I got into a debate elsewhere earlier today with a group of Calvinists that were making fun of some meme that depicted a person saying that even if God existed, they would not worship God.
Several people pointed out that this was likely because of things like the Problem of Evil: the meme-maker was basically saying that God would be unworthy of worship even if one existed. That’s all beside the point, just background.
What caught my attention was one poster (one of the Calvinists I presume) that was saying such people were fools: that even if dystheism were true, they should worship the god to avoid infinite suffering in Hell.
Now, I disagree with this, of course. I don’t act on behalf of my values to gain anything, and I don’t avoid causing harm in order to avoid punishment. I act on behalf of my values because they are my values.
This person just kept saying that it would be foolish not to worship the god, and praise it, and do what the god commanded, and so on: even if the god commanded to harm people, or wanted praise for causing harm. I said I would never do this willingly. He again said this was foolish (and trust me, by this point I do not trust this man’s ethics/morality, because this seems like exactly the line of argument I imagine some Nazis gave: “I better follow orders for my own safety.” I would rather die than be a Nazi.)
So anyway, this got me to thinking of a horrible hypothetical. In the case of dystheism, where there is just an awful god, but said god is omnipotent and can cause you to suffer a lot for an infinite amount of time unless you followed its harmful commands or praised it for harming people or any number of nasty things: am I alone in saying that while my mind and will are my own (before I go too crazy from whatever tortures would be put upon me), I’d choose Hell over going against my values of not harming people and not praising monsters?
First of all, God is not omniscient nor can He do whatever He wants. Despite what tradition says, God does not hold dominion over the earth. Not unless Genesis 1:26 or Psalm 8:6 doesn't really mean God gave man dominion, even though that's exactly what each one declares.
Gen 1:26,
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Ps 8:6,
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all [things] under his feet:
There are plenty of places in the scriptures that indicate God did not get His way. Why? Because all He could do was try to convince those with the dominion (people) to do what would result in good and not harm. He did not create mindless robots. It was like the saying, "let the bird go and if he loves you he will return." Therefore, people are at least complicit in what happens on this earth.
Prior to Jesus' coming, for various reasons the OT Jews could only get a dim view of God and they kept screwing that up. God did the best He could to deal with people, but, He couldn't just wave a magic wand and make things right again. Remember, He was not in charge on this earth. That might sound weird, but it'd be hard to twist Gen 1:26 or Psalm 8:6 to say man was not in charge, that God was in charge. It just does not say that. Tradition is not the standard for truth.
God's original plan was for people to live in a garden of pleasure and delights (the meaning of the word "Eden" in Hebrew). But people were not satisfied and wanted to be like God. Of course that didn't work out, so God's plan went down the drain. It was a perfect plan. Part of the perfect plan was free will. Well, Adam and Eve used that free will to trash God's plan for them. God could have just let them live until they (and all their ancestors) die, but He didn't want them to die. His only choice was to go to plan "B" which, as I said above, included the necessity for Him to work with people until the redeemer came. Sometimes they listened and things went well, and other times they didn't listen and things went bad.
I said the Jews could not really get a true picture of God. They did not have the spirit of God on them that God meant for all people to have. Adam and Eve had that spirit (hence the intimate relationship with God) but they screwed that up also. For that reason, they nor their descendants couldn't get a true picture of God.
John 17:25-26,
25 O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.
26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare [it]: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.
Jesus is the one who revealed God to the world. The scriptures say he was a perfect representation of God. Verse 25 says the world did not know God but Jesus did. The OT Jews did not know God. There view of Him in the OT was cloudy at best, if not outright opposed to His true nature.
Assuming you are familiar with the things Jesus did while he was here, i.e. all he did was good, it might be revealing to ask yourself if Jesus ever did anything bad to anyone. Well, as the scriptures say, he only went about doing good. If you can't picture Jesus doing something and he is a perfect image of God, then we must conclude that God did nothing but good also.
So, either Jesus doing nothing but good is not a perfect representation of God or our understanding of what God did in the OT is wrong. I suppose the easy thing is to just say the Bible contradicts itself and let it go at that. On the other hand, with honest scholarly research (not a 5 minute consideration of the matter), it is possible to square the two seemingly contradictory ideas.
