Deconstructing, subverting, and playing with God is Evil

Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

I can kinda understand why this trope gets used:

1) It's pretty easy to interpret the God of Christianity as an evil overlord (as Shin Megami Tensei is chronically determined to do)

2) God is arguably the ultimate enemy; there's nothing more powerful than the being who created us, and arguably, to conquer said God is to rise higher than before.

I'm sure there were other reasons I had, but I'm blanking on them right now. Whatever the case, I think that this trope gets used too often, to the point of laziness. No-one can think of other reasons why God does what he does, so he must be an evil Jerkass.

I'm a little irked at Atlus for showing how horrible Yvwh can look (in all his old testament glory) but not really doing anything to show other sides of him, like how he is later interpreted in the New Testament, where he's a lot less Smite-happy.

I also want to play with Rage Against the Heavens as well. How do we know the reasons people are doing it are good.

I have some ideas, but I want to see what you guys say first before I put them out there, so how would you do it?

I'd say apply Hanlon's Razor. Instead of having the Christian God be old and wise, portray Him as someone who was/is inexperienced at dealing with us. He created humanity when He was lonely without realizing the full weight of the responsibility it involved. He tried to deal with the mistakes humanity made, and sometimes He botched it up. He lets evil exist because He is exhausted from trying to root it out over and over, only to find it resurface again. I'm not sure if I'm properly getting across what I mean. I give this another read in the morning and see if I can do a better job then.

edited 24th Oct '14 10:25:52 AM by Elfhunter

Actually, that's not bad.

Hell, I've considered the same thing myself at some points.

Perhaps show God as also being very overworked? Running all of creation can't be an easy job, even with omniscience and almighty powers. You could combine that with Elfhunter's ideas and have Him dealing with the stress of His job, so He may want to go with a "quick" solution to deal with His children, instead of going with a long-term but better idea. His omniscience could also make it very difficult for Him to see problems from a mortal perspective, adding onto His inexperience of humanity.

I've recently had the idea that a lot of his darker moments (or any Gods darker moments) could be people misinterpreting both the cause and the reason behind his actions for one reason or another.

I mean, most texts and legends about Gods are written or told by Humanity (or whatever beings worship said God) and we understand each other (or sometimes purposely re-interpret someones actions to fit our perspective), so how easy would it be to misunderstand God.

When I think of an interesting play on Rage Against the Heavens and God Is Evil, I often find myself thinking of that one Wii game Arc Rise Fantasia.

The final Boss is a goddess who has been behind am apparent Religion of Evil which is behind a lot of Atrocities in the story. The hero is supposed to choose between two different Laws that will save one group or another. He opts to Take a Third Option that naturally requires kicking said God's ass. Just one problem:

The Goddess turns out to be exact as good and kind as said religion has said she is. In fact, she's been appearing throughout the game as a minor character, helping the people after awakening from a long sleep, and when she find out that the hero just plans to beat her up and create a world where she's not needed, she's naturally none too pleased. The fact that she was once a normal girl who was made to be a Goddess by the people, and did exactly as she was asked doesn't help, since the hero's solution specifically screws her over.

I'm not totally doing it justice, cause I never played the game, but I think that's the gist of it. It's an interesting idea I think.

Well, there's a good start point.

I never liked the way they basically left Eesa out to dry, given how she was hardly one of the bad guys. Has anyone ever heard of puzzling out new solutions?

I always liked the idea of a deity who claims to be omnipotent and all-knowing...and unfortunately for him, only about 90% of that is true. He can perceive the entire world as it is, all possible futures...except for the ones where he makes direct alterations to the world, because to live in his creation, he had to accept the universal limitations of "you can't see your own future without help" and "you can't undo what you've already done." Which essentially means he's paralyzed by indecision at any given time (at least until the Godzilla Threshold is hit), but he's a afraid of admitting it out of a combination of pride and fear. This makes him come off as extremely aloof and arrogant, which is compounded when his high priest figures this out, and desperately wanting to undo some tragedy in his own past, sponsors an initiative to make all possible futures of the world so bad, the god has no choice but to Cosmic Retcon history so that the priest's loved ones come back as an extension of that miracle.

There's also my own Sophia Paradox, who turned against her world...because it is such a Crapsack World that she decided to start over from scratch, not to mention having severe emotional problems from trying to support everything on her own and her own past. And the characters agree with the sentiment, and honestly pity her. The main issue is whether it's better to tear down and start from scratch, or work with what you have to make the world better.

I earnestly despise the play that this trope gets (particularly in the form of Rage Against the Heavens), so! >:)

There's a sort of enormous decision-tree series of questions I'm thinking of, starting with "what kind of god are we talking about here" and "define what you mean by 'evil'", but a lot of it can be distilled into "...and what exactly is so special about you?"

Let's call it "the Job Problem".

Writers Have No Sense of Scale. 7000 years of recorded history in a universe two million times older, and only the most exceptional humans pass even 1.5% of that. 2•10¹³ metres to the outermost reach of human influence in a cosmos where the edge of the universe is at least that far if that far is a metre away, and one of those exceptional humans will walk 0.000057% of that distance in the course of their lifetimes. That much exploration, and there are at least 10+ formal explanations for why a person made the choices they did and each makes perfect sense in one particular area and is completely incompatible with any of the others.

So what we have for determining right from wrong is based on extrapolating from personal experience and combining that with the broad cultural ethical consensus derived from the accumulation of other peoples' personal experience. It's a pretty nifty patch job for what it's worth - even though it doesn't incorporate vast sectors of humanity whose experiences and opinions are conventionally disregarded and not historically passed down, it's heavily weighted towards the recent past because information decays and becomes unreliable, and the brains which contributed to the consensus are known to suffer from intrinsic cognitive biases that introduce irreconcilable systemic errors (like inevitably skewing the results in their own favour in most ways) into the results. But most importantly for the question at hand, none of the models we have - except, to a limited extent, various religious texts, at least some of which are made up - account for the experience of a being of such power and knowledge to craft souls and universes.

It's very odd to suggest that such a being would not have a slightly better understanding of what its business is than humans - especially the Abrahamic God, the various theologies of whom universally agree that God pays scrupulous attention to detail.

Those are shoes into which it is idiomatically impossible to step - but someone who sought to condemn God on charges of cosmological abuse would have to. A protagonist who tried... I would marvel if they could maintain their resolve by the time they became a mere interstellar post-singularity intelligence. I would marvel if the original would be able to determine the difference between their ultimate form from the God they intended to judge.

Wow, that was longer than I expected starting out. Sorry, not sorry.

edited 24th Oct '14 6:07:54 PM by Noaqiyeum

The problem with portraying the Abrahamic God as both a God of Evil and a real God is that he's portrayed as being always right and having the higher standards to the point that those traits essentially define his him. Generally if a person considers him a God of Evil it's because they either dismiss his actual existence or are too lazy to "play God's advocate" and see things from his point of view.

This actually has an impact on the thread subject, because according to The Bible, humans were made 'in God's image'; in other words, humans possess a sense of morality because God is a moral being and shared that trait with his creations. Humans were created with a potential for good and only later acquired a tendency for evil.

According to that logic, if a God of Evil created beings, one would expect that they would created to be amoral and would need the potential or tendency for good instilled in them. It would be interesting to explore the implications of a race created by a God of Evil that felt guilty for being good because it violated their sense of immorality given by their creator, or felt guilty for having a sense of free will because they weren't supposed to have one.

TL;DR - So, a milder variation of Blue-and-Orange Morality?

I'd like to add this to my original post, but I'll go further say we share our emotional range with Him as well (what I mean is, I've only ever heard of God having two default emotional modes - Pride when we're faithful and Anger when we're not). So, in the context of my original post, God can make emotional mistakes, showing that even He is learning something alongside humanity.

edited 24th Oct '14 8:03:30 PM by Elfhunter

What would you call an "emotional mistake"? One of the other supposed differences between the Abrahamic God and humanity is that humans make mistakes while God does not.

edited 24th Oct '14 8:40:36 PM by shiro_okami

Well, I don't have anything concrete (I was just trying to find reasons for the Hanlon's Razor concept to work), but I think I'd point to the Tower of Babel incident. Humans gather together and build a tower to try and reach Heaven, God responds by creating new languages and overwriting everything these people had ever learned, thereby resulting in them being unable to understand each other. That was a tad bit extreme, given how many options he had, and not to mention all the problems it has caused throughout history; problems an Omniscient God would have foreseen but still allowed to happen. I'd suggest maybe that His choice wasn't brought about by rational thought, but rather by indignation at the humans' actions.

NOTE: I am not claiming that this is what actually happened, nor am I putting forth any serious alternative explanations to the events of The Bible. I am only stating an idea based on a premise that I have suggested, nothing more.

NOTE 2: I am a Hindu, so forgive me if I got any details wrong.

edited 24th Oct '14 9:14:03 PM by Elfhunter

Well of course it was brought about by indignation at the humans' actions. The Abrahamic God is very much an emotional being. And obviously God didn't think it was too extreme or a mistake or else he would have reversed it.

Remember, God is described in The Bible as the wisest being in existence, and thus the absolute last person Hanlon's Razor would apply to. Now if we are talking about God as a fictional literary character rather than a real deity, then you could reject those descriptions and substitute your own interpretation.

edited 25th Oct '14 11:43:48 AM by shiro_okami

that last part, yes. I spent the entirety of yesterday wondering if I should mention that or whether the part under NOTE in my previous post would be sufficient. I will restate it here - I am talking about a fictional interpretation of the Christian God, Who has been created solely as a means to justify the use of Hanlon's Razor. Furthermore, I'd like to substitute the word "Inexperience"instead of "stupidity" in its definition.

edited 25th Oct '14 5:01:59 PM by Elfhunter

Note that we don't have to specifically focus on the Christian God.

I mean, I mentioned Shin Megami Tensei cause that's a big case of Status Quo Is God Is Evil, but he's just one example.

Other Gods are possible as well.

edited 25th Oct '14 5:03:25 PM by HandsomeRob

Hmm, how to deconstruct the trope of "God is Evil" without making God all good? Is that it? There seems only two ways to go: either God is limited in power but doing the best he/she can; or God is a transcendent being whose morality is orange to our blue (with orange being vastly more complex and reality-grounded than blue).

Sounds good.

Though I'd also be interested in God actually being good, but somehow being seen as evil anyway, like with the aforementioned Arc Rise Fantasia.

It would add a bittersweetness to the heroes victory, as they end up killing an innocent, and now have to live with that fact, when it was probably a something that never needed to happen in the first place.

I definitely want there to be as many spins on the idea as possible.

Ooh! How about God Is Evil cause it's a role he has to play for one reason or another, and he has no choice in the matter. He raises Mankind up to be strong enough to kill him, both to free them, and to free himself (or herself if we go with a Goddess) from this unwanted role.

Are you aware that that is the plot to "God Emperor of Dune"? Not a bad story.

No I was not.

Sounds interesting.

Here's another one:

Killing God doesn't free Man from any manipulations, because it's just a repeat of a previous cycle that took place before (think the Greek Gods overthrowing the titans). Some gods accept this, believing it to be unbreakable, and don't bother to fight back; some refuse to go out that way and search for ways to break the cycle, etc, etc.

Humans bear grudges agains the gods for various valid and invalid reasons, but it becomes clear that they are just repeating the mistakes of their predecessors, and that they will suffer the same fate later, so rather than overthrowing the Gods, and casting them aside, they decide to live with them as equals instead, breaking the cycle that had come before.

For another idea, some humans know full well that the Gods aren't really evil, but seek to kill them anyway, cause they either think they can do a better job, are hungry for their power, or just believe that the mere existence of these deities holds mankind back, regardless of their intentions, with Morality playing no real role in their actions whatsoever.

Not sure how well that works; these ideas seem so much better in my head.

The premise in your second paragraph resembles the plot of "The Tides of God" by Ted Reynolds. Humans travel in space to intercept an alien artifact that is the source of human religious feeling, in order to destroy it.

Another one you might be interested in is "Between the Rivers" by Harry Turtledove. It involves humans rebelling for free will against control by the Gods in a setting based on ancient Mesopotamia. The humans win, but free will eventually turns out to have some drawbacks.

Giving this a bump.

Still think there's more to be said.

The fact that Christianity is a majority religion is of itself a BIG factor in exploring how God Is Evil.

It didn't get that way because Jesus Was Way Cool, it got that way because the very dogma of "there is only one God" led Christians to desecrate/destroy other religions' sacred sites, forced existing non-believers to convert or die, and a host of other less-than-ideal things. God did not protest that, which would make him a Well-Intentioned Extremist AT BEST.

Given the huge differences between the Old and New Testaments, one might view the Nice God of the New Testament and modern times as propaganda or a Villain with Good Publicity. He SAYS he's changed, but he's really still Old Testament God with more subtlety.

edited 8th Nov '14 10:55:16 AM by Sharysa

You mean like how he seems to be portrayed in the most recent Shin Megami Tensei games?

I did mention the possibility that some of his actions have been misunderstood and re-interpreted over the years (both by followers and dissenters) to promote their own agendas.

For example; worshippers claim that god will smite the unbelievers and that everything is sinful in order to use his name to control others.

Those who disbelieve claim that since he doesn't solve the problem of evil, or that bad things happen to good people indicate he must really be a villain.

All the while, God is.....well, I don't know what he's doing, but it's something that isn't evil or anything. Basically, it's all a big ass misunderstanding.

I mean, we'll bend over backwards to leather pants lots of characters. Hell, Paradise Lost does an incredible job of Leather Pantsing Satan (something the Author did not intend at all), so why not take some time to think about whether we fully understand God at all. Most people find Satan more interesting, and therefore don't really try to get into God's head at all.

Hmm, this doesn't sound right, but my point we need to be more creative with our portrayal of fictional gods.

Edit: Oh wait. I got something:

Big battle between Good and Evil. God of the good side is either killed or badly injured. Evil side comes up with good plan. Form religion in name of good sides god, but purposefully make it into Corrupt Church, while portraying themselves as misunderstood in order to convince humanity to rebel against good side's god. Said god may or may not draw power strength from love of followers, so this might be done to weaken him, or might be done in order to just mock him while he sits injured and unable to do anything by showing how the being he created and fought for can be so easily turned against him, and will eventually abandon him.

......Why do all my ideas feel kind of weak?

edited 8th Nov '14 2:40:21 PM by HandsomeRob

On the "those who disbelieve" part, are they of some other religion, atheists, or just bitter Christians?

Because a lot of other religions don't have the idea that "bad things ABSOLUTELY MUST happen to good people because their god(s) have a plan for them." A number of religions just go, "bad things happen to good people because the world is crazy sometimes."

edited 8th Nov '14 9:47:46 PM by Sharysa

Could be anyone really.

I wonder if I'm focusing a bit too much on Christian God as well. I did say that wasn't my full intention.

Gotta cover a wider spectrum.

You might want to take a look at Gnosticism. Even if it won't help its still pretty interesting.

edited 9th Nov '14 9:41:32 AM by Manicnightmarepixie