Some atheists gleefully leapt into the fray to denounce the existence of a God of love-or a God at all. Many use calamity as an opportunity to score points for their personal philosophy. Sometimes we honor the dead best with respectful silence. In times when words fall short, it’s probably best that we fall silent. Even well-intended words of consolation can be grating-almost obscenely so. Attempts to make meaning or meaninglessness are petty and above our metaphysical pay grade. When we encounter tragedy-especially tragedy of this scale, it’s better we refrain from interpreting the event. Satellite imagery revealed ravaged coastlines, full of flotsam, jetsam, and the corpses of men, women, and children. According to the latest estimate, the death toll is 250,000. The death toll began in the tens of thousands and then climbed to over a hundred thousand. It was more than a few days before the rest of the world got an accurate sense of the damage that the earthquake and resultant tsunamis had caused. Even 1,500 miles away from the quake’s epicenter, Sri Lankans had no warning that devastation was silently gliding toward them. Entire villages were leveled, the vegetation of whole islands was ripped up and carried off, families were separated, and many never reunited. The tremors themselves were devastating, but even more ruinous were the tsunamis that emanated from Sumatra. The epicenter was the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In 2004, a devastating earthquake struck Southeast Asia with a force of 9.0 on the Richter scale.
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