Sir, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (Comment, “Why does God allow terrible things to happen to His people?”, January 1) makes as good a case as can be made that, by setting “life within the parameters of the physical”, God, in effect, allows disasters such as the tsunami (letters, January 3, etc) to occur. At the same time Dr Sacks sanctions “prayers for the injured and the bereaved”.

But it is the inconceivability of a God who both allows cataclysms and listens to individual prayers, with no credible evidence that He does either, that continually swells the ranks of agnostics and atheists.

Yours sincerely,
ANTHONY RALSTON,
Flat 4,
58 Prince Consort Road, SW7 2BE.
ar9@doc.ic.ac.uk
January 1.

From Dr David Ashton

Sir, Jonathan Sacks attempts to answer the most vexing, enduring and potentially fatal argument against religious belief. I find his response unconvincing.

If God cares about his creation and is supremely powerful, then presumably he could have made the world otherwise. Moreover, the idea that natural disasters result from random events in a Universe wholly indifferent to us is surely less distressing than the idea that they could have been prevented by a deity who — for some inexplicable reason — chose not to act.

Epicurus remains unanswered: Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence comes evil?

Yours faithfully,
D. ASHTON,
44 Chancellors Close,
Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 3UJ.
January 1.

From Professor Peter F. Smith

Sir, It is understandable that, for many, the blame for the Indian Ocean catastrophe rests with God. Why did he let it happen? Perhaps because he was unable to prevent it.

The great monotheistic faiths agree on one point, that God is infinitely powerful — omnipotent. Is it not possible that God’s transactions with the world are confined to operating through the agency of the human mind? Where he is in evidence is in the countless acts of heroism, compassion and generosity revealed over the course of the tragedy.

Maybe he shares in the grief. After all, Christ demonstrated that God can weep.

Yours faithfully,
PETER F. SMITH,
50 Endcliffe Hall Avenue,
Sheffield S10 3EL.
January 2.

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