Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/98

96 being permit wholesale and private murder? Is He not rather a demon than a God? On the other hand, if this being is not omnipotent, then He is a useless god, and there is no need for all the fears which religion breeds, no need for creed and worship. Every war, particularly this last one, is an indictment of God. "God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world," is seemly only to minds drugged with an irrational creed.

"If there is a God, he is quite careless of human well-being or human suffering. The deaths of a hundred thousand men mean no more to him than the deaths of a hundred thousand ants. A couple of million men locked in a death struggle on the battle-field is only a replica of the struggle that has been going on in the animal world throughout time. If there be a God, he made, he designed all this. He fashioned the hooks for the slaughter, the teeth for the tearing, the talons for destruction, and man with his multiplied weapons of destruction has but imitated his example. A world without God, and in which humanity is gradually learning the way to better things, is, an inspiration to renewed effort after the right. A world such as this, with God, is enough to drive insane all with intelligence enough to appreciate the situation." (Chapman Cohen: "War, Civilization and the Churches."}

When the Martian investigated the annals of the World War he found, despite the opportunities Providence had had of showing its benevolence, the affair of the sinking of the Lusitania, the torpedoing of hospital ships, vessels that were not engaged in fighting but in bringing home wounded men who had fought in "God's Cause." He found descriptions of the slaughter of men and women and children in air raids, and he naturally concludes that the "providence of God" is an insult to the earthly intelligence.