If Your God is Omnipotent, You Unequivocally Worship an Asshole

Some of the things I write here fall under the category of “opinion” or “theory” or “conjecture.”  I freely admit that. No one can conclusively prove that God doesn’t exist (just as no one can conclusively prove that He does, save for the God himself). Some things that I write, however, cannot successfully be debated. The title of this post is a statement that has no valid counterpoint. If you believe in a god, he is either an asshole or he is not omnipotent (meaning that everything does NOT happen for a reason and we are NOT all part of God’s plan). There is no third option.

For reasons difficult to justify, many Christians and Jews (though not all) believe in an omnipotent god. They think He is all-powerful since he was capable of doing things like flooding the Earth and turning rivers into blood. This God allowed Moses to literally part the Red Sea so that His people could walk through it. He gave Jesus the power to perform miracles, going so far as to raise people from the dead. Hell, He created life!  If that’s not an example of omnipotence, then I don’t know what is. All these things are in the Bible, so if you trust the Bible there’s a good chance you think of God as an omnipotent being. If you worship such a god, you worship an asshole (quick aside: while everything in this post is more or less my original thoughts, it was pointed out to me that a gent by the name of Epicurus was credited for this general argument...in roughly 300 BC. It boggles my mind that this point was made 2,300 years ago, yet the majority of the world still believes in a benevolent god).

You may think that I lack moral fiber because I’m an atheist and I use words like “asshole,” but I’m proud of the fact that I don’t endlessly praise someone who is completely fine with untold multitudes of innocent people suffering and dying.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that the Judeo-Christian God exists, and let’s say that He is omnipotent. He was cool with every single war that has ever taken place in the history of this planet. He was down with people being bought, sold, beaten, tortured, raped, and worked to death (and he was down with all of this being socially acceptable rather than morally reprehensible up until a couple hundred years ago). He gave his tacit approval of more than six million of His chosen people being slaughtered. History is littered with endless examples of horrible things happening to innocent people. Ironically, a large portion of those atrocities can be directly attributed to religion (which is an entire post unto itself, so I won’t dwell on that point here). It’s not like he’s fixed everything and we’re now living in a utopia, either; a large portion of the world’s population lead what can generously be termed “crappy lives.”  While we tend to take things like food, clean water, education, and something approximating gender equality for granted in first-world countries, much of the world is struggling to attain those things. Even in America we still have problems that could be easily solved by an omnipotent god, like people being senselessly and sometimes accidentally murdered, altar boys being deliberately molested by creepy, sexually repressed old men, and women getting breast cancer.

Even if God did not actively seek to commit these atrocities, he did nothing to stop them. If he is, indeed, omnipotent (or even simply capable of affecting events on Earth), he could have done something to save countless people from suffering needlessly. Yet, God has stood by and allowed horrible things to happen time after time. Ergo, God is an asshole.

Perhaps you like to say things like “everything happens for a reason” or “when God closes a door, He opens a window” or “God has a plan.”  If that is your counterpoint, and you actually believe any of those statements, then you have already lost this argument and should probably start looking for other phrases to give you comfort when bad things happen. I humbly suggest the ever-popular “Turn that frown upside-down!” or “We’re not Detroit!” to lift your spirits in times of sorrow.

Allow me to illustrate my point with a simple example: the Holocaust. If you believe that everything happens according to God’s plan, then you believe that God explicitly allowed the Holocaust to happen. More than six million completely innocent people were killed for no good reason. That point is not up for debate. Those people died not because they committed crimes, but because of who they were; they were not killed because of decisions that they made, but because of who their parents were. Any silver linings that you may want to take away from the Holocaust are completely overshadowed by the fact that over six million innocent people died for them. Not only were they innocent--almost all of them were Jews!  Almost all of them believed in God!  There is not a single lesson that God could have taught us through the Holocaust that required that many deaths and that much destruction and suffering throughout Europe. After all, God is supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful, so it stands to reason that he could have found another way to get His message across (whatever the hell you may imagine that message to be). Furthermore, if He’s omnipotent and everything happens according to His plan, not only did he allow the Holocaust to happen...He planned it. This point can be extrapolated to apply to all of the atrocities in this world:  God planned the Crusades. God planned the Spanish Inquisition. God planned the era of witch-hunting. God planned the era of slavery (and didn’t bother to end it during Biblical times when He still supposedly had a habit of directly intervening in worldly affairs, preferring instead to wholeheartedly endorsing the practice). God planned every war. God planned every murder. God planned every case of cancer. God planned every case of child molestation. God planned every case of rape.

If you read that last paragraph and still think that “everything happens for a reason,” and that “reason” has to do with God’s plan, then you will have to concede that your God is a sick, nasty, deplorable dude. If you concede that point, and still choose to worship Him, then you are a terribly immoral person and a detriment to society. That also makes you a doo-doo head. It’s socially acceptable to worship God when we think that He is a loving God that cares about us. It’s not socially acceptable to worship a God who intentionally inflicts terror and suffering upon the world.

Some people prefer to explain the bad things in this world by means of “free will,” arguing that while God is omnipotent, he chooses not to affect the decisions of humans. If we accept this argument, we’re still left with all the suffering that is not caused because some person, rather than God, is an asshole. Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters don’t occur because of anyone’s choices (unless, of course, you subscribe to the idea that God is punishing us for allowing gay people in our society instead of stoning them or because modern women show way too much skin. If that’s the case: congratulations!  You’re a heartless bastard who delights in the suffering of others!). If you view natural disasters as “acts of God” then you implicitly concede that He’s an asshole as no benevolent god would willingly inflict such terror and suffering on so many people.

What about all the medical issues that exist?  Surely no loving god would think of kidney stones, testicular cancer, or Down’s Syndrome as good ideas, and no one chooses to have a child with Down’s.

Perhaps you have conceded that God is not omnipotent because you do not want to worship an asshole, and we’ve established that any god that could exist falls into one of two categories: 1) omnipotent, and therefore a complete asshole as noted above or 2) not omnipotent (which would allow said god to be loving and benevolent). Unfortunately, if you’re a Christian or a Jew, you still worship an asshole. Why?  Because the Old Testament exists. And the Old Testament is the original basis for Christianity and Judaism. And the God of the Old Testament is definitely an asshole.

The world of the Old Testament was a nasty place. Slavery was commonplace. War was a constant, as almost everyone wanted to expand their borders. Society in general was pretty brutal. They did not have iPods. They did not even have Walkmen. And throughout the Old Testament, the Jews (God’s “chosen people”) were continually being oppressed for some reason. This is a point that should not be taken lightly: the Jews were constantly dealing with tyrants who treated them like shit, and they were God’s chosen people. He couldn’t even be bothered to be nice to His own people!  They were slaves. They were conquered by the Egyptians. And the Babylonians. And the Romans. God’s idea of fun seemed to be making them wander around in the desert for forty years and feeding them some kind of crappy bread-like substance every single day that they had to pick up off the ground. And yet these people were supposed to feel blessed?  No wonder they were always trying to find other gods to worship!  The God of Abraham certainly wasn’t doing them many favors, so they might as well try worshipping someone who would.

Of course, like a good pimp or abusive boyfriend, God would occasionally throw them a bone to keep them coming back. He would deliver them from their captors after a while, or give them manna to keep them from starving to death. He would promise to judge those that were not living according to His will and punish them with eternal damnation. He gave them some life advice through the Ten Commandments (and half of them even made sense). None of this changes the fact that God was an asshole. The whole act of deliverance is great and all, but He still allowed them to suffer every time before He freed them. Knowing that your enemies are going to Hell when they die and you’re going to Heaven instead would provide some mental comfort...but it doesn’t change the fact that the Jews were treated like shit while they were on Earth. Here’s a nifty note (I would call it a “fun fact” but I don’t want to be misleading) that rarely gets mentioned: the reason the Israelites spent 40 years wandering around after the exodus was because God wanted to ensure that all the adults He freed from Egypt died before reaching their destination. Seriously, it’s in the book of Numbers. How can you construe that as anything other than a dick move?  “You’re mad about the fact that you have been a slave for your entire life. I’ll free you from that life that you hate...but I’ll also make sure you spend the remainder of your life wandering around in the fucking desert eating dirt bread. Na na na na boo boo.”

Of course, the Old Testament wasn’t all doom and gloom for the Jews--sometimes they got to inflict the doom on others!  If you want an example of just how kind a ruler God can be, look no further than the book of Joshua. First, God directed the Israelites to take the city of Jericho. By “take the city,” of course, I mean kill every living thing inside of it (Joshua 6:21: “They completely destroyed everything in it--men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep, donkeys--everything.”). Some dude named Achan kept some of the gold and silver for himself instead of offering it up to God, so naturally he and his entire family were stoned to death and burned (Joshua 7:25). Then God directed the Israelites to “take the city” of Ai: “When the Israelite army finished killing all the men outside the city, they went back and finished off everyone inside. So the entire population of Ai was wiped out that day--twelve thousand in all.” (Joshua 8:24-25)

This would become a habit: “Joshua completely destroyed the city of Makkedah, killing everyone in it, including the king. Not one person in the city was left alive. he killed the king of Makkedah as he had killed the king of Jericho. Then Joshua and the Israelites went to Libnah and attacked it. There, too, the Lord gave them the city and its king. They slaughtered everyone in the city and left no survivors...” (Joshua 10:28-30)  This goes on. And on. And on. They slaughtered every living being in 31 cities. The city of Gibeon made a truce and was spared, but every other city was destroyed and “not a single person was spared.”  Why did none of the other 31 cities make nice?  “The Lord hardened their hearts and caused them to fight the Israelites instead of asking for peace. So they were completely and mercilessly destroyed, as the Lord had commanded Moses.” (Joshua 11:20)  Oh. That’s why: because God is an asshole. What great sin did all these people commit?  Their parents weren’t Israelites. That was literally the only way any of these people could have been spared--if they had had different parents. They couldn’t even surrender or beg for mercy as God intentionally “hardened their hearts.”  Think about that for a minute. God decided these people all deserved to die because of something that they had absolutely no control over whatsoever. Seriously. That was the mindset of the “benevolent” Judeo-Christian God.

That’s the Old Testament in a nutshell: God demands not only unrequited love, but demands that you put up with suffering on Earth in order to find eternal salvation. Any Jews who didn’t worship God for their entire lives (regardless of how miserable those lives may have been) were sentenced to eternal damnation. And, as far as God was concerned, anyone who wasn’t born into a Jewish family could die and go to Hell (maybe Hitler decided to inflict suffering on people based solely on their bloodline as a reverse homage to God). This is the behavior of a benevolent God?  If God truly was benevolent, he wouldn’t bother with forcing such terrible lives upon His chosen ones in the first place, not to mention sending the vast majority of the world to Hell just because of who their parents were.

If you still do not think God is an asshole, then I don’t know what to tell you. Even if you think He’s no longer omnipotent for some reason, He certainly was in the Old Testament, and He wasn’t shy about flexing His power then. You can’t just pretend that the Old Testament doesn’t exist--that was the basis of Jesus’ religion, and it seems sacrilegious to simply ignore the “Word of God” doesn’t it?  The New Testament itself is full of references to the Old Testament, whether talking about “the God of Abraham” or “the descendents of David” or “the Law of Moses” or “the prophecy of Isaiah” or simply the myriad references to “the Scriptures.”  Jesus Himself said “the Scriptures cannot be altered” (John 10:35) and Paul said “all Scripture is inspired by God.” (2 Timothy 3:16)  It’s all in the same physical book for a reason. You can’t just decide you like some of the things Jesus said and ignore everything else.

Furthermore, regardless of which religion you subscribe to, chances are you’re going to Hell just like the majority of the people on this planet. The most widespread religion in the world is Christianity, the religion of choice for something over 2 billion people. There are over 7 billion people in the world. Therefore, if a requirement for getting into Heaven is worshipping the correct God and following the correct set of religious beliefs, a minimum of 5 billion people currently alive will go to Hell because they were born to the wrong set of parents. That number only covers the people who are currently alive; just think of the untold billions upon billions of poor souls who were sentenced to an eternity of torture and damnation for reasons that were entirely out of their control!  That alone proves, unequivocally and indisputably, that God is an asshole.

In case you would like to make the counterpoint that anyone can become a Christian (or convert to whatever the “correct” religion would happen to be) and therefore everyone has the opportunity to go to Heaven even if they were born into, say, a Muslim family: that’s a preposterous statement that you cannot honestly believe. You have no better chance of converting a Muslim to Christianity than a Muslim would have of converting you to Islam. Nearly everyone who has ever lived has died with the religion of their parents because no religion can be proven to be more correct than any other because any religion that still exists does so because it cannot be proven or disproven. The people who do change religions do so because they realize how ridiculous their religion is and search for something that seems somehow more plausible while still allowing them to go to Heaven when they die. Also, if God did exist, he could quite easily prove His existence, end the debate, and spare everyone from eternal damnation for praying the wrong way.

To his credit, Jesus seemed like a pretty nice guy. But God is an asshole.