{"id":418,"date":"2012-01-31T20:48:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T20:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2012\/01\/how-could-god-have-allowed-the-holocaust-and-other-meaningless-questions.html"},"modified":"2012-01-31T20:48:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T20:48:00","slug":"how-could-god-have-allowed-the-holocaust-and-other-meaningless-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2012\/01\/how-could-god-have-allowed-the-holocaust-and-other-meaningless-questions.html","title":{"rendered":"How Could God Have Allowed The Holocaust And Other Meaningless Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Back in September I wrote a response to Rabbi Alan Lurie\u2019s HuffPost blog<\/a> about how God is only hiding because we don\u2019t know what to look for.\u00a0 Lurie is a liberal \u201cnon-denominational\u201d rabbi who is actually a very successful businessman and architect.\u00a0 I am certain he applies sounder thinking to his business interests than to his teaching about God.<\/p>\n

Last week he took up the topic of \u201cHow Could God Have Allowed the Holocaust?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 He began in the expected way:<\/p>\n

All Rabbis hear variations on the following questions: \u201cHow can anyone believe in God after the Holocaust? How can a supposedly loving God stand back and let such a horrible thing happen? How can you reconcile the death of even one innocent child with the existence of a just God?\u201d For many, these questions are proof that a personal God does not exist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the paragraphs that follow, Lurie explains that there is a field of theology known as \u201ctheodicy\u201d that deals with God and the presence of evil.\u00a0 Then this:<\/p>\n

\u2026the very question of \u201cHow could God have allowed the Holocaust?\u201d represents a profound misunderstanding of the nature of God, creation, and the spiritual dimension, because it is based on very faulty assumptions. It posits God as a being who is totally separate from us, who observes our behavior, preventing harm from coming to those who follow certain rules (usually written in books), and punishing those who do not.<\/p>\n

\u2026But God is much more than that, and we are much more than that. This image of God and humans, frankly, is childish and primitive, and from this perspective there is no God\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He then walks us through his arguments for the existence of God, featuring the ACTUALLY childish and primitive assumptions that \u201csome thing\u201d cannot come from \u201cno thing.\u201d\u00a0 This is followed by a pre-emptive attack on asking who created God, calling this \u201ca misunderstanding of the nature of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

So who is his God?\u00a0 He finally offers a definition.\u00a0 Sort of.<\/p>\n

\u2026prior to creation there was only God; undifferentiated, timeless, pure consciousness, irrevocably alone. And yet God\u2019s greatest yearning is for connection \u2013 for something in which to be in relationship and to experience love. But there was no possibility of anything to connect to because no thing could exist, as the only existence was the completely indivisible God. This yearning, though, led to the paradox of creation, as God removed \u201cHis\u201d presence from a point, making physicality possible. This was the Big Bang, and long before it was discovered by Edwin Hubble in 1929 it was seen by mystics from many traditions, especially by those in northern Israel in the 16th century.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Where do I even begin with this nonsense?\u00a0 First of all, how does he know what God was feeling or yearning for?\u00a0 The human behavior of yearning for love or companionship is an accident of evolution.\u00a0 Its roots are evident in the social behavior of other animals, too.\u00a0 As for supposed ancient precursors of the Big Bang theory, I\u2019m pretty sure that the mystics of ancient Tz\u2019fat were not sitting around measuring cosmic background radiation<\/a> or they would have been awarded the Nobel.<\/p>\n

He continues:<\/p>\n

The Universe was therefore set in motion with the purpose of developing creatures who would arrive at self-consciousness \u2013 the awareness of being aware -, see the obvious design in creation, feel the presence of a loving Designer, and reach out in gratitude. This connection in love is both ours and God\u2019s greatest pleasure and delight (and, I believe, also for countless beings on planets scattered throughout the Universe).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The purpose of creation, then, is to be in a loving relationship with its Creator.<\/p>\n

There is NO obvious design or purpose in any part of nature.\u00a0 And this includes biological organisms, except to the extent that they are \u201cdesigned\u201d by the process of natural selection. What kind of \u201cloving Designer\u201d would rig the urethra right through the prostate?<\/p>\n

And how does he know what God\u2019s \u201cgreatest delight and pleasure\u201d are?\u00a0 Maybe what God really likes is smelling animal fat burning on an altar.\u00a0 That\u2019s what ancient Jews thought.\u00a0 While we\u2019re at it, we can just say anything we want to about him.\u00a0 Maybe he really gets the greatest pleasure and delight by watching suns explode.\u00a0 That happens all the time in the universe so he must really love it.<\/p>\n

All of this is typical of sloppy theology \u2013 and there is no other kind.\u00a0 It makes evidence-free assertions about the nature of God based on poor understandings of scientific discoveries and wishful thinking.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another great example:<\/p>\n

This does not mean that God is not omniscient. God does know the choices that we will make because our consciousness is in constant connection to God, and for God time is not a limitation, so our future choices are not hidden. Yet God deliberately does not interfere \u2013 not out of indifference, but out of great love. God must \u201cwatch\u201d in pain as we commit atrocities, because to interfere would negate free will, terminating the relationship and hence the very purpose of creation. This is the reconciliation of Rabbi Akiva\u2019s famous paradox, \u201cAll is foreseen, yet free will is given\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rabbi Akiva\u2019s paradox and the mounds of commentary it yielded are the very epitome of the \u201cchildish and primitive\u201d understandings of God that Lurie so abhors.\u00a0 Here God is a parent who loves us very much.\u00a0 However, as a loving parent he won\u2019t interfere, even though this causes him pain.<\/p>\n

By now I hope you can quite easily spot all of the problems with these claims.\u00a0 For example, who says that the Jewish God doesn\u2019t interfere?\u00a0 In the big book about him and much of the commentary that accompanies it, he interferes all the freaking time.\u00a0 We can\u2019t move right or left (or even eat shrimp for that matter) without him interfering.\u00a0 And a lot of what he tells us to do, in the bible anyway, is to commit the very atrocities that he supposedly watches in so much pain (see here for a partial list of God\u2019s terrific biblical role modeling<\/a>).<\/p>\n

As for the Holocaust, Lurie states:<\/p>\n

Where was God in the Holocaust? As God knew the terrible choices made by too many, and wept at the horrific consequences, those who chose love and service in the face of this horror were strengthened and consoled. Good eventually did win over evil, by our own hands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m sure he needed a really big imaginary tissue.\u00a0 Seriously, the last sentence is starting to approach the truth.\u00a0 Good did win (and some evil won, too, given that Stalin was among the winners).\u00a0 But God had nothing to do with it.\u00a0 When people accomplish anything in this world, good or evil, it is always \u201cby our own hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why do I harp on liberal rabbis the way that I do?\u00a0 Because liberal Judaism was born of a need to create a spiritual approach to life that was based upon reason and rational thinking.\u00a0 This is a promise that is now lost.\u00a0 Modern liberal rabbis are leading their followers down a path that ignores modern scientific discoveries and their implications.\u00a0 While they posit a God who is much more palatable to modern morality, he is no less imaginary.\u00a0 When will they finally cease this silly prattle?\u00a0 Making up newer and improved versions of God isn\u2019t fooling anyone who bothers to really think about it.<\/p>\n

I want to close on a positive note.\u00a0 Allow me to take a stab at the question, \u201cHow could God have allowed the Holocaust?\u201d\u00a0 Try this on for size\u2026<\/p>\n

When people once lacked sufficient evidence-based paths to understanding our presence in the universe, they posited supernatural causes.\u00a0 They imagined that these supernatural \u201cgods\u201d made claims upon them because the gods created them and provided for their needs.\u00a0 Over time, the Jews consolidated these many gods into one.\u00a0 We\u2019ll just call him God (he was generally described and addressed as a male).\u00a0 All of our questions and theories about humanity and nature were answered by what we came to believe God said and did.<\/p>\n

Jewish history proceeded and it was not a ball of laughs.\u00a0 We endured a lot of crap and we luckily managed to overcome it.\u00a0 We often ascribed both the crap and our survival to God, but it was always we who were enduring it.\u00a0 When the absolute worst crap hit us, we always asked ourselves why he would allow it.\u00a0 We came up with a bunch of answers.\u00a0 Some said it was to punish us.\u00a0 Others said that we had somehow turned away from him so he was powerless to prevent it.\u00a0 Still others posited that he just wasn\u2019t in a position to help.<\/p>\n

A small group of people realized that we were looking in the wrong direction.\u00a0 Science was already explaining our presence without recourse to him.\u00a0 So shouldn\u2019t we explain human behavior, both good and evil, in the same way?<\/p>\n

The faithful like to assert that non-believers are angry at God.\u00a0 How can we be angry at a non-existent being?\u00a0 If we are angry at all \u2013 and everyone should be able to get their hackles up about some injustice in this world \u2013 it\u2019s that some people keep waiting for God to make the big difference.\u00a0 Notably and to their credit, Lurie and most liberal rabbis have had the good sense to drop that part of our ancient fiction.\u00a0 They now rightfully place all of the burden on human beings, reducing God to no more than a moral inspiration.\u00a0 Why they continue to waste their time on that is beyond me.<\/p>\n

No matter how much we are drawn to ascribe it to an outside source, morality comes from within us.\u00a0 It is an evolved behavior.\u00a0 And in ITS absence, holocausts occur.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in September I wrote a response to Rabbi Alan Lurie\u2019s HuffPost blog about how God is only hiding because we don\u2019t know what to look for.\u00a0 Lurie is a liberal \u201cnon-denominational\u201d rabbi who is actually a very successful businessman and architect.\u00a0 I am certain he applies sounder thinking to his business interests than to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,14,24,25,30],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-bible","tag-history","tag-liberal-judaism","tag-liberal-religions-and-theologies","tag-non-theism"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Could God Have Allowed The Holocaust And Other Meaningless Questions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Back in September I wrote a response to Rabbi Alan Lurie\u2019s HuffPost blog about how God is only hiding because we don\u2019t know what to look for.\u00a0 Lurie is a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2012\/01\/how-could-god-have-allowed-the-holocaust-and-other-meaningless-questions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Could God Have Allowed The Holocaust And Other Meaningless Questions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Back in September I wrote a response to Rabbi Alan Lurie\u2019s HuffPost blog about how God is only hiding because we don\u2019t know what to look for.\u00a0 Lurie is a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2012\/01\/how-could-god-have-allowed-the-holocaust-and-other-meaningless-questions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-01-31T20:48:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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