Direct continuation of: The Biblical God is a Malevolent Bully, Part I

God is most certainly not a benevolent entity, but rather quite the opposite — and we can prove it again and again by pointing to all the needless suffering in the world right now, pointing to how religions are hopelessly confused and God could do so much more in terms of guidance, and pointing to the completely unjust and unfair idea of Hell.

But we don’t need to, because we can prove it from the Bible alone. In the previous part of this series, I quoted Bible passages where God ordered the torture and death of someone for collecting wood on the Sabbath, God ordered the death of babies in really violent ways, and also specifically ordered women to be raped. These are most emphatically not the actions of an admirable guy, but rather far worse than even the most wicked people in human history.

But I’m only have way through, and I’ve saved the even more egregious stuff for last. Yes, it gets even worse than pointless murder, rape, and infanticide. The following are, in my opinion, God’s top three worst moments, where it becomes clear that God deliberately tortures and kills innocent people for no reason at all. He even admits it!

God Kills Everyone, Including Babies and Animals

Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. — Genesis 7:21-23

We know the story this is a part of: angered by the sin of man, God sends a giant flood to wipe out the entire population of Earth. The story itself is patently absurd to think it actually happened, but even metaphorically — why would an all loving God ever do such a thing? Why would such an event ever be the proper action for a God to preform?

First, this flood was needless suffering. A flood is a rather traumatizing death – people flee from hopelessly rising water, gradually taking to higher and higher ground before the flood is seen as utterly inescapable, before succumbing to a slow drowning, eventually suffocating in mud. If God wanted to reset the world, he had many means to do so that did not involve also causing people to suffer needlessly — he could have simply created a new universe with the snap of omnipotent fingers. God did not need to cause suffering to accomplish his goal of killing everyone except Noah.

Second, this flood was unnecessary suffering. The idea that everyone on Earth was so hopelessly wicked that an omnipotent God had no way of reforming them is ludicrous. Given that it is logically possible to reform evil humans into upstanding citizens (give them the ability to think sufficiently rationally and then inform them about the drawbacks of being evil — even if the social and emotional drawbacks of evil are not enough, the threat of Hell should be more than compelling, even if evil itself), and given that God could do anything that is logically possible, God could have reformed the evil humans instead of needing to dispose of them.

Third, this flood was unjust suffering. God didn’t just kill all the specifically unrighteous people, but everyone and everything. Thus God killed babies and nonhuman animals along with the wicked people, even though these babies and nonhuman animals were completely incapable of being wicked or evil. They did not deserve to be punished, yet God punished them anyway. This punish someone for the deeds of others is a recurring theme when it comes to God.

Lastly, God knew this whole flood was coming from the beginning. God is omniscient, meaning that he knows everything, including what will happen in the future. Thus the moment God even considers creating humans, he can instantly foresee that they would act wickedly. Furthermore, it is logically possible to create humans which do not act wickedly (as I just demonstrated). Thus, we’re left with the conclusion that if God existed, he must have created humans with the specific intention to drown them in a flood for no apparent reason.

God Kills Innocent Children to Punish Someone For Something They Didn’t Do

At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead. — Exodus 12:29-30

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD.” — Exodus 10:1-2 (emphasis added)

So what is God doing in Exodus? Here we have Isrealites being kept as slaves by the Egyptian Pharoah. In a last attempt to convince the Pharaoh to let his people out of slavery, he chose to kill every firstborn Egyptian son. Now we might ask why a loving God would kill the sons, who are completely innocent, and definitely not responsible for the continued slavery. We might even ask why God would cause the misery to the parents of these sons, who also had no say in the continued slavery. We might even ask why this had to be so widespread, affecting every household. We might even ask why God would do this when he had options such as… I don’t know… simply teleporting all the Isrealites out of captivity.

But it wouldn’t even be worth asking these questions any more, because we already know the answer is that the character of God is a malevolent bully. This couldn’t be more clear, because — and here is the stunning plot twist — this isn’t a punishment in an attempt to get the Pharaoh to change his mind, because God already forced the Pharaoh to choose not to let the Isrealites go.

The reason the Pharaoh wouldn’t release the slaves like Moses asked is because, according to Exodus 4:21, God tells him that the Pharaoh will not listen because “I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go”. Exodus 7:13 confirms that God made the Pharaoh not be appealed by Moses’s miracles because God had “hardened Pharaoh’s heart, that he hearkened not unto them”. Exodus 7:3-4 says, “But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt he will not listen to you.” God clearly had no intention of giving the Pharaoh a choice.

In fact, God continues to repeat this entirely immoral cycle a total of nine times – launch a plague on the population of Egypt that had no control over the problem, ask the Pharaoh to release the slaves, but then harden the Pharoah’s heart so that the Pharaoh will not listen. Why would God not want the Pharaoh to listen? Why couldn’t God just unharden his heart so that all the senseless killing wouldn’t be necessary? It’s because God simply wanted an excuse to glorify himself — to, as he said in Exodus 10:1, “preform my signs among them”.

We might wonder what possible defense could be constructed for this. Turns out, the answer is that the Egyptian pharoah deserved it for the slavery he allowed to perpetuate, and because “the wages of sin are death”. Nevermind the fact that to enact this punishment God caused many innocent people to die, and nevermind that God had many other options to end the slavery at his whim, or to have prevented the slavery from ever happening in the first place.

God Ruins The Life of an Innocent Man for No Reason

Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.” — Job 2:3

Yes, God does indeed ruin a man without any reason. Specifically God has made Satan a bet – Satan thinks that Job only worships God because his prosperity, and God wants to see if that is true for some reason not through his omniscience, but by allowing the Devil to take Job’s entire life and see what happens. Why would a loving God allow such a thing to anyone, let alone a blameless man?

While God stands by and watches, Satan causes Job’s livestock to be stolen, causes Job’s servants to be murdered, causes all of Job’s children to die, and causes Job to be covered with very painful sores. When Job demands to know why he is suffering and miserable, God appears to him and, instead of apologizing, he explains that Job has absolutely no right to question him.

Here we have another clear-cut case, even more so than the flood and Pharoah examples: God allows a man who is blameless by his own admission to be put under great mental stress and anguish. Additionally, God allows servants and children to be murdered — innocent collateral damage — just so that Job can get a punishment he doesn’t deserve and so that God can get an answer he already knew.

The Book of Job is the height of God inflicting pointless and needless suffering on people. Why would a loving God do such a thing? Apologists here has absolutely no fact to attempt to rationalize it, so they are actually forced to use the “God’s ways are not our ways” / “You have no right to question God” / “Whatever God does is just and admirable, no matter what” defense. In fact, this is the defense God himself uses. There is no other out for apologists.

What Now?

So for a recap, we have a God who is perfectly fine with decreeing completely arbitrary and disproportionate punishments; for ordering the torture and murder of innocent people, including babies and pregnant women, not once but many times; for ordering complete genocide of entire races; for killing innocent people in terrible ways to punish others; for killing the entire world; for manipulating people into making choices against their will and then punishing them for it; and for causing people to suffer terribly for “without any reason”.

If you heard of a person who did all of these things, what would you think of them? Would you scramble to find reasons that could justify all of this cruelty? Hardly — you would rightfully condemn a person for being unspeakably evil, far more than just a mere malevolent bully. Yet, this is what God has done in the Bible.

We might ask what God could possibly do to ever be considered evil? What action would cause people to say “Ok, I give up, God is a bully”? Would it not be murdering and torturing babies, or commanding genocide and the raping innocent women? It seems that God could do just anything, and recieve a “God’s ways are not our ways” / “You have no right to question God” / “Whatever God does is just and admirable, no matter what” defense.

It’s hard to imagine any more perfect, convincing, and compelling case of someone’s malevolence than the actions that I have just enumerated in these posts. I do not envy those who have the job of defending God’s goodness and perfection from these incidents. But yet people do.

In the next part of this essay I’ll look at these defenses, show how they clearly do not stack up, and then show how Biblical immorality can be used to make two different compelling and solid arguments against the existence of the Biblical God and against the truth of Christianity.

Followed up in TheraminTrees’s Atheism, Part I: Incompatibility

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