Why Religion Still Makes Me Cross, Part 8: The Foundations of Belief 2 – Trapped Between Two Horns.

God is usually invoked to fill gaps – gaps in our knowledge, or gaps in our hearts. Yet we now find that belief in God is unsustainable precisely because we cannot find a gap between a bull’s rather worrying two horns. Christians who concede the Bible’s unreliability, when they feel burdened by the weight of deeply embarrassing and unpleasant guidance it contains, evade one of the two horns. It is, after all, just not done to say to a woman that, in certain circumstances “she is to be kept silent”; it would be asking for trouble to go on and explain that Eve was deceived, not Adam, and that, as a result, women can only be saved through childbirth. Vis-à-vis passages like 1 Timothy 2:15 liberals are frequently anxious to stress the Bible’s fallibility, and they are visibly relieved when I’m able to tell them that Paul almost certainly didn’t write it anyway. But those who evade one horn in this way (they don’t have to defend the Bible’s bigotry, nor try to explain away its contradictions any longer) can’t avoid being impaled by the other: they must accept that they don’t have a secure textual foundation for their beliefs, and possibly no foundation outside their subjective selves.

The alternative is to weather the storm and continue to revere the Bible, in spite of the awkward bits. But that rash and baseless course – doubtful and distasteful in equal measure – presents a very pointed horn. Even if Christians swallow their doubts and take Bible’s inconsistent content for what it is, the fact remains that can’t be weighed up or verified – we have nothing to weigh it against. Philo-Judeaus and Justus of Tiberius meticulously chronicled the first half of the first century, and they did notice various cults and figures like John the Baptist – rather strange that they didn’t notice this Jesus (lit. “the one who saves”), wouldn’t you say? (See Barker, Dan, 1992) That just leaves Josephus, born 37AD, author of The Antiquities of the Jews; Christians who give him a mention are apt to impress an easily swayed or ill-informed audience. And yet it only takes a glance at the evidence to see that scribes crudely inserted a brief reference to Jesus – “doer of wonderful works” – into later copies of Josephus’ work.

I certainly don’t want to take incredulity to reckless extremes, but if there aren’t any ‘external’ references before the second century (Suetonius and Tacitus made a couple of very vague, and critical references to the Christian movement in AD112 and AD117 respectively) then how can we be sure that the gospel writers didn’t just make it up? Paul’s Epistles, probably written in the 50s, say lots high-flown and things about “the Christ”, but entirely in the abstract. The gospels did grant this “Christ” some kind of physical life, yet even if they didn’t make things up there are good reasons to suppose that they adapted a great deal from elsewhere. After all, precedents were all around, having seeped into the culture until it was steeped in them: Jewish Talmudic literature and a pre-Christian “Joshua” cult both preceded and often paralleled the gospels. Antigonus had already borne the mantle “king of the Jews”, and been crucified, and Dionysus’ had already been a ‘saviour sacrifice’.

Then there was the popular Persian god Mithra (see Barker, Dan, 1992): now, Mithra’s birth had allegedly been witnessed by shepherds and Magi, who had brought gifts. He had performed miracles including raising the dead, healing the sick, and sighting the blind; he even ascended to heaven, after sharing a last supper with his twelve disciples. Now, here we have a most curious coincidence – well, that or the gospels writers had indeed been borrowing from here and there instead of recording real-life events. Similarly, ponder the striking similarities between Old and New Testament ‘miracles’: compare, for example, the raising of the son of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17 with the raising of the son of Nain in Luke 7. Believers who suppose that this is just chance are trapped by one of our bull’s horns, since they clearly take credulity to unwarranted excesses.

Perhaps the only option left is to make a break for it, in an attempt to sneak around the metaphorical bull rather than confront it. That means quietly putting the whole question of a verifiable foundation for belief to one side, hoping that no one will notice. And then, well, how about an unverifiable foundation for belief, religious experience? Although the religious individuals cannot offer proofs, showing that they can commune with God, they may think that it isn’t possible for anyone else to deny it – touché! Touché indeed, although not because I feel unable to deny “it” (that is the self-and-other “reality” of spiritual encounters) – I actually think it’s quite fair to assume the non-existence of “anything” if no one can show me the evidence. No, my difficulty arises when people I care for describe their experience of God to me, because I understand that, for them, this has a profound emotional, mental, and physical ‘reality’. I feel obliged to honour that, which makes remaining cross awfully difficult at times. So, they finally have me: my frustration is (temporarily) neutralised, my offensive against everything theistic grinds to a (temporary) halt, and I smile … benignly.

But wait, occasionally believers do try to affirm the genuineness of their belief experiences, and then the colour soon returns to my cheeks. They claim that their experiences must be authentic, because they spawn good works. In fairness such a view is fine and harmless most of the time, when belief in God is associated with good works. But it’s a problem when belief begets bigotry, or when prayer precedes prejudice. I’ve heard lots of testimonies, and the idea of a close union with a loving God would grab my attention, and appeal to me, if it brought forth good fruit consistently – but it doesn’t. If a group of siblings don’t turn out too well we can’t, with confidence, say that their parentage was anything special; we can’t infer the existence of an ideal cause from a less than ideal consequence.

So then, if a Basilica built on sand stays standing, it does so in spite of it’s foundations. Why invest so much time, effort, and spirit, when all those gilded depiction of heaven and hell could crumble to nothing? When Christians give their all to the love of God it’s risky, very risky: those that manage to evade torturous doubt and crises of meaning do so in spite of the absence of a basis for their belief. Acknowledging meaning in life, in real experience – in our selves and other people, as well as in things we can choose to enjoy, create, and respond to with dignity everyday – is far more secure.

Why Religion Still Makes Me Cross, Part 7: The Foundations of Belief 1 – A Basilica Built On Sand?

Entering a dialogue with any literature can offer a counterpoint, and a valuable opportunity to gauge our experiences from an alternative perspective. ‘Liberal’ Christians go somewhat further when they adapt or apply ‘authoritative literature’ – religious literature – to make it a servant of their current situation. South America’s ‘Liberation Theology’ seems to have made this work; it has acted to meet the here-and-now needs of victims of inequality, and it has made a big enough impact to antagonise the Papacy. That’s not too hard to swallow, but I can’t stomach Christians (or individuals of any religion) who elevate their text – or their Church – above their context. They attempt to bend and twist what “is” to somehow make it fit what they read, notably when they pass by what individuals do want (perhaps sex outside marriage, or even a same sex partner) and try to make them conform to what the Bible says they should want (the kind of male dominated marriage described in Ephesians 5). This is ever so unfortunate when it is clear, in so many ways, that the Bible is not even a good book.

Straddling the two worlds of academic theology and Evangelical Christianity abruptly opened my eyes, and showed me that many weighty persons who lay claim to familiarity with God frequently know little about the Bible: they call it Truth, but they don’t look into how, when, and for whom its component parts were written; they don’t ask questions – at least not without presupposing satisfactory answers – about the process by which Scripture was copied, altered, and eventually thrust together. Many six-day creationists aren’t aware that Genesis was compiled (from four sources) as late as the time of Solomon, and then without a thought or inking for “histo-scientific accuracy”; the plan was to write something stirring to rejuvenate faith in God’s Sovereignty, at a time when Israel was under threat. And still I’m acquainted with Christians – Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, and others – who stubbornly maintain that the Genesis is to be taken literally; they cannot admit that the Bible contradicts itself throughout, even when I take it upon myself to point out the numerous examples.

Logically – a priori – God cannot have made Man last (Genesis 1) and created him first (Genesis 2): an obvious discrepancy, factual in character, which casts doubt on the Bible’s internal consistency and historical veracity. When events are located in history – in a time and place – inconsistencies are often most apparent, and difficult to evade without saying “black is white”; it just so happens that this is the case with the nativity stories and resurrection “accounts”. Was Jesus born before Herod died in 4BC (Matthew), or was he born after Cyrenius became governor (Luke), which would be 6AD? When “the women” (and the gospels aren’t clear on which women) are meant to have been surprised and alarmed by Jesus’ empty tomb they may’ve seen one “young man” (Mark), an angel (Matthew), two men (Luke), or two angels (John). Bewildered?

Another thing – bear with me, it’s important – in its original form the earliest gospel, Mark, doesn’t have a post-resurrection appearance or ascension. The later gospels engender confusion instead of making up for this unhelpful omission: are we expected to believe that Jesus, after coming back to life, met his disciples for the first time in “a room” in Jerusalem (Luke, John), or that he materialised before them on a mountain in Galilee (Matthew)? (Hard to verify either way, given that mountaintops and fated rooms both tend to be very private…) The point is, if there is sufficient doubt concerning fundamentals such as Christ’s birth, death, and fantastic (or incredible) conquest of death, even the most watered-down, soggy ‘Christianity’ is surely unfounded and untenable. Similarly, what about our deaths, and the terribly important question of our wondrous rebirths in the hereafter? It appears that earning redemption through good works is definitely out (Romans 4). Rather, Salvation is somehow both a blossom produced by free will, when we choose faith, and also a gift of grace, entirely predestined so that we absolutely nothing to do with it (Ephesians 1)? After two thousand years of vainly wresting with these irreconcilables, God alone knows what’s going on.

Another variety of contradiction makes things awkward for Christians when it comes to using the Bible as a guide to living: should slaves obey their masters “just as (they) would obey Christ” (Leviticus 25; Colossians 3; Ephesians 6), or break every yoke so that Christ is their sole Master (Isaiah 53; Matthew 28)? Interpreting “Thou shalt not kill” is awfully tricky since the Old Testament example really seems to be saying, “it’s okay to massacre certain groups” (Canaanites, Golden Calf Worshipers, or – heck – how about any group that has a whiff of ‘heresy’ surrounding it according to the trends of the day)? Another quandary: did Jesus bring new wine (Matthew 9), or did he really mean it when he said he didn’t want to remove so much as a pen stroke from the Law (Matthew 5)? Mind you, going wholeheartedly for the latter isn’t really an option, since we’d all be off stoning disobedient children (Deuteronomy 21) and butchering individuals who are adulterous or gay (Leviticus 20; Romans 1) – we just don’t do that sort of thing where I come from.

Here Christians necessarily face two unsatisfactory options: should they defend the Bible without a leg to stand on, or embrace its flaws and abandon the platform upon which their faith rests. There is no third way; no route for Christians between this bull’s two sharp horns .

Why Religion Still Makes Me Cross, Part 6: The "God Shaped Hole"?

It’s an affront when some Christians give the impression that people like me can only ever grope aimlessly for what we think is right, or for what we think we want. Thus the C of E’s ‘Alpha course’: indoctrination sweetened by selective pseudo-science and a very warm welcome. Alpha introduces participants to their “God shaped hole”, as if they will always be “lost” until that hole has been filled. Well, that was certainly in the subtext when the Elders at my old Church favoured me, and allowed me to co-lead an Alpha course. What fun: trying to convince others was a great way of applying a panacea to my own doubts, and there was the sense that even if I wasn’t quite “sorted” at least I was better off than “my prey”.

Recently I spotted an Alpha poster showing a climber gazing at a breathtaking mountain vista; below a caption asked “Is there more to life than this?”. “What? Isn’t that enough?”, I spluttered, after a brief fit of coughing to clear my suddenly blocked throat. The poster, I realised, made me feel very uncomfortable because its words, so bizarrely at variance with its magnificent imagery, were tempting the viewer to feel unfulfilled even in spite of all the world’s wonders. Alpha beguiles people, and – like any good salesman – it does so by encouraging them to believe that they have a need, a want, or a “hole”. How fortunate that the Good News just happens to be at hand, there, in the Alpha brochure (sorry the manual): “Now for a limited period only (well, until the coming of the anti-Christ) God can gratify your desires, so at last you can be whole and contented.”

But wait, an alternative is to desire less in order to become more content, in line with principles found in Zen, Stoicism, and Taoism. Certainly, our problems often lie in our failure to choose to enjoy what we already have, rather than in what we lack. But we can, even without requiring much or possessing much, always decide for ourselves who we want to be, and create our own meaning; even when pains and troubles inflict our lives, there is always something to be taken from each day – some solace, or joy. That seems like a safer bet than pinning our hopes on finding some gift of ultimate Meaning. Frantically looking high and low (under the sofa?), or grasping for something “out of this world”, doesn’t stand out as a particularly effective way to go.

Evangelical churches, often more than others, revere their “elders”. And yet so-called “mature men of God” – typically individuals who happen to have learned lots of Bible quotations – are not necessarily wise or capable of empathy. You see, I’ve lived with, prayed with, and loved Christians; I know that even the nicest among them aren’t any more “sorted” than decent unbelieving people. To be direct, even the most committed believers rarely behave as if they really believe. Why, like the rest of us, do they allow trivia to upset them if they have Eternal Bliss (as part of God’s Almighty Plan) to look forward to? Why do they waste time dwelling on their anxieties and negative self-evaluations (labelling themselves ‘sinners’), if He has Saved them?

We all suffer, of course we do, often because of the negative attitude we bring to our own lives and/or because there genuinely is something missing. But busily reaching for an intangible source of relief looks to me more like a distraction than an answer. Myself, I’d rather learn to be my own Guru, or call up a real life good Samaritan – a ‘solid’, responsive person capable of doing something practical about my problems. Thus if usefulness were my sole criterion I’d take the Yellow Pages over the Bible.

Why Religion Still Makes Me Cross, Part 5: Not just "is", but "ought" as well!

Personally I am just about able to tolerate or endure faith-based efforts to explain what “is”, because they are deficient and laughable in equal measure. But it’s just hurtful, and personal, when faith is brought to bear on the question of “ought”. It makes me cross when some (certainly not all) religious people suppose that their access to Higher Truth obliges them to tell me what I am and what I ought to be. They behave as if it were up to them to decide what my life means. An appalling violation: who are they to say I can’t make sense of my own existence through my personal experiences?

It’s paradoxical, but true to say that difference is something we all share. We are the same in the sense that we all have distinctive genes, experiences, aptitudes, and inclinations. With infinite variety our characters tend towards opposing poles: dependent or independent; silly or solemn; intellectual or practical; extrovert or introvert, and so on. So how can there be One Path to happiness? Sorry but I tried worshiping God, confessing my sins, and essentially giving Him all the praise while giving my self all the condemnation. It didn’t work, and made me unhappy: thankfully I realised I had a problem before all that left me utterly demoralised, inward-looking, and ineffectual.

Were I to take my critique of the Christian Path to a believer, he might try the following classic rebuff, which can be readily adapted to destabilise almost any critic: he could say “It’s easier to destroy than it is to build”. My reply would be “Yes, it certainly is easier to destroy than to build”. I’d politely suggest that a superior path to happiness involves praising our unique selves, accepting our potential even in the face of our failings in order to BUILD hope, motivation, and also confidence. Confident individuals are secure, and as such aren’t disproportionately defensive or aggressive; they don’t need to dominate over others, or fear difference in others. So, they feel good, and their actions tend to be “morally good”. How about it: “Imagine all the people, living life in peace”?

It’s not that I’m saying good behaviour is easy to define or accomplish, but at least the whopping existential challenge before us comes alive once we are free of simplistic ‘Rules from Above’. We can confront “morality” as that which asks us to perpetually assess and re-assess our own actions, as well as our conceptions of meaning – most notably in our personal variations on the theme of love – and responsibility. It’s as if we must mould and re-mould our intentions and actions into shapes, then fit them into an infinite number of different jigsaws (or different situations) as best we can. Morality is grey, however much our fear of uncertainty and/or our indolence may cause us to wish it were written in black and white on some handy stone tablets. Compassion is grey too, by nature constantly inconstant; based on flexibility and compromise.

The sort of benign avoidance of judgement that compassion often calls for is, furthermore, absolutely opposed to biblical absolutes: were an accident or degenerative illness to devastate my body, so that the pain and indignity were too much to bear, I might beg to be helped to die; who could say, who would dare say, that it would always be right to refuse me? Now the kind-heartedness of ‘good’ and ‘true’ Christians frequently takes me aback – bless them, they want to help. But too often they decide what help is appropriate for me, or what help I need. Were I gay I might like it if the Church chose to help me campaign against prejudice, or perhaps promote civil partnership. But instead many Christians would seek to ‘help’ me make an alternative “lifestyle choice”! Were I hungry I might desperately seek relief from material poverty, and yet scores of concerned Christians would continue diverting efforts and resources towards saving me from my “spiritual poverty”.

Why Religion Still Makes Me Cross, Part 4: The Ultimate Question.

I don’t find myself suddenly grave and deferential when Christians round on me and say – with a self-satisfied checkmate smile – “Well, how do you think we got here then?” I just sigh, and wish we could engage with life’s subtleties for a minute. Where does this arbitrary all-or-nothing illogic come from, as if whenever science cannot (yet) fully explain something it is defensible to assume – and worse, “assume with certainty” – that God must be The Answer?

How exasperating when we don’t know anything about God. That’s why ‘great theologians’, from Pseudo-Dionysius to Karl Barth (to Rowan Williams?), have contented themselves by pondering what He isn’t and, yes, finding new and exciting ways to extend the range of what they don’t know. Here “God” is merely a word rather than The Word; a referent to nothing at all, useful only as a convenient label for ignorance. He’s the Ultimate Question (and, for Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, the “Ultimate Boewing 747”) rather than an answer in any sense: “Well, how do you think He got here then?” Surely He’s too complex to have come into being by chance. We are envisaging an Intelligent Designer who, just as much as the Universe we inhabit, has the appearance, and all the complexity, of something that has been designed. So where on Earth did He come from? Not even science (natural selection) can’t help out here, as it does when we seek to explain the presence of intricacy in our world.

No one is saying it’s easy to explain things like Existence, Nature, Morality, or Love, but let’s opt for a plucky attempt, rather than succumb to a directionless drift down the river of myth (up creek; no paddle!). Equally, how is it that we fail to use empirical evidence in order to try, seriously and unceasingly, to locate the origins of pain, jealousy, or cruelty? Fallacious flim-flam about serpents and the Devil amounts to a harmful, and to me frustrating distraction. Rather, acceptance equals awareness, and thereafter direction and motivation for change follow: we need to unconditionally accept ourselves and our world – the good and the bad – so that we can see honestly, without fear, denial, or distortion; we must replace belief in God with a belief in ourselves, in something tangible, in order to recognise that our own enquiry and can propel us – yes, us – towards meaningful answers and actions.

As for “Creation”, well, forgive me, but why is it easier for Christians to believe in an Eternal Father than a Universe that always Existed in some form? Look to the stars, and behold your Maker! Why not? Why shouldn’t The Universe be “God”? Even if The Universe did have a beginning I don’t understand why it should require a Greater, or perhaps just a more ‘human’ Cause (with a white complexion, and a large beard, surrounded by heavenly hosts…). I’m not saying that just anything can control its own necessity or origin – I’m not positing shrubs that arose out of nothing by the effort of their own Will, nor suggesting that a sardine can find the explanation for its being within itself. But the Universe is THE UNIVERSE, and it should be credited for what it is, and for what it once began, as well as for what it is continually becoming.

Why Religion Still Makes Me Cross, Part 3: Absence, and Evil.

At this stage theists smell The Problem of Evil, and drag out a creaky old wheelbarrow with which to bring forth the ‘free will defence’ once more. Apparently God – presumably not the predetermining God preferred by austere Lutherans, Calvinists, and ‘modern’ evangelicals – cannot educate us conclusively about right and wrong today, just as He cannot set us straight about His existence. If He did He would obviously violate our freedom, says the suddenly “oh so philosophical” theist. (“Err, would He? Golly, would He really?” I stammer – or at least I might were I an awkward spectacled choirboy in the 1950s – “Yees, by Jove, of course He would young man!” booms the Vicar, who looks very like Steven Fry and who prefers to drown out theological problems with his loud voice rather than risk actually having to think about them.)

Now, if we could might we not say “go on, take our freedom – for pity’s sake – if that means you can put an end to the suffering of just one innocent child in return”? And yet such a trade would be based on a false dichotomy, as if it were self-evident that we can have freedom with ignorance and suffering, or no freedom at all. Forgive me, it is possible to intervene to increase freedom, to educate and empower by showing people how (rather than what) to think. We manage it all the time, in schools, in prisons, and yes, in Churches. Richard Carrier has made the point well:
If all this is good for us, even morally obligatory, and is not a “violation” of the free will of evil doers, it is absurd to say it is wrong for a god to do it, that it violates free will only when he does it but not when we do it.

“Absurd”, and just lame. Ah well, we (who decline the fashionable but ungrounded deference to mass unreason) can, without qualms, fall back on more mirthful attempts to explain why a Manifold Presence might appear so woefully absent. I’d suggest a sick note next time: perhaps an almighty bought of feverishness (or manic depression) could explain all this wavering between the extremes of judgement, mercy, and nothing at all? Another option would be to admit to a more permanent insufficiency: I have in mind Dickensian images of a well-meaning incompetent (the Ultimate Mr Pickwick), or a cruel schoolmaster who is chillingly unmoved by the suffering of the children in his ‘care’ (the Uttermost Mr Creakle). Unfortunately implicit in the Name “God” is the idea that He made Heaven and Earth, and high achievers do find it hard to admit weakness, don’t they?

Why Religion Still Makes Me Cross, Part 2: The Manifold Presence and the Almighty Absence.

God’s absence would be less incongruous if He at least said why He chose to make His manifold Presence so obscure. What kind of parent fails to explain his actions, thus causing His offspring to feel confused and insecure? Come on God, why the riddle if you want us too earn salvation, through faith or however? You could give us a palpable basis for faith, and an object for our love, instead of abandoning us to a blind – thus certainly unwise, and most likely morally unsound – ‘leap’. Or just putting a stop to the Almighty subterfuge would be a start: why not, for example, arrange things so that our bodies disappear rather than rot in the ground, unless we aren’t really meant to believe in life after death? Yes, I’m aware of Jesus’ supposed triumph over decomposition, but I’m not all that impressed by one distant and poorly substantiated exception to the general rule.

From the Christian point-of-view belief on the basis of faith rather than fact is a good thing – a proper criterion for salvation since anything else would be too easy. (We are advised to believe in God on faith at any rate, even though the absurdity of believing anything else on those grounds is granted, naturally enough. How many upstanding Anglicans would set forth to proclaim the Good News to a group of hooded ruffians, or eschew medical care when ill, trusting on faith that Providence and prayer should keep them from harm? “Ah, yes, well… Quite.”) Indeed, some Christians may feel moved to chime in with “Gosh, isn’t it all wonderful; isn’t our Lord fulsome because He has bestowed upon us a chance to be tested?” And, to be fair, such sentiments would extend logically from a sort of twisted rationale, wherein belief has value precisely because it’s not straightforward, owing to its lack of foundation. Other apologists say, again with a whiff of reason, that the nature of God’s presence in a time and in a “mortal” guise, explains His current absence: they say He had to become our Messiah and die on a cross at a specific point in our history, which is, of course, now past.

But no, once Risen the Lord didn’t have to limit His Royal Appearances to such a short period after His “death”. He didn’t have skip the twenty-first century Jesus tour for his modern day fans, nor did He have to deprive all but a few close allies of his post-resurrection appearances in the first century. Come on, didn’t the resurrected King realise that we, now, would all be far more impressed if he’d appeared to (and converted?) the movers and shakers (and the sceptics) of his day – the Jewish Sanhedrin, or Pontius Pilate perhaps? He could even have dispersed visions of his Risen Self beyond the confines of Palestine, if He’d chosen to do so. That would’ve been something for the history books, and mindful that He was restricted to one stay on Earth He ought to have thought about the history books. It seems God was in a too trusting frame of mind if He thought human beings would be sufficiently moved to comprehensively record their experience of the Divine. What a disappointment: not a single authentic first century record of Christ, outside the Gospels, even though Roman historians and Jewish historians meticulously recorded just about everything else – including other “saviours” like Joshua of Galilee. For goodness sake, didn’t anyone else notice the eclipse, the Earthquake, and the walking dead detailed in Matthew 28?

If faith rests on a delicate recipe which combines reasons to believe (presence) and reasons to doubt (absence), then God got it all wrong – He grossly overbaked the latter and made a terrible mess in the kitchen. Perhaps His ‘taking a back seat’ in times of plenty, or when events haven’t really concerned Him, is partially forgivable – if still inexplicable. But harebrained nature of belief is soon fully exposed when we ask how God could have kept His Abundance to Himself while massacres were being perpetrated in His various names. To my mind a bit of parental mediation was certainly called for in 1572, when Catherine de Medici precipitated the Catholic slaughter of thousands, and thousands, of Huguenots. Equally, the Early Church may not have visited unhappiness and murder upon “heretical” Manichaes, Docetists, and Arians, if only He had turned up to settle to odd doctrinal dispute.

But then we are talking about the same Moral Force that was furious with Moses’ cohorts when they didn’t murder absolutely everyone in the Midianite gang – sorry “race”, not “gang”, like the similarly unfortunate Canaanite race. (Yes, every single man and beast were for it second time around, even if God did expressly decree that the young female virgins should be ‘spared’…) Finally, sincerely, and most decisively, there is just no way – no way – to defend belief in a God who couldn’t even manage an appearance when six millions of his ‘chosen people’ were being stripped naked, obscenely brutalised, and then gassed.