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Misotheism
Misotheism is the "hatred of God" or "hatred of the gods" (from the Greek adjective ???????? "hating the gods", a compound of ????? "hatred" and ???? "god"). In some varieties of polytheism, it was considered possible to inflict punishment on gods by ceasing to worship them. Thus, Hrafnkell, protagonist of the eponymous Icelandic saga set in the 10th century, as his temple to Freyr is burnt and he is enslaved states that I think it is folly to have faith in gods, never performing another sacrifice, a position described in the sagas as goðlauss "godless". Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology observes that: In monotheism, the sentiment arises in the context of theodicy (the problem of evil, the Euthyphro dilemma). A famous literary expression of misotheistic sentiment is Goethe's Prometheus, composed in the 1770s, not coincidentially contemporary to the first modern expressions of atheism. A related concept is dystheism (Greek ??????? "ungodly"), the belief that a god is not wholly good, and is possibly evil. Trickster gods found in polytheistic belief systems often have a dystheistic nature. One example is Eshu, a trickster god from Yoruba mythology who deliberately fostered violence between groups of people for his own amusement, saying that "causing strife is my greatest joy." But polytheistic deities since prehistoric times have been assumed to be neither good nor evil (or to have both qualities). Thus dystheism is normally used in reference to God, the omnipotent deity associated with monotheistic belief. Indeed, the moral absolute of good and evil has historically arisen in parallel with monotheism. In conceptions of God as the summum bonum, the proposition of God not being wholly good would of course be a contradiction in terms. A historical proposition close to "dystheism" is the deus deceptor () of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, which has been interpreted by Protestant critics as the blasphemous proposition that God exhibits malevolent intent. But Kennington[1][2] states that Descartes never declared his "evil genius" to be omnipotent, but merely no less powerful than he is deceitful, and thus not explicitly an equivalent to God, the singular omnipotent deity.
Terminology
TheodicyDystheistic speculation arises from consideration of the problem of evil—the question of why God—who is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent—would allow evil to exist in the world. Koons notes that this is only a theological problem for a eutheist, since a dystheist would not find the existence of evil (or God's authorship of it) to be an obstacle to theistic belief. In fact, the dystheistic option would be a consistent non-contradictory response to the problem of evil. Thus Koons concludes that the problem of theodicy—explaining how God can be good despite the apparent contradiction presented in the problem of evil—does not pose a challenge to all possible forms of theism (i.e., that the problem of evil does not present a contradiction to someone who would believe that God exists but that he is not necessarily good). This conclusion implicitly takes the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma, asserting the independence of good and evil morality from God (as God is defined in monotheistic belief). Historically, the notion of "good" as an absolute concept has emerged in parallel with the notion of God being the singular entity identified with good. In this sense, dystheism amounts to the abandonment of a central feature of historical monotheism: the de facto association of God with the summum bonum. Arthur Schopenhauer wrote: "This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings." Critics of Calvin's doctrines of predestination frequently argued that Calvin's doctrines did not successfully avoid describing God as "the author of evil". Much of post-Holocaust theology, especially in Judaic theological circles, is devoted to a rethinking of God's goodness. Examples include the work of David R. Blumenthal, author of Facing the Abusing God (1993) and John K. Roth, whose essay "A Theodicy of Protest" is included in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy (1982): On a lighter note, Paul Erd?s, the eccentric and extremely prolific Hungarian-born mathematician, referred to God as "the Supreme Fascist", who deliberately hid things from people, ranging from socks and passports to the most elegant of mathematical proofs. Divine malevolence in ScriptureThere are various examples of arguable dystheism in the Bible, sometimes cited as arguments for atheism (e.g. Bertrand Russell 1957). Most of these are from the Pentateuch, the theological nature of which is still close to henotheism. A notable exception is the Book of Job, a classical case study of theodicy, which can be argued to consciously discuss the possibility of dystheism (e.g. Carl Jung, Answer to Job). Thomas Paine wrote in "The Age of Reason" that "whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of God." But Paine's perspective was a deistic one, critical more of common beliefs about God than of God himself. Hebrew Bible
New TestamentThe Christian scriptures in the New Testament contain references to an "evil god", specifically the "prince of this world" (John 14:30, ) or "god of this world" (2 Corinthians 4:4, ) who has "blinded the minds of men". Mainstream Christian theology sees these as references to Satan ("the Devil"), but Gnostics, Marcionites, and Manicheans saw these as references to Yahweh himself, and saw Jesus as rebelling against Yahweh. These groups were dualists that held to the notion that the god of this world, the demiurge, was evil, but that there was a transcendent world greater than this one ruled by a true good god. Although God is considered to have been depicted in the New Testament as "kinder and gentler" than his characterization in the Old Testament, this interpretation is ultimately inconsistent with what the text says about his behavior:
Misotheism in art and literatureMisotheistic and/or dystheistic expression has a long history in the arts and in literature. Goethe's Prometheus, and the work of authors like the Marquis de Sade[9] are among the examples:
In more recent times, the sentiment is present in a variety of media: Poetry and dramaThe characters in several of Tennessee Williams' plays express dystheistic attitudes, including the Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon in The Night of the Iguana. Robert Frost's poem "Design" questions how God could have created death if he were benevolent. In Jewish author Elie Wiesel's play, The Trial of God (1979) the survivors of a pogrom, in which most of the inhabitants of a 17th-century Jewish village were massacred, put God on trial for his cruelty and indifference to their misery. The play is based on an actual trial Wiesel participated in that was conducted by inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Nazi holocaust, but it also references a number of other incidents in Jewish history including a similar trial conducted by the Hasidic Rabbi Levi Yosef Yitzhak of Berdichev: Modern literatureSeveral non-Jewish authors share Wiesel's concerns about God's nature, including Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses, Shalimar the Clown) and Anne Provoost (In the Shadow of the Ark): Speculative fictionA number of speculative fiction works present a dystheistic perspective, at least as far back as the works of H. P. Lovecraft and Olaf Stapledon's influential philosophical short novel Star Maker. By the 1970's Harlan Ellison even described dystheism as a bit of a science fiction cliché. Ellison himself has dealt with the theme in his "The Deathbird", the title story of Deathbird Stories, a collection based on the theme of (for the most part) malevolent modern-day gods. Lester del Rey's "Evensong" (the first story in Harlan Ellison's much-acclaimed Dangerous Visions anthology), tells the story of a fugitive God hunted down across the universe by a vengeful humanity which seeks to "put him in his place". Philip Pullman's previously mentioned trilogy, His Dark Materials, presented the theme of a negligent or evil God to a wider audience, as depicted in the 2007 film The Golden Compass based on the first book of this trilogy. The original series of Star Trek featured episodes with dystheistic themes, amongst them "The Squire of Gothos", "Who Mourns for Adonais?", "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", and "Return of the Archons". In "Encounter At Farpoint", the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Jean-Luc Picard informs Q, a trickster with god-like powers similar to the antagonist in the aforementioned "Squire of Gothos" episode, that 24th century humans no longer had any need to depend upon or worship god figures. This is an amplification of the tempered anti-theistic sentiment from Who Mourns for Adonais?, in which Captain Kirk tells Apollo that "We have no need for gods, we find the one sufficient." Popular musicDystheistic sentiment has also made its way into popular music, evincing itself in controversial songs like "Dear God"[10] by the band XTC (later covered by Sarah McLachlan) and "Blasphemous Rumours"[11] by Depeche Mode, which tells the story of a teenage girl who attempted suicide, survived, and turned her life over to God, only to be hit by a car, wind up on life support, and eventually die. A good deal of Gary Numan's work, specifically the album Exile, is laden with misotheistic themes. The output of Oscar-winning songwriter/composer Randy Newman also includes several songs expressing dystheistic sentiment, including the ironic "He Gives Us All His Love" and the more overtly maltheistic "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)",[12] both from his acclaimed 1972 album Sail Away. In the latter song, Newman bemoans the futility of dealing with God whose attitude towards humanity he sees as one of contempt and cruelty. Modern artIn 2006, Australian artist Archie Moore created a paper sculpture called "Maltheism", which was considered for a Telstra Art award in Australia during 2006. The piece was intended as a representation of a church made from pages of the Bible, specifically the Book of Deuteronomy: NotesReferences
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el:?????????? es:Malteísmo he:????????? nl:Kakotheïsme pl:Malteizm fi:Dysteismi Source: Wikipedia | The above article is available under the GNU FDL. | Edit this article
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