However, I am also of the opinion that, if a God should exist, he is a malevolent being. I, of course, take this viewpoint with all Gods that are a part of current organised religion, for reasons which I shall explain later. The primary focus of my argument, however, shall be focused around the God known as "Yahweh", who is known to billions across the world as the God of the Bible (Old Testament and New Testament) and the God of the Torah and Judaism as a whole.
My reasoning for this choice is primarily because of the popularity of Yahweh; It is estimated that there are 2.18 billion Christians in the world, and a significantly lower population of 13.3 million Jews. This makes Yahweh the most worshipped God in the entire world, hence my reasoning for using him as the primary example.
For the purposes of this argument, considering my view that God doesn't actually exist, I will assume that he does; this argument, after all, is not an attempt to disprove God's existence, merely to show to theists that God, if he does indeed exist, is not a perfect, loving being. Therefore, one must account for my hypothetical viewpoint whilst reading the remainder of the argument.
I shall begin initially by attacking certain verses from the Christian "Bible". Now, let us begin.
Genesis 6:6-7 wrote:The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created – and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground – for I regret that I have made them.’
This is quite a straightforward one to start off; Yahweh regrets that he has made humanity (so much for an all-loving God) so he decides to drown everybody. We don't know exactly how many people died, but we can estimate somewhere between 5-10 million people (some estimate in the tens of millions). How can a God, who supposedly loves everyone no matter their sin, decide to exterminate millions of people? Oh wait, it was because they were being evil. I guess that justifies the slaughter, it's not like an omnipotent Yahweh could find an alternative solution.
Deuteronomy 6:15 wrote:for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land.
Not only does Yahweh's jealousy directly contradict the 10th Commandment, but because he is jealous of some "false Gods" he decides to threaten the Israelites with complete annihilation. Loving? Good? Those aren't traits I'd use to describe him from this verse.
Deuteronomy 7:1-2 wrote:When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations – the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you – and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.
In this verse, Yahweh sends the Israelites to conquer a land which doesn't actually belong to them, and clearly has some sort of vendetta against these seven tribes. Well, maybe they'll just surrender and leave? Nah. God has made his conditions clear: they must be shown no mercy. I guess he doesn't love everyone, huh? It must be pretty rotten luck to have been born a Hittite, because it's time that Yahweh shows them just how merciful he is to his creations.
Joshua 11:19-20 wrote:Except for the Hivites living in Gibeon, not one city made a treaty of peace with the Israelites, who took them all in battle. For it was the Lord himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the Lord had commanded Moses.
Wow. That's just cruel. First of all, Yahweh intentionally hardens the hearts of the people that the Israelites fight against, so that they will continue in their warring, and he does this so that they can be exterminated without mercy. So, he removes their free will so that they can be forced into being destroyed completely, yet again "without mercy". It... it speaks for itself really.
Exodus 4:24-26 wrote:At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. ‘Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,’ she said. So the Lord let him alone.
Yahweh tries to kill Moses, the person who is going to deliver his people from Egypt and become their "righteous" leader, simply because his son isn't circumcised? I think that's a slight overreaction Yahweh, and you evidently don't love him if you're willing to kill him over an incident like this.
Numbers 14:18 wrote:“The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
That's a Bible record for self-contradiction. You can keep calling yourself "abounding in love", it doesn't make you any more loving. But really? Why should the descendants, who possess no responsibility for the crimes of their ancestors, be punished for these very crimes? I think we can all agree that it's a tad ridiculous.
Numbers 11:31-33 wrote:Now a wind went out from the Lord and drove quail in from the sea. It scattered them up to two cubits deep all around the camp, as far as a day’s walk in any direction. All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers. Then they spread them out all around the camp. But while the meat was still between their teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the Lord burned against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague.
It seems that Yahweh set a plague on the Israelites for eating Quail. Not just any Quail, Quail that was there in the first place because He drove them there. But in all seriousness;
Death the the Quail eaters! May their sons and their sons' sons be blighted by a plague for consuming these mid-sized birds!
Genesis 19:24-26 wrote:Then the Lord rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah – from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities – and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
Yahweh destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah by raining down burning sulphur, thus demonstrating his immense love for humanity, and because Lot's wife committed the heinous act of looking back on the inferno consuming all of the land, she was punished most merci
Exodus 11:10 wrote:Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country.
Exodus 12:29-30 wrote:At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.
Ah, the (in)famous "Passover", in which Yahweh sent the Angel of Death to slaughter the firstborn child of every Egyptian. Not only did he do this, but he ensured it would happen by hardening Pharaoh's heart; thus, it was by his will and his will alone that these children died. And for what, Yahweh, and for what?
There are plenty more, obviously, but to avoid over-doing it (which I may have done already), I shall move onto my next, and final, point.
God is supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent, and thus the "Lord of all Creation". As God created everything, he didn't just create the conditions for sin, he created sin, and therefore everything that is wrong with the world. His omniscience dictates that he could have (and still can) prevent everything wrong with the world, and yet he chooses not to. He chooses not to, because humans are imperfect, imperfection that was the result of his work and his "glorious creation", as he created the initial tempter; the Serpent in the Garden of Eden was made by God's hand too, another imperfect being. He knew that man would succumb to the Serpent, and yet he did nothing. He watched it happen, he caused it to happen, and he punished man with mortality, with death, because of it.
So, is God loving and benevolent?
Well, ask yourself this; would you classify the sole creator of evil, the slaughterer of millions, the murder of the Egyptian firstborn children, the destroyer of cities, the self-confessed hypocrite, as benevolent?
If you would, I urge you to question your definition of "benevolence".
