Like their gods

13 January 2010 · 2 Comments

Anyone who has read Dawkins’ The God Delusion will, in all likelihood, recall his description of the christian bible’s Old Testament god¹. For those of you that don’t recall, it reads:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

So, a bit of a git, then.

However, it struck me that these very same qualities often apply to a certain number of fundamentalist christians—presumably trying to be more like their god²—and the first and most prominent example of which that sprang to my mind was Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church/”God Hates <topic>” fame.

What a card that chap is. His god is almost certainly the same god that Dawkins mentions; the far more relaxed New Testament redeemer god, Jesus—traditionally the primary god of christianity—doesn’t appear to get much of a look-in in Phelps’ theology.

I began to wonder how like their gods these sorts of people are, how many of these qualities might actually apply to Phelps, and others of that ilk, were one to substitute his name into the above.

[Fred Phelps] is arguably the most unpleasant character in [christendom]: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ~~ethnic cleanser; a~~ misogynistic, [spectacularly] homophobic, racist, ~~infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential,~~ megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.³

It appears that pretty much the only descriptions that don’t apply to Phelps are those that would entail him having to personally perform or order the killing of one or more other people. Perhaps with an infestation of bees. As this sort of thing is generally frowned upon in most cultures (yes, including the bee thing)—occasionally for dogmatic religious reasons but more often than not for purely secular, sensible and justifiable ones—this is hardly surprising; one can lose their liberty to travel the world being a controversial bigot if one is convicted, by a very human court of law, for such actions and end up gaoled.

I did struggle somewhat over the ’sadomasochist’ item, but I realised that, as well as enjoying inflicting misery on others, the proclaimed beliefs of Phelps’ bizarre little cult do appear to indicate he’d be happy with whatever judgement his god handed out to him, even if that meant the ‘hell’ he so often condemns (thankfully completely ineffectively) others to.

According to mainstream christian tradition, the Old Testament god chilled out quite a bit when he ~~raped~~ got laid and impregnated some poor girl with himself-as-Jesus. Unfortunately the same can’t be said of Phelps, who seems to have tenaciously remained determinedly repugnant despite having sired a whole bunch of offspring, presumably in the traditional manner. And with a relatively ready, knowing and willing partner too.

Perhaps he needs to get some a little more often, although I can easily imagine a chap of Phelps’ age and predisposition having erectile (amongst other) issues.

I wonder how often Yahweh gets a bit of action these days. It’s not something one hears about.

How much does your favourite religious crackpot resemble their god(s) in word and deed?

at least the Israelite-loving Yahweh one that christians keep harping on about. I’ll ignore El, Hadad, Moloch, Asherah and the rest of them for now and take them at their harebrained monopolytheistic word. [↩]
or perhaps simply because they’re hate-filled asshats. [↩]
All of these qualities can, and have been, attributed to (and substantiated if not freely admitted by) Phelps and his clan elsewhere. I’ll leave this as an exercise for the reader’s edification. Hint: the Wikipedia link previously is a good starting point. [↩]

Tags: <bigotry, christianity, The Stupid It Burns, Westboro Baptist Church>