My Letter to the Editor (6/19/10)

It took a long time for the Times Leader to publish my letter to the editor, but it was posted today. As always, readers are limited in characters, but I still got my point across. A June 3 letter to the editor argued that our indiscretions (including divorce and homosexuality) are to blame for natural disasters. I respond (with edits by the Times Leader):

In the letter to the editor “Writer says indiscretions are to blame for disasters” (June 3), an author argues that our “immoral actions” are to blame for natural disasters that are caused by the Christian god.

While God’s existence is questionable, as I have argued in previous letters to the editor, the author commits various logical fallacies.

The first problem with the argument is surprisingly mentioned by the author himself: Natural disasters are noticed much more now. But this is primarily because of more news coverage and advanced technology – much more than we had a century ago. Natural disasters, of course, always have existed and have claimed many lives. The 1931 China floods, for example, according to CBC news in Canada, killed 1 million to 2.5 million.

The second fallacy is the “false cause fallacy.” The author sees various events and links them, although he provides no evidence to back his claim. The author sees “immorality” and says: “Aha! Look! This is to blame!”

We should look for more reasonable and probabilistic naturalistic explanations rather than assume that an all-loving God exists who created a universe with natural disasters that kill innocent people, including infants, who had nothing to do with others’ actions.

Is it reasonable to believe that because of divorce and gay marriage that God killed about 230,000 in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami or about 222,000 in Haiti? There is no good reason to suppose that an all-loving god exists in a universe with so much destruction.

If you would like to read more of my arguments and counter-arguments against gods, view my website: www.JustinVacula.com.