I do not believe in God. I flat out reject the notion that a divine presence governs the world in which we live.
When discussing my vehement atheism, whether it be with family, friends or complete strangers, the reaction is usually relatively uniform: "I feel so sorry for you, Nick."
During a recent conversation with one of my closest friends, I again bore witness to a face filled with sadness. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I wish you could feel the wonder that I do. It's such a good feeling."
Perhaps it is, but it is not a sensation I wish to experience.
In this piece, I will be attacking the notion of a compassionate God. In particular, I will be assaulting the concept of "God's plan," and I will assert that if there truly exists an omnipotent, all-powerful creator of life, then we should wish there didn't, for the cruelty He inflicts upon his creations literally defies description.
One of the advantages of the human language is its utter inability to fully convey the horrific episodes of human history. We simply have neither the spoken syllables, nor the written language, to even partially describe terror and atrocity.
Our incapacity is truly a blessing. We can hide behind the words rape, pillage and torture without grasping the actions they entail. Whether used casually in passing or with the utmost sincerity, these phrases barely register the experiences they describe.
What a wonderful defense mechanism--we can close our eyes to cruelty.
Accepting the inadequacies of the English language, I will do my best to fully describe a recent episode in mankind's sordid history.
I apologize ahead of time for my tone and for my descriptions. Keep in mind, though, that these are factual events.
In fall 1937, the Japanese army marched into the Chinese city of Nanking. During a five-week period, some historians estimate that roughly 300,000 people died. People die all the time, however. It is what specifically went on inside the city that makes the Rape of Nanking so absurdly terrifying.
Upon seizing control of the area, Japanese soldiers unloosed themselves upon the civilian population. Somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 women, ages six to 80 years, were raped. Soldiers gathered up women, girls and anything in between into makeshift brothels, tied them on beds and went to work.
Do you see what I mean about the deficiencies of the English language? You just read the paragraph above, thought, "How horrible" and moved on. You spent, what, five seconds, maybe 10 at most, thinking about the events above.
No. No, that is simply insufficient to understand what occurred in Nanking.
Prepubescent girls were thrown onto a bed, stripped naked and then soldier after soldier raped them over and over again. When they got tired, they decided to make sport of their bleeding concubines. They experimented with what exactly one could fit into a child.
They tried knives, guns, whatever came to mind.
I ask you to imagine those 60,000 to 80,000 females for what they were: They were daughters, mothers and grandmothers.
They were not faceless objects. They were next-door neighbors, they were loved ones. And for weeks, they were assaulted and defiled in the most despicable manner imaginable.
Many just died from the experiences, the lucky ones anyway. The other thousands had to live every day in physical and emotional agony remembering the fall of 1937.
I apologize for the graphic situations described above. I really, truly do. I assure you that they were extremely unpleasant to write. Personally, I'm about to throw up.
Unfortunately, the levels of pain and suffering that those victims endured is infinitely higher than anything I can attempt to convey.
We like to call such atrocities "inhuman." On the contrary, however, such terrifying acts are most acutely human, they are man's sadistic legacy on this earth.
I ask you the questions I ask myself everyday: If God exists, how can He watch that? How can He sit back and watch his creations mutilate, rape and torture each other in ways that, despite my grim efforts, are utterly impossible to depict?
A great many people often refer to "God's plan," or if they don't explicitly mention God, they vaguely say, "Things happen for a reason."
Human beings cling to such fantasies. We hide behind such neutrally cold terms like rape or mutilate, and close our eyes and shut our noses to the putrid stench of what goes on inside the world in which we live.
We pray. We ask forgiveness for our sins. We wish to be more perfect, more heavenly.
Not me.
If there is truly a divine being who created this universe, then I do not wish to be anything like Him. If you create something, you are responsible for it; your creation's mistakes are your own.
Please, please, don't respond that "God works in mysterious ways," or "Things will work out well in the end," or most despicably of all, "People get what they deserve."
A six-year old girl does not deserve to be raped to death. In fact, no one does. People don't get what they deserve, and things do not happen for a reason; that is another farce mankind tells itself to try to justify the cruelties of the world.
If things do happen for a reason, if they actually do, then God's level of sadism is unmatched.
Before you all condemn me as some vile blasphemer, I urge you just to think about the horrific events described above. Do not be so naive as to pretend you can understand the depths of horror reached at those two points in history. Such a belief is insulting.
Ask yourself whether you want to believe in a God who is responsible for such actions. More importantly, ask yourself how anyone could reconcile such events.
Personally, I cannot.
If a God created mankind, he should destroy us all and start anew. His creation failed abysmally.
Nick Christie is a Trinity junior and a sportswriter for The Chronicle.
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