By Morris Dean
A news article earlier this week recognized the anniversary of an American soldier's arrival at a Nazi concentration camp:
Sixty-eight years ago this week, Frank R. Anderson became one of the first U.S. soldiers to behold the horrors of Dachau.Anderson was in military intelligence in General George Patton's 3rd Army, according to the article, which was reprinted in the Burlington Times-News from the Fayetteville [NC] Observer. Patton was almost finished driving across Europe. Anderson's mission was to check out a vague report about some sort of atrocity in Dachau.
A U.S. tank had just knocked down the gates to the German concentration camp and shivering, starving inmates wearing pajamas were lying on the ground and wandering in the middle of the street in a cold rain.
"My first feeling was if there is a God on Earth, how could He permit this?" Anderson said.
Encounters with atrocity raise Anderson's question for many people. For other it's raised by a friend's death, a child's, a spouse's.
No atrocity ever raised the question for me—no atrocity in the Nazi sense of something really, really revolting from a historical point of view. And no death in my family ever raised it for me. But the philosophical "problem of evil" did raise it. I put the question more in the terms, "God just couldn't exist, because...." I challenged God's existence rather than try to figure out the "how" that must be involved for both God and evil to exist. Questioners who want or need to believe that God exists must answer the "how" question to rationalize their belief. "God gave humans' free will. He had to let those Nazis run the concentration camps. They're the ones responsible for the evil, not God."
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| Proof of the non-existence of God |
Or not. Perhaps "evil" doesn't pertain to Nature, or to the material reality of the Universe. Reality is just chock-full of suffering and death. Of course, there's life too, and lots of beauty and joy. For a while. Until a bigger animal eats you or something else horrendous befalls you.
If there is no godly hand in the food chain, can there be a God? We live and die with that question, though some deny its implications—the non-believers in the ironical sense. I'm a believer.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
| Please comment |
There are things I find interesting if one thinks about God and death. The old saying' everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die to get there,' could perhaps answer some of your questions; or give you more.
ReplyDeleteMaybe there is a God and he doesn't give a damn, because what we call life, and cling to, is no more than a birth canal. Something that needs to be passed through in order to reach life as he knows it. If that is the case, then death by any means, is but a process. Not something a god would care about one way or the other. You are on earth to die---why should he care how that comes about? Also, these rules that this God has called the world to obey---why would a god need to make up rules if this is not the world he intended us to be in.
People worry about death to much. We go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. One night, in each person's life, they will go to sleep; if you wake up---great, if not, you'll never know.
Is there a God? Or if there is no God! This will be answered only by dying and no one wants the answer that badly.
From my cousin Gail (commenting on Facebook):
ReplyDeleteI still pray you will allow God to be real to you. Satan uses Education, as well as many other things, to blind us to God's Truth. It's not "religion" it's a RELATIONSHIP. I will still pray that you, Morris and all of your friends realize how much God loves you and that He sent His Son, Jesus, to die in your place so that you might have eternal life with Him. Salvation is not a matter of the head, it is a matter of the heart. May the Holy Spirit work in the heart of each of you today and every day.
My reply:
Cousin Gail, good day to you too. From what promotional church bulletin did you copy out THAT eloquence? I am thankful that neither my heart nor my head is any longer vulnerable to the figments of a church official's imagination (nor of those who scribbled the synoptic Gospels).
Have a good relationship with your cousin, do you? I had an aunt I loved very, very much. Each Sunday, she would go off to church, saying nothing to anyone else about going with her. I asked once if it bothered her that no one went with her. She said, "I'm having a hard enough time getting myself into heaven. I don't have time to waste on those who don't want to go." She didn't say it in a mean way--just factually. Those who want to believe could take a lesson from her.
ReplyDeleteEd, thanks for your comment. While at the same-day surgery clinic yesterday, I got some sort of insight into the situation with my cousin Gail, about which I intend to write in this week's "Thor's Day"...so the whole thing has, as far as I'm concerned, turned out well.
DeleteGail is wasting some of HER time on me, and perhaps I'm wasting some of mine on her, but at least it's something fun to write about for the blog.
And all along, I had been thinking education was a good thing; but I'm also fond of the gospels, though I am no believer.
ReplyDeleteFollow-up Sunday from my cousin Gail:
ReplyDeleteI am saddened (and have been for some time) that your head and your heart have been hardened to God. You have been blessed with a great amount of intelligence. I thank God for what He has enabled you to achieve (through your education) in this world. That "eloquence," if any, is from my heart, from God. I realize that this is a spiritual war, not a war I want to have with you, so this is my last posting on this.
My reply to Gail a few moments ago:
Gail, sorry for the delay in responding. I had emergency eye surgery yesterday for a detached retina. [Blog off line for a few days] More about it later today, when I belatedly publish yesterday's column, "First Monday with Characters" on Moristotle & Co. The reason I thought the eloquence came from a promotional brochure is that I could have sworn I've seen almost the exact same wording a number of times before, from others of the Christian faith. I apologize for assuming that you, too, had seen the words before and (perhaps unconsciously) adopted them as your own.