by Keith Needham

Created on: April 18, 2009

It must be asked whether or not the entire concept of natural disasters is actually founded on myth. For a disaster to be natural, it must be a product of nature only, not caused by any divine or human events and/or actions. Natural disasters can only occur within the world of a naturalist - or, perhaps a Deist who believes that God has created the universe with its own "natural" laws and does nothing whatsoever at all to intervene in the world. If one, however, subscribes to a theistic world view, then there are no natural disasters, but only disasters which are allowed and/or guided by God in order to achieve His ends and His purposes.

This is where natural disasters dip into mythology. For it cannot be proved that a disaster is actually natural in its origin. To accept that only nature is involved in any and/or all events which seem to affect the non-human, non-animal aspect of the universe is actually a faith position, not a scientific evaluation. Science does not do well with examining origins of actions that have already taken place. According to the scientific method, an event has to be observable in order to be evaluated scientifically. While science can observe effects of causes, it cannot evaluate causes except on those few occasions when it is actually able to observe the causing event.

To explain: take the current Red River flood. I find myself in the middle of such and would like to have a natural explanation. Of course, the standard explanation is that the flood is the result of Mother Nature and her effects upon the planet. Or, blame may be placed upon global warming with its weather shifts - or possibly (and I heard this on the radio) on the effects of El Nino or El Nina. To be sure, weather patterns were involved. Some places in our valley did receive a significant amount of snow. But we could have handled the snow if the run-off pattern had been a bit different.

So, what caused the snow to come when it did, what caused it to be spread about the valley and the surrounding areas as it was? What caused the melt off to happen as it did - oh, and what caused the cold weather to come which stopped the flow of the runoff and added a bit more water due to a couple of storms? And then what - dare I ask who? - caused the warm weather to come - and who or what caused it to warm faster at the start of the river than what it was melting at the end?

You see that the answers to these questions have to be met with a mythology, with a probable cause and explanation,

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