Misotheism | Wikipedia audio article
Misotheism is the “hatred of God” or “hatred
of the gods” (from the Greek adjective μισόθεος “hating the gods”, a compound of μῖσος
“hatred” and θεός “god”). In some varieties of polytheism, it was considered possible
to inflict punishment on gods by ceasing to worship them. Thus, Hrafnkell, the protagonist
of the eponymous Hrafnkels saga set in the 10th century, as his temple to Freyr is burnt
and he is enslaved, states that “I think it is folly to have faith in gods”, never performing
another blót (sacrifice), a position described in the sagas as goðlauss, “godless”.
Jacob
Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology observes that: It is remarkable that Old Norse legend occasionally
mentions certain men who, turning away in utter disgust and doubt from the heathen faith,
placed their reliance on their strength and virtue. Thus in the Sôlar lioð 17 we
read of Vêbogi and Râdey á sjálf sig þau trûðu, “in themselves they trusted”.
In monotheism, the sentiment arises in the context of theodicy (the problem of evil,
the Euthyphro dilemma). A famous literary expression of misotheistic sentiment is Goethe’s
Prometheus was composed in the 1770s. A related concept is dystheism (Ancient Greek:
δύσ θεος “bad god”), the belief that a god is not wholly good, and is possibly
evil. Trickster gods found in polytheistic belief systems often have a dysphemistic nature.
One example is Eshu, a trickster god from the Yoruba religion who deliberately fostered
violence between groups of people for his amusement, saying that “causing strife
is my greatest joy.” The concept of the Demiurge in some versions
of ancient Gnosticism also often portrayed the Demiurge as a generally evil entity.
Many polytheistic deities since prehistoric times have been assumed to be neither good
nor evil (or to have both qualities).
Thus dystheism is normally used about
the Judeo-Christian God. In conceptions of God as the summum bonum, the proposition of
God not being wholly good would be an oxymoron. A historical proposition close to “dystheism”
is the Deus deception “evil demon” (dieu trompeur) of René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy,
which has been interpreted by Protestant critics as the blasphemous proposition that God exhibits
malevolent intent. But Richard Kennington states that Descartes never declared his “evil
genius” to be omnipotent, but merely no less powerful than he is deceitful, and thus not
explicitly an equivalent to God, the singular omnipotent deity. == Terminology ==
Misotheism first appears in a dictionary in 1907. The Greek μισόθεος is found
in Aeschylus (Agamemnon 1090). The English word appears as a nonce-coinage, used by Thomas
de Quincey in 1846. It is comparable to the original meaning of Greek atheos of “rejecting
the gods, rejected by the gods, godforsaken”.
Strictly speaking, the term connotes an attitude
towards the gods (one of hatred) rather than making a statement about their nature. Bernard
Schweizer (2002) stated “that the English vocabulary seems to lack a suitable word for
outright hatred of God… [even though] history records several outspoken misotheists”,
believing “monotheism” to be his original coinage. Applying the term to the work of
Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), Schweizer clarifies that he does not mean the term to
carry the negative connotations of misanthropy: “To me, the word connotes a heroic stance
of humanistic affirmation and the courage to defy the powers that rule the universe.”
Dystheism is the belief that God exists but is not wholly good, or that he might even
be evil. The opposite concept is eutheism, the belief that God exists and is wholly good.
Eutheism and dystheism are straightforward Greek formations from eu- and dys- + theism,
paralleling atheism; δύσθεος in the sense of “godless, ungodly” appearing e.g.
in Aeschylus (Agamemnon 1590).
The terms are nonce coinages, used by the University of Texas
at Austin philosophy professor Robert C. Koons in a 1998 lecture. According to Koons, “eutheism
is the thesis that God exists and is wholly good, [… while] dystheism is the thesis
that God exists but is not wholly good.” However, many proponents of dysphemistic ideas (including
Elie Wiesel and David Blumenthal) do not offer those ideas in the spirit of hating God. Their
work notes God’s apparent evil or at least indifferent disinterest in the welfare of
humanity, but does not express hatred towards him because of it. A notable usage of the
concept that the gods are either indifferent or actively hostile towards humanity is in
the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft. Maltheism is an ad-hoc coining appearing on
Usenet in 1985, referring to the belief in God’s malevolence inspired by the thesis of
Tim Maroney that “even if a God as described in the Bible does exist, he is not fit for
worship due to his low moral standards.” The same term has also seen used among designers
and players of role-playing games to describe a world with a malevolent deity.
Antitheism is in direct opposition to theism.
As such, it is generally manifested more as
an opposition to belief in a god (to theism per se) than as opposition to gods themselves,
making it more associated with antireligion, although Buddhism is generally considered
to be a religion despite its status concerning theism being more nebulous. Antitheism
this definition does not necessarily imply belief in any sort of god at all, it simply
stands in opposition to the idea of theistic religion. Under this definition, antitheism
is a rejection of theism that does not necessarily imply belief in gods on the part of the antitheist.
Some might equate any form of antitheism to an overt opposition to God, since these beliefs
run contrary to the idea of making devotion to God the highest priority in life, although
those ideas would imply that God exists and that he wishes to be worshiped or to be believed
in.
Certain forms of dualism assert
that the thing worshiped as God in this world is an evil impostor, but that a true
benevolent deity worthy of being called “God” exists beyond this world. Thus, the Gnostics
(see Sethian, Ophites) believed that God (the deity worshiped by Jews, Greek Pagan philosophers, and Christians) was an evil creator or demiurge that stood between us and some
greater, more truly benevolent real deity. Similarly, Marcionites depicted God as represented
in the Old Testament as a wrathful, malicious demiurge.
== Theodicy == Dystheistic speculation arises from the consideration
of the problem of evil — the question of why God, who is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient,
and omnibenevolent, would allow evil to exist in the world. Koons notes that this is only
a theological problem for a theist, since a dystheist would not find the existence of
evil (or God’s authorship of it) to be an obstacle to theistic belief. The
dysphemistic option would be a consistent non-contradictory response to the problem of evil. Thus Koons
concludes that the problem of theodicy (explaining how God can be good despite the apparent contradiction
presented in the problem of evil) does not pose a challenge to all possible forms of
theism (i.e., that the problem of evil does not present a contradiction to someone who
would believe that God exists but that he is not necessarily good).
This conclusion implicitly takes the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma, asserting the
independence of good and evil morality from God (as God is defined in monotheistic belief).
Historically, the notion of “good” as an absolute concept has emerged in parallel with the notion
of God being the singular entity identified with good.
In this sense, dystheism amounts
to the abandonment of a central feature of historical monotheism: the de facto association
of God with the summum bonum. Arthur Schopenhauer wrote: “This world could
not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures
into existence to delight in the sight of their sufferings.”
Critics of Calvin’s doctrines of predestination frequently argued that Calvin’s doctrines
did not successfully avoid describing God as “the author of evil”.
Much of post-Holocaust theology, especially in Judaic theological circles, is devoted
to a rethinking of God’s goodness. Examples include the work of David R. Blumenthal, author
of Facing the Abusing God (1993), and John K. Roth, whose essay “A Theodicy of Protest”
is included in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy (1982): Everything hinges on the proposition that
God possesses—but fails to use well enough—the power to intervene decisively at any moment
to make history’s course less wasteful.
Thus, despite and because of his sovereignty, this
God is everlastingly guilty and the degrees run from gross negligence to mass murder…
To the extent that [people] are born with the potential and power to [do evil things],
credit for that fact belongs elsewhere. “Elsewhere” is God’s address. == Deus deceptor == The deus deceptor (French dieu trompeur) “deceptive
god” is a concept of Cartesianism. Voetius accused Descartes of blasphemy in
1643. Jacques Triglandius and Jacobus Revius, theologians at Leiden University, made similar
accusations in 1647, accusing Descartes of “hold[ing] God to be a deceiver”, a position
that they stated to be “contrary to the glory of God”. Descartes was threatened with having
his views condemned by a synod, but this was prevented by the intercession of the Prince
of Orange (at the request of the French Ambassador Servien).
The accusations referenced a passage in the First Meditation where Descartes stated that
he supposed not an optimal God but rather an evil demon “summe potens & callidus” ( “most
highly powerful and cunning”).
The accusers identified Descartes’ concept of a Deus deception
with his concept of an evil demon, stating that only an omnipotent God is “summe potent”
and that describing the evil demon as such thus demonstrated the identity. Descartes’
response to the accusations was that in that passage he had been expressly distinguishing
between “the supremely good God, the source of truth, on the one hand, and the malicious
demon on the other”. He did not directly rebut the charge of implying that the evil demon
was omnipotent, but asserted that simply describing something with “some attribute that in reality
belongs only to God” does not mean that something is being held to be a supreme
God. The evil demon is omnipotent, Christian doctrine notwithstanding, and is seen as a
a key requirement for Descartes’ argument by Cartesian scholars such as Alguié, Beck,
Émile Bréhier, Chevalier, Frankfurt, Étienne Gilson, Anthony Kenny, Laporte, Kemp-Smith,
and Wilson.
The progression through the First Meditation, leading to the introduction of
the concept of the evil genius at the end is to introduce various categories into the
set of dubitable, such as mathematics (i.e. Descartes’ addition of 2 and 3 and counting
the sides of a square). Although the hypothetical evil genius is never stated to be one and
the same as the hypothetical “deus deception,” (God the deceiver) the inference by the reader
that they are is a natural one and the requirement that the deceiver is capable of introducing
deception even in mathematics is seen by commentators as a necessary part of Descartes’
argument.
Scholars contend that Descartes was not introducing a new hypothetical, merely
couching the idea of a deceptive God in terms that would not be offensive.Paul Erdős, the
eccentric and extremely prolific Hungarian-born mathematician referred to the notion of Deus
deception in a humorous context when he called God “the Supreme Fascist”, who deliberately
hid things from people, ranging from socks and passports to the most elegant of mathematical
proofs. A similar sentiment is expressed by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhikers Guide to
the Galaxy about the temptation of Adam and Eve by God: [God] puts an apple tree in the middle of
[the Garden of Eden] and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise
surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting “Gotcha.” It wouldn’t
have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it…Because if you’re dealing with somebody
who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under
them you know perfectly well they won’t give up.
They’ll get you in the end. == Scripture == There are various examples of arguable dystheism
in the Bible, sometimes cited as arguments for atheism (e.g. Bertrand Russell 1957),
most of them from the Pentateuch. A notable exception is the Book of Job, a
classical case study of theodicy, which can be argued to consciously discuss the possibility
of dystheism (e.g. Carl Jung, Answer to Job). Thomas Paine wrote in The Age of Reason that
“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.”
But Paine’s perspective was a deistic one, critical more of common beliefs about God
than of God himself. The New Testament contains references to an
“evil god”, specifically the “prince of this world” (John 14:30, ο του κοσμου
τουτου αρχων) or “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4, ο θεος του αιωνος
τουτου) who has “blinded the minds of men”.
Mainstream Christian theology sees these as references to Satan (“the Devil”), but Gnostics,
Marcionites and Manicheans saw these as references to Yahweh (God) himself.
References to God as wrathful or violent are more sparse in the New Testament than in the
Old, but several antitheist speakers, notably Christopher Hitchens and Matt Dillahunty,
have drawn attention to several passages.
== Misotheism in art and literature ==
Misotheistic and/or dysphemistic expression has a long history in the arts and literature.
Bernard Schweizer’s book Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism is devoted to this
topic. He traces the history of ideas behind monotheism from the Book of Job, via Epicureanism
and the twilight of Roman paganism, to deism, anarchism, Nietzschean philosophy, feminism,
and radical humanism. The main literary figures in his study are Percy Bysshe Shelley, Algernon
Swinburne, Zora Neale Hurston, Rebecca West, Elie Wiesel, Peter Shaffer, and Philip Pullman.
Schweizer argues that literature is the preferred medium for the expression of God’s hatred because
the creative possibilities of literature allow writers to simultaneously unburden themselves
of their monotheism, while ingeniously veiling their blasphemy. Other examples include: Goethe’s Prometheus
the work of the Marquis de Sade Emily Dickinson’s poem “Apparently With No
Surprise” depicts God as approving of suffering in the world, relating the tale of a flower
“beheaded” by a late frost as the sun “measure[s] off another day for an approving God”.
Mark Twain (himself a Deist) argued against what he saw as the petty God many followed
in a posthumously published book, The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven,
Eden, and the Flood.
He talks, in part, about the African “sleeping sickness”, malaria.
Ivan Karamazov in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1879 The Brothers Karamazov articulates what might
be termed a dystheistic rejection of God. Koons covered this argument in the lecture
immediately following the one referenced above. It was also discussed by Peter S. Fosl in
his essay titled “The Moral Imperative to Rebel Against God”.
Konrad, the protagonist of Adam Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve, calls God a tsar.In more
recent times, the sentiment is present in a variety of media: === Poetry and drama ===
The characters in several of Tennessee Williams’ plays express dysphemistic attitudes, including
the Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon in The Night of the Iguana.
Robert Frost’s poem “Design” questions how God could have created death if he were benevolent. In Jewish author Elie Wiesel’s play The Trial
of God (1979), the survivors of a pogrom, in which most of the inhabitants of a 17th-century
Jewish villages were massacred, put God on trial for his cruelty and indifference to
their misery.
The play is based on an actual trial Wiesel participated in that was conducted
by inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Nazi holocaust, but it also
references several other incidents in Jewish history including a similar trial conducted
by the Hasidic Rabbi Levi Yosef Yitzhak of Berdichev: Men and women are being beaten,
tortured and killed. True, they are victims of men. But the killers kill in God’s name.
Not all? True, but let one killer kill for God’s glory, and God is guilty. Every person
who suffers or causes suffering, every woman who is raped, and every child who is tormented
implicates Him. What, do you need more? A hundred or a thousand? Listen, either he is responsible
or he is not. If he is, let’s judge him.
If he is not, let him stop judging us. === Modern literature ===
Several non-Jewish authors share Wiesel’s concerns about God’s nature, including Salman
Rushdie (The Satanic Verses, Shalimar the Clown) and Anne Provoost (In the Shadow of
the Ark): Why would you trust a God that doesn’t give
us the right book? Throughout history, he’s given the Jewish people a book, he’s given
the Christians a book, and he’s given the Muslims books, and there are big similarities
between these books, but there are also contradictions. … He needs to come back and create clarity
and not … let us fight over who’s right. He should make it clear. So, my answer
to your question, “Should we trust [a God who can’t get things right]”, I wouldn’t.
The writing of Sir Kingsley Amis contains some misotheistic themes; e.g.
In The Green
Man (God’s appearance as the young man), and in The Anti-Death League (the anonymous poem
received by the chaplain). === Speculative fiction ===
Several speculative fiction works present a dysphemistic perspective, at least as far
back as the works of H. P. Lovecraft and Olaf Stapledon’s influential philosophical short
novel Star Maker. By the 1970s, Harlan Ellison even described
dystheism as a bit of a science fiction cliché. Ellison himself has dealt with the theme in
his “The Deathbird”, the title story of Deathbird Stories, a collection based on the theme of
(for the most part) malevolent modern-day gods. Lester del Rey’s “Evensong” (the first
story in Harlan Ellison’s much-acclaimed Dangerous Visions anthology), tells the story of a fugitive
God hunted down across the universe by a vengeful humanity that seeks to “put him in his place”.
“Faith of Our Fathers” by Philip K.
Dick, also from the same anthology, features a horrifying
vision of a being, possibly God, who is all-devouring and amoral. Philip Pullman’s previously mentioned
trilogy, His Dark Materials, presented the theme of a negligent or evil God to a wider
audience, as depicted in the 2007 film The Golden Compass based on the first book of
this trilogy. The original series of Star Trek featured
episodes with dysphemistic themes, amongst them “The Squire of Gothos”, “Who Mourns for
Adonais?”, “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”, and “The Return of
the Archons”. In “Encounter at Farpoint”, the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation,
Captain Jean-Luc Picard informs Q, a trickster with god-like powers similar to the antagonist
in the aforementioned “Squire of Gothos” episode, that 24th-century humans no longer had any
need to depend upon or worship god figures. This is an amplification of the tempered anti-theistic
sentiment from “Who Mourns for Adonais?”, in which Captain James T. Kirk tells Apollo
that “Mankind does not need gods, we find the one quite adequate.” In Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine it is revealed that the Klingon creation myth involves the first Klingons
killing the gods that created them because “They were more trouble than they were worth.”
In the film Pitch Black, anti-hero protagonist Richard B.
Riddick stated his own belief,
“Think someone could spend half their life in a slam with a horse bit in their mouth
and not believe? Think he could start in some liquor store trash bin with an umbilical
cord wrapped around his neck and not believe it? Got it all wrong, holy man. I believe
in God… and I hate the fucker.” Robert A. Heinlein’s book Job: A Comedy of
Justice, which is mostly about religious institutions, ends with an appearance by Yahweh which is
far from complimentary.
The Athar, a fictional organization from the
D&D’s Planescape Campaign Setting denies the divinity of the setting’s deities. They do,
however, tend to worship “The Great Unknown” in their place.
In the 2013 film Prisoners, Holly Jones and her husband Isaac lost their faith in God
after their son died of an unspecified disease. Since then, they have been kidnapping and
murdering children to make other parents lose faith in God and turning them
into revenge-driven hollow shells of their former selves, i.e.
Spreading their monotheism
to other people. As Holly Jones states to Keller Dover near the end of the film, “Making
children disappear is the war we wage with God. Makes people lose their faith, turns
them into demons like you.” ===
Popular music === Misotheism is a 2008 album by Belgian black
metal band Gorath. Dystheistic sentiment has also made its way
into popular music, evincing itself in controversial songs like “Dear God” by the band XTC (later
covered by Sarah McLachlan) and “Blasphemous Rumours” by Depeche Mode, which tells the
story of a teenage girl who attempted suicide, survived, and turned her life over to God,
only to be hit by a car, wind up on life support, and eventually die. A good deal of Gary Numan’s
work, specifically the album Exile, is laden with misotheistic themes.
The output of Oscar-winning songwriter/composer Randy Newman also includes several songs expressing
dysphemistic sentiment, including the ironic “He Gives Us All His Love” and the more overtly
mal theistic “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)”, both from his acclaimed 1972 album
Sail Away.
In the latter song, Newman bemoans the futility of dealing with God whose attitude
towards humanity, he sees as one of contempt and cruelty.
The song “God Made” by Andrew Jackson Jihad proposes dystheism and has an implied hatred
for God. More specifically, their song “Be Afraid of Jesus” is about a vengeful Christ
although this could be a critique of fundamentalist hate speech.
“God Am” by Alice in Chains from their self-titled release has many misotheistic themes about
the perceived apathy of God towards the evil in this world.
American death metal bands Deicide and Morbid Angel base much of their lyrics around monotheism
in name and concept.
Many bands in the black metal genre, such as Mayhem, Emperor,
Gorgoroth and Darkthrone express extreme monotheism in their lyrics and actions, which involved
burning down churches during the early 1990s. === Modern art ===
In 2006, Australian artist Archie Moore created a paper sculpture called “Maltheism”, which
was considered for a Telstra Art Award in 2006. The piece was intended as a representation
of a church made from pages of the Book of Deuteronomy: …and within its text is the
endorsement from God to Moses for invasion of other nations.
It says that you have the
right to invade, take all their resources, kill all the men (non-believers) and make
no treaty with them. == See also == Criticism of religion
Deontological ethics Divine command theory
Ethics in the Bible Evil God Challenge
Free will God as the Devil
God is dead Problem of hell
History of atheism Lawsuits Against God
Love of God Meta-ethics
Moral absolutism Nihilism
Religious fundamentalism Religious extremism
Omnibenevolence Theistic Satanism
Utilitarianism Virtue ethics == Notes.
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