My Road to Unbelief Part IV

My Road to Unbelief

Part IV: Revulsion

The answer was no. Never. Absolutely not.

What's the point of prayer when millions of prayers every day during the Holocaust were met with deafening silence? What's the point of having a divine protector that does not protect you when you most need it? What's the point of a divine protector of humanity if he does not protect humanity when humanity most needs it? One would have to believe that the protector allows suffering of such magnitude to happen. To me, that is a far scarier prospect than having no protector at all.

And consider the scope. Only counting the Jews of this particular genocide, the number is about 6,000,000. While only seven digits, that is far more than a human brain can comprehend. It's far more than Hitler can comprehend. If you think he understood the magnitude of his crimes then you give him too much credit. I could hopefully wrap my head around the idea of six hundred lives. Maybe if I strained myself I could comprehend six thousand. But six million? Far greater than the human mind can handle.

There is, however, someone who could presumably understand the magnitude of the crime. God. And apparently it isn't enough. Crimes far, far greater than human comprehension, and it isn't enough for God to step in.

Perhaps it was part of some divine plan. But then I ask, why would I ever want to follow such a plan? This is the most psychotic version of "the ends justify the means." The version that absolutely nobody would ever follow if it was presented to them. If that's part of the plan, then there is no way I would ever support such a plan. Psychotic.

Perhaps God has intentions for me but not my family. But not for the little eight-year-old girl who was turned into a lampshade. This argument makes me nauseous with the sheer arrogance of it. It isn't normal arrogance, but cosmic arrogance. The idea that your divine worth is somehow greater than others. My own body rejects such a answer. The reason I lived to be nine-years-old and she didn't is because of nothing more than Luck. The other possibility is just sickening.

No. From that day forth my empathy was an ever-present shield against ever believing in such a God. No longer would I ever want God to exist. If God didn't exist, I would be relieved, happy, and thankful. Thank God there is no God.

However, I wasn't actually an Atheist yet. For the next few years I would waver back and forth between Deism and Atheism (although I did not know the word Deism). Theism was forever dead to me.