Sydney's Anglican Dean, Philip Jensen, has said that the tsunami was a warning from God that judgment is coming, and that society has become too sinful and Godless. Perhaps if we banned pornography and Satanic rock music and indecent language on TV and kissing in movies and unmarried couples going about unchaperoned and started stoning homosexuals, witches and wearers of mixed fabrics to death as the Book of Leviticus commands, God would make all the earthquakes and tsunamis and tornadoes and suicide bombers and email spam and antibiotic-resistant superbugs and killer bees and killer sharks stop. Maybe if we were super-obedient, He would even see fit to bring down petrol prices or something.

Another religious leader, Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, claims that God sent the earthquake to kill 2,000 Swedish tourists because their country prosecuted a fundamentalist preacher for preaching against homosexuality. That would be a lot of collateral damage for a kind, loving God; though I suppose for Rev. Phelps' God, it makes perfect sense.

On a different note, the Ayn Rand Institute says that the US should not help tsunami victims, because (a) taxation is theft, and (b) altruism is evil.

Posted by: Steff | http:// | Mon Jan 3 22:39:46 2005

What remains scariest to me is when people start (collectively) to rationalise their psychotic understanding. These examples, again, emphatically foreground that "modernity" never has arrived completely, and maybe never will. Of course, come to think of it, those who instrumentalise people such as those of the examples above, are probably even scarier. For quite a number of years now I have had a sneaking suspicion that killing all of them simply won't suffice. Hach vell, back to teaching them reading and writing and basic empathy in primary schools eh ?

Posted by: Gimbo | http://gimbo.org.uk/ | Tue Jan 4 15:26:22 2005

Um, the linked article at Ayn Rand doesn't seem to mention the tsunami?

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org/ | Tue Jan 4 15:44:10 2005

They seem to have moved it, or removed it.

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