Upon a rather in-depth examination of the Bible (particularly the Old Testament which many churches conveniently ignore), God was a mass murderer, killing millions of people and also directing others to rape and kill for him. He also distributes sinister laws and explains what punishments will ensue if someone deviates from his wishes. What’s worse, the ultimate penalty for disobedience is hell - eternal torture of unfathomable proportions. This is the God that millions worldwide worship and follow who orders us to love one another.
God’s Genocidal Wrath
Starting with the book of Genesis, we learn of many of the atrocities committed by God. One of the first instances was Noah’s flood (Genesis 6:5) whereby God decides to drown the entire world, killing nearly every living person and animal on earth because he believes that people are evil and unworthy of existence. But if the people were evil, wouldn’t the fault lie with the manufacturer? Yet he drowns nearly all the men, women, and children on the face of the earth because he deliberately chose not to make us to his liking.
Even if those who were evil deserved to die slow and torturous deaths, couldn’t God have placed the innocent children and animals aside so that they wouldn’t drown? If not, how about a humane death at the very least? Drowning is a horrible way for people to die. Yet God did this to every man, woman, child, baby, and animal on earth because he supposedly made a mistake. To make matters disgustingly worse, the flood accomplished nothing! God realises after the flood that a man’s imagination is evil from youth (Genesis 8:21). Even if this was the sole immoral act carried out by God, I’m positive that I couldn’t bring myself to worship him. However, this is only the beginning of his mass-murdering spree.
Another genocidal operation courtesy of God takes place in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Above these cities, he creates a rain of burning sulfur to kill every inhabitant, save Lot and his family, because they’re deemed evil by the almighty judge, jury, and executioner (Genesis 19:24-25). Now, refer back to the points illustrated in the previous paragraph. God should have assumed the responsibility of taking measures to prevent these actions from somehow becoming necessary. He even remembered that men were evil by nature after the flood. Did he suddenly forget his opinion when he destroyed two entire cities of men, women, and children? Again, we should sincerely hope that this all-knowing deity would learn to take some of the blame in these situations. Like drowning, burning is not a quick and painless death.
In Exodus, we find God coercing Moses into becoming his spokesperson for freeing the Israelite slaves from the Egyptian Pharaoh. Moses initially points out that he’s a terrible speaker, but God’s reply to this passive resistance is a set of rhetorical questions in which he takes credit for making people deaf, dumb, and blind (Exodus 4:10-11). Some of these handicapped people are a burden to others, and many die without ever demonstrating independence. Nevertheless, God takes great pride in this achievement. Most of us typically find people who relish in the misery of others to be deeply disturbed. Instead of correcting these atrociously boastful deeds, God seemingly leaves it up to us to develop ideas for combating transcendentally induced handicaps. Ironically, with advances in medical science, we’re making genuine progress against God’s wishes. His yearning to make certain people handicapped is useless, evil nonsense. Evidently, it’s a successful argument because Moses decides to accept the offer.
In the meeting among Moses, Aaron, and the Pharaoh, God doesn’t want his Israelites to go free without a fight. Instead, God instructs Moses and Aaron on exactly what steps to take so that the Pharaoh will initially become too stubborn to allow the people to leave. Obviously, God only wants an excuse to “bring forth [his] armies” against Egypt in order to punish the entire country for the decisions of one man to hold his chosen people as slaves (Exodus 7:1-14).
The plagues that God carried out against Egypt as a result of Pharaoh’s decision were turning the river to blood; sending an abundance of frogs, lice, locusts, and flies; killing every cow belonging to the people; inflicting boils upon all the citizens; creating a hailstorm to destroy their crops; instituting three days of darkness; and killing the firstborn male child in every household across the country. The cattle slaughter, river of blood, and downpour of hail ruined the Egyptians’ sole water and food sources. Worst of all, God once again feels the necessity to eradicate thousands more innocent babies, children, and animals because one man was too stubborn to free his slaves.
On the escape route, Moses miraculously parts the Red Sea and crosses safely. When the Egyptian army pursues, the waters regroup to drown the soldiers and horses (Exodus 7-14). God could have easily freed the people and spared thousands of lives, but, of course, he doesn’t do things this way. One can only assume that he took sinister pleasure in murdering Egyptian soldiers for following orders from their superior officers.
When the Israelites were upset that Moses caused these people to die, God sends a plague to slay an additional 14,700 (Numbers 16:41-49). To close out the Pentateuch, God exterminates a number of his people who fall down and worship the gods of Baalpeor. A subsequent plague kills another 24,000 (Numbers 25:1-9).
God’s episodes of murdering innocent individuals for the faults of their leaders, fathers, or other ancestors are not uncommon in the Old Testament. Jephthah asks for God’s assistance in killing the children of Ammon and promises him the first person out of his house upon his return as a burnt sacrifice if he will agree to aid with the massacre. God concurs and lethally delivers the children of Ammon into Jephthah’s hands. When Jephthah returns, his daughter, an only child, makes her way outside to welcome him home. Two months later, Jephthah regretfully fulfills his promise by burning his daughter as a sacrifice to God (Judges 11:29-39). Why would God allow a man to offer an innocent person as a reward unless God also intended for certain people to be mere possessions?
While David is King, he decides to conduct a census: a horrendous sin in God’s eyes. As punishment for his poor decision, he is to select among seven years of famine, three months of fleeing from his enemies, and three days of pestilence. Unable to choose from the offered catastrophes, God picks the three days of pestilence that result in the deaths of 70,000 men. Women and children weren’t mentioned, not that the Bible considered them to have any real value in the first place. Again, God murders enough people to fill a sizable city for the “sin” of one man. David subsequently cries out to God and asks him why he wants to murder innocent people who had nothing to do with the decision to execute a census. Of course God doesn’t provide an impossible answer for this sensible question, but his reasons scarcely seem morally or ethically justifiable (2 Samuel 24:10-17).
David also desires a woman named Bathsheba even though she’s married to one of David’s soldiers. Driven by his lust, David orders her husband to the front lines of a battle so that the enemy will take care of his problem. God then becomes extremely angry with David for this relatively petty crime. Once the new couple has a child, God afflicts it with illness for a week before watching it die (2 Samuel 11, 12:14-18). Yet again, God exterminates an innocent baby for the actions of the father.
Instead of directly murdering people or using his followers to execute similar commands, the apparently insatiable God begins sending animals to kill those who displease him. On one occasion, he has a lion kill a man because he refuses to hit someone (1 Kings 20:35). God sends his lions out again to kill a group of people who were new to Samaria. The reason for this atrocity is their lack of worship, even though they were never informed of the proper worship methods (2 Kings 17:24-26).
In an exploit of inconceivable irrationality, God sends forth two bears to kill forty-two children for making fun of Elisha’s bald head (2 Kings 2:23-24). Why would God feel the necessity to have two bears viciously maul little children for acting like…children? This is supposed to be the same “wonderful” and “loving” God who promises us eternal life, but an entity capable of these inane activities could certainly change his mind and banish all of his worshippers to Hell. Christians never have to justify such passages because, of course, they never read them!
Since God commits scores of violent acts randomly throughout the remainder of the Old Testament, let’s look at a few examples. God causes the Midianites to kill one another (Judges 7:22-23). He confuses the Philistines and causes them to kill one another (1 Samuel 14:20-23). He inflicts a number of people with blindness because Elisha asks him to do so (2 Kings 6:18). He causes a seven-year famine without specifying a reason (2 Kings 8:1). God kills Nabal without specifying a reason, but it’s probably because David desires his wife and other belongings (1 Samuel 25:38). God sends an angel to kill 185,000 men in an Assyrian camp because they’re enemies of his people (2 Kings 19:31-35). He plagues Azariah, a man labeled as a good King, with leprosy for the remainder of his life because he allows people to burn incense in a location displeasing to God (2 Kings 15:1-5). This is another great example of an overbearing punishment for breaking an asinine law. Some of our fellow humans were obviously destined to meet death early in life without any chance of redemption in God’s eyes.
Counting just the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Red Sea incident, the ark gazers, the plagues, the census, and the battles in which God directly participated, I estimate that this terrible creature claims to have murdered one to two million people. Regrettably, we still haven’t discussed any of the instances in which God orders his people to kill others or when he “delivers armies” into the hands of the Israelites to be annihilated in battle. By this point in our discussion, God has already joined the elite company of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Zedong as the largest mass murderers in history.
Following God’s Alleged Commands
When God wished certain people dead thousands of years ago, he was never confined to his own powers. You might even agree that God was at his worst when he recruited others to assist with the scores of slaughters in the Old Testament. As initially difficult as it might be to accept, God often provided his followers with orders leading to outcomes even more horrific than before.
God encourages the Israelites to beat their slaves and rape women captured in warfare. God advises Moses on a number of matters related to his appointed leadership. He is to cast any menstruating or leprous person out of the camp because God doesn’t want to be around those “dirty” people when he descends for a visit (Numbers 5:1-3). In other words, God wants no association with those who are more likely to need assistance, medical or otherwise.
In a series of ethnic cleansings, God delivers Jerusalem to Judah and the Israelites. They kill 10,000 Canaanites and Perizzites in Bezek (Judges 1:2-8). Later, God accompanies Judah when he destroys the cities and kills the inhabitants of Zephath, Gaza, Askelon, Ekron, and Luz (Judges 1:17-26). When Ehud announces that God has delivered the Moabites into the hands of his chosen people, they march to Moab and slay 10,000 men (Judges 3:26-29). God delivers Sihon and the Amorites to be murdered by Jephthah and the Israelites (Judges 11:21-23). God delivers twenty men to be slaughtered by Jonathan (1 Samuel 12:14). As God orders David to exterminate a few Philistines delivered into his hands, David does so and takes their cattle as well (1 Samuel 23:2-5). As God orders David to kill more Philistines recently delivered into his hands, David accepts God’s gift once again and kills more Philistines in two additional battles (2 Samuel 5:19-25). God delivers the Syrians to the people of Israel in order for them to murder 100,000 foreigners. Twenty-seven thousand Syrians escaped but were killed when a wall fell on them (1 Kings 20:28-30). Likewise, God delivers the Moabites into the hands of Israel once again. The army of Israelites destroys the city of Moab along with an unknown number of its inhabitants. When God witnesses certain members of Israel turning from him, he decides to assist the tribe of Judah. God then kills the King of Israel and enables Judah to kill 500,000 Israelite men because the Judeans “relied upon the Lord God of their fathers.” God later becomes angry with his followers when they ridicule his messengers. As punishment, he sends the army of Chaldees to kill all the occupants of Jerusalem.
As you may have already guessed, God didn’t confine the impact of his seemingly perpetual rage solely on humans. Animal sacrifices seemed particularly important to this fiendish character. Strangely enough, this is one deity out of many that seems pleased with aromas emitted by burnt flesh (Genesis 8:20-21). In fact, Leviticus chapters 1-9 are thorough instructions on how to perform animal sacrifices.
For every category of sin, God has a specific ritual that he wishes us to perform. His authors tell the readers how to break animal necks, what parts of the animal to burn, what organs to extract, where to sprinkle the blood, how much God thoroughly enjoys the spectacle, etc. Numbers 18:19 further declares that animal sacrifices should be performed forever. Have Christians finally appreciated the insanity of God, or do they just not read their Bibles anymore?
An estimate on the number of victims who paid the ultimate price in wars that are claimed to be instigated by God is hard to determine, but I would imagine it’s somewhere around two or three million. All together, God may have been personally responsible for as many as five million needless murders. I’m sure there are several battles and/or plagues that I omitted, but I trust you get the general message. The Hebrew god is a mass murderer, plain and simple. Moreover, these estimates still don’t include all the deaths resulting from petty religious bickering that continues to this day.
God’s Rules And Regulations
In addition to all the previously mentioned atrocities, God hands down a nightmarishly inhumane code for his creations to live by. In fact, there would literally be millions of murders committed every day if God still had his way. I’ll certainly admit that a few of the more sane guidelines are acceptable, but many are definitely not within the bounds of justice and humanity. Those are the ones in need of a serious impartial review. A few examples allegedly handed down by God follow.
Anyone who goes uncircumcised is to be exiled from his people (Genesis 17:14).
If a man has sex with a menstruating women, both are to be exiled (Leviticus 20:18).
A man who marries a mother and daughter must burn in a fire (Leviticus 20:14).
If two men have sexual relations, both must be put to death (Leviticus 20:13).
If a mother and son have sexual relations, both must be put to death (Leviticus 20:11).
If a man and daughter-in-law have sex, both must be put to death (Leviticus 20:12).
If a man has sex with an animal, both must be put to death (Leviticus 20:15).
If a woman has sex with an animal, both must be put to death (Leviticus 20:16).
Anyone who attacks his mother or father must be put to death (Exodus 21:15).
Anyone who curses his mother or father must be put to death (Leviticus 20:9).
Anyone who commits murder must be put to death (Leviticus 24:17).
Anyone who commits adultery must be put to death (Deuteronomy 22:22).
Anyone who commits perjury must be put to death (Deuteronomy 19:18-19).
Anyone who commits kidnapping must be put to death (Exodus 21:16).
Anyone who disobeys a judge or priest must be put to death (Deuteronomy 17:12).
Anyone who works on the Sabbath must be put to death (Exodus 35:2).
Anyone who does not worship God must be put to death (2 Chronicles 15:13).
Any strangers approaching a sanctuary must be put to death (Numbers 17:7).
Any prophet who tries to turn you against God must be put to death (Deuteronomy 13:5).
Any prophet who makes a wrong prediction must be put to death (Deuteronomy 18:20-22).
Family members who tempt you with other gods must be put to death (Deuteronomy 13:1-5).
If an ox gores someone, the ox and its owner must be stoned to death (Exodus 21:29).
Anyone who claims to talk with spirits must be stoned to death (Leviticus 20:27).
A stubborn and rebellious son must be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 21:18-21).
Any woman who has had premarital sex must be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 22:21).
Anyone who worships another god must be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 17:2-7).
Anyone who curses or blasphemes must be stoned to death (Leviticus 24:14-16).
Break the neck of your donkey’s firstborn or kill a lamb instead (Exodus 34:20).
If a city worships other gods, kill everyone in it and burn it (Deuteronomy 13:12-16).
As you can tell from the list provided, God wants you dead for just about anything you do. Of all the worthwhile messages that God could have included in the Bible to help us through life, he settles on a number of nonsense rules and regulations that he knew hardly anyone would still follow a short while later.
God’s Psyche
“He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins” (Joshua 24:19). God becomes jealous when we do not pay him enough attention or when we like other gods better than him. If you are guilty of either of these transgressions, he won’t forgive you for making him angry. His behavior is the quintessence of a spoiled child throwing a tantrum when you won’t look to see what he’s doing. This fair assessment is undeniably consistent with the remainder of God’s curiously immature actions throughout the Old Testament. Even so, the Bible does an about-face in the New Testament and says that the now silent creator does forgive you for anger-inducing infractions. This notion exemplifies qualities of a more respectable and desirable deity, thus the New Testament creator is the one on which Christians tend to place their focus. Well, which interpretation of God should we accept as the truth?
God places “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children…unto the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 34:7). As you read the Old Testament, you should take careful notice of the aforementioned recurring theme of God forcing children to pay for the sins of their ancestors. I’ve probably worn the topic out by now, but this cannot possibly be considered a fair way of treating people. God undeniably admits that he creates an unfair system in which the righteous are not guaranteed freedom from his wrath due to the contingency of him punishing us for our ancestors’ actions. Thus, we can only conclude that God receives a sense of sadistic enjoyment from punishing people for things they didn’t do because there’s no true justification for anyone, deity or not, to treat others this way. Proverbs 16:4 even confirms this hypothesis by telling us that God made evil people so that he could punish them at some point in the future. It’s an incomprehensibly evil undertaking for God to make people behave a certain way just so he can entertain himself by torturing them for eternity. Furthermore, the excessive boasting and power flaunting by God literally adds insult to injury. In addition, the author of the second letter to the Thessalonians says God will cause wicked people to disbelieve the truth about Jesus so that he can send them to Hell (2:8-12).
We also understand that God wants Christians to suffer through life (1 Peter 4:12-19). Why doesn’t he make it less painful to follow him in order for more of us to understand the “true” way of being saved? If that’s not bad enough, God even hurts the people he loves (Hebrews 12:6). Now we have even more evidence that God doesn’t want to save some people from his punishment of eternal, perpetual damnation. However, let us not forget that this is the same deity who created his son to die an agonising death on the cross in order to pay for everyone else’s sins. If God were human, psychiatrists would certainly have him locked in an asylum.
God goes so far as to place equivalent monetary values on human life for an offering that he requires everyone to provide (Leviticus 27:1-8). This is another prime example of the total disregard God reserves for his creations. We may not be omnipotent and omniscient, but most of us would never attempt to place a specific price on the value of a human life. Incidentally, we’re worth very little to him. This notion is especially true when you consider how readily he commands thousands of us to our deaths in the Old Testament. If you’re interested, men are worth approximately $100 while women are only worth about $60 in modern currency equivalents. If you want to know why women are less valuable than men, you’ll find out in the next equally disturbing chapter.
Job is an odd book in an odd place. While it’s believed to have been written in an era concurrent with the Pentateuch authorship, the fable appears much later in the Bible with the books of poetry. Regardless, Christians insist that we accept it as a literal work rather than a figurative one, thus we will review it as such. As a literal work, it’s a wonderful glimpse into the mind of the most primitive form of the Hebrew god. In the ridiculous tale, God allows Satan to torment the innocent Job by utilising various methods of torture. All of this is just to prove to Satan that he couldn’t make Job curse the name of God. How nonsensical is that? God’s ego drives him to watch a good man be tortured because he feels the need to prove a point to an inferior entity of evil.
The authors of Psalms often glorify God for a number of despicable acts. The authors exalt God for giving knowledge on how to kill enemies in battle (18:34-42) and for literally bashing people who don’t worship him (2:9). The authors admire God for his plans to burn some of his creations to death (21:9-10) and for the murder of every firstborn male child in Egypt (135:8, 136:10). The authors praise God for his intentions to tear disbelievers into pieces (50:22) and for making a spectacle out of people who worship other gods (52:5-7). Why would anyone sing praises of such abominations except to score points out of obvious fear? This thought reminds me of the Iraqi government officials who started praising Saddam Hussein in July of 1979 as he read a list of traitors who were to be executed. Because members of the audience obviously didn’t want to be among those facing an imminent death sentence, they publicly demonstrate their loyalty to Saddam by shouting praises in order to preserve their own lives. The method works wonderfully now, and it seemingly worked many centuries ago.
Guidelines on how to secure a place in Heaven are finally set in the New Testament, but they remain inherently unfair and contradicting. Christians across the board believe that you’ll burn in Hell forever if you don’t accept Jesus as your personal savior (Mark 9:42-48). If we assume this belief to be factual, is it truly fair to a radical Muslim who has had the exact opposite notion drilled into his head since birth? Of course not. All God has to do for the Muslim is show him the error of his ways. Instead, the combination of God’s present silence and his Old Testament approval of violence lamentably provides the radical Muslim with the notion that it pleases God when people fly airplanes into buildings. The murdering Muslim simply hasn’t been instructed otherwise.
Just Empty Threats?
God invariably makes threats that if you do this, he will counter with that. Let’s look at a few Old Testament examples and determine if his retaliations are justifiable. The first of which would be to not harass any widows or orphans because God will kill you with a sword (Exodus 22:24). As in the previous section, we see a continuity of God administering unfit punishments for minor crimes. If you try to rebuild Jericho, your oldest and youngest son will die (Joshua 6:26). While such an extreme measure of revenge could hardly be warranted, God affords everyone ample opportunity to avoid his insane wrath in this instance. If you don’t worship God, he’ll sever your arm, revoke your eyesight, and curse you with a premature death (1 Samuel 2:31-33). Similarly, he’ll wipe you off the earth if you observe other gods (Deuteronomy 6:14-15). If you take it as far as hating God, he’ll totally destroy you (Deuteronomy 7:10). I think these punishments are starting to creep over that arbitrary boundary known as “fairness.”
However, we see a small incongruity in making these threats. If God’s orders were to kill anyone who disobeys these divine commands, why would he personally need to administer these punishments? Better yet, why isn’t God making good on these threats? Incidentally, shouldn’t God be angry with his followers for not killing people with different viewpoints? Regardless of the answers to these questions, we’re about to see God leap past any hope of inconspicuously remaining in the background.
Have a look at Leviticus 26:14-39 (reworded in Deuteronomy 28:15-68). That’s quite a punishment for not believing in God. You’ll go blind; you’ll become sorrowful; you won’t be able to grow food; your enemies will become your leaders; you’ll run for no reason; you’ll have no pride, power, or strength; your land will go bad; your children and cattle will be killed by wild animals; your cities will empty; you’ll be struck by a sword; you’ll receive a pestilence; your hunger won’t be satisfied; you’ll eat your children; your places of worship will be destroyed; your enemies will take your land; you’ll become terrified; you’ll live with injustice; and then you’ll perish.
Thankfully, we can safely conclude that there’s no connection between reality and these transcendental threats because it’s obvious that God isn’t currently enforcing these punishments. Since unfortunate episodes perpetually manifest across the religious spectrum, it’s also safe to conclude that they aren’t transpiring due to the absence of God in the victims’ lives. Since the Hebrews contemporaneous with these threats lived in an unscientific and superstitious era, they gullibly but wholeheartedly believed that these events had a divine cause and effect relationship. As an obvious consequence of that unenlightened belief, the population rarely challenged these frightening warnings. What can we surmise about these intimidating statements? Two words: scare tactics.
In Leviticus 26:14-39, God yet again exposes his childish behavior by listing a long series of punishments for failing to follow his commandments and not paying him enough attention. He sends his only son to assist us in carrying out what he feels is a positive lifestyle, yet he threatens to torture us for eternity if we don’t listen to him and follow his advice. Why is God overly concerned with how we act and how we choose to worship? Since this cruel deity supposedly made us exactly how he anticipated, he should definitely know what actions we’re imminently going to take. One would presumably think that an all-powerful and all-knowing god would have little regard for the opinions of his insignificant creations, turning instead to hobbies that one would think are more productive. It’s now obvious that our existence is nothing but a game to him, and it should leave the reader to wonder why he would subject us to this exhibition when he already knows the outcome.
The God Of The Future
It would be quite negligent for me to approach a somewhat comprehensive piece on this perspective of God but not include references for the hundreds of evil operations that the prophets claim he will implement sometime in the future. There’s such a wealth of despicable activities carried out or silently observed by God that I must once again force myself to share only a small portion of the most horrendous, inventive, or entertaining ones. Common examples of Godly justifications usually fall into one of the following categories: he has angry desires for revenge, people will turn their backs on him, or his followers will sin by finding new gods to worship. While most of the foretold events are yet to come, apologists must accept the prophecies as part of an unchangeable future because the passages are part of the inerrant, unalterable word of God. Since these promised catastrophes are imminent in their arrival, we can treat these events as though they’ve already materialised for the purpose of analyzing the moral justifications, or lack thereof, that God offers for his actions.
God will kill men, have their children smashed, and have their wives raped (Isaiah 13:15-16).
God will punish children for the iniquities of their fathers and distant ancestors (Isaiah 14:21).
God will lay waste to entire cities and make the lands desolate (Jeremiah 4:7).
God will set people, animals, and even plants on fire because of his anger (Jeremiah 7:20).
God will send so much evil that people would rather be dead than suffer (Jeremiah 8:3).
God will give away the property of men, including their wives, to other men (Jeremiah 8:10).
God will kill young men, and their children will die from a famine (Jeremiah 11:22).
God will cause everyone to become drunk so father and son will kill one another (Jeremiah 13:14).
God will not hear the cries of the people or acknowledge their sacrifices (Jeremiah 14:12).
God will make people hungry enough to eat their own children and friends (Jeremiah 19:9).
God will burn entire cities with the inhabitants still inside (Jeremiah 50:32).
God will break people’s bones and knock their teeth out with stones (Lamentations 3:1-16).
God will force fathers and sons to eat each other and scatter their remembrance (Ezekiel 5:10).
God will be comforted by killing everyone with pestilence, plagues, and swords (Ezekiel 5:12-13).
God will lay dead bodies around idols and spread their bones around the alters (Ezekiel 6:5).
God will kill righteous men and forget their good deeds if they ever turn to sin (Ezekiel 18:24).
God will turn daughters into whores and wives into adulterers (Hosea 4:13).
God will kill children when they come out of their mothers’ wombs (Hosea 10:14).
God will tear people apart and devour them like a lion (Hosea 13:8).
God will kill children and unborn fetuses because their parents worship other gods (Hosea 13:16).
God will sell the children of Israel into slavery in a far away land (Joel 3:8).
God will kill inhabitants of entire cities if they have a corrupt government (Micah 3:9-12).
God will consume every living thing from the face of the earth (Zephaniah 1:2-3).
God will send people to steal Jerusalem, rape the women, and enslave the rest (Zechariah 14:2).
God will send plagues on people and animals to rot away tongues and eyes (Zechariah 14:12-15).
The prophets warn us of the Old Testament God’s frightful, futuristic return to the earth, at which point he’ll initiate every category of curse imaginable on the people who ignore his commandments, refuse to worship him, or commit acts that he arbitrarily deems evil. It’s remarkable how he can randomly dish out such unfathomable punishments for reasons a typical person would consider lacking in foundation, yet he becomes terribly enraged when one of us follows suit.
God brings people into this world without a choice in the matter and expects us to do certain things, otherwise he’ll punish us severely without rest for an eternity. God’s omniscience must necessarily allow him to know which names will not be included in his book of life. Therefore, we can only conclude that he purposely brings people into the world with zero chance of avoiding Hell. Any deviation from this predetermined course would make God wrong, but since God cannot possibly be wrong, it’s impossible for us to deviate from the absolutely unalterable plan that he has already envisioned. Thus, Christians can only logically claim that we are exclusively involuntary pawns at the mercy of God’s whimsical decisions as to where we will spend our ultimate eternal destinations. This heartless exercise of brutality can only be the single most hateful crime any being could ever commit.
Now that I’ve had time to reflect upon these considerations, if I believed for one moment that it was possible for this god to exist, I would be the first person in church on Sunday morning and the last person out the door Sunday evening. I would swallow my disgust and worship the deity that I detested in order to accept the slightly more agreeable punishment of eternal praise over eternal agony. In our universe bound by reality, however, such a personality can only be a ridiculous creation from a deceitful set of individuals who were sadly unaware of the vicious monster they created.
The God Worshipped By Two Billion
God barbarically killed millions of people in the Old Testament because they weren’t “fortunate” enough to belong to the Israelite tribe. Had these alleged victims belonged to the lineage of Jacob, they obviously wouldn’t have suffered the full wrath of God. However, what chances did they realistically have of converting to worship the Hebrew deity when their own parents conditioned them to think according to their local customs? Even today, God’s evil demands require us to murder billions of non-Christians because their parents unknowingly continue to practice this same form of powerful conditioning. The consequences of obeying God’s directions should give us the presence of mind to refrain from following such orders without first analysing the morality of the demands in question. Widely distributed directions from a fair god should be moral or have a satisfactory explanation. Otherwise, we may be repeating the same evil accomplishments of our ancestors.
What logic is there in the fact that the being who promises us eternal life because of his love for all humankind is the same entity who orders us to kill a variety of people for morally bankrupt reasons? The biblical god is not “wonderful” and “loving” as Christians claim because these unenlightened followers base such crude assessments on the more positive New Testament. The God of the Old Testament, on the other hand, is pure evil and full of perpetual anger; he even admits as much. No one who creates and needlessly kills millions of people can honestly be called “wonderful” and “loving,” deity or not. Certainly, most people wouldn’t think it was fair if they saw their fellow man being tortured just because his parents raised him with a different version of the creator. God even takes enjoyment in the fact that many people will never make it into Heaven. Regardless of your position on the issue, I believe we can all agree that God has quite a unique character about him, to say the least.
We’ve also come to realise that we can observe the following qualities of God: he exhibits immature rage when no one pays attention to him; he makes people suffer for what others have done; he has no regard for human life; and he tortures decent people for such reasons as winning bets with Satan. If we were to extract this behavior into human terms, we would most likely draw a comparison with that of a spoiled child. Because of an obvious state of fear and panic over similar reports heard by authors of the ancient Hebrew scriptures, they wrote and sang praises to this terrible creature thinking that such measures might assist in helping them escape his unconscionable wrath.
