Tsunamis as Debating Trophy

Here's an interesting column in the London Times by Gerard Baker challenging the "the smug way the ubiquitous 'God is dead' crowd in the media have seized on the [tsunami] tragedy as some sort of vindication of its creed. It is unedifying to say the least to behold scientists and philosophers on both sides of the Atlantic waving the shrouds of hundreds of thousands of victims as a debating trophy."  In addition to taking a swipe at the Archbishop of Canterbury's statement about the tsunamis understandably causing people to doubt God's existence ("Since the leadership of the Church of England has generally acted as though it did not really believe in God for most of the past 20 years, perhaps we should not be too disappointed."), Baker contends that a:

fair, challengeless world might be a wonderful place to live. But I don’t think that it would be recognisably human. If we have reason to doubt the point of our existence in this world, surely we would understand it even less in that one. And if I were God, and had created Man, I am not quite sure that I would see the point either.

(Thanks to the Paragraph Farmer for the lead.)

Rob