If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.
And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's,
But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.
This is not someone who is selfless and only thinking of those he loves. Parents put their own needs, wishes and desires behind the needs of their children. They don’t make their own desires priority number one. It’s children who seek to have their needs met however they can; this makes sense for a helpless child, but not for an immortal demigod.
Jesus is explicitly clear: humans don’t matter. Not your wife, not your children, not even you. Nobody matters but Jesus, and his unquenchable thirst for adoration.
Screw everything important in this world. Feed his endless hunger for applause and praise, and he’ll reward you for leaving them to fend for themselves -- in first-century Middle East, no less.
“The Christian god is a ruthless, dictatorial, narcissistic, sociopathic mass murderer. If I go to Hell for not worshipping him, so much the better.”
I wouldn’t want to spend eternity with the evil monster from the bible they call “Lord,” and I sure wouldn’t want to spend eternity with people so morally bereft they regard this despicable beast as “good.”
Spoiler alert: in the end, he kills everybody (because he can), most are tortured in lava for eternity (because he can), while his acolytes become mindless zombie slaves feeding his unquenchable thirst for praise, “day and night” for the rest of eternity (because its what he ultimately wants).
Hey! Don't you feel like the way praying is normalised is sort of sociopathic in nature. Imagine God is your mother and you have to beg her or "pray" to her for food and basic amenities and mother can provide you easily without any begging but still insists you beg her. That would be considered child abuse and narcissism. I don't know how to word it properly but I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.
Absolutely.
I think you described it perfectly, and you’re completely right. A god who knows about and can resolve human suffering with trivial ease but doesn’t or won’t is a god who doesn’t care, or even set it up that way in the first place. In which case, why would you pray to it?
“The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right. Half–buried in the contradiction is the distressing idea that nobody is in charge, or nobody with any moral authority.” - Christopher Hitchens
But believers do pray to it, to direct it on what would be more convenient or satisfying to them, to explain what it doesn’t know, to convince it to change its grand Plan™, to request an exemption, or to stop it outright. I know some believers will say “that’s not what prayer is about!1!” Except that the Pope thinks that is exactly what it’s about.
This isn’t just some vague “guide the doctors and scientists” thing:
So the number one Catholic in the world believes that he can pray for direct, divine intervention. Literal magic, delivered by this god, “with his hand.” Because apparently this god can do something about it - this is the Pope after all, he should “know” - but wasn’t going to do anything until the Pope petitioned for it.
“Prayer, in my opinion, is an act of doubt, not an act of faith, for if you truly trusted your god’s plan, you wouldn’t pray for anything.” - Michael Sherlock
If you have to ask it, it’s not all-knowing. If it can’t do anything about it, it’s not all-powerful. If it won’t do anything, it’s not all-loving, or even good. This is essentially a version of the Problem of Evil.
Believers sometimes invoke the parent analogy themselves. This usually comes about through the psychotic explanation that their god, who sends people to eternal suffering for a temporal slight (against its own ego, naturally), is analogous to a parent lovingly disciplining their child. You know, by lovingly sending them to the fire-and-lava naughty corner for infinity minutes, rather than the regular quiet corner for just five.
In your example, the mother is negligent at best, malevolent at worst. A mother who puts their own narcissistic need for adulation and praise above the wellbeing of her children is certainly not “all-loving” let alone the definition of love. Nor is a mother who constantly reminds her bruised and bewildered children that she can “make-you-or-break-you” at the drop of a hat, that you exist at all solely at her mere whims (”I brought you into this world, and I’ll take you out”).
But what they always carefully leave out of their “god=parent” analogy is that parents are held accountable for their parenting, they’re held responsible for the wellbeing, education, socialisation, understanding of right and wrong, etc. If that’s the analogy they want to play, then we can play it, but it won’t turn out well for them when it comes to this accountability. Believers simply won’t have a bar of it - not without a worthless platitude like “mysterious ways” or “testing you.”
It’s jaw-dropping mental gymnastics, constructed to avoid piercing the confirmation bubble they’ve built around themselves. Because apparently their creator god who made everything and knows all can’t be held accountable for the results of its own actions, the choices it’s made.
So while all credit goes to the god, all blame resides on humans - their imperfectness (due to god making them that way), their sin (that god won’t just resolve or abolish), their susceptibility to Satan’s influence (who he created, sent and won’t destroy), their insufficient - or outright lack of - worthless “faith” (due to the god insisting on being all insubstantial, undetectable and mysterious).
And despite it just being superstitious nonsense, the fact is these people believe it and construct their lives around their undisguised distaste for real humans and the world around them, in preference to their needy, negligent, malevolent god. It’s anti-humanity.
If “god” was omniscient, it would have known that the angel-slaves it created would rebel. If “god” was omnipotent, it could have created a world without evil or the devil. If "god” was omnibenevolent, it would have.
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