Deconstructing, subverting, and playing with God is Evil

Yeah, it depends largely on who you ask. In fact, I'm of the opinion that the old/new testament interpretations are largely Not So Different.

For example, YHWH does actually show considerable mercy at a few points in the old testament. For example, in the book of Judges, he always comes back for Israel, despite being betrayed by them too many times to count. He also calls out his Prophet, Jonah, for wishing divine wrath upon a non-Jewish nation. He makes it quite clear that he values people of every nation, and really wishes that he wouldn't have to punish anyone.

On the flip side, the New Testament introduces the concept of Hell. Jesus wasn't always nice to everyone, particularly to the Pharisees. While far from a Blood Knight, I would argue that Jesus isn't quite a pacifist (upending tables and chasing people with a whip isn't something Gandhi would do, I don't think). And then there's the book of Revelation, where he causes global natural disasters to achieve his ends.

So, in conclusion, I would state that the two act pretty similarly, it's just that the Old Testament focuses more on the "This is God's law" where as the New Testament focuses more on Jesus's Heroic Sacrifice.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

Not true in The Dresden Files, where god is around, gives aid to his champions (Knights of the Cross), and keeps Harry safe when he's on consecrated ground. IIRC the earlier books of Anita Blake mention God's presence a few times when she goes to a church, before she decides to throw herself into Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny full speed. If we assume that all realities exist somewhere, then your characters and their situations are real, but then that ties into is it real because you write it, or do you write it because it's real? If the former, are you their God?^note If it's fanfic, did you just take God's place? There's also the lovely theory that this world is (a) Hell, or at least Purgatory, and we're misunderstanding the meaning of eternity. RiverWorld covered that pretty well, IMO.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Why would we assume that "all realities exist somewhere"?

On what sound principle would one base such an assumption? We might as well assume that every time a neuron fires in a living brain it creates a horse out of thin air.

I'm perfectly fine with the theory of the multiverse in that there may be "something" outside our own universe that somehow spawned our universe along many others as part of its natural capacity, but that doesn't mean that the universes spawned in that exoverse are in any way shaped by our actions (in this universe, you chose the fish which instantly "creates" an alternate universe as old as our own and identical in all ways where you chose the vegetarian quiche, one where you chose the beef, another where you chose the Waldorf Salad and yet another where you said "Fuck it, I'm going to MacDonalds") or our thoughts (writing an alternate history where the South won the Civil War suddenly creates a universe as old as our own give or take a few years that is identical to ours except for that one event, right down to having the same people in it) in this universe.

I could write a billion stories in which firebreathing winged unicorns discuss Kant's philosophies while getting drunk on sulphuric acid (OK, maybe not billions) but it's not going to mean that they've suddenly sprung into existence somewhere for realsies.

A distant galaxy populated with Jedis, Sith and annoying robots didn't retroactively spring into existence a long time ago just because George Lucas wrote a script.

We're human beings, we're creative storytellers, but we don't have the power to make things real just by writing them. Even the things that were once Science Fiction and are now reality required a lot of other people doing really clever things - we didn't suddenly gain the ability to get to the moon just because Cyrano de Bergerac wrote about it, we didn't suddenly have communications satellites because Clarke wrote a story that featured them - and Mars wasn't suddenly populated by strange aliens due to the efforts of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.G. Wells.

Nor do alternate universes pop into existence every time someone writes a short story or novel.

Writing a fictional story about a place or time that does not exist and "populating" it with people who also don't exist is not the same as creating a real world/time filled with real people, so having crappy things happen to the characters in a story (because "fiction is based on conflict" or "for the enjoyment of others) does not make the author of the story an "evil god" inflicting woe on his creations.

If we had that capacity to imagine things into existence, it wouldn't have taken the human race long to work out how to imagine them into existence here and we'd all be flying around on the dragons, firebreathing winged unicorns and personal rocket packs we dreamed up rather than busting a gut trying to afford to get the car fixed.

We're not gods, for all our "creativeness", so we can't be "evil gods" or "good gods".

I agree with everything else you said, but I have to disagree with this statement. Hell is not a concept found in The Bible (see Fire and Brimstone Hell for more info; link goes to Analysis page). Almost every time the Bible talks about death outside of symbolic Revelation it describes it as Cessation of Existence.

edited 20th Jun '15 6:23:56 PM by shiro_okami

I read it, actually sound interesting. The idea of the Fire and Brimstone Hell is product of "Blind Idiot" Translation and bad interpretations.

I like it.

Related to the original theme. I want write a story who involved a Good God, but who don't affect the mankind unless is a Life or death/extintion situation. All because he think who the free will of mankind is more important.

Watch me destroying my country

I personally believe in cessation of existence for Hell, but I like to portray it as being kind of a World of Silence inspired by Zelda's Twilight Realm aesthetically. You aren't actively being tortured, but the place just sort of radiates existential hopelessness. Most of the people there have gotten Bored with Insanity long ago.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

I like the concept a lot. But a bit more related to the topic, if God is good and he make a "paradise", how you make it?.

I make the paradise as people dreaming with their most loved desires. Feeling themselves realizated, and when they get bored?. They just sleep a dreamless sleep until someone important to them appear.

Watch me destroying my country

My setting has three afterlives: Heaven, Hell, and Reincarnation (There's also a Purgatory, but that's more or less a waiting room). You don't usually spend eternity in one afterlife, but rather, spend some amount of time in one until it's time to reincarnate again.

With Heaven, I'm thinking I'll make that more or less be a really nice, clean city. Upon entering Heaven, you're given "Virtue Points" (Heaven's currency) depending on how good you were in life, and you're allowed to spend them as you like. Basic necessities (food, water, shelter, electricity) are entirely free, though. (An upper-middle class American would be considered minimum-standard living in Heaven)

Something about Heaven makes people behave more laid-back and tolerant of each other. People are generally allowed to run free and do whatever they feel like, though if a person can't decide what to do, God can assign them something to do-because of God's semi-omniscience (he isn't all powerful in this story), his advice is usually helpful.

edited 10th Dec '15 11:37:12 AM by Protagonist506

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

Should Good God be omnipotent?

Depend of the tone, i make him omnipotent, the motive of the Paradox of evil?.

God promise Mankind respect the free will, and he realize who the only way who he can fully make it is be apathic. He help us when the world is in real danger (extintion-like danger).

Watch me destroying my country

In my story, I have these rules for the setting's God-Expy:

The Holy Spirit-Expy is the only part of God that is actually omnipotent-but it's very slow and imprecise. A good way to describe it is like this: It decrees that good will ultimately triumph over evil. But this doesn't apply too smaller-scale victories necessarily. This basically justifies "villains always win in the second act, but never the third").

God the Father-Expy is fairly powerful, and able to solve problems in the semi-short term, but isn't omnipotent. This is why he has a tendency to act Old-Testamenty, he's simply doing what he has to do for the greater good of humanity, even if it's ugly.

I haven't yet included an obvious Christ analogue, but I'm thinking if I get around to one I'll probably make them a small-steps hero specifically selected by YHWH-expy to counterbalance his Needs Of The Many philosophy. I'm thinking he'll be the progenitor/prototype to the setting's equivalent of Paladins.

edited 11th Dec '15 1:17:55 AM by Protagonist506

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

In my universe of Fausto Cross, there is a omnipotent, omniscient and omnipreset God Is Good Abrahamic God.

In this case, God's logic is basically that of creating good and evil and letting mankind makes its choice with him actng as a Mentor Archetype for humanity to guide them to good, but ultimately letting them choose what they want to do. He only interferes via third parties (angels, prophets, demon hunters, e.t.c) and very indirectly. Luckily, since he's omniscient, he can help a lot by doing very little (as he knows where to exert his influence to cause bigger waves, like a scheming equivalent Rube Goldber Device).

So basically he's The Chessmaster The Spymaster All Powerful By Stander The Ob I Wan.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

For one, no death, aging, or sickness (anybody who thinks that this would be boring has no imagination). The other important part is that people have more control over their desires; they no longer have an inclination to do something selfish, wrong, corrupt, or evil. Anybody who does do something like that anyway For the Evulz is dealt with immediately by God himself. Those two things alone would solve a lot of problems.

edited 13th Dec '15 12:54:02 PM by shiro_okami

So you're saying no free will, subject to the ultimate Thought Police and you can't even escape by dying - forever.

Sorry, but my imagination is quite capable of seeing the clear and obvious horrors in such a system.

Having your mind fucked with to the point you no longer feel inclined to have "ungood" thoughts doesn't sound remotely like a "Paradise" or the actions of a "good" god.

edited 13th Dec '15 7:32:09 PM by Wolf1066

How in the world do you get "no free will" from "more control over their desires" and the possibility of For the Evulz? Did you actually stop to mentally process what you read before writing your response?

You totally misunderstood what I said to the most extreme degree possible. I'm not saying no free will, I'm saying more free will. The reason why well-meaning humans can still have "bad" thoughts is because our free will is tainted. Right now, it is impossible for humans for humans to be purely good. We are forced to be flawed. I'm not saying that we need to be "mindfucked", I'm saying that humans already are mindfucked, and have been for thousands of years, and that un-fucking them would solve a lot of problems.

"Inclination" and "choice" are not synonyms. An individual without an inclination to be bad can still choose to be evil, and a person with an inclination to be bad can still choose to be good.

What you think I said is the exact opposite of what I am actually saying.

Where are you getting mind-altering drugs, "thought police", and "mind-reading dictators" from? At no point did I mention any of that.

edited 14th Dec '15 8:34:42 PM by shiro_okami

We are not "forced" to be flawed, nor is our free will "tainted". By whom do you claim we are forced, whence comes your hypothetical "tainting"

Where I get "no free will" is quite simple: if something stops us from behaving as human beings do and have done, then the free will to do that is gone. You can easily, with modern psychotropic drugs, make people "disinclined" to perform certain actions - but that's not giving them "extra free will", it's suppressing their minds.

You also stated that if someone decided to do something For the Evulz then the Celestial Thought Policeman would intercede directly.

Not exactly freedom of choice when you can't ever get away with anything.

What you have described is not a paradise, but an eternal dictatorship far above anything described by Orwell in {{1984}}.

Being subject to a thought-reading dictator for eternity may be your personal idea of "paradise" and "goodness", but it certainly isn't mine.

I wonder if you realise how long "forever" actually would be. You seem to bandy the term about without any comprehension of the length of time entailed and (rather arrogantly) say that people who do comprehend how sodding long even a few billion years would be "have no imagination".

As the topic of the thread is "Deconstructing, subverting and playing with God Is Evil", not "my views on what paradise would be", I suggest that any further discussion be taken to PM.

edited 14th Dec '15 7:51:33 PM by Wolf1066

No, we`re trying to play with God Is Evil and the idea of afterlife is important. Sorry but if we disagree ...sorry?.

Watch me destroying my country

The afterlife won't matter THAT much to the presumbly alive-and-not-in-the-afterlife protagonists and majority of the other characters.

Also, you`re a Chaos follower?

Well, yes, but someone will have to explain how it works.

Honestly, i`d prefer using the Jewish Kabalah who said who the Ultimate Fate is becoming One with God in an eternal and inhuman way and God isn`t omnipotent, but just an Humanoid Avatar of the Ain Soph (the eternal god, a being beyond good and evil)

Watch me destroying my country

Well, that does assume that protagonists are alive and our story isn't about the afterlife. I'm still working on how to make Heaven work in my setting for the Crystal Dragon Jesus religion, but it'll probably resemble Tomorrowland or a better-done Rapture, where people are free to create and learn new things about the universe. As for the Who Wants to Live Forever? deal, I would argue existence itself may have some sort of value-in addition, the shorter your life, the most stuff you miss out on. If a person were to cease to exist entirely, they would miss out on infinite happy experiences in the future they would otherwise have.

How my story deconstructs Rage Against the Heavens is by showing why a deity ruling over mankind like an old testament God-expy might be necessary and the consequences of a large group of people (the setting's antagonist's) rejecting him. At least In-Universe, humans have some sort of need for the deity-it's humanity's natural state to worship him, so the extreme Nay-theism of the antagonists creates a lot of "spiritual restlessness", for lack of a better term. The hole for a proper deity is filled with human vices and nightmarish totalitarian regimes. More over, despite claiming to be out for mankind's best interests, they're rejecting major components of what it means to be human (their loathing of the setting's YHWH-expy includes a rejection of various virtues he's set fourth-or at least they interpret these virtues very differently.).

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

Er... what? What?

Why do humans have a 'need' for a deity? Why is it their 'natural state'? Why does that hole have to filled with vices and nightmares? Why does the hole even exist?

If you want to deconstruct God Is Evil, going with an explanation that makes humans utterly dependent on God just because it's "their very nature" is not going to help. Why does God make human so dependent on Him, for example? Why does the very dependence on God not lead to "nightmarish totalitarian regimes" with its own set of vices, even/especially if those vices are referred to as virtues by God and the humans that depend on Him?

edited 4th Jul '16 5:47:05 AM by hellomoto

Just chiming in with an odd perspective that I don't think is much represented here.

When one is writing a story, a certain amount of one's own philosophy inevitably leaks into the framing of various situations. For instance, what one considers to be a moral good will inform how one presents the good in one's work to some degree, even if one is consciously writing from a morally neutral viewpoint or against one's own biases. It's hard to put on a front on every level, because ultimately that front is something that you invented, shaped by the way that you see yourself and others and the world around you.

I find it very hard to avoid the way that I think about meaning and value in what I write. If you want a reductive self-description, I'm an existentialist of sorts, and an agnostic: I think that life is what you make it, and that this is a beautiful thing; and while I cannot say that there is or is not a God (or gods), whether the creator-type or the overseer-type, I feel like this deity would have a lot more to concern themselves with than petty human matters.

As such, I feel that while most of us can safely agree on certain moral principles, ascribing a divine source to them is dubious, and requiring a divine source outright presumptuous. It is exceedingly trite to say that there are many moral atheists and immoral believers in this world, but a big part of what makes it so played out is that it is self-evident. Sure, it can still be argued that a benevolent or malevolent god is the ultimate source of all this kindness and cruelty regardless of belief, but that opens up all sorts of strange lines of speculation regarding universalism and predestination that, while fascinating to me, tend to colour outside the lines of dogma to begin with and have their own flaws to examine.

But again, that doesn't take a supreme being or a universal progenitor or architect out of the picture. It just changes their role in the equation.

What I'm getting at is: What if God is so alien to us that ascribing motivations as we understand them is meaningless, and thus attributing what happens in our lives to their plan is potentially a truism without value? Or, conversely, what if God is good, but the order on which such a force operates is so vast that trying to parse moral sums winds up being a coin flip anyway? What if there are so many sides to God-ness that definitions of good and evil from a divine perspective frequently contradict one another? And so forth.

I have characters who are under the impression that God is a total jerk or grade-A cool beans based on personal experiences natural and supernatural, but ultimately, I like the idea of it all being kind of beside the point.

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Honestly, I`d make the Abrahamic God being initially just a Lawful Neutral God of metals before he decided Take Over the World and make it better, he managed to do it and defeat Marduk, the King of Babel and take the throne, then YHVH impose monotheism in a attempt to manipulate the whole Gods Need Prayer Badly, when he is strong enough, he use his Throne, who he transform in the Merkabah, the Chariot of God and reboot the entire reality, creating the world as we know, who was like a 90% equal, but the spiritual beings now live in the Underworld, a place where they are free to do whatever they want.

The Gods who YHVH find nice enough aren`t in the Undeworld, but in their own domains, the Spiritual Realm of YHVH is a Constitutional Monarchy with the Heaven as the Capital, other deities serve as well as allies or neutrals.

The Japanese Amatsukami are Neutral about the Kingdom of YHVH and Hades eventually become the more powerful Deity of the greek pantheon thanks to YHVH manipulations...and Hades do a decent Job as one of YHVH`s biggest allies. Odin and the nordic Gods manage to work with YHVH despite their differencies (YHVH is a Lawful Good deity who is surprisingly egalitarian for his time, and he is just becoming better with the time, the sheer power of monotheism is amazing while Odin is Lawful Neutral...and a Social Darwinist of the first degree, the only reason why he decide serve YHVH is because well...Might Makes Right work in both directions).

Lucifer decide who YHVH is becoming a tyrant and he try to rebel, but he fails and YHVH send him to the Underworld...in a plan to make Lucifer the King of the Underworld and make Luci impose some type of peace in that abysm.

Is reaveled who YHVH actually take the creative power of the Demiurge...who is a scared child who was adopted by YHVH, the real reason why become the Primordial Father was because the Demiurge had faith in Him -being the first god who actually try to do things better for all give a lot of points-, YHVH in paid decide take with Demiurge, the "guilt for all the things of this world".

All things were ccording to His Plan...until the Primordial Mother Godess Sophia awaken,joins to Lucifer and convince other Gods to attack YHVH, usually using other Godess as pawns, Sophia is liberated of her Prision inside the Merkabah and fuse herself with Ashera, the wife of Yahve in his days as a polytheist deity, then The Heavenly Father fight against the Earthy Mother, in a fight who end with Lucifer giving the final blow, killing God.

Sophia banishes and the forgotten deities see how Heaven falls and now they are free to travel to the human world.

Year: 1914.

Years later Those Wacky Nazis are sending Thor to fight against the russian God of War Jarilo, Japan is controlled by the letal duo of the Emperor and the Godess Amaterasu and they are burning China to ashes, USA falls in a civil war who only ends after the rise of the new national God, Uncle Sam, the situation is scary. A man decide who the Gods should serve Man instead of Man serving the gods and he managed to do the imposible, he make a deity his slave.

Several Years later, 2014 AC,

The Angels finally managed to use the rests of the Merkabah as their base and they scape to the real World, many spiritual domains dissapeared by the massive lack of faith -why have faith when the gods are my slaves- and Lucifer, angry and with VERY GOOD reasons decide send his biggest attack to the Human Kingdom (also, the genocides were way worse, the population is minimal, is a Forever War and all the races who aren`t white or asian are basically extinct)

The Angels cross the Despair Event Horizon and dictate who mankind as we know is beyond salvation and decide create a new race of Humans, then destroy the old world in the Neo Eden Project.

They do it, but the humans manage to sabotage the project, no Neo Eden for nobody, just some islands in middle of Nowhere, the Earth is gone.

All of this because Lucifer decide kill God. At least he had the Underworld...oh wait, the Underworld was create by YHVH and now is falling too, the Underworld only can resist other 100 years.

...Damn, Kill YHVH and Liberate the Old Gods sounded so heroic, why this ended in this way?

PD: I`d Summon Handsome Rob

edited 7th Jul '16 9:16:12 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

@Protagonist 506 Oddly enough, your description is pretty much how The Bible describes the human condition after the "Fall of Man". Is that by accident or design?

A better question to ask is, What/who determines what is a virtue or vice? Humans have proven to be failures at gaining a consensus in determining what is or is not a virtue or vice, so could God really do any worse?

Humans have set up totalitarian regimes despite the fact that humans are not dependent on human governments to live. And human governments can't even solve any problems anyway. What makes dependence on God not lead to that end that is that while humans are corruptible, God is not. That is part of what makes God who he is.

Of course, if God really was just as bad as a human with phenomenal power, if not worse, it would be a nightmare.

edited 8th Jul '16 8:35:29 PM by shiro_okami

It's by design (in fact, reading the book of Judges is part of what gave me the idea for the setting).

Actually, come to think of it, even though the main motivation of the villains is Rage Against the Heavens (and that's a major component as to why they're evil), organizations and people in my setting that are merely neutral or apathetic towards God-Expy are usually portrayed in a more positive light. For example, most other deities in the setting operate on a sort of Blue-and-Orange Morality that's not quite good or evil. For example, the death goddess encourages self-destructive hedonism and wishes that everything would just hurry up and die-but only because she went to all the trouble of setting up an amazing afterlife party and wishes more people could enjoy it. The actively evil deities are: 1) A Straw Nihilist of sorts that wants to completely derail any aspect of fate in the universe and eventually destroy it on the principle of Who Wants to Live Forever?, and 2) a Knight Templar who thinks God-Expy is too moderate.

As for why the worship of the God-Expy doesn't lead to a dystopia is because he's not human and not really corruptible. He isn't perfect, but he practically never uses his power solely for self-interest (he is capable of making a decision that he later decides was a mistake, but every decision he makes is a genuine effort to help).

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"