“As for evidence, you might be aware of Israel. That nation has been in the news much of late. So, without being flippant at all, I present Israel as evidence. Think about it. They are living the script written thousands of years ago. Not by chance.“
— Don, A Christian Apologist
Israel as evidence for the existence of God. I’m thinking about it as Don suggests.
Where did it all begin, this bizarre notion that one tribe in the Middle East was chosen by God to be his special people? According to the Genesis myth, it was when YHWH promised Abraham he’d be his best buddy forever and ever, so long as he mutilated his body and those of his sons in perpetuity. They would also have to keep every one of this bullying god’s 365 rules and regulations, including the petty and piffling ones. So far so good, apart from the fact it was all very one-sided, and the mutilation of course. You’d think this would’ve been a sign that things weren’t quite kosher, but no; Abraham and his descendants buy into it and almost straight away, YHWH begins to let them down.
God’s Chosen Ones soon find themselves slaves in Egypt. A second mythical character is needed – up pops Moses – to get them out of this scrape. Unfortunately, after Moses has finished chatting with YHWH, who identifies as a burning bush on the top of a mountain, the sulky deity feels slighted by something the Israelites are doing. As is his way, he has many of them slaughtered and the rest he forces to troop around the same small plot of land for 40 years. This is how best buddies treat each other!
Later, the Jews find themselves defeated by the Babylonians and are carted off into exile. This exile, which YHWH does nothing to prevent, lasts 70 years. Still, it leads to a pleasant song made famous by Boney M in 1978 so I suppose it was worth it.
For the next few hundred years, Israel fell under the rule of other nations more powerful than itself. Not to worry though, YHWH is still ‘looking after them’, particularly those who are slaughtered in the rebellions that ensue. As Robert Conner says in a recent comment on Debunking Christianity, ‘If Yahweh ever threatens to bless you and your children, just kill yourself and get it over with.’
Fast forward to the Roman occupation of Israel. YHWH, having undergone a makeover, reneges on his promise to take care of his Chosen Nation forever and ever and comes up with a different plan to save people from his own cussedness. Now, if they want to continue as his friend, they have to believe a supernatural being has returned from the dead.
Abandoned by God, as he now wants to be called, Jews who haven’t defected to the new faith see their sacred, eternal temple destroyed by the Romans in AD70. Thousands of them are massacred and the Jewish nation ceases to exist.
This sets the pattern for the next two millennia in which God’s new friends organise pogroms, massacres, and vicious persecution of Jews. This culminates in the Final Solution of the Third Reich which seeks to eliminate the Jewish people entirely. While awaiting extermination in a concentration camp, Andrew Eames scrawls on the wall of his prison: ‘If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.’ God allows six million of his Chosen People to die at the hands of the Nazis.
Following the Second World War, Israel took possession of the area surrounding Jerusalem, then occupied by Palestinian Muslims who are themselves descended from earlier immigrants. Thousands on both sides are slaughtered in the conflict that follows. In 1948, after almost 2,000 years, Israel became a nation once again; not through any miracle of God but as a result of human endeavour and bloodshed.
Tension and further skirmishes followed, leading to the present day when Israel finds itself under attack by Hamas terrorists. Thousands of innocents – women, children, and babies – have been slaughtered without mercy. Israel is, as I write, retaliating and intends to enact further vengeance. And where is God in all this? You guessed it: nowhere to be seen.
According to some – including the naive writer at the top of this post – all of this serves as evidence of God’s existence. That Israel has persevered for so long, despite opposition, persecution and the holocaust is not, however, evidence of God, any more than the great cathedrals of the world are. It is instead testimony to the resilience, resolve, and sheer bloody-mindedness of the people themselves. Perhaps their belief in YHWH (they don’t, of course, recognise his Christian counterpart) has fuelled their persistence, as it has their territorial claims.
Jewish beliefs and history are not evidence that YHWH exists. If anything, his apparent abandonment* during their many trials and tribulations is evidence to the contrary.
*Of course a non-existent entity can’t actually abandon anything, any more than it can lend its support or favour one group of people over another.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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So well said. A HUGE thumbs up!
I always use the example of the Holocaust, but your elaboration is so much better.
Well said! Plus, I can’t get over the arrogance of God’s new friends the Christians who believe they are also God’s Chosen People – adopted by God because of their belief in Jesus and “grafted onto the vine”.
If you think about it a tribe calling itself God’s “chosen people” is at the very least chauvinistic and delusional. It’s interesting that the word “Israel” itself means one who struggles with God… I guess being “chosen” also means that the favorite son also has to perform. If you haven’t seen the movie “Year One”, it’s worth a watch where Abraham is depicted as the kook that he is at odds with modern sensibilities… and they don’t even get into the slave girl concubine.
I like to imagine Jehovah as this being that feeds on suffering, derives sustenance from it. It explains so much!
For example, in this context, saying that the Jews are the Chosen People is equivalent to calling them the Wagyu Beef of humanity. He finds their suffering the most delicious, so he keeps them cultivated yet still allows their persecution and slaughter.
The Israeli/Palestinian conflict originated in the Balfour treaty of 1917 in which the UK committed to creating a ‘national home’ for Jewish people. What right did the UK have distributing sovereign land in the first place? Why did they pay no heed to the rights of the people who actually occupied the land? The treaty never envisaged the creation of the ‘state’ of Israel, rather as a place where they could live in peaceful harmony with the indigenous population. Well, that worked out well!
To be fair, I have a lot of time for Israel, and I support their right to an independent state. Unfortunately, they’ve been horribly served by their leaders who, far from trying to seek some sort of accommodation with the Palestinians, have done their level best to exacerbate tensions. The Palestinians have, to their discredit, refused to accept any sort of pragmatic compromise, continue to deny the right of Israel to exist as a state, and have rejected at least two very viable offers of a two nation agreement. Once this immediate crisis is over I suspect that the Netanyahu government will be out on its ear. Perhaps that might be the time for more moderate leaders, on both sides, to work once and for all for a permanent solution. Sorry…I suffer from that dreaded disease called optimism!
Britain had no right at all to promise the land to Jewish people. It did it for political reasons, to secure Jewish support during the First World War. It was both self-serving and ridiculously idealistic. The US supported the declaration at the time but by 1948, the British government opposed the creation of a Jewish state.
It all demonstrates, yet again, the folly of world powers interfering in the affairs of other states.
The Jews have a book that says they will inherit Palestine. Thus, if they can dominate Palestine, they can interpret that as saying their book is correct.
The Palestinians have a book that says followers of their religion will dominate the world. Thus, if they can push out the Jews, they can interpret that as saying their book is correct.
And thus, there is no room for compromise and a peaceful negotiation. That would prove that both books are wrong.
That is the problem with trusting ancient writings as though they are infallible books.
MERLE: That is the best short explanation of the conflicts in the middle-east as I have ever seen.
@Merle I’m not sure the “book” says they will inherit Palestine. If you look at the Israeli flag, the two rivers symbolized by blue stripes are the Nile and the Euphrates. Per Genesis 15:18-21 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi[e] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”
(Hmm… That does seem like a LOT of displace people though…)
Actually, Eames didn’t say it, he said he found it carved into a wall at Auschwitz
Yes, you’re right. I should’ve checked.
I really wanted to quote the conclusion a group of Jewish men reached while interred, that a God who would allow the murder of his people on such a scale couldn’t exist. Alas, I have only a memory of this from a BBC drama of 25 years ago and couldn’t find details of it online.
And of course now I can, having remembered that Anthony Sher starred in it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_on_Trial
Although I don’t believe in a deity and, therefore, also don’t believe there are any “chosen” people, I sympathize with the wish of many Jews for a “homeland”—and the right of Palestinians and other Middle Eastern people to live on land their forebears have occupied for millennia.
That said, I think the reasons why the US and most of the West reflexively support Israel are twofold. One is a sense of guilt over the Holocaust, which certainly is one of the biggest crimes in human history (and one that was supported by the US and other Western powers to a greater degree than they’re willing to acknowledge). The other is the military-industrial-financial complex, which cloaks itself in Christian fundamentalist beliefs in the “second coming” in the US and, to a lesser degree, among the right wing in other countries.
So Joseph Smith said he stuck a rock in a hat? And then put his face over the hat to read Mormon scriptures off of the rock? That’s just ridiculous.
Anyway, the system I follow started when a guy said he saw a bush that wouldn’t burn up and … wait a minute.
The book “Why the Jews Rejected Jesus” changed my mind about the Jewish connections to Christianity