It's days like this that make me hate Christianity...

WARNING: I realise that some of my readers are Christians. Therefore, to put this angry post into context, you might want to read about my loss of faith, which explains my angry and occasionally bitter position on religion.

Myanmar believes 4,000 die in cyclone

By Aung Hla Tun Reuters - 24 minutes ago

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta believes at least 4,000 people died in a cyclone that ripped through the Irrawaddy delta, triggering a massive international aid response for the pariah southeast Asian nation. Full story here.

4,000 people dead in what used to be Burma (I think they call in Myanmar these days.)

4,000 people! In the space of a few hours! All from a single 'Act of God' that tore through Irrawaddy delta leaving a trail of wreckage and corpses in it's wake.

4,000 is the official casualty figure, but it's climbing all the time. Conservative estimates put the actual death toll at closer to 10,000.

It's days like this that I pray God doesn't exist - because if he did, how could something like this happen? If God existed, he'd be at worst a mass murderer - at best a criminally negligent landlord. Events like this are simply incompatible with the feel good crap Christians try to spoon feed us.

I mean, what's the Christian take on the events in Burma?

I remember in the days following the Tsunami how a Christian friend of mine was trying to explain that hardly any of the 250,000 South East Asians who'd been killed would go to heaven 'because most of them are Muslim.'

Apparently you have to accept Jesus Christ before you get a pass to heaven, so the quarter of a million God wiped out that Christmas morning lost not only their lives, but were condemned to eternal damnation.

Nice stuff, this Christianity.

But even the specific technicalities of Christian 'lore' fade into insignificance when you look at the big picture. How could God even let this happen?

In the Bible, terrible events normally happen for the reason. The great flood was a 'cleansing' that either wiped out the 'bad men' or, if you read some of the more juicy Catholic texts, eliminated the 'Nephilum' who were the offspring of Angels and humans.

If the Tsunami or the cyclone in Myanmar happened for a reason, what was it?

And whatever the supposed 'reason,' how can a 'loving' God coolly eliminate thousands of his children - even for some supposed indiscretion. It doesn't sound like a loving God to me - more like a vengeful, petty, brutal mass murderer. Mind you, that's how he acted in the Old Testament.

I will never understand how a Christian can witness events like these and not doubt their faith. In fact, I'm surprised how anybody who lives on Earth can still believe God is kind and loving. The cyclone in Myanmar was a more epic 'Act of God' than most, but the negligent and criminal acts God condones occur each and every day in plain sight.

A church going, God-fearing family who find out that one of them has terminal cancer. A random fire wiping out a family's uninsured home, leaving them penniless. One I witnessed myself - a regular church-goer paralysed after an accident on a trampoline, unable to move and throwing his family into poverty and uncertainty.

Surely these events are just The book of Job, reenacted by the Lord's faithful servants all across the world, each and every day.

If this is how God rewards his 'faithful,' I'm pleased I rejected such a concept. Servitude to 'God' is servitude to a petty, cruel and spiteful master who kills and condemns on a whim.

No, the only way life makes any sense is if there is no God.

If random tragedies like the thousands killed in Myanmar are just that - random tragedies. Random is easier to accept that some distorted 'message' from a celestial murderer who considers himself our 'moral authority.'