Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'Where is God in all this?' - the problem for religions
Every man who prays before 'a' God has an explanation for this mega Tragedy. They are as follows,
1. We have been committing sins so we are getting punished.
2. God had enough with our non/dis belief in HIM/HER, so he showed who is in charge.
3. The Hindu way of explanation that they are paying for their sins in the past birth.
4. or My favorite, God acts in mysterious ways.

so why did this God let this happen? What was the reason? What is your pick? Choose one and lets go back to smug world of ours.
let me try to analyze these reasons I came up.

1. The classic, we are paying for sins reason. What did the 3 day old baby do? Is drinking milk and sleeping sin? I guess the baby is collateral damage. Small price to pay for getting rid of the world of sinners. If this logic holds, all others left are not sinners! I will leave it to the interested readers to blow holes in this reasoning.

2. He could have appeared before everyone in this world and screamed. That would have been enough. He could have eradicated the drought in Africa, got rid of HIV/AIDS,. I don't know killing 200,000 people just to stoke his ego is not particularly a loving God to me.

3. Hindus and their karma, which I was strong believer till recently. So all the millions who have been affected have bad karma account? Is there not one with good karma account? If there is none then did God concentrate all the bad Karma guys at these places? Must have been one logistical nightmare!

4. God and his mysterious ways, All the above explanations for this reason. To teach us resilience? To teach us compassion? So Millions of humans lives worth this?

No doubt there will be thousands of explantions of why God allowed this to happen. I am pretty sure no of this is going to be right. The only answer is we live on a very active planet, and we should be prepared for these natural disasters.

The only lesson is for us humans a imaginary God is more important that our fellow being. If only we had donated money to building a warning system rather than donating to Temples Church and Mosques!