In the midst of the daily tragedies we read about in the news, religious believers are strangely silent about their "loving and merciful" God. 

The God they believe in is not merciful when these tragedies occur. He didn't save the 700,000 precious lives claimed by earthquakes in the past decade (as reported in the media, November 7, 2011). 

God did not spare the lives of thousands of Africans who succumbed to the Ebola virus. Nor did His "infinite" mercy save the lives of 50 million people who perished in the 1918-9 "Spanish" flu pandemic, the deadliest pandemic in human history.

When Christians are confronted with these disasters, they absolve their personal God of any responsibility whatsoever. They blame nature, which was "created" by God in the first place!

In the final analysis, the "buck" stops at God's "desk"! He is accountable for the deaths and disasters that result from the operations of His handiwork. 

When it suits them, Christians tell us that God does not intervene in human affairs. He allows hundreds of migrants to drown at sea, and children to be mauled to death by vicious dogs.

As novelist Ian McEwan told an audience at Stanford University in 2007: "The believers should know in their hearts by now that, even if they are right and there actually is a personal God, He is a reluctant intervener, as all the daily tragedies, including the death of children, attest. The rest of us, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, know that it is highly improbable that there is anyone up there at all."

John Guillaumier

St Julian's