Essay on Religious Faith
There are lots of words said about God and evil, destiny and religious faith. However, in spite of the believing in God people suffer from many disasters. For example, the Holocaust illustrated the absurd of life and untenable religious faith. Talking about the holocaust in Germany and social, psychological and organizational mechanisms that made the genocide possible we should learn a lot of conformed to this theme literature in order to understand all the difficulties. The holocaust in Germany is perhaps the most awful and scaring event in the history of humanity. Such cruel and severe discrimination of one nation led to the death of nearly whole nation. Why it was so? Why did it happen? But people, who died there and who lost there their families and relatives, could not answer these question objectively and definitely could not forget this. There are things, which we remember, and things, which we cannot forget.
According to Bauer the Holocaust refers to the period from January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, to May 8, 1945 (VE Day), when the war in Europe ended. These deaths represented two-thirds of European Jewry and one-third of world Jewry (Bauer 35). As far as I am concerned, there were different views on the ultimate aim and task of the German-National movement regarding the Jews. From one side, it is believed that so-called explanatory work is all that is needed. From the other side, however, it is seemed to only want to “eliminate” the Jewish spirit from the “cultural” field. Strictly talking, there is a third side, which says only from the economy, at last, a fourth has other aims again, and all the opinions become confused. Reading Hitler’s book “Main Campf” you become to understand, what thoughts had this man, and, to be honest, it scares you great. “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord” Hitler (1969, page 60).
It is obviously that the fact of the Holocaust can make the existence and omnipotence of God ghostly doubtful. A loving and powerful God would not create such cruel word where Holocaust could happen. Further still, the fear created first god. A majority of human aspirations are contradicted with life itself. Mackie has stated that God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the theologian, it seems, at once must and cannot consistently adhere to all three (Mackie 2). Mackie claimed that there were three positions, which all could not be true at the same time. They are evil exists, God is wholly good and, eventually, God is omnipotent. Though, all three could not be legalistically contradictory and inconsistent. And to a deeper, despite that philosophers’ arguments for the existence of God are faulty, it does not convince that no one should believe in God; the belief in God is irrational and also lacks some rational support.
Furthermore, I have found many common to mines thoughts in the text. If God is omnipotent and is wholly good, why then innocent people (especially children) suffer? If there is no evil, why people’s lives are full of injustice? Evil exists to contrast with good. The existence of God cannot be proved as well as cannot be denied, on my opinion. Especially, looking back to the history and remembering such cruel events as wars, Holocaust, hunger and other. In general, the Holocaust represents 11 million lives that abruptly ended the extermination of people not for who they were but for what they were.
In conclusion, I must mention that a lot of events in humans’ lives cannot be explained, and many events contradict to the religion, faith and loving God. However, everyone looks for the faith in order to deal with fears and doubts, even when God do not help. I believe that only human can help him or herself to overcome the difficulty and God and faith and religion are only tools to male it simpler and easier. Therefore, any religion is useful and necessary for many people, who cannot find the way to live, the direction to go and the reason to do.
