Perhaps We’re All Going To Hell

Tell me this. Have you not, at some point in your life, questioned the morality in god?

I mean, this guy — he lets terrible things happen to good people, kills entire civilizations with natural disasters, disease and famine, and damns people to a hell of eternal torture for questioning his existence or for not obeying some cryptic orders that he wrote in some religious book. Doesn’t that sound like tyranny? I mean, I can kinda see where all the atheists are coming from.

Why of course no god exists, for if he did, how could there be all this cruelty in this world? If he wants me to believe in him so bad, he should just show himself and settle the matter forever. Otherwise, it’s so evil of him to punish me for refusing to believe!

Says the atheist. And they have a point — how could a nice god do this to his subjects?

Now, there do exist arguments that protect the morality of god against this line of reasoning, and some of them are pretty good too. One of my favourites was put forward by a man from ancient Roman-Egypt, named Plotinus -

For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good?

As an example, he compares the concept of ‘evil’ to a wound on your body. A wound hurts, but really it’s nothing more than the absence of healthy flesh and bone. When the body heals, the wound doesn’t “go somewhere else”, it simply disappears. It exists only as long as the flesh is absent, and thus has no existence of it’s own.

For someone back in his day, this was genius stuff.

But I’m not here to justify god’s actions — I don’t want to be one of those annoying guys on Twitter who say the pandemic happened for the best. No, lets take this in the opposite direction instead.

God could be a bad guy

The common discourse on god is often based on his perfection — on the notion that he is rational, that he loves us and that he is omnipotent. He’s supposed to protect us from evil, forgive us for our sins, love us as his children and propagate justice in our world. But these are expectations we and our religion have placed on him — mere assumptions on how he should act. We — especially atheists — project human virtues like wisdom, justice and rationality on god, and then reason about his existence based on whether he upholds those or not.

But really that makes no sense — he has no obligation to do what we ask of him. Why should he try to do anything we consider good? Why does he need to be a nice guy? After all, this expectation for god to be a morally good entity is just a shadow of our desire for the world to be a happy place. Nothing more.

“But this book here says he has those virtues”

And the book can be wrong. Obviously, a religion doesn’t have to be right for god to exist, one has nothing to do with the other. Perhaps everybody is wrong and he’s doing his own thing. Maybe he’s moody. Maybe he’s ugly. Maybe he’s a sadist and built this cruel world to entertain himself. Maybe he’s mortal. Maybe he lives in Mexico. Maybe he doesn’t show himself because he doesn’t feel like it. Maybe he’s not a ‘he’ at all. Maybe it’s an AI.

What would we know?

Think about it — if you don’t believe in god, could it be that instead of his existence, what you’re really rejecting is his moral perfection as you understand it? Could it be that you’re merely rejecting religion’s view of him, and not god himself?

For all we know, a bad god could exist and one of our religions could really be the true one, as irrational as it’s rules may be. Any of us who don’t practice it really could be going to hell. Damned to eternal torture, just like that. I mean, if god really is this all-powerful irrational entity with an ego, imagine how stupid it would be to defy his orders just because you don’t think he’s right.

What happens to a soldier who refuses to obey the orders of his general?

Would you really risk putting science — a set of rules that he could have created in the first place — above him? I mean, this guy could kill you in an instant. It’d be a terrible idea to stick to your ego instead of falling in line and worshipping this guy — human rationality has nothing on divine power, after all. Nobody’s asking you to love him, as long as you fear him.

I paint a cruel picture of existence, I understand. But what tangible reason is there for it to not be cruel? Is there a rule that says so? Why should your life necessarily be comfortable? God doesn’t owe you jack.

And even if he did, there’s nothing you can do about it if he refuses to pay.

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This post was originally posted on my own blog — Think.