How about this: The "omnipotent god" that the Jews worship doesn't exist and never has, except in their minds, and as a result, couldn't possibly have saved them from being murdered by the millions.

Is this what passes for a deep thinker in your pantheon?

there are many jewish atheists.

as an atheist, i'm not merely and "ethnic" jew, i'm a jew in every meaningful sense of the word.
judaism *has* a mythological story, but it just a story; belief in it is not a required part of the religion.

the distinction is, among jews, those who believe and those who don't believe in the mythological stories of judaism.

but both believers and non-believers are, or can be, "religious" jews.

an "ethnic" jew would be someone who identifies as jewish (jewish mother or conversion) but doesn't observe any of the jewish laws.

of the religious aspect of being Jewish as not being "meaningful"

Just a wild notion.

all i'm saying is that belief has nothing to do with membership in terms of being considered a jew, or even a "religious" jew. that doesn't mean they are meaningless at all.

the mythological stories from the torah, and also from the kaballah, certainly are a part of judaism and have meaning to those who believe in those aspects. in fact, the stories even have meaning for many jew who don't "believe".

AND that you're a Jew "in every meaningful sense of the word". Since you don't believe in god, you're not Jewish in the religious sense of Jews who DO believe in god, and are therefore saying that that sense is not meaningful (since it doesn't apply to you).

So you said just exactly that.

You seem to be conflating "cultural" with "religious".

christianity is a religion of faith; belief is the key to membership in the religion.
judaism is a religion of identity; you don't need to belief to be "religious".

My mom was Jewish, I'm part ethnically jewish, my kids are part ethnically jewish, none of us are religious. Identifying oneself as jewish does not make one religious. My wife's family was religious, she is still a cultural or secular jew, she celebrates cultural jewish festivals, and we celebrate them with her, but she also is not religious. You can continue to insist that identifying as Jewish makes one religious, but doing so just eliminates meaning from the word "religious".

yiddish and bagels and so on.

that doesn't make you "religious", but it could make you a "cultural jew".

keeping kosher and keeping shabbat, attending shul, etc., would make you a "religious jew".
a religious jew might believe or not, that really doesn't matter in determining whether or not they're a "religious jew".

but a "cultural jew" is no less of a jew than a "religious jew", they are all full members of the religion.

Religions always use some convoluted explanation for anything about god that doesn't make sense. Basically, "God works in mysterious ways." Nothing I've ever read that supposedly proves the existence of a deity meets the standards for logical argument. People believe in "him" because they were taught to, and most cannot ever escape that brainwashing.

eom

That still leaves open the question of who they're merciful towards. Believers throughout history have regularly wished for their god to help them smite their enemies. Nowhere is it written that just because you're a god, you have to be nice to everyone.

that's what i learned from my years in texas, anyway

the Cowboys still suck.

is one of the reasons that lead me to atheism.
When you grow up being taught you are part of the "chosen people" by God. And this selfsame God does nothing when this happens, it makes you think.

"chosen people" meant more that god had chosen jews to be subject to jewish law.

hence non-jews are subject to other laws perhaps, but not jewish law. jews have no problem with gentiles eating pork.

this is at the root of why jews generally do not proselytize and why conversion to judaism is a challenge.


in more sardonic moments, jews have been known for saying that god chose us for a life of misery.

the people who were closer to God than any others. The people God chose to give his laws too.
Unless Jesus was, in fact, the son of God, or Mohamed was his profit, they other religions had to be wrong in their assessment of God.
But that apparently wasn't enough to do anything in the Holocaust.
God not existing seemed the more logical choice.

never was supposed to. it's a fine jewish tradition to go off on an angry rant to god, why, why do you do this to me, to us, to my family, yada, yada, yada. but there was never any promise of richness or reward simply for being jewish or following god's law.

jewish ethics are not transactional; they are not based on a notion of getting a reward for doing the right thing. judaism is a religion of identity. jews follow the laws and traditions because it's who we are. not because we expect or even deserve any reward for it. it's just who we are. why the rules about facial hair or mixing threads? meat and cheese are both ok just not together? rabbis can come up with spiritual "whys" for these, but they are fundamentally just markers of our identity. we do these things because that's what it means to be jewish.

of course, as with any religion, people pick and chose exactly which rules to obey....

but the God that Jewish people worship sat back and let this atrocity happen, as he has throughout history, except when he decides to act at less egregious events.
People can dance in circles about why God did nothing, but it is more logical that there is no God, at least not the one the Torah talks about.

Seems this God decided "Oh screw the Jews, I helped them already"

Exodus 6:6
"Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.

and of course he kills jesus too. add one more jew to the list....

and of course, plenty of jews believe that god did not at all sit by and do nothing, god in fact made it happen, and has his reasons, they are just rather hard for us to fathom.


is it more logical that there is no god? of course, and there's no need to convince me as i've always been an atheist.

you were playing devils advocate.
I have heard these arguments and responding to them, not debating you per se.

Seriously, step back a bit. The creator of the universe singled out one tribal grouping of one species on one planet in one solar system in one galaxy from the billions of galaxies and their billions of stars and their planets and their species?

It is a failed concept from an obsolete cosmology.

I don't think it was, and i haven't heard that it was his work from any but a few.
But this isn't about God causing the holocaust, it's about him sitting by while millions of innocents, including a third of his "chosen people" were sent to their deaths.
It's about the sin of inaction.
If all evil needs is for good men to do nothing, what does that say about a God who does nothing.
If a God existed, this is indefensible.

This answer is about the Holocaust written by a survivor.

http://www.questia.com/library/4437626/survival-in-auschwitz-the-nazi-assault-on-humanity

The facts of the story are more riveting than a philosophical question.

sorry link came up blank.

Maybe you could post a pertinent paragraph.

Actually what I find fascinating about the riddle is that it's based on philosophy not science.

That link requires a free registration and you can read the book for free.

Here's a summary.

http://www.enotes.com/topics/survival-in-auschwitz

Also, I am not saying we should blame God for the Holocaust. The Nazis and German people are squarely to blame.
But there is reason to question why the God I was brought up to believe in would do nothing when it happened.
As I said, part of my path to atheism.

Had a friend, co-worker who's father was in the German army during WWII, Eastern Front. She was very young but got the take that he essentially did what was expected of him as a German citizen. Though he didn't participate directly in the mass killings of Jews, Romani, gays, et al. (he spent much of the war as a POW) when it became clear most of the family chose to emigrate.

Monsters exist. And if these monsters have political power, most of us will obey, especially when not obeying leads to imprisonment, torture and death.

Or, maybe we could blame it on natural selection and our selected trait of striving to get along with others in our group - even when our group is being led by a monster.

The point I suspect he's making is that people are not created monsters, although we all have the capacity to become one, or a Beowulf.

The point I suspect he's making is that people are not created monsters, although we all have the capacity to become one, or a Beowulf.

"It was not the work of God."


But it WAS the work of ~66 million Christians, roughly split 67% protestant, 33% catholic.

Your "statistic" is simply the entire population of Germany.

Give it up.

Vile though they were, there were only two men.

But I suppose, they were only obeying orders.

However, the construction of that tower isn't really a moral proposition, and wasn't built by people who held deep beliefs around the proposed morality of the action.


But to clarify my grievance, it's along the lines of 'they should have known better'.

like the Bush family?

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Wenn es einen Gott gibt muß er mich um Verzeihung bitten.

or in English:

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]If there is a god, he will have to beg for my forgiveness.