"When the whole world doesn't believe in G-d, it'll be a great place."
This was said by Phillip Roth, the recently deceased Jewish novelist who is now, sadly, in gehenom and a BIG believer in G-d. As our President likes to say "HUUUUGEEE". He never explained why the world will be such a great place when people don't believe in G-d. So that there will no longer be any reason compelling a person not to kill, steal, rape, cheat, lie etc. etc. How wonderful!!!
From wiki: He also said during an interview to The Guardian: "I'm exactly the opposite of religious, I'm anti-religious. I find religious people hideous. I hate the religious lies. It's all a big lie," and "It's not a neurotic thing, but the miserable record of religion—I don't even want to talk about it. It's not interesting to talk about the sheep referred to as believers. When I write, I'm alone. It's filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety—and I never needed religion to save me".
"I find religious people hideous". Some of the worst Anti-Semites are Jewish. There are deep complex reasons for this. As Yeshayahu said מהרסיך ומחריביך ממך יצאו. I wonder how a seemingly intelligent man can group together millions of people and say they are all hideous when many of them are by all accounts very fine human beings, doctors, nurses, teachers, psychologists etc. etc. When religious Jews give a tremendous amount of tzdaka and likely do more acts of kindness per capita than any other group in the world. Is there an organization of atheists who visit patients in the hospital on a daily basis, providing them and their families with food and emotional comfort, free of charge?? What good did Mr. Roth do in his lifetime making him better than all of the "hideous" religious people?
"It's all a big lie". What is a big lie?? That the world didn't create itself from nothing?? Does he have any scientific proof for that? Did Mr. Roth even witness anything creating itself from nothing [not even out of thin air because before there was a world, there was no thin air. Nor was there energy which makes one wonder how the Big Bang happened [assuming it happened as most scientists do today] without energy. And if there was energy, Who put it there? The energy created itself? From WHAT??]
"It's not a neurotic thing, but the miserable record of religion—I don't even want to talk about it."
Ahhhhh - but atheism has a GREAT record. I quote the brilliant scientist and mathematician David Berlinski:
“What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that G-d was watching what they were doing. And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that G-d was watching what they were doing either. That is, after all, the meaning of a secular society.”
David Berlinski - The Devil's Delusion - Atheism And Its Scientific Pretensions
David Berlinski - The Devil's Delusion - Atheism And Its Scientific Pretensions
Back to dead Phil:
"When I write, I'm alone. It's filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety—and I never needed religion to save me. "
Maybe if you had meaning in your life you would not have been filled with fear, loneliness and anxiety? Religion, takeh [Spanish for "assimilated Jews are a sorry bunch"], would have saved you. If you would have been religious the odds of you having died after two divorces [from non-Jewish women] and zero children, would have been very slim.
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All I can say is that his tortured soul needs mercy so we should daven for Phillip Roth [I don't know his Hebrew name but Hashem knows whom we are talking about] that his soul should find a tikkun somehow.
