Category: Readings (Page 1 of 6)

Here is a very interesting column by professional skeptic James Randi on the cruelty of “God”. Based on the case of an Oregon teenager whose Christian fundamentalist parents let him die a very painful death, rather than take him to a doctor, the column explores similar themes as those that I touched a couple of weeks ago in my On God posting. Basically, what kind of God would let people die painful deaths and do nothing?
From the column:

I am inclined, when hearing about a story like this, to utter the phrase, “What kind of person…?”, but when reading about this one, I instead thought, “What kind of God…?” I’m talking to you, Followers of Christ of Oregon City. I want to know, truly, what kind of God wouldn’t want a person to get better. I want to hear, at length, about exactly what kind of God wants people to die in pain. And, before you tell me that this is not God’s fault, but the devil’s, let me go ahead and say –
It makes exponentially more sense to side with the devil, over and over again, to put your faith in him and believe in him and trust in him, than it does to believe in the kind of God who has the ability to save you and chooses not to do so.
To keep up this fictional argument, I do not want to hear about how death isn’t really so bad and God is just calling us all home. Opioid pain medication was not invented because death is such a peaceful journey into the arms of Christ.
Followers of Christ of Oregon City – this one goes out to you. Your God is a sadist and a torturer. And if He really attempted to make you in His image, then he has done a fine job. Because so are you.

I just published in our Project Disappeared blog an interview with Analía Verónica, the daughter of accused torturer Eduardo Kalinec. The interview is in Spanish. One of the issues she touches on is the impossibility of reconciling a man who was sweet and loving to her, and a monster on his day job. “It’s very hard to know that my father held a picana with the same hands with which he touched me”. A picana is an instrument that delivers electricity, similar to a cattle prod, but which allows the torturer some degree of control as to the voltage applied. The picana, developed my the Argentine police, was the favorite instrument of torture in Argentina.
Analías words touched me because I also have problems reconciling memories of people who seemed so nice and gentle to me, but who might directly or indirectly been involved in the repression. Among this is an uncle, a very soft and sweet man, who was pediatrician for the Argentine Navy during the repression. As a pediatrician it’s unlikely that he participated in the repression, but he could not have not known what was happening and yet he stayed in the institution. Of course, he never talked about it – but he did want to make sure that his connection to me wasn’t made public 🙂
Another person was the father of an elementary school mate – a police officer. His name doesn’t appear in any lists, so I don’t have strong bases to conclude that he was involved in the repression – but then again, the lists are utterly incomplete. The names in them are those of people who were identified by the survivors – but the disappeared were usually kept hooded so they couldn’t see their tormentors. This man, in particular, was really nice and I loved going to my friend’s house to play after school – but I remember a few things about him that make me suspicious.
In a greater sense, I have real problems reconciling a childhood that was quite pleasant all in all, with the horrors that were going on around me – of which I only learned after democracy had returned to Argentina (when I was 14). I’ve gone back on my memory to trying to look for clues of what had been going on. I remember, for example, that pink house close to ours in City Bell. The house was perhaps a hundred meters away. Nobody occupied it throughout all the time we owned our country house – nobody even visited it. For some reason, my parents forbade us to go there – and we mostly obeyed. I remember going there once, however, looking through a window and seeing a mess of clothing and objects all over the floor. I don’t think we tried the door. Today I wonder if its owners were disappeared.
In any case, the interview is in Spanish, but it’s well worth reading.