How can a benevolent God allow the Holocaust? (Israel, Biblical, Christianity)
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God doesn't have the ability to sin. Does that mean he doesn't have free will?
Imagine a God that makes life perfect for all with no struggles. Ultimate utopic communism.
Imagine a God where no one ever experiences dissatisfaction, no heartaches, no pain, no risk, etc. One would think God could do that. God could create a perfect life for 100% of people on Earth. Is that really a perfect creation?
If I were God i would do what God has done. I would create MAN with absolute freedom.
Imagine a God that makes life perfect for all with no struggles. Ultimate utopic communism.
Someday we will exist in a perfect heaven.
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Imagine a God where no one ever experiences dissatisfaction, no heartaches, no pain, no risk, etc. One would think God could do that. God could create a perfect life for 100% of people on Earth. Is that really a perfect creation?
If I were God i would do what God has done. I would create MAN with absolute freedom.
You really haven't answered my question. Why do you think Man requires more freedom than God?
As Karen Armstrong states in "A History of God" in discussing the Holocaust and its affect on many Jews..."If this God is omnipotent, he could have prevented the Holocaust. If he was unable to stop it, he is impotent and useless. If he could have stopped it and chose not to, he is a monster.
So those of you believe your God is only good, what possible reason was there for your God to allow the Holocaust to happen?
In this lost and fallen world, God does not generally intervene. And ultimately, the Holocaust taught humanity something that humanity had completely failed to learn from the same sorts of atrocities before the Jewish Holocaust. Humanity learned the consequences of mindless hate and dehumanization of other human beings.
During World War I, the Ottoman Empire rounded up millions of Armenian Christians, force marched them out into the desert and proceded to massacre starve them to death. 1.5 million died. Eerily enough, Hitler made direct reference to the Armenian Holocaust to excuse his own mass-murders: "I have issued the command — and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad — that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness — for the present only in the East — with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
From 1886 to 1908, King Leopold of Belguim instituted a horrific campaign of forced labor in the Congo killing 8 million people.
Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution killed 9 million people. Stalin's reign of terror killed 20 million.
Mao Zedong is responsible for the massacre of at least 40 million people.
Ghengis Khan and Alexander the Great are considered "great men of history" for their massacre of millions and millions of people. Ghengis Khan is estimated to have killed about one fifth of the population of the entire world.
Obviously, the Jewish Holocaust is not the biggest mass-murder event in human history. Obviously, humans still do many of the same terrible things. We tend to think we've become more civilized and that we're above such horrible things, but have we? We have legally stripped the humanity (and therefore all human rights) from 55 million human beings and counting, then let them be legally murdered, and that's just since Roe vs Wade. We still turn a blind eye to wholesale massacres in Africa and Asia that are still ongoing today. But the graphic images and tediously complete documentation of the Jewish Holocaust has definitely shown human beings the terrible things they are capable of. "Crimes against humanity" is an entirely new concept in human history that came as a direct result.
I am hopeful that the Jewish Holocaust helps humankind learn to stop doing such horrible things to each other. I think it already has. I think it has taught most of humanity to be less mindlessly bigoted and more accepting of our differences.
I did not say man requires more freedom from God. Man has absolute freedom from God.
As I said man has free will and it is therefore free from the control of God.
Unless, you believe God controls all the actions of MAN.
You say that Man has the ability to choose God, or not choose God, right? Or that he can choose good or evil? You suggest that if man cannot choose both sides, then he doesn't have free will, right?
But we know that God cannot sin. He does not have the ability to sin. How is it, then, that man has more freedom than God?
Meaning he is not omnipotent or just doesn't care. There's no love shown here. None.
No compassion.
I don't want to be associated with any god like that, and I cannot understand how anybody else wants to be either.
Go ahead, spin it anyway you like , there just is no morality shown.
Why are you blaming God for something that human beings do to other human beings? You also seem to be looking for excuses to disbelieve or hate God, but I can't really know that with any certainty. Only you know for certain.
The worst that any person can do to another is to kill the body. That is insignificant compared to all of eternity and ultimately killing the mortal body is pointless. We will all live again in immortality for all eternity. In the end, what has the killer actually accomplished?
If God did intervene to stop everything bad from happening, where would it end? Would we have any freedom left to us at all? Where do you draw the line between "God must always intervene" and "God can let it happen"?
If you have come to the ridiculously obvious conclusion that the Jewish Holocaust was a terrible thing, why are you wasting your time railing against God for it? Why aren't you asking "How could any human being do something like that to another and how can we prevent it from ever happening again??" That second line of questioning might actually accomplish something useful. Railing against God for something that God didn't even do is pointless.
You say that Man has the ability to choose God, or not choose God, right? Or that he can choose good or evil? You suggest that if man cannot choose both sides, then he doesn't have free will, right?
But we know that God cannot sin. He does not have the ability to sin. How is it, then, that man has more freedom than God?
You keep putting words in my mouth. I say that man has free will. Man can choose God, not choose God, or be indifferent. Man can also be ignorant about the existence or non-existence of God.
The issue of sins does not apply to God. I did not say that man has more freedom than God. I am simply saying that man has free will. The concept of freedom does not apply to God.
So those of you believe your God is only good, what possible reason was there for your God to allow the Holocaust to happen?
Maybe you're not going to think it's fair of me to answer your question with a question (with two questions, actually), but your answers will help me formulate my answer to you.
1. What should God have done to keep the Holocaust from happening? Should He just have killed Hitler prior to his rise to power? Do you think that would have done it? Or should He just have somehow made sure other countries intervened long before they did?
2. How much "evil" should God permit? What should He let people get away with and what kinds of things should He make sure don't happen (presumably by killing off the "bad guys" before they do their damage)? In addition to making sure the Holocaust didn't happen, should He have also made sure slavery didn't happen? In addition to making sure slavery didn't happen, should He have also made sure the financial crisis of 2008 didn't happen?
(I'm just trying to figure out when, where and how you believe He should be intervening.)
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