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.
