Whose wrath?

Does anyone out there believe that the Japanese people are so evil that God should visit not one, not two, but three consecutive disasters upon them. I for one certainly do not. If you do not believe that God initated or caused these events, then like me you must believe that they were random events, triggered by physical phenomena that we understand quite well. The tectonic plates of two large areas, the Pacific and the Eurasian plates, are clashing just off Japan, and that causes regular earthquakes, but the actual level of the earthquake is random depending on the forces at play. After the earthquake of course comes the tsunami (a Japanese word because these phenomena were virtually unknown in the West), the severity of which also depends on specific conditions.

In the case of the recent Japanese earthquake of 9.0 on the Richter scale that was near to the Japanese shore and quite shallow, the tsunami that followed was more destructive than usual. Finally, the tsunami stopped the cooling of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant by putting the pumps out of operation, causing explosions and release of nuclear radiation. So far there is no evidence that any of the reactor cores have actually melted, but they may be in the process of doing that. This possibility caused the Japanese Government to evacuate all people within a 12 mile radius from Fukushima. This includes many of the people in the city of Sendai that has also been virtually destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami. Of course, the nuclear reactors are by the shore because they need sea water to cool them. As a result of the devastation, there is little or no electricity, gas and/or fresh water and food within a large radius of the main earthquake area. It is expected that in excess of 13,000 people have been killed.

This kind of devastation of biblical proportions is usually associated with God's anger. But, what a cruel view of the world, what could these innocent Japanese people have done or what conceivable unknown cause could there be to justify such destruction and suffering. It may be that God said, "if you don't change your evil ways I'll send an earthquake," and when that didn't work, he said "if you still don't change you ways, I'll send a tsunami so big it will destroy your cities," and when that still did not change their ways he said "now I'm going to really get you, by causing a nuclear meltdown." But, if anyone believes this nonsense they should go back to reading their stories of long, long ago, when people believed that God was really, really powerful. Anyway, our sympathies are with the Japanese people suffering from the encroachment of human civilization onto unstable land masses.