"An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard only one side of the case; God has written all the books."
-- Samuel Butler
I mean, is it even possible to make “Lord” look any worse that it already does in the pro-god bible?
“I saw the world through the eyes of God and it was good.
Then I saw it through the eyes of a man and I wondered why God thought He was good.”
The bible’s god character doesn’t know he’s the villain.
“It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.”
-- Thomas Paine
Believers will themselves admit they can’t know the mind of their god, which means they can’t ever know it’s good. Especially when the only reason they think it’s good is because it says it’s good.
Source: protopage.com
IF I WERE THE DEVIL...
If I were the Devil, I would manifest myself inside of a virgin, say that I am the Son of God and convince everyone that they can now be forgiven for every sin just by asking, thus opening the floodgates for an unprecedented and unending torrent of sin.
I would start with the uneducated and the poor. I would impress them with some magic tricks, teach them to pretend to eat my flesh, drink my blood and always, ALWAYS, use MY name when speaking to God.
I would most assuredly use my immortality to fool them into thinking I came back from the dead as proof of my divinity.
What better way is there to channel more souls away from God and straight into Hell?
-- Lance A. Sievert
Source: facebook.com
I've pitched that story idea where all the pagan pantheons send their best demigods to beat up Yhwh to some online pals, and they said I was being too harsh on him specifically and treating him like a straw man. How do you recommend I avoid this, or is this reaction inevitable if I want to portray Yhwh biblically accurately?
As I see it, if you’re going to stick to actual YHWH, as opposed to a YHWH-like stand-in, you have two choices: you can make it believable or you can make it accurate. But you probably can’t do both. Although there might also be a middle ground that compromises both. Which might also be okay in fiction.
Many people, both believer and non-believer, who are casually aware of the events of the bible only know them through such things as the films The Ten Commandments and The Passion of the Christ. Or even The Simpsons. Many are just not aware of all the nitty-gritty of what the bible says (supposedly) happened, what its god (purportedly) did.
Your own knowledge probably exceeds even that of the believers. So when you pull some of it out, they may well be like, nahhhhh.
With that in mind, you may need to either dumb it down to the level of their understanding of the bible - sacrificing accuracy in the process - or bring them up to a higher level.
To do the former, you may need to stick to the really well known stories. Going on about Canaan and the Amalekites and so forth might be over their heads.
One way to do the latter might be to use language, phrasing, events, attitudes, etc, from the bible or inspired by it. Have other characters refer to other things he’s done - “we’ve invested in our boat building industry since you last made it rain” - take his dialogue and rephrase it using his “I am the Lord” mode of speech, have him refer to these events himself - “I killed Onan for not impregnating his sister-in-law; you think I won’t pillar-salt you?”
This is certainly the harder route, as it requires digging into some of the scripture and stories. Some starting places might be:
- https://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html. This is not just a list; each event on the list is hotlinked to its own page which gives key verses.
- God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction - Dan Barker. Categorizes the personality traits of the bible character into their own chapters.
There may be a bit of middle ground where you sacrifice a bit of accuracy to make it a bit more accessible. Like the film Titanic. They wanted to tell a particular story, so in some things they didn’t hugely dwell on the accuracy.
At the end of the day though, it may be inevitable and unavoidable. If for no other reason than that the source character is such a mess. It’s not even that he’s the bad guy or look what he tells people to do in the name of his “love.” It’s that it’s a character that has been written by committee from a variety of different source legends and becomes whatever the author wants him to be for that story.
If you’ve got non-believers who were never really subject to it, telling them what’s in the bible often makes it seem like you’re making shit up to make Xianity look bad, out of spite or something.
If you’ve got believers who are motivated to not accept the qualities of the character as described in their own book, you might not be able to sell it. Not because you’re not accurate, but because it doesn’t line up with what they think of their god... that they’ve authored.
Here is a review from Amazon on Dan’s book:
The book is literally a book of bible quotations.
“Strawman” is a favored accusation by believers once they discover the world of logical fallacies, as it’s their way of saying “if you don’t believe and accept it, it’s because you don’t understand it.” It doesn’t matter how many verses you cite.
I got the same thing from the Mother Teresa posts. There were people who were like, nah, none of this is true, she was a healer, why are you trying to destroy the memory of this woman who dedicated her life to helping people. Right below a quote from her, in her own words, where she says she’s not a healer, her job is to bring people to Jesus, and she loves suffering because it’s Christ-like. Yet, mine was the “strawman.”
Two other suggestions, if I may:
Firstly, don’t forget that the villain doesn’t think of themselves as being a villain. Despite clearly being the antagonist, and being someone those of us not invested in the belief might reasonably regard as a malevolent, evil demon, the god of the bible thinks he’s the hero.
And finally, don’t get hung up on what other people think. Take the feedback, find the valid criticism, discard the whining, tune it in a way that makes you happier with what you’ve created, but don’t compromise it because others don’t “get” it. Or even refuse to on principle.
What function does the “Satan” character serve that isn’t something that the Dark Lord Yahweh is already responsible for, or is guilty of already having wrought? Other than as a scapegoat to blame for the pretence that “god is good”?
Source: twitter.com
The only reason Xtians think their god is the "good" one is because it says it's the good one. Which is exactly what the villain would do. As everything else in the book goes to extraordinary lengths to demonstrate.
Source: facebook.com
Just curious have you read the bible (or any other scriptures) in full? I’ve tried and it was so poorly written and ridiculous I couldn’t even get started. Love your blog btw
Yes, I’ve read the bible in full. It was a real slog. It’s almost beyond belief that people think it’s “true” - or would even want it to be true - let alone that the narcissistic, capricious, manipulative, malevolent main character is the protagonist, worthy of worship.
The hero of the bible is neither Jealous nor Jesus; it’s human virtue. Perseverance, resilience and moral growth. Both in-universe - with the characters who struggled and either prevailed or were destroyed trying to deal with this beast in both sky-ghost and human forms - and in the real world - with the atheists who recognize how gross the whole thing is, and even the Xtians who hide, change or outright deny the gross bits, implicitly conceding that it is gross.
“I had been taught that the bible was a good book. Instead, I found a record of such superstitious silliness and ignorance, such moral obscenities, such ghastly atrocities that I had never even imagined. I found the bible’s personalities, God’s favorites, and even God himself to be utter reprobates. In this book, where I had expected to find simple guidelines, every kind of behavior that was repugnant to me was glorified and rewarded, even perpetrated and commanded by God himself. There wasn’t one page of this book that didn’t offend me in some way. In fact, after a session of reading it, I always wanted to go and take a bath in grandma’s lye soap.”
- Ruth Hurmence Green, from the film “A Second Look at Religion” (1980)
As an atheist, don’t worry if you haven’t; it’s not necessary in order to defend your lack of belief. Until they produce their god, what the bible does or doesn’t say is as irrelevant as what Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone does or doesn’t say.
For what it’s worth, they haven’t read it anyway. Even though they really should because, like a software license, they’ve clicked “I Agree” at the bottom of it.
- More than half (53%) have read less than half of the bible.
- Only 20% have read the whole thing at least once.
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.”
-- Thomas Paine
I had been taught that the bible was a good book. Instead, I found a record of such superstitious silliness and ignorance, such moral obscenities, such ghastly atrocities that I had never even imagined. I found the bible’s personalities, God’s favorites, and even God himself to be utter reprobates. In this book, where I had expected to find simple guidelines, every kind of behavior that was repugnant to me was glorified and rewarded, even perpetrated and commanded by God himself. There wasn’t one page of this book that didn’t offend me in some way. In fact, after a session of reading it, I always wanted to go and take a bath in grandma’s lye soap.
Ruth Hurmence Green, from the film “A Second Look at Religion” (1980)
#Ruth Hurmence Green#good book#bible#bible study#christianity#the good book#bible horrors#book of horrors#superstition#superstitious nonsense#A Second Look at Religion#Freedom from Religion Foundation#god is a supervillain#god is the villain#supervillain#religion#religion is a mental illness#atheism#atheist
As I was saying, jealousy is the key; all through his history it is present and prominent. It is the blood and bone of his disposition, it is the basis of his character. How small a thing can wreck his composure and disorder his judgement if it touches the raw of his jealousy! And nothing warms up this trait so quickly and so surely and so exaggeratedly as a suspicion that some competition with the god-Trust is impending.
The fear that if Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge they would "be as gods" so fired his jealousy that his reason was affected, and he could not treat those poor creatures either fairly or charitably, or even refrain from dealing cruelly and criminally with their blameless posterity.
To this day his reason has never recovered from that shock; a wild nightmare of vengefulness has possessed him ever since, and he has almost bankrupted his native ingenuities in inventing pains and miseries and humiliations and heartbreaks wherewith to embitter the brief lives of Adam's descendants. Think of the diseases he has contrived for them! They are multitudinous; no book can name them all. And each one is a trap, set for an innocent victim.
Mark Twain, “Letters from the Earth”
#Mark Twain#bible#bible study#christianity#jealous god#god of jealousy#jealousy#adam and eve#adam & eve#Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil#tree of knowledge#Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil#cruel god#god of cruelty#god is the villain#supervillain#god is a supervillain#antibible#anti bible#anti christianity#antichristianity#religion is a mental illness#anti religion#religion#antireligion#atheism#atheist
Source: facebook.com
Just for argument’s sake, let’s stipulate for a moment that “god” had to kill everyone for being the bad people he already knew yet created them to be, and despite him not bothering to hand down his narcissistic rulebook until eight generations later.
For the god who would eventually go on to kill every firstborn in Egypt in their sleep (in a magical pissing contest, no less), or could simply snap them out of existence with a word, it wasn’t enough that everybody died. No, they had to suffer,
They had to see it coming, they had to see the cold waters rising, they had to be helpless, they had to be terrified, they had to struggle and gasp, they had to see each other die one by one and know what was coming, they had to see their land-based animals exhaust and succumb, they had to see their children thrash and choke, they had to see everyone they loved die in desperation, they had to cry out in vain for help from the god they knew was there, and they had to never know why.
Only that could correct the problem. Which, as it turns out, was vague, non-specific “wickedness” - doing what he created humanity to do, and not following what he hadn’t yet told them.
If such a god-creature actually existed, it would have to be the single most despicable, immoral, villainous, reprehensible, outright evil creature to ever exist. What kind of person would worship such an abominable monster?
Thank goodness it doesn’t.
Source: facebook.com
#bible#bible study#christianity#noah's ark#noahic flood#noah's ark myth#noah#the great flood#genesis flood#worldwide flood#god likes genocide#genocidal god#god of genocide#god is evil#god is a supervillain#supervillain#god is the villain#imaginary supervillain#god is immoral#immorality#immoral#religion#religion is a mental illness#atheism#atheist
That’s a really weird way to announce that your god is the petty, spiteful “Mean Girl” supervillain of the story.
Source: twitter.com