Reply #76: Why did God allow this to happen? [View All]

[Modem Butterfly]

Below is a snippet from a very large essay called "An Auschwitz Alphabet". It was written by the grandson of Holocaust survivors in an attempt to come to terms with one part of the Holocaust. I think of this portion of the essay when the question comes up about why a supreme being would allow, and even create, situations and phenomena that hurt people. Katrina and the Holocaust are not at all comparable, except for the fact that they both beg the question, "Why did God allow this to happen"

http://www.spectacle.org/695/essay.html

There is no God

The most important lesson one can learn from Auschwitz is that God does not exist. Occam's Razor tells us not to search for a complicated explanation when a simple one is available. Ever since Auschwitz, theologians have had to go through major contortions to hold onto an image of God. There are only two possibilities: either God caused (or at least permitted) the destruction of the Jews, the Gypsies and the other victims, or God does not care. The first approach is unacceptable for two reasons. It means that entire groups of people may be indicted based on race or other identity, which is contrary to everything I believe. And it makes God out to be a mass murderer. On the other hand, if God does not care, why believe in Him? An uncaring God is either a cruel and negligent one, or, even worse, a God who is unaware of humans and their plight. This latter--the God of Spinoza and of Freud's psychotic Dr. Schreber--is really just a metaphysical formulation bearing little or no relationship to the popular idea of God as a being who intervenes in human history.

Although there are only two possibilities, there is a third approach to retaining belief in God: shut up and stop asking questions. Interestingly, this is the message not of God but the devil to the knight in Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Probably, the majority of those who believe in a Jewish or Christian God today-- at least I hope it is the majority--simply do not confront God with the question of how He could let Auschwitz happen. But this approach is not acceptable to those who believe that there is no area off-limits to human questioning.

By far the simplest explanation for Auschwitz is that there is no God to intervene in human affairs. No deity exists to care what we do to each other. All compassion and all hatred in the human universe is ours. We are on our own.