The Innocuous Concerns Of A Belligerent God

The Innocuous Concerns of a Belligerent God How can people accept such a selfish god? Why is it that god will help an individual and not an entire race? Why doesn’t god take a more utilitarian approach? Is it because he is omnibenevolent? If the former is true, then surely not. This is an age-old question, and is part of the inconsistent triad. Epicurus came up with this problem in 341 BCE – “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” How can people believe in a selfish god, one that will supposedly help you with your job, yet does not do anything about genocide? I will look at the various arguments for and against god in relation to the problem of evil. Firstly there is the issue of god’s selfishness, or should I say humanity’s selfishness? As aforementioned god seems bent towards helping individuals, why is this? I believe that god is a human conception, therefore suited to ones individual needs, which are selfish (as I will go on to explain later) In 1994 the presidents Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira were assassinated, this triggered the genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus. Following this event was 100 days of killing where approximately 500,000 people were killed. Genocides as thus are, unfortunately, not uncommon throughout human history. Yet, with the modern gods that are supposedly benevolent, why does this happen? The gods of bygone days – such as the Athenian gods and those of the Mayans – may have let such things happen, with their gods of war and death; they may even promote such actions, as these were ‘primitive’ polytheistic religions. I will be focusing on the matter of the Judeo-Christian god, as he is currently the world’s most widely accepted god. It is the common belief that this god has four main attributes – omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and omnibenevolence. The first issue raised with these attributes is the aforementioned inconsistent triad of theism – god knows everything, god is all good and god is all loving; how can a god with these attributes let evil exist (or as Epicurus questioned)? Inconsistent triad aside, this god may not even be omnibenevolent. The god of the Old Testament, the Torah, is not the all-loving god that Christians perceive him to be. The second book of the Torah, Exodus states in verse 34, lines 11-14 “Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. … Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles. Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”1 It’s somewhat interesting that a god who is supposedly omnibenevolent and therefore all forgiving would instigate such events. Another similar example is present in Numbers 31:718 when god tells his followers to kill Midianites, while “[saving] for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” These are just two of many examples of selfishness and warmongering of the all-loving Yahweh.

There are, of course, many arguments to justify this warmongering (though maybe not as many to justify god’s selfishness). Probably the most used rebuttal is in the form of theodicy. The word theodicy literally means “the justice of god” though a more interpretive translation would be “to justify god”. Possibly the two most proposed theodicies are that evil and suffering are all part of god’s great plan, a plan that humans cannot possibly comprehend. The other is that humans have free will and therefore are free to commit evil deeds. The one problem I see with this is that it looks over the others who also have free will who do not want to die, if god is omniscient, he should know that these people will die and that, for example, they will be killed by another human. This therefore renders the world in a deterministic sense, while disproving the idea of free will. From a philosophical perspective, god may be seen as utilitarian – allowing evil events to occur for an ultimate good outcome. However, there rarely are benefits from acts of genocide. A possible counterargument for this could be that this ultimate outcome could be the Day of Judgment where the innocents killed could get into heaven. Yet all those who have died get this chance, so why would god let some be killed off in brutal ways? It is more likely that god is anti-utilitarian, as he promotes genocide with the justification that those being killed do not believe in him. While those who subscribe to Christianity may see this as an extreme way of saving people’s souls by forcing them to embrace Christianity and therefore save their souls, it is essentially for the benefit of a god who goes by the name Jealous. The idea of a god that is perfect and has all four of the aforementioned attributes, that allows evil due to theodicy is just purely idealistic. Reality on the other hand is not like this. I believe such a perfect being was created to create an illusion of hope in a selfish world. This is somewhat similar to the idea of “god of the gaps” as this perfect god is to fill the gaps left by selfish humans. Yet it was these selfish humans who created this god. Unsurprisingly this god displays many selfish tendencies within the Bible. I believe there is a psychological reason for this, in a Freudian self-gratuitous egoistic sense. By creating a god who supports the individual is gratifying to ones Id. The Id is a term coined by Freud used to describe the subconscious, selfish level of the ego. As it is subconscious, one cannot control or ignore the unstructured, wanting nature of ones Id.

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All Bible verses are from the NIV (New International Version)