Click Here To Purchase From Amazon Judging God

Authors: John A. Henderson, M.D., and Craig Gurgew 

ISBN: 9781933251424

Co-authors Henderson and Gurgew have summoned the audacity from some deep inner source of theirs to produce a book in which they dare to visit judgment upon the deity they view as the combined Jewish-Christian-Muslim god: the JCM god, as they call “it” (rather than the masculine “he” or “him” used in the bibles of the three religions). Since they are unabashed atheists, the judgment they impose, from their perspective, is upon an imaginary entity worshipped by religious people. Hence, their book is actually a gimmick. They treat the JCM god as it exists in the eyes of people who believe in it, and on that basis they excoriate this god as a destructive monster.

The JCM god, as the co-authors point out, gives life to human beings only to take it away after a brief existence. During that brief existence, they complain, many humans must exist in crippled conditions, others must go through life blind, millions are tortured with devastating diseases, and the lives of millions more are destroyed by earthquakes and tsunamis and other horrors that the scientific minded call “natural disasters” while the religious view them as part of a mysterious, inexplicable plan or will of a “loving god” that must not be questioned.

            “Hello, loving god!” Henderson and Gurgew begin their salutation to it. “What is this all about? Were you having a bad day or is this just one of your practical jokes?”

The co-authors also focus on the overall scheme of an existence in which one animal preys upon the other and deadly bacteria and viruses become another way, along with “natural disasters,” of keeping populations under control: and always, by whatever the means, the method entails horrifying types of death. Judging from their own human sense of morality and ethics, Henderson and Gurgew cannot find any excuse for a god that manages its creations in that manner. To them it is a bad god, not a good god, and their conclusion is: “If we can’t get a god at least as good as a good person, we are better off without one.”

I find two major problems with this intriguing book. The first is that the co-authors leave open the possibility that some of the biblical characters they discuss briefly, such as “Jesus” and “Paul” (the ridiculously Anglicized names used for them) may actually have existed, whereas these two atheists ought to know that the characters are inventions. The second problem is that many of the atrocities the co-authors lay out in gruesome detail – such as genocide and deaths from failures of machinery – have no relevance to deity. They are caused by human beings.

It is useful, however, to be reminded that the three religions encompassed in this book have caused far more hatred, divisions, fighting, persecution, slaughter, ignorance, and hindrance of scientific progress, than they have provided any benefit to humanity. We are reminded, too, that the most fiendish, genocidal tyrants, such as Adolph Hitler, claimed to be acting on behalf of the “living god” with which they were in direct communication.

All in all this book, written in brilliant exposition, is one that deserves to be read, even if only for the purpose of providing what has become known popularly as a “reality check.”

To read Burton's Interview With Dr. Henderson CLICK HERE

 Click Here To Purchase From Amazon Judging God

The above review was contributed by:  Burton H. Wolfe: Burton is an award winning journalist and the author of hundreds of published articles and of books such The Hippies (New American Library), Hitler and the Nazis (Putnam), and Pileup on Death Row (Doubleday). Wolfe produces an online journal called "The Wolfe's Lair" and maintains a web site.