Deconstructing, subverting, and playing with God is Evil

No worries. Christianity is EVERYWHERE in Western media, so pretty much every other religion gets sidelined unless it's a Very Special Episode or if they need a convenient horror story plot.

In the counter-side, we always get to be the bad guys nowadways. Particularly the Abrahamic God (experiment: Look for a Urban Fantasy series that involves the Abrahamic God and notice how He's always dead, missing or evil).

Well, that's kinda why I made this thread.

A benevolent, active, almighty deity makes it hard to make some plots work.

Especially when you have angels zapping around, it becomes hard to excuse the nice god not murdering all the demons/vampires/etc in Urban Fanstasy.

This is true.

Guess that's also why Satan gets to be a good guy.

Still, I'd like to see more people try. I get why it doesn't happen, and I get why it's hard, but after a while you have to wonder if God is always evil, stupid or useless, then how is it we even still exist? I mean, you'd think he'd just explode all our faces.

You'd expect that that's just as likely to happen as him getting his ass kicked by humans.

And how is it I keep falling back on Christian God when this is supposed to more general?

I think that there are several potential explanations for your focus returning so. For a few examples: I seem to recall your mentioning in another thread that you yourself are Christian; it seems quite natural then for the Christian God to be somewhat closer than others to the fore of your mind. It may also be that the contrast between usual conception and the trope is higher with the Christian God than with other deities, making for more obvious example. Finally, there's also the use of the singular in the trope title, which might slightly suggest a monotheistic deity to your mind.

......

That makes sense.

Ok, I'm going to try something new here:

The Greek Gods aren't actually dicks like Mythology paints them out to be.

The humans just made up those stories because they needed something to blame, so they said the gods are assholes. As for why said gods don't say anything to the contrary, they are busy getting their asses kicked by.....I don't know, lets say the Titans, because the war with them never ended.

.....That one is a little weak. Gonna need some tweaking.

Hmm... Perhaps you could take it further, and have the Titans be responsible for the untoward effects and events generally associated with the gods (summer/winter, etc.)?

If humanity is evil (or just jerks), and the Gods depend upon human worship for their life power, then they would be more or less forced to pretend to be evil (or jerks) in order to fulfill their worshipers' expectations. For all we know, the Gods actually hate this.

Oh wow. That's an interesting one. I never thought of that.

Oooh! What about Berserk?

As I recall, it has the Idea of Evil, where God exists as an evil being because people wanted something to blame for all the shit that happens, and the universe created it to be that thing they blame.

As the Berserk section for God Is Evil puts it, Evil is God. It's an interesting spin, and takes the idea that our gods are shaped by mankind to an interesting extent.

God as the scapegoat.

Sharysa, I don't know if you have actually read The Bible, but I have, and I really don't get how people can come to this conclusion. For one thing, I don't know where you get the idea, "He SAYS he's changed." The Bible gives the impression that God does not, has not, and will never change. Sure, he adapts to the situation, but he does not change.

Also, thinking that God is somehow "different" from one Testament to the other ignores the context and situation of each Testament. In the Old Testament, God's people were a particular genetic race and nation with boundaries that needed to be created and defended and served to nurture the Messianic lineage, meaning that while God allowed the nation to be dominated at times, any attempt at genocide would need to be met with lethal force.

By contrast, Christianity spans race, national boundaries, and even cultures, so those actions were no longer necessary. The whole point of evangelism and the baptism of Cornelius was that everyone had the potential to be a Christian if they wanted to, so militant nationalism would be counter-intuitive and self-defeating. And anybody who thinks that God has "gone soft" in the New Testament has left out Revelation, which alludes to a bloodbath of epic proportions that not even all the acts of divine justice in the Old Testament put together could match. Yahweh was always the "God of love and justice" (among other things), it's just that in the Old Testament he spread out both evenly throughout, where as in the New Testament he is reserving all his justice for one single occasion.

The irony of that is that at the same time Christianity was adopting other religions' beliefs to the point that mainstream Christianity today is rather different from in the first century, so it's not like their actions furthered God's interests in any way.

edited 12th Nov '14 2:50:41 PM by shiro_okami

Well, I was raised Catholic, so we're pretty far off the beaten path in terms of Christianity. I keep forgetting to qualify my religious stuff with that, sorry. :p

Speaking of adopting native practices, a lot of Christian/indigenous syncretism seems to have been either a hasty bid to keep SOMETHING of the native practices alive, or something mainly done in the rural areas where the religious higher-ups didn't/couldn't pay much attention.

edited 12th Nov '14 3:22:10 PM by Sharysa

You want to challenge God Is Evil? Okay. Take away God's omniscience and omnipotence. That way, He can't be held responsible for anything that's wrong in the world because He didn't foresee it and He can't change it now. Nobody can call Him crazy, evil, or uncaring that way.

If we're talking about other gods, you can't make them less jerkass-y because they're natural and social forces personified. Fire doesn't care if it warms or burns you, so why should a fire god? Writing doesn't care whether it's used to communicate truths or lies, so why should a god of writing?

In vodou, we generally accept that the spirits act like mortals sometimes because most of them used to be humans. We lie, cheat, steal, fight, betray each other, deceive ourselves, and cry over spilled milk, because we're our parents' children. The only difference between mortals and spirits is that humans have more freedom. They're so much like us that we EXPECT them to fuck up sometimes. Hell, even when we get mad at them, we remember who and what they are. (Of course, this is coming from someone who's never been in a Haitian earthquake.)

Bumping this up.

Give some more ideas. I still think there is a lot we can do on this subject.

After you, sir.

.....

I don't really have anything good right now.

I have a pretty lame suggestion if you want: God as a scientist. The Universe and everything in it was just an attempt to understand the extent of his powers, and humanity was an attempt to understand his own conscience (it would be the only objective way to do it). He periodically interferes with his system, shaking things up to see the results. He doesn't do it out of a sense of malice; in fact, he is indifferent to humanity on the whole. His prime objective is to just to gather knowledge.

Hmm.

It could work.

You know, I'm trying to think of something that plays off the Arc Rise Fantasia example I used earlier.

It does require God to be both flawed, and not totally omniscient, but genuinely benevolent.

As I've said before, it's pretty easy for people to misunderstand each other, so misunderstanding God shouldn't be too hard, especially when he's trying to do the dual job of respecting Mankind's free will, while still protecting them both from outside threats and from themselves. Trying to find the right balance between helping them, and letting them develop on their own.

It all goes wrong, mankind rebels and seeks to free themselves from the cruel god.

Or taking the Blue-and-Orange Morality in a new direction, God is not evil, but helps anyone who asks of it, in some form. So this means that Villains who pray to god and claim to do his/her will are correct in that s/he is on their side, but also on the side of the heroes, because s/he is on the side of all humans.

Maybe God's apathy is driven from people in the past, and a Leave Us Alone Forever moment. He's not dead, evil or missing, but obeying the wishes of people who told them they could handle it themselves.

Just reminding you that not being omnipotent doesn't mean you can't be a good God/god.

There are plenty of benevolent gods in various pantheons, who are often stated to not know everything. People can be good and have good intentions, but that's backfired on us many times.

It goes both ways: The Omnipotent God can know everything and be benevolent, and still seem evil because His actions or lack of actions will not make sense at first glance.

edited 22nd Nov '14 1:55:45 PM by Sharysa

Yes. That's what I was getting at. It just feels like it's really hard.

The fact that god not doing anything usually means he's evil has been my pet peeve for a while now.

It doesn't help that it sometimes feels like it's really hard to think of other options even if you're willing.

I like this as well, He does nothing cause he's respecting the people's original desires, which makes the fact that they suddenly come knocking at his door looking to kill him for doing nothing seem a bit unfair.

And another reminder:

• "Omnipotent" means "unlimited in power" — there is nothing he cannot do. But "can" and "will" are not the same.

• Omniscient" means "Unlimited in knowledge" — there is nothing he does not or cannot know. But "knowing and causing" or "knowing and acting on" are not the same.

although, if a being is not Omniscient then he probably isn't Omnipotent either; unless he decided for some weird reason to reject Omniscience.

Not really; it boils down to the difference between knowledge and ability.