Let me start out by saying I'm an atheist. Am I absolutely sure there is no God, no supreme being looking over us? No, of course not. Contrary to some opinions, that doesn't make me agnostic. I hold the possibility of God to be so remote as to be inconsequential, but I don't for a moment think I possess all knowledge on the matter.
I would also add that I am a hopeful atheist, not only confident in my lack of belief, but assured that it is ultimately the belief system most in the world will come to. When we as a society cast off our gods, we can finally grow up as a sentient species.
So, do I hate God, when I don't even believe in him? Yes, absolutely - I despise the idea of God as described by religion. Call him Yaweh, Allah, or any other title you wish to ascribe. The idea of God is just as vile as any actual existence. And if he is a real being, my hatred becomes all the more justified.
But hate is such a strong word, you might say - yes indeed. Why do I feel so strongly?
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words...
The caption below the picture attached to the article explains the scene, but here it is again. A young boy, dying from famine, is trying to crawl to a UN food station about a kilometer away. He isn't going to make it, and a vulture is stalking him.
Fundamentalists of all stripes will attest to the power of prayer, to the power of an intercessory God to move in the lives of people when called upon.
Did this boy not pray? We don't know - did he perhaps pray to the wrong God? Did no one in the world pray for hungry children?
Can not the God who parts seas, destroys the world through flood, raises the dead, and professes to be creator of all we see manage to feed a starving boy? If he can, and doesn't, he is despicable. If he can't, he is a fraud.
As the photo caption says, the picture won a Pulitzer Prize. Shortly after winning, the photographer committed suicide. It's not known exactly why - although guilt over the boy in the photo seems a likely explanation.
I'm also reminded of a story told by an elderly Ukrainian woman about losing her son during Stalin's forced famine on the people of Ukraine in the 1930s.
The Babushka speaks about having to look her dying son in the eye, and tell him no, he couldn't have the beet root. She had to choose to give it to her healthier child in the hopes of survival. Her son's eyes dimmed, and he faded away.
She was in all likelihood Orthodox, and probably prayed daily - to no avail.
Now I know all the arguments that will be brought out in defense of the deity. "God works in mysterious ways," and "we can't know the mind of God," or maybe "God had a higher purpose for them." We would never try to excuse the same type of behavior from a fellow person, why are some so willing to give God a pass?
If God could claim to have created everything and then sat back, allowed events to flow as the might, that still wouldn't absolve him, but it could be at least a viable argument.
But that's not what God or those who follow him claim. God is seen as an active participant in the world, answering prayers and interceding on behalf of the faithful. And that belief is also contemptible.
When the faithful claim miracles on their behalf, they are elevating themselves above the less fortunate. They are, in essence, claiming a right to divine intervention for everything from traffic to sports. The trivial in their life suddenly becomes more important than a young child dying from cancer or hunger or war.
When a person says "God answered my prayer," I automatically dismiss whatever comes next. I know they are wrong. And I would argue it's even worse if they are right. If God will allow himself to be troubled to clear traffic ahead of someone running late, to help a person on a test, or cure a cold, he by default makes himself responsible for all of the unanswered prayers.
And some of them he chooses to ignore indict him as either pathetic ideal or wretched overlord. When Tony Dungy, former coach of the Indianapolis Colts, said they won the Superbowl by doing it "the Lord's way," I wanted to climb into the television set and punch him in the face. Celebrities and the wealthy who claim to owe their success to God are saying "look at me, I'm important to God."
When someone like Glenn Beck tells you his rally is divine providence, he is telling you his movement is God's working in our lives. Yet the same God cannot alleviate the suffering of a dying child.
The desire we all hold for meaning in life can explain why so many people are drawn to religion. Easy answers to those questions that once seemed impossible to know. I am by no means indicting all people who are religious.
On the contrary, some are fine individuals. It's their belief system that is flawed and ultimately evil. Good people can be very wrong. I once struggled to find meaning in faith. I can say, without hesitation, that my decision to leave it behind was one of the most liberating of my life.
And of course just liberating yourself from the heavy yoke of religion doesn't mean you will be a better person. But at least you will understand that our society and how it treats the least among us says something very strong about us. The religious right likes to say we would be lawless, killing, raping, etc, with no regard for consequences.
I beg to differ. I think when we leave behind dogma we can find within ourselves the capacity to work to lift all. Regardless of what Beck and company say, it's very much about collective salvation. For as long as one suffers needlessly, we are all the lesser for it.
I've been told I will be sorry one day, that "every knee shall bow, every tongue confess." Maybe I will succumb to some unimaginable torture and do just that. If I am wrong, and there is a God, I hope I have the strength to express my true feelings.
Comments
What you actually hate is the example set by those who call themselves religious, and therefore "close" to God. At least in their own minds.
Just as the hippys were born as a response to a conseravtive power. Atheism is often born out of rebellion to the religiouis idea of what God "is".
Atheists are people who prefer to actually read the fine print before they sign something.
Other than that, they don't stand out in a crowd.
Except to members of the crowd...Who signed what was in front of them. Sight unseen.
x
For those of us who have had close calls with death and have had reasons to be mad at the God which atheists do not understand is "beyond all understanding" this seems a week argument. God might have been being gracious in taking away further suffering when the poverty stricken boy was most likely to die anyway. Notice, I say might. We who truly have faith in an all-powerful being realize that he doesn't have but one name but has all the names noted. Just as yes can be si or ya or oui or whatever, God is but a linguistic label. Those who deny something exists simply because they cannot see it have my pity. It may be that they are realists, but what if it happens to be that they have never been blessed with imagination? Just a few thoughts. Forgive the lack of logic, or accept the possibilities. The God I am aware of will understand either way. Thanks for the rebuttal time.
Sir, it's a big lie that these people don't believe in unseen. If they are educated they definitely do believe in photons that they have never seen. They believe their forefathers were monkeys while they've never met any of them. They believe in death even if they haven't experienced themselves.
If you complain about a tragedy such as a child starving, when you could give your money and spend your life to prevent it. - but yet refuse to do so, are you not also a fraud?
Karen, I totally agree. It's easy to lambaste (the idea of) god for inaction, and therefore culpability, but we humans could do so much more but choose not to. Whether or not god exists, there are countless opportunities for someone who complains about the disjunction between god's supposed existence and all the evil in the world to devote himself to fixing as much of what's wrong as humanly possible. I'm not trying to be snide, either.
So because the photographer that took the picture of the child was not a man or woman of god and let the child die there so they could get the photo they wanted its gods fault?
My what a clever pile of molecules. I’m so glad it shared its thoughts, or whatever they are, with us. Funny how a chemistry experiment can be so opinionated about things, and so certain that what it says is “true”.
Not impressed.
What we have here is a man ungrateful for the life that has been given him. You'd assume that child would have never lived? How about you ask him? And why didn't our esteemed photographer toss the kid some food?
What business is it of yours to judge a God in the first place? Ah, right. That whole gratefulness thing again...
The fact that men die, however they die, says nothing about the qualityies of an eternal God, nor speaks at all of the capcity to choose to love.
This is a most amusingly sad article. The atheist hates a God that "isn't" in order to say that he really hates people who believe in God. Is there tragedy in the world? Of course. If you can't blame it on the absent non-God of the atheist, then that atheist is fully capable of blaming the tragedy on man and his public policies. But does he? No. Rage against that which "is not" is a fine stance to keep from blaming such tragedies on the real cause, the evil which is a part of mankind's lower behaviors. Get on with the critique of man, Mr. Musall, and stop the same-old-same-old which gives you a forum to abdicate your human responsibility as an atheist to blame the supposed "real" causes of misery -- other men and their public policies.
What kind of a contradictory article is this? If you don't believe in existence of God then how can you hate him? Secondly rather than criticizing the action of the photographer, you're just blaming God. The photographer and everybody else who were present there should have taken the kid to UN camp rather than taking pictures. That's why he committed suicide. Please at least be honest and fair in your article. You could have started the article without reference to this photo.
I think he ment he hates the concept of the God that the people believe in. You know, the racist, sexist, ignorant God that people love so much.
I give God a pass for the same reason I give the Russian mother a pass for not giving her son the beet and surviving while he died, give a pass to the photographer for not intervening to save the child, and give you a pass for sitting comfortably in America writing articles about how you hate God instead of dedicating your entire life to saving starving children in Africa. A lack of action does not imply indifference or a lack of love.
Further, everything that happens, down to things as small the individual flaps of a butterfly's wings effect the course of the universe an we have no way of knowing what purpose it might serve not only days later but millennia later.
The alternative is a universe that doesn't care if we live or die and an ultimately futile existence that will end with the heat-death or collapse of the universe. The only reason you care about that child or anyone else is that you've been programmed to irrationally care because it serves some evolutionary purpose. If you really want to face reality and are certain that there is no God, that stop caring because there is no logical reason to care and it doesn't matter if you do or not. The universe is indifferent to that child, you, and the entire planet and will wipe it all away in due course.
By the way, there are very intelligent and rational humans who lack that irrational and emotional ability to care that evolution saddles everyone else with and they make up 1%-4%of the population, maybe more. They are psychopaths. And in a universe without God, they actually have a more sane and rational view of things than anyone else.
See the paper "Is It Irrational to Be Amoral?" by Shaun Nichols and the article "Psychopaths Among Us" by Robert Hercz.
I thank you for your article, though I am not an Atheist, I do detest organized religions. At least now I can see why someone would be an Atheist, what the argument for it is. I too wonder why so many people in my life have died, and died young--good people, when there are so many horrible humans "God" could choose to take. Nothing is worse than hearing, "it was Gods plan" when a loved one dies...thank you for sharing your point of view.
First, let me say that even though I am a Christian I didn't use to be and I had all the same questions you do. Like you, I expressed them. Christians used to dread seeing me coming, actually. LOL But God was big enough for me and my questions and big enough to send people--and circumstances--in my life to help me better understand what had eluded me before. I had lived a difficult life, with many tragedies, so I was angry and questioning about a God that would allow it. Now I understand how my own families--and my--decisions placed us in some positions that resulted so adversely. There are legitimate reasons why God doesn't "bail out" humanity--we refuse to even acknowledge he exists or to worship him as creator, but we then want to demand his help. I'm sure that one makes him shake his head. I can see my boss going for that too (not). But there are also times when, like that child, someone innocent is in harms way. Again, God gives people free will--like the child's parent, or the predator who decides to harm someone--and God doesn't "stop" them from their free will. Lots of people don't understand that you can't have it both ways: you worship God and he provides for you or you don't and your the master of your fate. We find it easy to understand that on a job: please the boss, get the raise and a good work environment--don't and he won't bail you out when you mess up. Lastly, God doesn't "rescue" everyone, even those who are Christians. But those who are understand that because they know God loves them and may call them to "lay down their life for another". That's what He did. And Christians are to be willing to "die to self" (materially and physically) to help someone else. I'll be praying for you. Thanks for speaking your heart. That is never wrong.
"A young boy, dying from famine, is trying to crawl to a UN food station about a kilometer away. He isn't going to make it, and a vulture is stalking him."
So, it's somehow God's fault that the photographer would rather get a Pulitzer prize than actually stop to carry that child to the feeding station?
To all of you commenting about him, or the photographer personally and all that...
You are pathetic, in that you don't even see the logical fallacies you're spewing. And you're also half the reason I hate organized religions and die-hard believers to begin with.
You don't know that the author doesn't donate money, or part of his life, to help those starving children. You probably don't know what the man who took the photo did afterwards.
This is the logical fallacy of "attacking the author (or other people involved), instead of his points."
You're all idiots. And since you're so content to be that way, you'll never see reason. One can only hope that people who are actually open to valid reason and arguments will see this article and genuinely consider the points made, instead of attacking the author over parts of his life they have no clue about...
you say you are absolutely sure that there is no God, but that is impossible to be absolutely sure about. The good news is that we will all know for sure one day, like that kid in the picture.
I like the one who said he had a brush with death. Does he mean he is glad god didn't take him? That doesn't make sense. Then what about the ones god decided not to "spare". Who is he that god "spares" him and not someone else. That's the point of this message.
stop shifting blame to the photographer. for your information, people touring sudan at the time were instructed to steer clear of famine victims for fear of diseases, some which may have not even been fully realized or treatable. the point is, whether the photographer was there or not, there would still have been a hungry child being stalked by a vulture. this photograph isn't any kind of proof of god's existence or not. and for the guy who pities atheists, i pity those who fall back on religion to explain things that just can't be explained or justify the horrors humanity endures.
God is so merciful so that we can help the poor.Jesus said, There will be always poor in the world. God provided poor people so that all people have their mission to help the poor because each one of us have our mission to help. God has assigned us to do is to help. He has provided the poor so that we can lift up and raise the poor and give bread and water to the poor.
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