First, I would like to apologize, but I just really can't stop myself from posting this:

Wow, I wish this was a joke, I really do, but its not. This is yet another example how religious thinking has hijacked logical thinking. Nevermind that earthquakes are caused by fault lines.

I personally thought it was just a bunch of fatties jumping up and down together, which not only caused the earthquakes and tsunamis of the world, but what caused the Earth to tilt slightly.

Of course this is nothing new:

Remember, Katrina was caused by homosexuality, the 2004 Earthquake/Tsunami was also caused by unbelievers. And so forth and so forth.....

Where is Richard Dawkins when you need him?

I'm sure you can find plenty more examples of catastrophes being blamed on something or other. It's easy to point fingers when it doesn't happen in your own back yard...

A hundred years ago, when news still travelled at the speed of ships, people didn't get as worked up about stuff like this. Today we "experience" everything in real-time. Chile & China's earthquakes for example. As soon or while it was happening, people were watching it on the TV and the Internet. Fingers point quicker...

My tuppence:

If they were a bunch of non-religious patriarchal autocrats in Iran, they'd still come up with some goofy reason why lack of proper dress or some other disobedience of rules was to blame for earthquakes or typhoons or whatever. It's really about control and manipulation of public opinion, not religion, which in this case is simply a tool of the government. The us vs them game works well with or without religion.

Let's be careful about making pejorative remarks about other cultures....Picking up on what has been already stated here, some of these bizarre things are not necessarily cultural---it may simply be the "control" thing. Attempts to exercise control over people has been demonstrated in all cultures---although certainly with different intensity and outcomes.

No offense meant for the people in Iran or the Persian culture intended... perhaps I should have said "Iran or anywhere else".

I laughed when I read about this in the newspaper.

Causing errr, ummmm, "eruptions," sure. But earthquakes?

LOL, did the earth move for you?

Earthquakes are THE LORD'S punishment for Ubuntu users. For shame!

While slackers are to blame for the plague. More medieval.

It was always my understanding that earthquakes don't kill people, but collapsing buildings do. And if I know builders, I know they are easily distracted from their work by passing women... certainly if they are not dressed modestly.

Logic dictates that a distracted builder will produce a poorer quality building than a focused builder. So perhaps there is truth in the theory. At the least I have proven through logic the relation between earthquake fatalities and the distraction caused by immodestly dressed women.

QED

Not just in THAT part of the world. A number of US religious figures (and not just the Phelps family) blamed Katrina, 9/11 and other disasters on a variety of things from homosexuality through to womens rights.

Basically, every country has it's nut jobs.

No, that was The Black Death, not The Slack Death.

Oh yea it was the Phelps wasn't it? I actually thought it was Jerry Falwell, after all he spewed out his fair share of venom.

Thats true, but at least your country for a time had a place to send them away. When North America was under the yolk of England, you had a place to drive out your puritans, and basically your country thrived culturally after that. If you read a US history book, the "poor puritans" (pff ) suffered greatly for their beliefs, but I often wondered; well why? Then I finally realized, and this is something they don't tell us in US history classes, is that they were the ones trying to impose their ultra-religious views on others.

To quote Robin Williams in his 2002 stand up concert: "How fscking anal DO you have to be for the English to say; Get the fsck out!" Skip to 4 mins 26 secs

edit

The comedian Greg Proops has a pretty good explanation too.

Promiscuous women might cause earthquakes, but volcanoes are because of US health care reform.
http://progresspolitics.gather.com/v...81474978186039

Perhaps, all those earthquakes/hurricanes/Windows ARE actually some kind of punishment for people's stupidity. Who knows?
Anyway, people in the UK might have more important things to worry about:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/elections/d...d-to-vote.html