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The Darker Side Of God HOME If you ask Christians to describe their quasi-chosen god of worship, you’lloften hear such descriptors as “wonderful” and “loving.” This choice of selectivedesignation seems commonplace within the Christian community. In fact, mostchurches ignore the Old Testament all together so that the members feelcomfortable propagating this view. Fueled by such blatant omission, this lengthychapter will fill the void by offering a look at the volume of horrendous actsperformed or directed by the darker side of God. However, you shouldn’t interpretthis chapter as an attempt at an exhaustive record of every violent actattributable to God because such a review would require another book all together.Upon completion of reading this chapter, you should realize that God was amass murderer among other things, often directing others to rape and kill for him.He also distributes sinister laws and explains what punishments will ensue ifsomeone deviates from his wishes. What’s worse, the ultimate penalty fordisobedience is Hell: eternal torture of unfathomable proportions. Even if weignore the previously discussed scientific problems debunking the notion of anaffiliation between divinity and the Bible, you should still feel resistanceagainst worshipping this particular Hebrew deity after learning of the detailsemphasized over the next few selections. God’s Genocidal WrathWithout any conceivable doubt, I firmly believe that the Hebrew god is themost evil character of all time. Starting with the book of Genesis, we learn thathe’s an insanely angry deity. Of the many atrocities committed in the OldTestament, God is usually the sole participator. The Genesis authors record thefirst such instance in chapters 6-8 as the account of Noah’s flood.The reason that God decides to drown the entire world, killing nearly everyliving person and animal on earth, is his belief that people are evil and unworthyof existence (Genesis 6:5). So what if they were evil? As Lenny Bruce onceexclaimed, “The fault lies with the manufacturer!” God allegedly created humans,yet he faults us for being guided by our desires, instincts, and naturaltendencies. Since he’s supposedly omniscient, God realized how we were destined toturn from the beginning. He must also have realized that his lament would fuel theurge to destroy his precious creations, only to leave himself back where hestarted. Even so, he creates Adam, yet hundreds of years later, he drowns nearlyall the men, women, and children on the face of the earth because he deliberatelychose not to make us to his liking the first time.Even if we suppose the adults deserved to die slow and torturous deaths,what association could we conceivably make between their decisions and theadolescent victims of the flood? Couldn’t God have just placed the innocentchildren and animals aside for a while so that they wouldn’t drown? If not, howabout a humane death at the very least? Drowning is a horrible way for people todie. As a result of hopelessly treading water for hours, their muscles burned dueto large amounts of lactic acid production. Once they finally gave up, went under,and held their breaths, acidic carbon dioxide eroded their lungs until the
 
unbearable pain forced them to inhale where there was no air for them to breathe.The water brought into their lungs robbed their bodies of oxygen, causing them togo numb. As water violently rushed in and out of their chests, the currentseventually laid their heavily breathing, slowly dying bodies at the bottom of theocean. The inhaled water caused their lungs to tear and bleed profusely. As theirblood supply dwindled, their hearts slowly came to a halt. Even so, their brainscontinued to process information for another couple of minutes. They were patentlyaware that death was imminent, yet they could do nothing to speed it or preventit. I imagine that their final reflections would have been on what they did todeserve such treatment.As you see, drowning is not a quick and painless death. Regardless, this iswhat God did to every man, woman, child, baby, and animal on earth because he madea mistake! To make matters disgustingly worse, the flood accomplished nothing! Theomniscient God realizes after the flood that a man’s imagination is evil fromyouth (Genesis 8:21). He seemingly allows us to be evil to this day, just likethose he purportedly drowned in the flood. Even if this was the sole befuddled andimmoral act carried out by God, I’m positive that I couldn’t bring myself toworship him. However, this is only the beginning of his mass-murdering spree.Another genocidal operation courtesy of God takes place in the cities ofSodom and Gomorrah. Above these cities, he creates a rain of burning sulfur tokill every inhabitant, save Lot and his family, because they’re deemed evil by thealmighty judge, jury, and executioner (Genesis 19:24-25). Now, refer back to thepoints illustrated in the previous paragraph. God should have assumed theresponsibility of taking measures to prevent these actions from somehow becomingnecessary. He even remembered that men were evil by nature after the flood. Did hesuddenly forget his opinion when he destroyed two entire cities of men, women, andchildren? Again, we should sincerely hope that this all-knowing deity would learnto take some of the blame in these situations. Like drowning, burning is not aquick and painless death. Fortunately, these people didn’t truly feel any painbecause the tale is an obvious work of fiction. If you travel to the locationsaround which historians believe these cities are based, you’ll effortlesslydiscover balls of sulfur forming naturally on the ground. In other words, as isthe case for Noah’s flood, we have the likely inspiration for the imaginativetale. Another Planned GenocideIn Exodus, we find God coercing Moses into becoming his spokesperson forfreeing the Israelite slaves from the Egyptian Pharaoh. Moses initially points outthat he’s a terrible speaker, but God’s reply to this passive resistance is a setof rhetorical questions in which he takes credit for making people deaf, dumb, andblind (Exodus 4:10-11). Some of these handicapped people are a burden to others,and many die without ever demonstrating independence. Nevertheless, God takesgreat pride in this achievement. Most of us typically find people who relish inthe misery of others to be deeply disturbed. Instead of correcting theseatrociously boastful deeds, God seemingly leaves it up to us to develop ideas forcombating transcendentally induced handicaps. Ironically, with advances in medicalscience, we’re making genuine progress against God’s wishes. His yearning to makecertain people handicapped is useless, evil nonsense. Evidently, it’s a successfulargument because Moses decides to accept the offer.In the meeting among Moses, Aaron, and the Pharaoh, God doesn’t want hisIsraelites to go free without a fight. Instead, God instructs Moses and Aaron onexactly what steps to take so that the Pharaoh will initially become too stubborn
 
to allow the people to leave. Obviously, God only wants an excuse to “bring forth[his] armies” against Egypt in order to punish the entire country for thedecisions of one man to hold his chosen people as slaves (Exodus 7:1-14).The plagues that God carried out against Egypt as a result of the Pharaoh’sdecision were turning the river to blood; sending an abundance of frogs, lice,locusts, and flies; killing every cow belonging to the people; inflicting boilsupon all the citizens; creating a hailstorm to destroy their crops; institutingthree days of darkness; and killing the firstborn male child in every householdacross the country. The darkness, boils, frogs, lice, locusts, and flies werequite punishing, but they wouldn’t necessarily ruin anyone’s life. The cattleslaughter, river of blood, and downpour of hail ruined the Egyptians’ sole waterand food sources. Worst of all, God once again feels the necessity to eradicatethousands more innocent babies, children, and animals because one man was toostubborn to free his slaves.On the escape route, Moses miraculously parts the Red Sea and crossessafely. When the Egyptian army pursues, the waters regroup to drown the soldiersand horses (Exodus 7-14). The omnipotent Hebrew god could have easily freed thepeople and spared thousands of lives, but, of course, he doesn’t do things thisway. One can only assume that he took sinister pleasure in murdering Egyptiansoldiers for following orders from their superior officers. Thankfully, modernscholarship tells us that these events never took place either. I’ll explain thelogic behind this comforting declaration in Moses And Other HistoricalFabrications.God revisits the plague concept when he dishes one out on his chosen peoplefor following Aaron’s orders to worship a golden calf (Exodus 32:35). Recall,however, that Aaron was one of the two men to whom they owed their freedom. Whywould God punish his people for actions that they didn’t realize were “wrong,”especially when they had implicitly learned to trust the person giving the orders?This debacle seems to have shifted Aaron over to God’s bad side because God laterkills his two sons for building a “strange fire” (most likely meaning that theylet a forbidden item burn) (Leviticus 10:1-2). No matter how many times I readpassages like this, I’m always amazed how God kills people because they dosomething silly like build a displeasing campfire, but as we will soon see, heallows them to rape female prisoners of war.On the subject of fire, God later sets some of the desert wanderers ablazefor complaining about their difficulties (Numbers 11:1). Keep in mind that theywere now wandering around the desert for decades doing absolutely nothing afterhaving been slaves in Egypt for centuries. When they complain about having no meatfor nourishment, God provides them with a circle of quail three feet high and aday’s journey wide but immediately plagues and kills a handful of them forgrumbling (Numbers 11:31-34). Later, the people become increasingly irritated overbeing homeless. In fact, circumstances are so miserable that they actually want toreturn to Egypt as slaves. Subsequently, Korah leads a group of 250 other upsetindividuals to stand up to Moses. Needless to say, they all pay for their mutiny.God opens the ground under Korah’s household and sucks everything he has, familyand all, into the depths of the earth (Numbers 16:31-33). The remaining council of250 are burned alive (Numbers 16:35). Does the punishment fit the so-called crime?Does God have any compassion for their situation? Obviously not, on both accounts.When the Israelites were upset that Moses caused those 250 people to die,God sends a plague to slay an additional 14,700 (Numbers 16:41-49). To close outthe Pentateuch, God exterminates a number of his people who fall down and worshipthe gods of Baalpeor. A subsequent plague kills another 24,000 (Numbers 25:1-9).At least these people may have had some idea that what they were doing would
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