You can't always get what you want

"I read the Book of Job almost as satire" of Job's friends. But what do you think of Job himself? Falling back on a Stones lyric isn't exactly enlightening.

"The healer of broken hearts and binder of their wounds, counting the number of stars and calling them all by name." That's nonsensical. How can it describe how to act?

I agree with Christians' & Muslims' basic commandments:

1. One should exploit others suffering to spread one's own religion.

2. Charity should be done with an ulterior motive to gain power.

3. One should identify weakness in another country and culture. Then, instead of letting them correct problems, one should exploit.

4. Divide and conquer.

5. Always pretend to do charity. This provides the perfect cover for the true agenda.

6. Always remember that my god is better than the other's god. Use this belief to justify and rationalize acts of deception & destruction.

7. Religion is about winning and expanding, not about spiritual development.

8. Might is right.

9. If the whole world can be converted to Islam or Christianity, we will win. Then we will destroy the other inferior religion.

10. Peace on Earth and goodwill to mankind - NOT.

If your god is so all powerful, why did it create a planet for us to live on that is so dangerous to us?

Job is not an explanation for human suffering as I'm sure the rabbi knows. It is an inexplanation.

Thinking of Haiti puts me in mind of the testimony of Shoah victims, who, whether believers or atheists, credited their survival to luck, chance. Most, for example, Primo Levi, Simon Wiesenthal, found the notion that God had preserved some and not others, morally reprehensible.

As, of course, it is. Neither genocide nor natural disasters are divinely "planned."
That some, while accepting their survival as chance, still keep their faith does not trouble me at all.

Faith does not trouble me. What troubles me is thoughtless, mindless cruelty, as in I survived because God had a plan (Christian) or I survived because it was God's will or God spared me (Jewish). Either statement does no good for those who must live with the loss of loved ones. Even I survived to bear witness troubles me.

Let those whose faith comforts them find peace. Let them leave the rest of us in peace. Keep it out of the legislature, out of government funded services, etc. And, Media, do not feel obligated to publicize every stupid word a Pat Robertson or a Palin unthinkingly utters.

Either your god exists, and he crushed all those innocent children, or there is no such thing.

You religious swine should be used to false dichotomies by now.

"I am a believer in God, and that God exists independent of the natural world. I do not believe in a petty god who chooses random moments to selectively lash out at individuals or groups who have transgressed."

No, but you do believe in the God who created this world where earthquakes are a natural and probable consequence of the way this world was created.

In law, a person is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his acts.

In law, therefore, your God must be presumed to have intended that the Haiti earthquake take place, with all the human suffering that came with it.