Friday 11 February 2011

God is a Selfish Sado-Masochist?!

Let's talk about God! Most people I know to seem to think he (she/it?) is a being who has designed a world with a lot of rules, put us there, and now wills us to live there. Catholics, who I personally have most experience with, also assert that we need to serve him and obey all his rules and regulations as stipulated by a guy in Rome who wears a funny hat. Now I do not want to disrespect the Pope or this great religion (which is largely responsible for the existence of our entire civilization and capitalist market system), but I do have to say some of its commandments are a bit ridiculous. So let's discuss this special person - God.
God created everything for himself, did he not? And he told everything to follow his rules, did he not? And he punishes those who do not follow his rules, does he not? Are you getting the pattern here yet? It seems to me God is a mighty selfish individual! I could, of course, say that all of the universe belongs to him and thus he has the right to rule it with an iron fist. After all I accept Lockean homesteading and as it is with man, it must be with God: "the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his". But that would also mean something crazy - namely that children are the property of their parents. After all, they did create the children out of themselves much as God created humankind. As Max Stirner put it:
"He cares only for his cause, but, because he is all in all, therefore all is his cause! But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must "serve a higher cause." – Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well-pleasing to him."

But furthermore what is the character of this creature, God? Well, he is said to be omnipotent (he created everything out of nothing!). And yet he created an imperfect world. It is a world in which his laws are continually broken. He has to keep punishing or blessing people for their actions. If he is omnipotent he could just repair it all in the blink of an eye! But he continues to trudge on and make series after series of mistakes. Either his omniscience is indeed nonexistent, or he must have some frightening character flaw. I would posit that he is (assuming he is an omniscient and omnipotent being) a sado-masochist. He enjoys people breaking his rules (masochism!) and he enjoys punishing them for it (sadism!). After all if both were not the case, why would he continue on with this arrangement? Since I also assume he is ultimately good, why would he not just fix things? Why would he not make us perfect communistic people?

This whole discussion, of course, was strictly ironic and polemic. It was meant to illustrate the absurdity of God as some people imagine him - that old man (our Father) in the sky who watches over us and helps or punishes those on Earth. I think the Law of God is pure and simple, though we break it all the time without knowing. This Law was defined by Herbert Spencer as the Divine Plan. As the great Spencer writes, "evil perpetually tends to disappear". Why? Because, again to quote the man, "all evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions". And we violate this Law daily by seeking to save the unfit and punish the strong and successful. This is the greatest evil of collectivism, and the greatest evil of the state.

10 comments:

  1. Evil on Earth exists from mans choice. It is we who allows it to happen. Evil exists from our choice - not to do what is righteous. To do what is righteous is to do what is to do what is due. What is due is that what is just. What is just is what is to be done accordingly to the truth and mercy/love. This is to act with wisdom. The problem of present day, is that we do not want to acknowledge the truth and not want to act with wisdom. The problem of today is that we do not want to do, what is the best for us, but instead we want to live in lie/illusion. That is the tragedy of humanity.

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  2. But here is the question - if God did not want evil to exist, he could just flick his finger and it would disappear. Also, most Christian theology from St.Augustine onwards claims that evil does not exist: there is only good and the lack of good. All these thought systems are inconsistent and thus cannot be true.

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  3. About the second comment:

    Where is the inconsistency? Show some evidence for your claim.

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  4. Simple: If God is omnipotent and wants good for all, he would not be causing bad things to happen. Or this one: If God is omniscient, then he cannot be omnipotent (I have written about this before). There are a lot of inconsistencies in Christian theology which cannot be corrected without radical change.

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  5. Maybe God want's good for all people, but does not want to impose it against there will? Maybe evil is defined by lack of good?

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  6. But God created everything. This means he also created the conditions in which evil, siffering, and disease may exist.

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  7. But he did not make us choose, the evil, he gave us a option. Its a little bit like with commies, the force people into the 'good'. God gives us the opportunity to choose good and encourages us to do it, but on the other hand, he does not force us to it.

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  8. I agree completely. This is why a lot of Christian do act like commies (they try to force others to do 'good'). But my question is this: God could make a world where we all want to do good, why didn't he? He could have made a world where we all take pleasure not in helping ourselves, but helping only others. Also he did not have to create diseases and such other things! I believe God is good, but I don't believe God is a benevolent creature which wants us all to live happily however we wish. We have to follow his rules. Like St. Paul said "He who does not work, neither shall he eat".

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  9. I God made made us only do good, not having any choice, then that would be pretty much slave-driving, or we would be more like a bunch of pre-programmed robots. There are people who take pleasure in helping (actually I do not know personally people who hate doing that). Yes there is the disease, but that was the choice of humanity (and its not like we are deprived of healing, isn't it). And how can a God, who suffered death on the cross not be benevolent to His people? He showed us everything that we need to do, promised to help us, if have faith in Him and EVERY day shows us His presence.

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  10. Ah brother, but then why did God create a world in which the concept of slavery is even possible?
    In fact, why did He create it at all? He did not create it for us - we did not yet exist. He created it all for Himself!
    All the same, He could have created a 'nicer' world, with no volcanoes, hurricanes, cholera, or AIDS. Obviously we the people did not create these things. We must therefore either accept the possibility that God is not bothered by the existence of suffering, or that He meant to create it.

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