Is God a Sadist?
Dmitri April 27th, 2007
Imagine you have a pet, say a cat or a dog. You might actually have one but let us take cat as the hypothetical example. The cat is totally dependant on you for food, shelter and its well being. It does not obey you and tends to irk you often by playing with other street cats, drinking your milk, eating birds and anything which you are not particularly fond of your cat doing. It makes you angry and sometimes drives you mad with rage, what do you do? Pour molten lead in its ears? Set its tail on fire? Torture it to death?
Can you see yourself or any sane person doing this to a cat?
Now if I were to tell you there exists someone who would do that, what would you think of that person? A sadist brute and a psychotic or a wise and merciful man (or woman)? You can answer yourself, I won’t hear you. I know what your answer would be. If I were to say that that someone is forgiving and loved his/her pet and yet would torture it for mistakes it makes, what would you think of me? Would you think I am joking or I am mad? Or would you think I have some hidden agenda?
Such a person exists in the mind of religious people. The almighty God full of love and mercy. In the Abrahamic (Judeo-Christian-Islamic) religions God is very powerful yet he lets the Satan reign who can mislead you and me. God controls our past, present and future yet it leaves us to ourselves decide our choices. He knows what we are going to do the next moment and yet lets me write this. He gives us powerful lust and yet wants us not to think of sex and makes lust one of the greatest sins. He has full control of our mind but lets Satan take control instead. He expect us to take a lot of difficulties to obey him and satisfy his narcisstic deisres of praise from his billion creations.
Deviate from his line of fancy and you are punished much more than your sin of disobedience is worth. Hellfire for eternity or millions of years. Could you think such a person could be tolerant, merciful, kind and forgiving? That such a person could actually exist and yet do all such things of barbarity that a maniac psychotic wouldn’t even think of. Common sense tells such a thing is unrational and illogical. Would you worship and heap praises on a being who has such sadistic and cruel tendencies? You decide….no one wants to make a cruel warlord unhappy.
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basically, okey you’ve got some foundations for what would apear to be a logical argument.
but what you have not taken into consideration is that, the abuse this said God gives us, is neglect rather than a forced pain and torture.
Neglect would appear to be, sadist, brutal and not very merciful of our loving and adoring creator, i will come back to this in a moment…
This idea you have ejaculated onto the place that is cyberspace is incredibly short sighted, if blind. You have taken small segments of the picture and very intelligently, changed its context.
anyway, enough about you, back to this post. You havent been able to distinguish what is the Abrahamic God, Christian theologist would not associate Allah to YHWH. Infact they are two separate Deities.
you have been short sighted in your aproach towards the idea of Satan’s control over physical life, which, seems quite cruel, but what this offers, is the opportunity to abandon physical suffering, to gain something better.
that is similar to a parent saying, if you do all your chores, you can have a chocolate bar…..
A Christian theologist would not be able to associate Allah to Yahweh, because they like to think themselves as different and unique from Muslims. Yet from a person with an objective view all three religions Judaism, Islam and Christianity share the same core.
The idea of Satan having control over physical life and the need of a spiritual being to save us from our natural instincts is absurd in itself. Physical pain and pleasure are momentary, the concept of Satan works to create a guilt complex and fear of hell which in the long run works of benefit the clergy. This also fuels a desire to cleanse oneself to remove their sins. This desire benefit the religious leaders in the form of commercialised rituals like pilgrimages or gaining an army like Jehadists, Crusadesers and the anti-Semitic pogroms which were guided not by love of nation, but for religious attachment and the desire to be holy in god’s eyes.
Would you rather that a child learnt not to do the wrong because of the chocolate and spanking incentive or an understanding of why his/her actions would cause damage in the long run? For example, I never smoked or did drugs even though my parents never prohibited me but because I was brought to understand the outcomes of smoking at an early age. Human beings are highly reasonable and intelligent creatures, if it is nurtured at an early age they will develop into better person(s) to make the world a better place.
The greatest danger to the western world is the perspective of relativism; it’s all just relative. The term has nothing to do with family relations; relativism translated simply means everyone and everything is meaningless, therefore there is no right or wrong, no accountability and no one to be held accountable to. That makes things relatively nice for criminals; they can rob rape and murder and never be responsible to higher authority or God, because God is relative; he does not exist unless the person chooses to believe God exists.
Out of relativism comes the entire belief system of liberalism.
@ Lisa Richards - Relativism is more real and desirable than rigid moralism. A criminal cannot be reformed by religion but by an efficient legal system. Religion is involved in worse crimes than those committed by petty criminals, some of the worst genocides in human history had a religious justification or were moral from a religious point of view. Imagine how the situation would have been different of the perpretators were realists, they would have realised the futility of human loss and suffering caused by religious genocides like Crusades, Inquisition and Wahabi Islamic extremism.
I totally agree with you. How can a God that is supposed to be all loving, forgiving, and merciful inflict otherwise good people with eternal hellfire and torture just for not believing in Him or following the wrong religion? This just doesn’t make sense to me. Even if I did believe in this God, I would not find Him fit for worship.
Oh for chrissakes read the Bible.
OF COURSE GOD IS A SADIST. HE SAYS SO, REPEATEDLY.
There are DOZENS of stories consisting of nothing more that “God” tormenting humans for pleasure.
Much of Christian history and theology consists of attempts to justify or explain this.
Some say this was what Jesus Christ came to deliver us from. But that’s not “Christian”, that’s just new age Bible interpretation.
Ok, I don’t know if you have read the bible friend.
In the old testament God is not very Godlike and is in fact kind of evil if you look at it the right way.
But lets be serious in looking at God because I find the old testament to be more morality stories, songs and the usual like. To understand God I look to the new testament, save the writings of john as they are are cryptic and not to be taken literally, because in each testament and in acts of the apostles we see God as a cool dude. God in the new testament is all about love and doing unto others as you would do unto yourself and giving and being charitable and such. Actually much like the Koran. I also see the whole Jesus dying for our sins and indeed the sins of those who killed him as proof that god is good and will take all of us as he um… loves us… I guess.
And for the whole basing Gods goodness upon the actions of people, not God, I think that’s just dumb. I mean Jesus was God and he did cool things, I’m pretty sure he didn’t kill anyone and helped people, so I would base how good God is upon his own actions. I don’t think you would base how good or bad your friend is upon the actions of some random guy.
For the record I’m a catholic and I believe in evolution, the big bang and that God is also Allah. I dont know what the whole thing with Christians do not say Allah and God are the same thing, I learned that God is Allah in a catholic school( along with evolution, we were not taught creationism as it has no scientific backing, and the big bang theory)
I would also like to address the whole using God to gain power thing. THAT IS NOT GOD, that is greedy people using God to take power and it happens all the time, especially in western religions where there is a distinct good and evil to be loved and feared.
To conclude, this whole argument is moot as all of the bible is written by humans, all of the actions that are taken “for God” are taken by humans and also the fact you can neither fully prove nor disprove the actions of God as it is unclear what actions are or are not God’s and simply that the definition of God is relative so any criteria to prove or disprove him is instantly not the whole criteria.
So this post and all before are pointless indeed as you cannot change what people believe because belief is unreasonable and reason destroy what is already void of reason.
yeah I believe god is really a sadist! Because before he hears someone for help he likes to watch you moaning and suffering from hardships, he seems like having a good time watching you asking for mercy asking for help and if you are LUCKY he would hear you. I mean if he really loves us all how come we need to experience suffering first before he would hear us. That is if he’s in the mood to help us, but if he’s not you’re so sorry my friend. Let’s say you’re a parent and you can see your children having a hard time or a hardship in life what would you do? Are you gonna let him suffer more and watch them tear with blood before you help them, and yet you always have all the resources to help them, god is always like that, he loves to power trip I don’t know why, us humans are nothing compare to him, we can’t complain directly to him because he’s like an absentee landlord whenever we needed him he’s always not around. If something good happens to us he takes the credit but if something wrong headed in our way it’s our fault. Because we’ve made a wrong decision. As far as I know he is a sadist god! Period.
Back to my above post… I’ve been praying for a very long time now for a job (just a decent one) so that I can save up money to buy an engagement ring and get married. But NOooooooooooo!!! The Almighty HAD to deny me a job, leaving me almost broke and penniless. Sometimes I ask myself, is HE preparing a fantabulous, all marvelous, super-duper, most incredible job for ME and while HE’s busy creating this never-before-seen job for me, HE wants me to sit at home and surf the internet and play computer games??? I’ve come to believe that HE helps those whom HE WANTS to help.
You are not on this earth to enjoy yourself. As far as I am concerned, this earth is hell. Oh yes, I have suffered plently. I ‘ve been cheated and harmed by people that seems “normal” through out my life.
As I am typing this, I am very close to being homeless. But I am not angry or bitter.
This world is very imperfect. Your stay here is TEMPORARY. Jejus could have been real, but Christianity was written by people.
Try to intepret life through Christian teachings may drive you mad and hateful, from a thinking person viewpoint, not a Christian ( he ’s got heaven to look forward to ).
This life is the trainning ground for what lies ahead. A different dimension, planet, or just another life back here on earth in a different body.
So my outlook is: ” Nothing and everything matters “. Nothing “materials” matters since there is death. Everything “spiritual” matters since you are immortal.
I agree God is a sadist. To be in heaven you have to go through hell with all the ‘physical pain’? For what? Everybody who says God is not a sadist is either a sadist himself or just plain blind. Some just don’t want to believe that God is bad.
Not only that always beware of people who are too religious. They are suspiciously defensive of God. You are only being reasonable. Why are they so threatened?They never give a straight answer.
Maybe god is not sadistic or neglectful.
HOnest to goodness, I’ve had to live a more difficult life (not just my opinion) than most of my peers and sometimes I get angry and curse god, sensing that I’m singled out for an extra doses of trials and tribulations. (Maybe I should count my blessings though-things could be a lot worse.)
Still part of me tells me my worst troubles are due to bad luck-not consequence of my actions or those of some deity’s.
For my non worst problems, I can blame myself, luck, jerks I work with, etc.
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I still say a silent prayer when an ambulance goes by and next time I’m in the hospital, I’ll probably apologize and beg, but all in all, I think no deity is there to help or hurt. Maybe help and hurt only comes from luck, ourselves, and others.
If there is a god at all, maybe it’s not like the giant all powerful, angry, abusive, pseudo parent that people understandably imagine and/or conjure up. Maybe it’s nonpersonal. Maybe it’s more like an ultra physicist or something. I wonder if any person has ever, does, or will ever know.
Here I talk all big and philosophically yet fear that I’m making god mad and that it might punish me. Dang.
Only idiots would choose to worship such a god.
Most people will not choose to worship anything unless they were raised (indoctrinated) as children or if life circumstances send them exploring spirituality. In the West, outside certain areas, most people raised in a religion will spend a large part of their lives secular, usually incorporating religious traditions only to pass on to their kids or when they get older. There are just a few small branches of Christianity that still actively seek conversions, although I suppose those are probably the majority of religious Westerners many people reading this might have seen.
Personally I do not imagine God as a sadist because He’s a mental construct, at least as far as I can tell. I’ve never seen any miracles, and nothing relevant in the Bible can be proven except the historical backdrop. The people who insist non-believers will go to hell are never satisfied unless they control every aspect of your life. And religious bosses in the workplace are often the worst - very hierarchal and quick to anger if their authority is questioned.
Atheism isn’t all roses though. There are clear connections between secularism and low birth rates. Former Soviet countries have it the worst, most of Europe isn’t far behind, nor is Canada. The same logic doesn’t apply to communist and former communist developing nations but it’s a trend in the West. North America can thank God for immigration.
Not just regular sadist and not alone, actually all its cortege and its special executors (like Satan and other evil creatures) are unimaginable sadists. Hitler, Stalin and other human sadists compare to god and its messengers are kindergarten sadists. god is pure evil. Go through any old book and quickly you will find pure deceptive evil, playing with human’s life with unimaginable evil maneuvers. Torturing human it’s hobby for it. I think that all human should reject it and return contemptuousness on being so cruel to us. I even will go farther and look for ways to destroy it. There should be something better than this evil creature, I hope.
A cat does not know right or wrong as a man does. Man has knowledge of good and evil unlike and animal. Are you saying you are dumb as animal? Do you run around sleeping with multipal partners like animals do with thought? An animal does not know about STD like man does.
Lets give a different story. God creates man, man kills his brother out of jealousy and laughs. The dead brother’s spirit cries to God for Justice. What is a Just God suppose to do? Just let the murdered get away with doing wrong? Let me guess a Just God in your eyes is suppose to let the man “do what he feels like without consquence for his actions”.
So God gives the man a chance to get a cleat slate for his murder by sending Jesus to take the mans punishment and the man says, “to hell with you God your mean”. “You won’t let me do whatever I want”. “I will worship another God (Satan) instead because he lets me do whatever I want”.
I don’t see God sending animals to Hell when they kill eachother. Because he hasn’t given them knowledge of good and evil. But you will never listen to me and you claim you are just “stupid apes” or whatever lie you believe how you came to be. Your missing link forefathers came from the sea after it rained on the rocks for 65millions years.
You will belelive that everything came out of nothing “big bang”. Yet You won’t beleive God made the Earth in six days. You will belive all people living today came from the sea. But you will not beleive we all came from one man and one woman.
To address religoun given at childhood. Noone ever told me abortion was murder as a chiild yet in fifth grade I told my teacher I did not like Greenpeace because they put animals before people. No one indoctrinated me that abortion was evil yet how did I come to have the knowledge of How evil it is?
@Dimitri or Aby
May I inquire why my post was not accepted by the moderator? I may not have been the most organized argument, but I thought it was subjective and rational… Is it a crime to be athiest?
I want to put forward two questions.
1. Why man wants God?
2. Why God needs man?
Ans for Q-1: Man has seen many minor happinesses in his life and all seems to be temporary. His egoic mind wants more permanent last longing happinesses and found that it has got no power to make such things on the earth. It knows very well that death is unavoidable, so ego developed an imaginary another world naming it paradise where it can get every desires be satisfied. To achieve that man’s egoic mind constructed an imaginary extra terresterial power known as God and trying to put all its belief & trust on it to derive power from that imaginary source. All the religious books are result of above said egoic construct of mind thoughts. No religious book’s author has seen any God on this earth, consequently to gain some social respect, every author started proclaiming that all his words are revealed or inspired by God or his angels.
Ans for Q-2: If God is a person having omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent powers, why he needs man? Does it means that he can’t live alone? Already he created lot of angels to serve him, and still he wants more souls to devote, praise, love, and adore him. So God is testing all human beings for their worthiness of trust, belief, and unconditional love on him. He will admit in his paradise only those souls who is showing unconditional love on him. He don’t want the rest and destroy all those failed souls by perishing them in hell. So he expects unconditional love & unlimited trust from a soul to admit it in his paradise. Ultimately, what does it reflect on God? He seems to be a limited, egoic, and selfish personality.
Why does “gawd” need to test us? Is it because it is unsure of itself. Does it lay awake at night tormented by the thought that it’s creations are doing something sneaky? Why does it need all this worship? Why does it need cash? Why does it have temper tantrums? Why are do bodies have such a crummy design that gets infections, tooth decay, cancer, appendicitis, heart disease etc. Everything points to the fact that “gawd” is a tormented freak who desrires pain and anxiety. But the religious masochists, like abused wives, continue groveling on their knees to this thug saying “its all my fault”.
Yes i do think that god is a sadist. Some people have all the luck in the world while others seem to be born to fail and have bad luck in their lives. God has the power to save and help people in need but he does’nt do anything. I think god is a criminal.
I was in the middle of assisting my son with a piece of homework (no doubt that will spark another long debate!!) and came across these musings. Wow! Some very angry people out there, and no doubt many for very genuine reasons. For my part, no, I do not believe that God is a sadist. I’ll get straight to the point. My life has been far from plain sailing, but I am glad to say that as a Christian I can make some sense of it all. I am surrounded by friends from church who support and encourage me through a really tough time at the moment. Not long ago I read the book of Job who struggled with the whole issue of suffering and tried to make sense of it- and he did pretty well (by the way it’s in the Old Testament part of the Bible). We were never promised an easy time of it, and Jesus even went as far as to say that we have to take up our cross and follow him. That’s a heavy thing to carry, and we know where he went with his cross. Thankfully because of his sacrifice we can have complete forgiveness, acceptance and eternal life. Most of us wont have to give up our lives literally for others, but unless we learn how to love our neighbour as ourself, we will never have fully lived. I find that so completely liberating!
No, God is far from being a sadist, but is in fact all loving and compassionate. I have not answered the question of suffering, I know, and there are no simple platitudes that will suffice. C.S. Lewis does a good job in his short book called “The Problem of Pain”. Give it a try. Marko
Dr. J. Vernon McGee once told an objector to the faith, “You’re not smart enough to have intellectual problems with God”. I believe he meant the comment to apply to us all, and these are the wisest words on the subject I’ve heard.
I have had many of the same thoughts. It seems to me that there can be an evil god, or no god, but there cannot be a good god. Not unless he is weak.
Could you please tell us where the picture of the cat came from, and was the cat ever rescued? I guess someone caught it in a trap and then drowned it. What happened to it?