Thursday, March 19, 2009

Somewhere

I do not believe in God
I do not believe in any type of god
I do not believe that there is a higher power up there playing god
I do not believe in any sort of deity

Now that we got that out of the way I will try to explain my reasoning. And it will not only stem from this article, for there are far too many reason why I do not believe there is something up there watching us.

I was taking my daughter to her weekly youth party. And as I was stopped at a traffic light I saw a bumper sticker, and it read:

Pray, God will hear you.

Yeah, but will he listen? I do not think there is a god up here who will let certain things happen. And I am talking mostly about those things that happen to innocent children. What child asks to be abused? Whether it be physically, sexually, verbally, mentally or spiritually? No child that I could think of (or adult for that matter), but yet it happens all the time. And yet I wonder if these little creatures (in God's image) prayed at night to be delivered form the man/woman who is abusing them, what is God doing about it? Does he hear them and tell them in his own special way that he works in mysterious ways and it will all come out in the wash? Well what if the wash is this child ending up in the E.R. with a bashed in skull and dies 3 hours later...what then? Who was listening to that child when she was begging to be taken away from the bad man/woman. God? I think not.

What about all these children who are born to parents with crippling illnesses, or disabilities? Do they deserve a lifetime of nothingness? And lest we not forget the parents who will spend a lifetime of caring for these little creatures. I do not believe there is a god sitting up there playing chess with our lives, and if there is he is a sick twisted god. I cannot think of any people who deserve to be subjected to the experiences that many go through on a daily basis. Case in point, Elizabeth Fritzl. If that name does not ring a bell, let me refresh your memory. She is the woman who was locked in a basement in Austria by her father and also bore 7 of his children. (Six are still surviving, due to the death of one infant)

This man started raping his own daughter at the age of 18 and kept her in a windowless room. Three of her children never saw daylight, and the wife of the father was upstairs all the time. Where was her sense of morality, her sense of doing what was right. I might, and that is a very slim margin there, believe she did not know what was gong on if she had never seen any of the children, but 3 of the 6 children were raised upstairs by the father/grandfather and the grandmother. How do you explain them away?

What creature made in the likeness of God does that to his own flesh and blood. Did God intend for us to be made in his image, then given free will just so we can totally screw up? If so that's a God with a sick sense of humor. Give us free will but tell us what we can and cannot do? That is a fine line.

I think there are a few folks through the ages that deserve to be put to death and if you do not believe in capitol punishment, then you are probably hoping there is a here after where they will pay there dues. I for one am hoping he goes to Hell, if there is indeed one. But for the time being he will go to prison and be fed three decent meals a day, and get all thee amenities that many people do not even receive, but he will not suffer for the pain he inflicted while on this Earth.

And let's look at it from a different angle. What if he repents and begs for forgiveness for his actions, can a god really forgive for what he did over and over and over again? I may, and that is a far stretch, forgive someone who did something in a fit of rage, but to forgive someone who repeated their crimes over and over not giving a care to his victim.

And then there is the victim. How are those people supposed to function in the real world now? I would not want to be that shrink. Do you ask them to retell their life or do you help them tuck it away in a far odd part of the brain that should be kept only for traumatic incidences? Flip a coin. And now these children and probably the daughter think of their lifestyle as normal, for that is all they knew. How do you recover from a life you thought of as normal?

But, if there is a God and a Heaven and a Hell, then there is somewhere for Josef Fritzl to go and that place is Hell.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have to say i agree with you. I kind of hope that we might all be born again as someone else....but as for God I'm not sure. I have never been religious and my mother always used to say it was a fairy story to make people less afraid about dieing.

Bill Cooney said...

This is a terrific post. Many great thinkers throughout the ages have noted the "suffering dilemma" as the main reason for their skepticism about the existence of a god or supreme being. They have questioned the liklihood that an all-loving, benevolent god would allow such profane and pervasive suffering.

Of course we're all well aware of the dogmatic answer Christians have at the ready. The death of Jesus, salvation, eternal reward, etc. That's all well and good if people want to buy into that, but it doesn't even begin to answer why obscene suffering on such a grand scale would be allowed to occur in the first place.

It is plain to me that we have - as human beings - the capacity to relieve suffering.

Instead of a bumper sticker that says, "Pray. God will hear you," I think I'd much prefer a bumper sticker that said, "Ease someone's suffering. They will love you."