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May 29, 2006

The Answer is Obvious

My money is on "god does not exist:"

Pope Benedict XVI visited the Auschwitz concentration camp as "a son of the German people" Sunday and asked God why he remained silent during the "unprecedented mass crimes" of the Holocaust.

Benedict walked along the row of plaques at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex's memorial, one in the language of each nationality whose members died there. As he stopped to pray, a light rain stopped and a brilliant rainbow appeared over the camp.

"In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

Not surprisingly, God was unavailable for comment, probably off helping some high school sports team to an all-important victory or something equally as important.

Perhaps Linda Breder, a prisoner at Auschwitz, has an answer:

There was no God in Auschwitz. There were such horrible conditions that God decided not to go there.

Ms. Breder, interviewed for the book Auschwitz: A New History, went on to say that many of the survivors she knew became atheist as a result of their time in the extermination camps. Well, hey, I've heard from plenty of folks that I'm an atheist just because God didn't give me what I wanted, that I didn't want to bow to his authority... would they dare say the same to these people?

It was God's plan that some of them waste away to nothing, while others were gassed within minutes of their arrival. It was the Holy of Holies who found good reason for families to be torn apart, the elderly and the children marched to their deaths, the rest wondering when their time may come.

No, I'm atheist because there's absolutely no evidence that any gods exist, and while the horrors of Auschwitz may not rule out the existence of all gods, they certainly make belief in an all-loving and all-powerful god an exercise in magical ly-twisted pretzel logic.

Why was God silent?

Well, He wasn't in the overcrowded ghettos. He didn't catch a ride in the crowded, dark, piss-stinking cattle cars. He didn't stand in line for selection by Nazi doctors. He didn't claw at the walls of a gas chamber. He didn't march barefoot through a Polish winter, only to be shot for asking for a drink.

In short, he wasn't there.