I have this article on my website but even though it’s clearly humour, like many such articles it has a core serious message (primarily that the Abrahamic god is, as Dawkins puts it, “the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”:
I’ve never understood how anyone who actually reads the bible comes away thinking the Abrahamic god is a loving god. Of course many don’t actually read the thing and take a priest/pastors/ministers word for it, but what’s the clergy’s excuse? The kind of mental gymnastics it would take to consider the god depicted in the bible as loving and caring boggles the mind. I find most things about christians incomprehensible. If I thought for one minute that I had a soul and that I risked eternal torture for not doing what this god wanted I would have his holy book as memorized as possible, but many christians don’t even read the whole thing.
I always thought of Yahweh as being rather bloodthirsty, genocidal, homicidal, and misogynistic.
I’ve tried to explore this dichotomy with deeply religious, Evangelical EMS partner . . . and he told me that these tendencies actually show how loving God is, as it means that He will go to any extreme to help his chosen people.
This was when I decided that talking to religious fanatics about spiritual matters is both pointless and frustrating.
Wow! To be fair to him, for many years I had that kinda dualistic view that God existed (and could do no wrong) and science was also right. Ironically (to my mind) it was theists that broke me and made me a full blown atheist.
Love this film, the music, the script the acting, all just brilliant…“The preacher say it absolved us…for him not for the law. I’m surprised at you, Pete I gave you credit for more brains than Delmar.”
…“even if it did put you square with the lord, the state of Mississippi’s a little more hard nosed.”
“I had to be at that there crossroads at midnight, to sell my soul to the devil…well ain’t it a small world, spiritually speaking, Pete and Delmar just been baptised and saved; I guess I’m the only one that remains unaffiliated.”
That line makes me laugh every time I hear it, just like the cat’s arse is on fire, as my late dad used to say. My apologies to captain cat, it’s a metaphor, let me explain:
When I was a newborn baby, my parents told me they would stand baffled outside the bedroom and listen to me laugh hysterically in my sleep, and marvel what the hell a baby could find so funny, no lie. Later my dad used to say to my mother, when my mirth overpowered me, “***, that boy would laugh if the cat’s arse was on fire.” You can imagine what a 6 year old me made of that…
From a philosophical or literary standpoint, the question might explore themes of predestination, free will, and the nature of evil. If Satan is seen as a symbol or a metaphorical character, the discussion shifts towards what he represents in human nature or in the cosmic balance of good and evil, rather than the fairness of his treatment as an individual entity.
In modern cultural and literary contexts, there are interpretations of Satan that portray him more sympathetically, as a complex character or even a tragic hero (as in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”). These interpretations might suggest that Satan was not given a fair chance, highlighting themes of rebellion against tyranny or the questioning of absolute authority.
