Dear God: how about that whole holocaust thing?

1) You can and do intervene in human affairs. The Bible records you doing so many times, and modern-day Christians pray to you, because they believe that you will help them, at least every once in a while.
2) You are omnipotent. You are aware of everything that is currently occurring, and also aware of what will occur.
3) Therefore, it would have been possible for you to stop the holocaust before it even began.

Now, let's imagine the year is 1939. Say I told someone in 1939 exactly what was going to happen in Nazi Germany. I then gave this person a button. I say: if you press this button, there will be no holocaust. If you don't press it, 12 million innocent people will be murdered. Is there anyone who would claim this person was acting morally if he didn't press the button? I doubt it.

So thanks, God, but no thanks. If I'm going to choose to believe in an omniscient being who is kind, merciful, and loving, I think I'd at least want to believe in one that would stop the brutal murder of 12 million of my fellow human beings.

"Never should I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust."- Elie Wiesel

"In the concentration camp I had cried out in sorrow and anger against God and also against man, who seemed to have inherited only the cruelty of his creator."- Elie Wiesel

Not all Jews people made it out with their faith intact.

Shanoyu: you seem to be mixing like two or three different religions there(or does the Bible discuss Karma?) But I just don't accept your defense. I *might* be able to accept it if God had a general policy of non-interference. Some sort of divine Prime Directive. But again, in the Old Testament, God was interfering like it was going out of style, and a main part of the Christian faith still seems to be the belief that God will intervene. What's the point of saying "Please God, save my sick child.", if not that you think God might come through for you. So how many people must have been praying in the concentration camps? God chose to ignore those prayers, and I while it was clearly humans who were doing the killing, God was guilty for letting it happen(if he exists, is obviously the assumption here).

I just simply don't think the Holocaust is compatible with the Christian concept of God. Other faiths might be OK, but not a faith with a God who supposedly cares about, and helps, humans.

But anyway suppose God exists, why would shem (shem's an all purpose pronoun I made up to describe multisexed things... strangely though its plural is shemp) allow suffering? Job goes to great pain in the Old Testament of the Christian bible to explain why we suffer in the presence of this all purpose omnipotence (i like how omnipotence sounds a lot like impotent, seems fitting to me).

Buddhism considers the human condition as suffering which can only be overcome by coming into harmony with the misery. Islam literally means submission, which, though it probably translates poorly, is a word that many see as synonymous with suffering. Hinduism probably has a God of Suffering (I'm guessing here. I don't know many Hindus).

And Jews... listen to Jews when they speak of suffering. Any people that can be persecuted the way they have and still hang together as a faith, I respect. No one in the Western world has been fucked with longer than the Jews -- they know suffering.

I went there one day, and listened to an old Hungarian lady talk about how she went into Dachau (I think) when she was about 17, and how she spent 2 or so years there.

She was still an observant Jew, and she said that people had often asked her if she blamed G-d for the Shoah.

Her reply: "I don't blame God, because that would let man off the hook."

Deuteronomy 28 contains a list of blessings that God would bestow on the people of Israel for obeying him, and a much longer list of curses if they didn't.

45 ¶ Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee:
46 And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever.
47 Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things;

...

62 And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because thou wouldest not obey the voice of the LORD thy God.
63 And it shall come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.
64 And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone.
65 And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind:
66 And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: