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Is God Actually The Villain?

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
This was the video that changed my views on religion in general


This led me to channels like 43alley and AronRa. I am not a Christian but this led me to view hindu scriptures in a different way, from the perspective of those who wrote them. I had a debate with my Aunt regarding the events of Mahabharata and concluded that it wont be written that way if the bad guys won. I am officially an atheist now.
 
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This was video that changed my views on religion in general


This led me to channels like 43alley and AronRa. I am not a Christian but this led me to view hindu scriptures in a different way, from the perspective of those who wrote them. I had a debate with my Aunt regarding the events of Mahabharata and concluded that it wont be written that way if the bad guys won. The Mahabharata was a battle between the original inhabitants of India(who are depicted as "demons" in hindu scriptures) versus the Aryans and Dravidians who came from outside and the Kalinga War was the final failed war to protect a civilization.

The Mahabharata also talks about gods in the sky dropping nukes.... if you believe that sort of thing....

#imnotsayingitwasaliens
 
No.

If it wasn't for the necessary existence that is GOD, then we wouldn't have existed and experienced this life in the first place, for better or worse.

Also, how can God be a villain when he created Hideo Kojima and Sony Interactive Entertainment?
rsz_tqharym.png
 

Cybrwzrd

Banned
Yes.

If god is omnibenevolent, he is all good and incapable of evil. If he is omniscient, he knows all, therefore he can't make mistakes and all his actions must be for good. If god is omnipotent he is capable of doing anything, and anything he does must be for good. If god is omnipresent he exists everywhere at once, therefore he must stop evil from occurring. If he is all powerful, exists everywhere at one time, all knowing, and all good, evil should never happen. But, evil exists. Therefore god must not be omnibenevolent. Which makes him capable of evil. Which calls into question his omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence.

Why worship a god that lies about being good?

At the very least, the old gods are honest.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
 
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Didn't watch the vid but just yesterday my brother was saying a certain group (Freemasons I believe) ultimately view God as bad and Lucifer as good since Lucifer is the knowledge bringer.
Supposedly this isn't readily shared with sort of "low level" freemasons and not until you reach the end is that revealed. Sort of how Scientology holds back info from their new recruits.
I'm super ignorant about such things and my bro gets into some tinfoil hat territory so I take a lot of what he says skeptically, but it was interesting.
 

Furlong

Banned
Michael Buerk was a BBC news reporter who was on the ground during the Ethiopian famine. Years afterwards he talked about how nothing could possibly justify the scale of the suffering he witnessed - god was either not all-powerful or all-good.
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
The Mahabharata also talks about gods in the sky dropping nukes.... if you believe that sort of thing....

#imnotsayingitwasaliens
Sort of like miracles in bible and koran. To me the Mahabharata sounds like a cover up for a genocide. The people depicted in such books are probably real, but the events are exaggerated to praise the "good guys".
 

Cybrwzrd

Banned
It doesn't need any mortal's approval. Worship it or not, it's still going to eat popcorn and complain that there's billions of shows in the universe, but nothing is interesting to watch.

Can a god exist if it isn't worshiped, or believed in? Does it even matter if it exists if it ceases to act as a god?
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Didn't watch the vid but just yesterday my brother was saying a certain group (Freemasons I believe) ultimately view God as bad and Lucifer as good since Lucifer is the knowledge bringer.
Supposedly this isn't readily shared with sort of "low level" freemasons and not until you reach the end is that revealed. Sort of how Scientology holds back info from their new recruits.
I'm super ignorant about such things and my bro gets into some tinfoil hat territory so I take a lot of what he says skeptically, but it was interesting.
You can watch 43alley's video on Satan


It neatly explains what your brother was talking about.
 
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Blond

Banned
Might sound weird but you should try DMT. I can honestly say afterwards that I'm beginning to understand the universe of religions in a different manner. When you experience what these ancient people were tripping on you have look at it from a different POV, one that you wouldn't have otherwise and you can kinda understand why people say the things they say and hold the views they do much, much better. In addition, the ideas of magic, alchemy and necromancy in the bible also make a lot more sense when you do it.

(I'm not actively encouraging drug use, but if you have the opportunity to try it once or twice I wouldn't pass it up personally)
 
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#Phonepunk#

Banned
Of course. If God is responsible for all things then that includes good and evil. God is the top of the cosmology. This is pretty well established. Even the power of the lesser spirits and demons can only come from him. It is through him that all things happen.

You can’t create the universe without breaking some eggs. Many humans cry “why me?” Because they are unable to even comprehend the scale of such an existence.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
What about the ancient middle eastern, native american and pagan european gods ? They are not worshiped anymore.
That seems like a massive assumption on your part. People still have Mayday and other pagan derived rituals. Just as well there are Native traditions continuing to this day. Middle Eastern religious conflicts, still a thing. It sounds like you are operating from a position of cultural ignorance.
 
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jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
God being "the villain" makes a lot of sense if you view the Bible (like I do) as a work of fiction

But lots of people seem to shape their lives and ideals around their own perceptions of God and far be it from me to take that away from them.
 

Cybrwzrd

Banned
If you haven’t already you should read Small Gods by Terry Pratchett.

I think I may have read that one a long time ago, I have read most of the Discworld books, at least the ones out in the mid 90's when I was hooked on them because of that old PS1 Discworld game.
 

protonion

Member
Let's assume God exists.
We are talking about a being that created the universe and life as we know it. Think the the scope of this feat for a few seconds.

I like how this being is reduced to an invisible human consciousness that roots for good and gets angry at bad people.

Think when you pass an ant army killing another. Do you care? Multiply that distance between you and the ants by infinity. This is where God lies.

We dont have the mental capacity to work this out.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
If he is omniscient, he knows all, therefore he can't make mistakes and all his actions must be for good.
yet who is deciding what is a mistake and what is not? is death a "mistake"? there is no life without death. i would argue death gives meaning to life. should he remove all death? why not remove all life, since it ends in death? see it doesn't make any sense. you are holding him to standards that are not even defined.

just as well, if God was unable to make a mistake, that would not make any sense. he would have a limitation that a simple human could overcome. it does not make sense that a human could be able to do something (make a mistake) that his creator could not.
If god is omnipresent he exists everywhere at once, therefore he must stop evil from occurring.
this is a massive assumption. nowhere in the Bible does God promise this. if God's aim was not allowing evil, he would never have created the universe in the first place.

the funniest thing about God is how many restrictions atheists tend to place on him. if you went by their definitions, he would have far less power than the standard human. "can't make mistakes, can't kill, can't lie," etc. it's pretty silly.
 
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Sort of like miracles in bible and koran. To me the Mahabharata sounds like a cover up for a genocide. The people depicted in such books are probably real, but the events are exaggerated to praise the "good guys".
Btw OP have you ever read about Gnosticism and specifically the Demiurge?
 

DKehoe

Member
I think I may have read that one a long time ago, I have read most of the Discworld books, at least the ones out in the mid 90's when I was hooked on them because of that old PS1 Discworld game.

It’s the one about one of the gods taking on a physical form on Discworld, as a prophecy has foretold, but discovers that because actual belief in him is so low he is stuck inside the form of a tortoise. He then has to rely on the one person who still believes in him. The rest of his “believers” just follow the church’s teachings out of habit or fear.
 
God is a concept, just like the devil/evil, the self. Let go of concepts and realize that you are all, god/the devil, the whisper in the wind, only blinded by an isolating, chattering mind. Who need fear god or the devil, when they are born of the same infinite, indefinable stillness, the ground in support of all which awareness comprehends.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
Sort of like miracles in bible and koran. To me the Mahabharata sounds like a cover up for a genocide. The people depicted in such books are probably real, but the events are exaggerated to praise the "good guys".
quite a number of events depicted in religious texts actually happened IRL. one of the words translated as "Hell" in the KJV was a real place where child sacrifices to the gods were held.
Archaeology
Main article: Tophet
Child sacrifice at other Tophets contemporary with the Bible accounts (700–600 BC) of the reigns of Ahaz and Manasseh have been established, such as the bones of children sacrificed at the Tophet to the goddess Tank in Phoenician Carthage, and also child sacrifice in ancient Syria-Palestine. Scholars such as Mosca (1975) have concluded that the sacrifice recorded in the Hebrew Bible, such as Jeremiah's comment that the worshippers of Baal had "filled this place with the blood of innocents", is literal, while Mark Smith has stated that in the seventh century BC child sacrifice was a Judean practice performed in the name of Yahweh.


800px-Valley_of_Hinom_PA180093.JPG
 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Let's assume God exists.
We are talking about a being that created the universe and life as we know it. Think the the scope of this feat for a few seconds.

I like how this being is reduced to an invisible human consciousness that roots for good and gets angry at bad people.

Think when you pass an ant army killing another. Do you care? Multiply that distance between you and the ants by infinity. This is where God lies.

We dont have the mental capacity to work this out.
But how do you know he created everything ? Yahweh and Allah were derived from the term Elohim meaning god which is actually came from the Canaanite god el or ilhm. And slowly his followers decided he is the supreme god above everyone else.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
And slowly his followers decided he is the supreme god above everyone else.
the supreme god among all does not need words or forms and is indeed above all. you calling him one name or the other doesn't really matter. i'd argue you are debating what name to call something that is beyond names.

i'd argue most atheists have a poor personal definition for what God is. they cannot see past names, forms, attributes.

the Hindu tradition looks past this by saying God has a thousand names and all the different forms are different attributes of the one foundational God. some Hindu traditions even include Gods from other religions as avatars of Vishnu (the Buddha, even Jesus).

this concept is less easy to grasp in the west. thus the focus on "who is the right one"? which IMO entirely misses the point.
 
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But, evil exists. Therefore god must not be omnibenevolent. Which makes him capable of evil.

This is completely illogical, you're blaming god for Humans bad deeds as if he did it himself? That's quite the spin.

But how do you know he created everything ? Yahweh were derived from the term Elohim meaning god which is actually came from the Canaanite god el or ilhm. And slowly his followers decided he is the supreme god above everyone else.

This comes from the Myth that the Hebrews had no god before Canaan which is false and has been debunked for years.
 

Cybrwzrd

Banned
if God's aim was not allowing evil, he would never have created the universe in the first place.

Therefore God is capable of creating evil, which means that he is not good. As I said, if he isn't good then it removes the reason to worship him, because, at least according to Christian faith, God is the only being that is good (Mark 10:18). Not only that, but he showers his good on all that he created - (Psalm 145:9)

This is completely illogical, you're blaming god for Humans bad deeds as if he did it himself? That's quite the spin.

If god creates something capible of evil and does not prevent evil from occuring, he directly caused the evil to occur by the very nature of his omniscience and omnipotence.
 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
the supreme god among all does not need words or forms and is indeed above all. you calling him one name or the other doesn't really matter. i'd argue you are debating what name to call something that is beyond names.
And why is he supreme ?
This comes from the Myth that the Hebrews had no god before Canaan which is false and has been debunked for years.
false? debunked? Its a logical statement that make more sense than most interpretations.
Why doesn't anyone think that Satan created the world?
Do you think God created it ?
 
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YukiOnna

Member
Specifically to my families religion, after looking at it objectively, I'd say so. Goddamn asshole made everything a "test".
 

Cybrwzrd

Banned
the funniest thing about God is how many restrictions atheists tend to place on him. if you went by their definitions, he would have far less power than the standard human. "can't make mistakes, can't kill, can't lie," etc. it's pretty silly.

I'd also like to add, that those concepts are based on theology, and the bible. God can certainly kill, as evidenced by the old testament, but he can't lie or make mistakes.
 
If god creates something capible of evil and does not prevent evil from occuring, he directly caused the evil

No that's not how it works, and you're also arguing you have no free will at the same time. You're only capable of evil if you move away from him. You are also trying to equate your current understanding of the term broadly based on the society you're in, which some time long past your definition of good wouldn't be so. You're basically trying to oversimplify pretty much everything while applying your limited understanding to history as a whole which doesn't make sense.
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
I don't? I'm just saying if Satan created the world, it'd explain a lot of the contradictions people are providing.
Remember that people separated God's 'bad qualities' into Satan. Its just the different side of the same coin. God can only do good and all bad things were done by Satan.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
This is completely illogical, you're blaming god for Humans bad deeds as if he did it himself? That's quite the spin.
God is all powerful. He created humans. He has the ability to create humans that don't do bad things, or to create a world where bad things do not occur, or compel humans to not do bad things, just like he hardened Pharaoh's heart (but in a good way).

He is the cause of all things and bad things happen, so He must have caused them. That would give Him some responsibility in the matter.
 
We all know religion was nothing more than a way to create some level of civility and unification during times where government rule wasn't what it became to be. Laws are nothing more than the replacement of religion and rightfully so. It turned itself into a something else entirely. That's why there are many religions all over the world over different periods of time. Worshipping something is a crutch to explain what you cannot explain and in a world where so much was unknown, it was useful.
 

lock2k

Banned
Man, this video is a trip, I really enjoyed it.

It's very appealing to me because even though I came from a religion family (my nuclear family wasn't that religions, apart from my mom) I never, ever, recall having a strong belief. To this day, I don't know how to pray and I never cared. I genuinely think I am impaired in the belief department and I do not mean, in any way, to criticized religious people. In fact, I admire them and their sense of communion, sometimes I wish I would have beliefs but I simply can't. I tried and I don't feel a thing. Does anyone else feel the same way?
 
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