In Rememberence and disgust.
Seventy years ago this week, the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz -exposing the undeniable evidence of the atrocity of the Nazis and the most grotesque aspects of the curse of religion ever perpetrated on mankind.
The hideousness of the Holocaust begs the answer to the eternal question posed by the Greek philosopher Epicurus:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Believers will deny Christianity and their obsession with "Christ killer Jews" is to blame. They will move to avert placing the blame on their god for this inhumane obscenity. They will say "God gave man free will", as though it gives their god a pass. They will invoke the "theodicy problem", the defense of God's goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil, which they will claim is "still unanswered."
But in fact the theodicy problem has been answered ever since the first atheist existed ... religionists simply don't acknowledge that answer. To do so would kill their god, just as sure as their insane religious affliction killed the Jews.
...and just this morning we were treated to a presentation by a semi-religious charity taking aid to Africa; their presentation included the history of 20 years of genocide--100,000 people killed in the name of their leaders' commitment to "Christianity."
ReplyDeleteThey admitted their religious leader's complicity in genocide, Paul? Or am I misunderstanding?
ReplyDeleteNo, that's the irony. They didn't seem to see the connection between their 21st century "Christian faith" and that of the self-righteous cult responsible for the deaths of 100,000 "heathens" in the name of God.
ReplyDeleteThe question of theodicy, the christian quest to explain the existence of evil in the world, this is where the faith utterly fails.The holocaust was driven by centuries of christian created anti-semitism from the inception of the faith against the killers of the so-called Christ, when confronted with this historical truth the average christian can only only mumble and stammer absurdities about the love and forgiveness of the faith.
ReplyDeleteGerard,
ReplyDeletePrecisely!
"...their insane religious affliction killed the Jews."
ReplyDeleteReally? Then what killed the Roma in Hitler's camps, the Armenians, the Tutsi and all the other victims of genocide throughout history? Were they all insanely religious?
David,
ReplyDeleteNot all murder, war and genocide is religiously instigated.
The Holocaust was.