Because of Us, Human Being!…or Not?
Earlier this morning, I read from one of my friend’s Y!M status that an earthquake had struck Gorontalo.
This morning, after I woke up, I asked Ryan, a friend who works in Sulawesi about the condition. Too bad, he didn’t feel it and kept sleeping. He referred me to Detik. Doh! It takes a lot of time to access Detik from Singapore, so I read Kompas Online instead.
As usual, when I read online news website like Detik and Kompas, I always take some time to read the comments, just in case there are funny or offensive ones 
. This time, I noticed several comments that can be written like this:
Maybe God is tired of our wrongdoings.
Have us human done wrong?
Let us make more prayers to God. All these disasters happened because of human fault.
Human being must be more aware! This is a warning to us!
What I don’t understand is, in Indonesia, when natural disaster occurs, many people will say like this. What warning? Aware of what? And what does a (real) natural disaster (in the sense that it doesn’t occur because of human fault or greed like some floods resulted from lack of precipitation, due to excessive deforestation) relate to human behaviour? What will more prayers do?
I am just thinking that, if this is the case, maybe if in the collision between Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies another planet collides with Earth, that is because of us, human being, too… 
Please note that I am not saying that this is bad. I cannot judge it so. I just don’t understand.
PS: From other friends’ Y!M status, I also noticed that there was an earthquake in Jogja too, but I guess it was weaker than the Gorontalo one. When I asked one of them, he also suggested me to read…guess what? *drum sound* …… Detik! Again! Damn, why do internet-literated friends like them always tell me to read Detik? I wanted to know their individual experiences!
Pertamax yo
.
なぜなら、ぼくらは人間んだ。。。
kira-kira begitu ya maksudnya?
I believe the concept of blaming human beings for every bad shit that happens to earth was first thought of by Greenpeace environmentalists, instead of religionists
.
Religious people then tend to relate catastrophes with divine signs of doomsday.
Well first of all you can’t analyze religious activities under the scope of raw logic. It’s just pointless.
When people perform religious deeds, they do it more on the basis of belief than logic. They just believe that praying will do tons of good. How the mission is actually accomplished is up to God. Adherents are on a need-to-know basis. Evidence is out of the question; since evidence-supported belief is not belief; it is revelation, that comes only to the chosen ones (prophets, saints, etc.).
That is the concept of belief.
Second of all, the reason why disasters are often related to the need for atonement is because according to Islam (I don’t know about the others) natural-disasters - among other things - are one of the signs made apparent to humans when doomsday is near.
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Hence the atonement - pray more, steal less, etc
Again, if you try to grasp all that with logic alone, that would be self-torture
.
Oh, almost forgot:
The blame-humans-for-earth’s-disasters concept, I believe, is not applicable to disasters caused by “external factors.”
Although it does apply when you see it as one of the doomsday signs, from the religious perspective.
So it really depends on how you see it.
Hmm…
This is kind of fallacy, but I forget the name..
Would you like to remind me, what is it?
Ignoratio Elenchi?
@Yayan
), itu artinya “karena kita (adalah) manusia” –> manusia sebagai predikat. Yang saya maksud si sini, manusia sebagai penjelas “kita”.
Err…kayanya bukan
Kalo ga salah baca (baca: Google Translate ga ngawur
@fritzter
Whoa…long comment
First of all, thanks for your comment. I wrote this post this morning, and now I have already got an answer, or at least a discussion.
Basically I just cannot draw simple general causal relationships, like, if we do bad, we will have natural disaster, and if we pray more, the frequency of natural disaster will be reduced. This excludes “man-made” disasters that I described above. But I think you are correct, it deals more with religion, or may I say, spirituality, than with logic. That is why I wrote this post under “Spiritual” category
BTW I think it resembles the story of Job aka Ayoub (we share the same prophet, don’t we?), doesn’t it?
@Ardianto
Sorry, me no expert in theory of fallacies
Well, maybe this thought is fallacious, but since, just like Fritzter wrote, this deals with religion more than logic, and some religious arguments can not be easily and logically understood (CMIIW though), I am not sure that this religious approach is invalid.
Although I personally prefer to have logic and spirituality go along the same way.
(e.g simply by not having this kind of thought)
But again, as I wrote in the post, I won’t judge other people who believe so. If it’s good for them, why not?