My letter published in National Post - Jan 15th

Hitchen's article is a valid comment that the world is very arbitrary in its treatment of us human beings. He correctly points out that disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis are indiscriminate in their application to those in their way. Unfortunately he always writes with the implied subtext that because bad things happen to good people, and prayers seldom result in a receipt of a shiny new red wagon, there is no God and that religion is a fraud. No so. Religion is the study and work of how to deal with that arbitrary world. It is there to help us deal with the vicissitudes of life, to make our pitiful lives better, to help us ameliorate the disasters of nature, and to help us help others deal those disasters. It gives us an opportunity to distinguish ourselves from animals, to consider or experience the unity of man and our spiritual relationship with God or universal intelligence and with our fellow man. The world's arbitrariness proves that the world is arbitrary, nothing more.