It Was an Act of Nature, Period

Re “Deadly Tsunami Resurrects the Old Question of Why,” Jan. 8: It is always an entertaining spectacle to read of the scramblings of priests, imams and ministers trying to explain to their followers another natural catastrophe. Following the laws of physics, and with no specific periodicity, a major continental plate once again undercuts another. Nothing supernatural is going on. No sentient punishment is taking place. Human beings, following their own evolved concerns for one another, grieve and pitch in to help the unfortunate -- as they did in their caves and family groups long before the invention of gods.

It is good that people, through their various organizations, give and organize to help, but why the mysticism? Why would a benevolent God having infinite powers cause innocent children not only to die but also suffer egregiously in the process? Here’s my final denial of a benevolent God: In the latest rains, we skiers had a 40-year storm with a badly needed snowpack of several feet, only to have the final wave of the storm predicted to be a warm one that would melt off all the snow below 7,000 feet. Now, is that benevolent?

Edward Mulvaney

Pasadena

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Any halfway competent geologist would howl with laughter at any suggestion that personal sins and/or misdeeds would exert any effect whatsoever on underwater tectonic plate shifting. Especially so when close study invariably shows that such minuscule effects as “psychic” spoon-bending, let alone large-scale physical “events,” are produced via either defective spoons or plain, old-fashioned trickery.

Horace Gaims

Los Angeles

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To those who are looking for the hand of God in the Asian disaster: God had nothing to do with it; it was an earthquake.

Bill Bennett

Newport Beach

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Michael Ramirez is quite right to equate the Iraqi disaster that is the U.S. “war on terror” with the Asian tsunami disaster (editorial cartoon, Jan. 8). But Ramirez fails to recognize that disaster relief can only effectively commence once the disaster has past. Once the U.S. recedes from Iraq, as the tsunami wave has receded from Asia’s oceans, then perhaps the United Nations will be free to provide the Iraqis with their unquestionably much-needed relief from the U.S. invasion.

Ashwani Vasishth

Hollywood

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How sad and desperate Ramirez must be to use the tsunami victims as a vehicle to denounce the U.N. and deflect responsibilities of the Bush administration’s role in creating this dilemma now facing Iraq. The people of Iraq didn’t live in the land of utopia under Saddam Hussein, but he served a genuine purpose that benefited the U.S., and that was the suppression of the Shiite (fundamentalism). I look forward to the future work from Ramirez to see how and whom he blames for the civil war and destabilization of the entire Middle East. When this is all over, there may be no Iraq.

Ronald D. Radigan

Walnut