The photograph of the seven smiling Columbia astronauts in their orange flight suits, flanked by American and Israeli flags, reminded us of some of the photographs we saw in the newspapers and on flyers around New York City after the Twin Towers collapsed. Handsome, intelligent, accomplished, young faces, their lives cut short.

Everyone deals with these losses in their own way, but for many Americans, thoughts turn to God. After the Challenger exploded in 1986, President Reagan spoke of the astronauts who “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.” On Saturday, President Bush quoted the prophet Isaiah: “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”

The Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, had brought into space a miniature Torah scroll that had been used secretly by Jews in Bergen-Belsen, a Nazi concentration camp. At a press conference yesterday, a NASA official, Robert Cabana, spoke of the shuttle commander, Rick Husband, and his wife. “I don’t know of any finer individual or anybody that has a greater faith in his Creator. And it’s been a source of strength for Evelyn. I know that she’s content to know that Rick is with his Lord, now,” he said.

Depending on one’s notion of God, the Columbia disaster may be even harder to comprehend than the one at the World Trade Center, difficult though that was. The September 11 attack, after all, was the action of evil humans. In a world where people have free will, the evildoers will sometimes do evil.

The Columbia disaster, on the other hand, seems so far to be a freak accident. It’s like a healthy young person suddenly coming down with a terrible disease or dying in a car crash.

The fundamentalists of various religions may suggest that America, or these individuals, are being punished for their sins. Among others, the deaths of these seven astronauts may be seen as a sign that there is no God, or that, if there is, he or she or it has little or no power to intervene to protect humans.

Mr. Bush noted that the astronauts’ mission was a scientific one. “Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand,” he said. As we New Yorkers and Americans watch yet again the sifting of ashen debris and steel for pieces of human remains, we are reminded that the longing to understand — which at times like this consists more of longing than of understanding — is reserved not just for scientists, but is shared by the philosophers and theologians and parents and teachers and children and by all of us human souls.