People who are visiting a beach in the tropical "paradise" of Indonesia get up and go about their business, enjoying the weather, the scenery, the snorkling, the etc. People who get their living from serving and selling to the first group of people get up and go about their business, opening sales booths, putting on their poolside uniforms, getting their tour boats ready for another day. Everything is routine, until you start to notice that the water at the beach is going away before your eyes.
In what seems to be a flash, the ocean returns with a vengeance, suddenly towering above everyone's heads like a nightmare, and everyone is suddenly running as hard as they can, trying to find a way to keep from being killed by the tidal wave. All around, people's lives are being snuffed out, buildings are being washed away, and debris is everywhere. Almost at once, in the minds of all the survivors, come the questions.
Why did this happen? How could I have survived, but not my wife, brother, daddy, etc.? What should we do now? How can I feel safe ever again? They just keep coming, those questions.
A lot of commentators have had a run at dealing with some of the questions. "Why did it happen?" I understand that Richard Dawkins said that the "why" question is most readily answered. We know all sorts of things about tectonic plates and subduction zones... the mechanics of the event. A pair of crust plates meet just off the coast of Bandeh Aceh, and one slipped down below the other over a line dozens of miles long, suddenly lowering the ocean bottom by about 60 ft, and releasing an unimaginable amount of kinetic energy into the surrounding water, which then had to go somewhere.
One columnist had a few choice words for Dr. Dawkins. "That's not what we mean!" was what he more or less said. People want to know a more metaphysical "Why?" It's interesting to note that theologians have been furiously wrestling with that metaphysical question. They have apparently conflicting issues to address... God is "love," and God is "omnipotent," so how can this disaster have happened? How could a god who loves the whole world suddenly snuff out a quarter of a million people in a single blast of power? I don't doubt that they'll be puzzling over that conundrum for a long time, and more power to them.
Of course, there are some who have no real problem with the idea of God as a killer. After all, deaths due to nature's actions (whether by weather or wild animals) happen all the time. The tsunami was nothing out of the ordinary. They see the world as a confusing jumble of incomprehensible events, and they seem to trust that God is working things out as it sees fit. So they just do what their Bible tells them to do, which is thank God for everything. When asked why this happened, they often will say "It's because of Adam's sin. God cursed the ground because of that, and this was definitely a 'cursed ground thing,' wasn't it?"
But then we have to come back to Dawkins and the atheists. As I said, Dawkins was taken to task for answering the wrong question. Well, here's a news flash for those who are wondering: Dawkins answered in a manner that makes the most sense to atheists. When we ponder "Why?" we have to do so in light of our view of the universe. For us, there is no super being in the sky that could have prevented this disaster or who might have chosen the exact time and place for it. All people ask the metaphysical "why?" of beings that have free will, that make choices. So far as we can tell, the universe is NOT such a thing. A hurricane forms purely from understandable, mechanistic events. It strengthens or weakens, takes a particular path simply because of physical influences. A tsunami is philosophically the same. There is no overarching "why" to be asked of such things. They just are, and happen without regard to anything except for physics.
No doubt, many of my readers will find this take on it far from satisfying. I imagine people saying "But that's no real answer!" I invite anyone who has that sort of reaction to think about it for a bit. Is "Goddidit" any more emotionally satisfying? Does it make any rational sense to say, "It's all because of Adam's sin?" Somehow, I don't expect so.
But in the end, we all have to deal with the emotions surrounding this and all natural disasters in our own way. I accept the facts without asking that sort of "Why?" To me, the question is nonsense. What is more important is facing the facts and deciding what I need to do in response. Since I care about my fellow humans, I do what I can to help them recover. Somehow, I get the feeling that our response is more important in the long run than our desire for asking "Why?"