It's not a matter of perspective. It's a matter of what is, and what isn't, in the Earth's crust.What isn't in the Earth's crust is a mechanism that detects human sin in order to cause more or less earthquakes. Too late.

I tell you what. I'll live in an opaque, ventilated, soundproof box for a few days. During that time I'll periodically pray to God and read the Bible, and then at other times I'll be gluttonous, or fornicate (sigh... if I must for science), or be sinful in other ways. I'll use a random number generator to determine when and what I do.Your job is to detect my sin, via any method of your devising, short of direct observation of my activities in the box. Your job is to attempt to detect my sin leaving the box and affecting the Earth's crust or anything else. Since the idea is being presented that sin somehow causes real, physical effects on the Earth, we should be able to detect them on the way.

Through what physical mechanism does human sin affect the makeup of the Earth?Did you read my post about my box experiment? Surely if human sin makes the world imperfect, we should be able to detect this corrupting force as it emanates from particularly sinful places - gay bathhouses, perhaps.

That post had absolutely nothing to do with the questions I asked.

Would you agree too that any time disaster is averted, seemingly by coincidence, that that is also evidence for God?

If the situation was reversed, and Muslim missionaries came to relieve tsunami-stricken L.A. and Seattle, how would you feel if they openly asserted their destiny and right to convert homeless, vulnerable Americans to the Islamic faith? Remember too that for the positions to be truly reversed one big Muslim nation would have invaded and would even now be occupying a harmless Christian nation at great cost to it's civilians.How would you feel about that? Honestly?

You've never heard of the international aid organization "Red Crescent"? You know, the Red Cross of the Muslim world? Do we? Try to get elected to politics as an open atheist. A near majority of Americans support reduced civil liberties for Muslim citizens. I remember on the news not too long ago a town was up in arms because their Muslim community wanted to erect a minaret and hold a call to prayers. Of course, the town's Christian churchbells ring every hour on the hour. You've given a number of reasons why you don't think the situation I proposed would happen, but that's not what I asked you to do. What I asked you was, if it happened that way, how would you feel? Honestly?If Islam is the violent religion of darkness you seem to think it is, how would you feel if Muslims came over to our shores to convert Americans in the most stricken and vulnerable of conditions? Answer the question this time.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 01-17-2005 12:41 AM