You might think that, by now, people would have become accustomed to the idea of natural catastrophes. We live on a planet that is still cooling and which has fissures and faults in its crust; this much is accepted even by those who think that the globe is only six thousand years old, as well as by those who believe that the earth was "designed" to be this way. Even in such a case, it is to be expected that earthquakes will occur and that, if they occur under the seabed, tidal waves will occur also. Yet two sorts of error are still absolutely commonplace. The first of these is the idiotic belief that seismic events are somehow "timed" to express the will of God. Thus, reasoning back from the effect, people will seriously attempt to guess what sin or which profanity led to the verdict of the tectonic plates. The second error, common even among humanists, is to borrow the same fallacy for satirical purposes and to employ it to disprove a benign deity.

Christopher Hitchens

Tag: religion atheism humanism earth 2004 intelligent-design theodicy earthquakes natural-disasters 2004-earthquake-and-tsunami 2005 plate-tectonics tsunamis young-earth-creationism

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Much as I admired the elegance of physical theories, which at that time geology wholly lacked, I preferred a life in the woods to one in the laboratory.

J. Tuzo Wilson

Tag: science life theories nature wonder admiration elegance geology woods scientist plate-tectonics scenery scientific-theories laboratory lab

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