Punishments from God

On December 26, 2004, an underwater earthquake created a tsunami by the coast of Banda Aceh.  Many communities were affected by this event.  The people of Aceh are a very religious Islamic society, these people tried to figure out the cause of this disaster, they could either rule it out as American terrorism, they thought that the American Army was testing a new weapon against them.  They also thought that this was an act of their god punishing them for their sinful acts.  In these types of religious societies, everything seems to revolve around religion and their relationship to their god.  It seems rational to think that this was an act of God punishing people for their sins because the Bible itself talks about a major event that was very similar called The Great Flood, but that’s if you believe in the Bible.  There were about 300,000 people killed by this tsunami, did all these lives needed to be taken?  Was this punishment necessary?  People who believe in religion and who see these natural disasters as acts of God will believe it because they choose to, in a way, it gives them a feeling of comfort.  Being able to blame such tragic events on someone or something gives them control over how people think and even how they behave about it. 

In the modern world, we are able to determine exactly why these sort of natural disasters happen; there is a scientific explanation behind them. Religious people will still say that God has a part in everything, and that all comes back to the element of thought: point of view.  We all choose to explain things how ever we wish to.  There are people who believe that God controls everything that happens, there are others who don’t, as I said we all have different points of view.