When massacres occur, god is behind it?

           

          On Friday, December 14, 2012, a tragedy occurred in Newtown Connecticut where twenty children and six adults were killed in a shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The echoes from the gunfire had barely stopped when the kooks came out to air their impressions on what happened. One group in particular, certain Christians, conveyed the strangest explanations or rationalizations that I have ever heard. God BLESS Sandy Hook? Not since airliners were crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in September 2001 have there been so many Christian enlightenments and justifications to explain what happened, and why it happened. In a nutshell…god did it.                 
          
                I all but choked on the coffee I was sipping as I listened to one radio talk show and heard a woman, who identified herself as a God-fearing Christian, claim that God saw he needed twenty new angels (apparently He wasn’t aware of the shortage prior to casting His gaze around paradise) and set in motion the events that led to the slaughter.
                For even a second, do you consider it in good taste the implication of what she is suggesting? That God looked around, saw he had twenty fewer angels than he needed to be worshipped or entertained by, (Never mind the six adults, I guess) and sent a mentally unstable man into an elementary school to mow down 6 to 7 year old children?

Now that the killing has stopped, it's time to get on our knees to thank God, or ask God why it happened...and never get a response.

 But of course, other Christian callers quickly hastened to add their own beliefs that God didn’t know this was coming and He was simply making something good out of a bad situation by turning adolescent murder victims into instant angels. (Like making lemonade when you are handed a lemon.) They didn’t stop to think “Why would god work this way?” As the great Greek philosopher Epicurus wrote over 2400 years ago:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but is 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?

Why don’t Christians consider this when tragedies occur?

                On another talk show, a caller suggested that because secularists had forced god out of the schools, this is what would inevitably happen. When kids can’t pray Christian prayers in the classroom, when bibles are banned from the library, and when thanking God and Jesus at ceremonies and graduations is prohibited, then we reap what we sow…ergo, mentally unstable, heavy-armed, young, white males will automatically begin thinning out the human herd with gunfire. This caller said that God has turned His back on us because we turned our backs on Him. These kinds of Christians believe that God knows these acts will happen and, if not causing them, simply allows them to happen. I don’t see any difference between the two. It’s an act of malevolence either way.

              Do they really believe God thinks this is reasonable? Killing, or allowing to be killed, children who have done nothing to offend Him, and that they should die in such a horrific manner? What the hell kind of Christian sits around thinking this pile of garbage up? Of course, throughout the Christian bible, God DOES kill children without batting a holy eyelash. For example, God killed children in the tenth plague of Egypt. Their deaths were senseless because there were peaceful alternatives that could have accomplished His goal of getting the Hebrews released by Pharaoh and out of slavery.  When you kill children to accomplish a goal, and that goal could have been achieved without killing them, then their deaths were senseless because they weren't key to reaching that goal. The Proverb about babies being ripped from their mother’s womb certainly sounds like killing innocent kids is part of god’s plan. Also, the great flood in Genesis that only Noah and his seven family members escaped from is another classic example showing that babies and adolescents are not exempt from god's wrath. God doesn’t mind killing children at all. It just has to be for the right reasons. I deliberately didn’t seek any information about how the lunatic fringe at the Westboro Baptist Church would interpret this because I was certain they would blame the whole situation on gays. They most likely insist that, since the U.S. allows homosexuality to exist in our society, God sent this gunman into the school to bring us back to God (their version anyway) in a most shocking manner, by killing children. Homosexuality = murdering kids. WBC has perfected the non sequitur.

                After the massacre, area churches opened their doors for special services in order to make people feel better by telling God what he should do. God apparently didn't know this would happen.

                 If Christians are saying their God allowed these kids to be killed because Americans don’t have the Ten Commandments plastered everywhere, don’t go to church as frequently as they should, don’t pray enough, allow homosexuality, alcohol drinking, and even bowling on Sunday, then they are just as bad as that god they worship, if not worse. Blaming an invisible, nebulous, mysterious supernatural creature is delusional and amounts to passing the buck. However, human beings thinking it up, believing it, insisting others should believe it, and act on it as well, is nothing short of evil...man-made evil.
                God-fearing Christians...if this is the kind of god you believe in, you should be fearful. The rest of us just think you're nuts.

The Big Difference

                What does the future hold? How does one's vision of the future impact the way they live their life? Beliefs influence how one reacts and how they interact with others. Belief systems seem to boil down to one of two types of world views.

                One system sees a better tomorrow with true human harmony being a reachable goal, even though it may still be distant today. It will be a time when people can, and will, work with each other and find a just, lasting, and symbiotic way to make life better for all who exist here. If we can cooperate in space, at the far reaches of the planet, in technology, health care, finances, and communication; then we can equally cooperate in human progress and in human understanding. We all have more in common than we have that differentiates us. There isn’t a short term solution. It will require a long term commitment on our part. However, we have proven that we have the capability, the reasoning, and the desire to make things better, for ourselves and for those around us. Wouldn’t it be nice if it turned out we’re all only separated by something like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon?

                The other belief dictates that mankind is naturally evil and sinful. In this country, the predominant belief system is christianity, but it could just as easily apply to islam or judaism. Those who follow the christian belief hope, pray, and work for the biblical Armageddon to happen in their lifetime. They believe Jesus will then come tearing out of the sky to save some of the remaining human beings who will live for a thousand years with Jesus in control of Earth. Finally, for reasons not very clear, the devil (a supernatural being who was thrown into a pit when Jesus came back) will be let loose to destroy things on Earth again. And then, everyone who ever lived on this planet will be tried by God where a vast majority of them will be judged unworthy of anything but damnation, and thrown in a lake of fire for all eternity.

                Does this sound like the design of an intelligent supernatural being that transcends time and space?  Yet, this is the love and mercy of the Christian god, according to their bible, and it is the core of the Christian belief. Defenders of Christianity will try to explain that god doesn’t send people to hell (or the lake of fire); they send themselves to hell (or the lake of fire). Really? Is it any different than this scenario?

The Robber says                                                                               God says

“Give me your money, or I’ll shoot you!”                                   “Worship me, or burn in hell forever!”

People have free will.                                                                    People have free will.                   

They can choose to obey the robber's                                       They can choose to obey God's
commands, or not.                                                                        commands, or not.

So Robbers do not kill people.                                                  So God does not send people to hell.

People choose to die by                                                               People send themselves there, by         
choosing to disobey the robber.                                                choosing to disobey god.
               

Would you excuse and pardon the robber for murdering his victim in this case?

            But the ultimate problem is this; the Christian sees a bleak future that requires a supernatural event to change it, but they don’t explain how or why it will happen as they claim, except to repeat passages from their bible, as if that clarifies everything. You just have to believe, you just have to have faith, you just have to worship their god and trust that he will make everything right.

                The offer to worship the Christian god is not a choice, it is an ultimatum. The whole idea is based on a threat. That’s what terrorists do. That’s what the recent christmas holiday represents; not the birth of a child, but the birth of a method to threaten you with unimaginable horror. In its most concise form, it is ‘Worship me or go to hell forever’ which is no different than pointing a loaded gun at your head and saying “Do as I say, or I’ll pull this trigger.”

                I choose to believe in a very different future for the human race. I do not, for example, believe we’re on auto-pilot destined for total destruction, nor do I believe a supernatural event will occur that will resolve, temporarily, the apparently ghastly conditions we humans have created on Earth. I am certain that humans, with all their flaws and faults, will continue to progress and build toward a better future. There will be set backs and miscues, but we are aiming in the right direction. As long as we don't get sidetracked by allowing religion, ANY religion, to divert our course, we will continue to lay down the building blocks that will lead to a much grander and more equitable future for us and our descendants.

  It’s time for the human race to rise above these two thousand year old superstitions, and throw off the fear, the belief in a forsaken future, and faith in an unseen, unknowable supernatural force. We no longer need to be scared of the 'monster under the bed', because it was never there to begin with; nor do we need magical, invisible friends whom we converse one-sidely with (in prayer). The bible was written as a means of controlling people. In it, we’re condemned as being inherently sinful by the very being that, it is claimed, authored the bible, and we owe that being our lives in perpetuity. Of course, the message of the bible is then touted as the only salvation available, again according to that supernatural being that supposedly authored it. When other religions try to use the same argument with their own holy book, do you believe their claims are true?

The future is far too important to leave to interpretations that are no different from reading Tarot cards, tea leaves, or the entrails of a slaughtered sheep. I choose the vision that does not treat human beings as unworthy and must ultimately be saved by an undefinable supernatural source. We are superior to that and our eventual growth away from religion will only make our lives and our future that much better. The day when humankind’s belief in the supernatural is just a quaint memory, and a footnote in a history book, can’t come soon enough.