I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.
(Jean-Paul Sartre.)
Magneto: I remember my own childhood … the gas chambers at Auschwitz, the guards joking as they herded my family to their death. As our lives were nothing to them, so human lives became nothing to me.
Storm: If you have a deity, butcher, pray to it.
Magneto: As a boy, I believed. As a boy — I turned my back on God forever.
(Uncanny X-Men #150. October 1981. Qtd in Jacobs, Rivka. “The Magneto Is Jewish FAQ.” 11 Nov 1998.)
Right?
I think it’s interesting that while Sartre takes it as given that there is no God, Magneto doesn’t say he doesn’t believe in God: just that he’s turned his back on God.
Do you believe there are events so breathtakingly beyond our tiny human processing powers in their scope that even the fallout we ourselves witness is tiny compared to the ripples they create in the universe? Do you think those ripples can become so powerful as they reverbate out in their effect that they can negate the existence of God? I’m not explaining my question well.
Okay. Obviously there are events that can make a person declaim God’s existence, as Sartre does, just as those same events might crystallize another person’s faith, reaction to the primal scene taking a different effect on each in their turn. That part I do not question or debate. But suppose that there was certainly a God: could something happen that was so bad it could kill God? Would not the events of the second World War, the Holocaust and the bombing of Hiroshima, be such a thing? And have we not compounded that as humanity daily ever since with the usual million atrocities and ungrateful offenses that people have committed toward one another and their environment since they first slithered on to land and grabbed hold, just continually jackhammering cracks in the material of the universe? It’s like two in the morning, why am I even writing this. I guess if Nietzsche’s right and God is dead, I’m saying we killed Him. Right? Don’t shoot the messenger, baby.
Tags: a confession, comics, concentration camps, death, death camp, drilling a hole in god, Erik Lenscherr, faith, God, images, Jean-Paul Sartre, love, Magneto, movies, Nietzsche, peace, philosophy, Pictures, quotes, religion, Self-audit, stills, Storm, Uncanny X-Men, writing, X-Men
The Thought Experiment 
February 1, 2011 at 1:12 pm |
Don’t shoot the messenger … Yeah, well, there isn’t a thing that man can do that is so bad, or so good, that can affect God and His purpose, or He isn’t God.
If we, mankind, indeed ‘slithered on to land’ then we are no more responsible for our actions than the lion is responsible to his lunch.
February 2, 2011 at 10:39 am |
Science has failed to disprove God, but science has been very effective at disapproving some interpretations of God.
Science still can’t explain what causes gravity. We can model the influence and effect of gravity and mass, but we just don’t know what creates gravity or what gives something mass. Speaking of matter, ordinary matter only accounts for 4.6% of the observeable universe. Science has much to discover as well.
This is not an exit
February 3, 2011 at 7:32 am |
Reading this post this morning, after watching the movie “Happiness” last night
–there’s something about God delegating Man to one of his Angels, isn’t there?
February 3, 2011 at 10:00 am |
Actually, John … it’s the other way around. Angels are delegated to men. Read Psalm 91, particularly verse 11.
February 3, 2011 at 10:48 am |
I was referring specifically to the one, archangel I guess:
http://www.thercg.org/bics/rcgbic-017.html#c
I’m not a biblical scholar by any means, I’m just feeling . . . forsaken
February 3, 2011 at 12:50 pm |
Whoa … forsaken? By whom? Jesus said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” That’s actually a pretty good promise considering He made it as an initial new promise, not just, say, as the result of a question. He offers the assurance that He will be with us at all times. So, how can we know if that is indeed true?
Well, that’s where faith comes in. If you simply make the statement that you believe Jesus’ offer and tell yourself that you are in no way forsaken but have Jesus Himself actually alongside of you, wherever you are, then that alone will build great confidence.
Try that for starters and I believe you will be pleasantly surprised. It might be a good idea to read the whole of Psalm 91 and see it as God’s private message to you.
Let me know how you make out. I won’t take long.
February 4, 2011 at 2:01 am |
Again let me clarify, I mean I feel WE are forsaken, humanity seems to really have lost its way. Natural selection has favored the selfish and the greedy, but prosperity promotes such leisure-time activities as reading and learning, the sciences and the humanities. The ruling classes have historically tried to keep the power of Knowledge for themselves, but what learning teaches is that our salvation lies in critical thinking, and the Common Good, not in Social Darwinism, nor in blind faith. Education is Revolution, and the ruling class is exposed as the enemy of the people–to those who have eyes to see. But now we are bedevilled by so much tactical disinformation, many of us are just closing our eyes and covering our ears, curling up into a ball and I imagine Satan brushing his hands and saying, “My work here is done.”
February 4, 2011 at 9:49 am |
Yeah, I see your point. But you know what? We do not have to get caught up in the politics of the elite, this business of supporting certain so called ‘leaders’ and pushing them into office as if they were our saviors, which, of course, they all claim to be.
Public office should be a ‘tour of duty’ not a career of ‘living off the fat of the land and taxpayers.’
But, like I said, we do not need to get caught up in all that. We can just look around within our own personal sphere of influence and help those whom God shows us to help and that in itself with give a rewarding life and an eventual “well done.”
The way I see it, anyway … God bless you as you seek to do His will for you.