Gods of Love and Vengeance?

Some have tried to solve the problem of evil and suffering being intolerable and how there is a good God by suggesting there is a harsh God and a kind one.  Marcion in the early Church went down that road.

If there are two Gods could it be that one God is a God of love and the other is the God of vengeance? Vengeance is doing wrong to a person for wronging you while punishment is doing right to a person for wronging you.

This theory presupposes free will. The God of revenge would have nothing to punish us for if he we are free therefore both Gods would have to make life a permanent holiday for us.

Babies could not suffer unless they are being punished for the sins of a previous life for just being hurt to get at their parents. Revenge is paying back wrong for wrong so it is a mistake to say that Nasty God would not lash out at a baby for sins it cannot remember. It still has a debt to pay. Revenge usually hurts more than the intended victim. Other people are affected by it too. So the God would attack a child out of hatred for its parents.

Don’t think, “Such a theory would not be nasty and cruel for us to accept. If the God is taking revenge we do not have to approve. Even if he exacted punishment instead of taking revenge we could still have compassion for the victims for punishment is a necessary evil. If he asks us to approve then this contradicts the doctrine that he has compromised with the God of love. The Good God would never have consented to our creation if we had to approve and make our good deeds and thoughts to be evil bigotry and discrimination.

The latter wants us to be loving while the former wants us to be loving only to people who are deserving of it. The Gods have put us here to choose between evil and good and being rewarded and revenged upon. We would have to be half loving and half vengeful. This would not be a sin when we have no choice. Anything else will bring the wrath of the Judge God on us.

If all are sinners all the time then the good God is not really trying to win us over to goodness so there is no good God. And there must be some fault with us when none ascend to Heaven when we think and live like saints. When the choice is made by us, the God who can take us should. If too many souls go to the avenger the good God will have to wait until the sinners repent of all their sins and take them all up to his Heaven in that instant. But such repentance would be artificial and neither God would be happy with us or have let us be made for we are too sinful.

Even if we do repent of all our sins we still have to be punished for them if there is a God of wrath and vengeance. And what is the punishment? Everlasting suffering. Since sin is being willing to literally hurt God infinitely if you could from the minute you sin and forever it follows that you should suffer to the full everlastingly.

Don’t think, “When nobody is taken to Hell for the God of vengeance to get his own back the moment they sin it indicates that there is no such God.”

He could be doing this as it is – might just look as if he is not for there is a rival God and the universe could be full of people. Wicked people who are overlooked have to be ignored by the Dark Lord because he is not allowed to take them for the bargain is that only half of the human race may be taken to Hell.

But when all are sinners there is no point in any God waiting and all should be damned.

A vengeful God punishing us forever. Would the God of revenge hate us that much?

He kills and he slaughters and he believes in justice to the extent that he likes to go too far in his allegiance to it. Only a monster could torture a baby over previous life of crime or the crime of others. So the answer is yes.

 “The Good God has to punish sin. We would suffer nearly all the time if there was a Good God and a vengeful one”. He does not have to when the other does it for him. Bad God makes punishment unnecessary although he does it out of a malign motive and goes too far. Good might think we suffer enough so we are exempt from receiving retribution from him.

If the Gods are concerned about doing right then why don’t they magically inform all of us and convince us concerning what right and wrong are? We would know, if they existed.

And if the Gods exist they could manipulate our thoughts to prevent us from choosing to sin. Even free will can be fettered. The vengeful God would be totally evil if he lets us sin.

We reject this theory of the Gods for we know it is wisest to stick to what is more likely. And that may be that mind over matter influenced evolution. Even if it were plausible the Gods theory still would not be the most likely theory.

The good thing about the theory is that it has less of what theologians call seeming contradictions or mysteries than belief in one God of absolute love. This alone makes it evil to believe in one such God.

But would one vengeful God do? It would. He could bless us for past goodness and our sufferings could be his getting his own back. The theory is superfluous and that makes it unreasonable.
Eternal Dualistic Gods?
 
Are there two timeless Gods and one evil and the other his rival in goodness?

If the Gods are outside time, if they are eternal beings, then they are as good as infinite. Suppose I have a little power of mind over matter and enter the eternal state and use it then I will still have it afterwards because nothing can change in that state. So I can use it infinitely. The Good God will use his power infinitely and the Evil God his in the same way. His will to love becomes infinite and the others will to evil is also infinite. But this is impossible. Two infinite opposites cancel one another. So the Gods must be in time. They must have had an origin in time for time had to have an origin.

If they entered eternity they would lose their power. Only one could get in and there would only be one God if that happened.

So each God wants to enter and uses all his power to try and the other has to stop him leaving them no power to for anything else or creating. They would be in total deadlock. They cannot make an agreement in case it is a trap. The other God could be bluffing so that his rival will reduce the power keeping him out of eternity so that he can overcome and enter himself. So the fact that we exist and eternity exists and can be entered proves that there are not two Gods. They dare not use their power to make anything. This argument still works even if you believe in a God of mercy and justice or in a God of mercy and a God of revenge. It ruins any argument that has a pair – or even more that two- of Gods at variance existing.

Maybe the Gods cannot enter eternity? But modern physics tells us that if some beings made the universe then they must have power to stop time altogether for the universe has many examples of time been speeded up and slowed down.

So the doctrine of two conflicting Gods is false.

This logic is wrong: “The Gods could use their power to prevent one another using their power to infinity in eternity. This would mean that the power is potentially infinite not actually infinite. Potential means can be while actually means that it already is. Two forces that are potentially infinite can co-exist. They will not use their power to the full if they want to remain in existence. If they ever used it it would mean that they never existed and ever entered eternity so if they exist in eternity they never used it.”

Potential infinite power is infinite energy that is not being used but it is still infinite. It is therefore impossible that two potential infinites could exist. Also, one God could destroy the other if one refuses to use all his power.

The Sinner and the Holy

The theology: Perhaps there are two Gods and the good one just wants us to have moral qualities and is not concerned about our happiness and the other one wants us to sin but is not concerned about making us suffer. They would have to be equal and meet halfway all the time.

This is the most reasonable form of dualism if the universal theological doctrine that sin would be a greater evil than suffering and virtue would be a greater good than happiness is accepted – a theory which itself is just sick religious pornography. It takes some fanaticism and nerve to declare that the whole world starving to death is better than for a single sin to take place.

Sin is a worse evil than suffering because this dualism says that if God exists then an infinite curse is on sin for God wills infinite good to you. It is evil because of the harm it would do if it could.

But if God is really good then he hates suffering as much as sin for both are evil. The evil and uncompassionate doctrine of sin being the greater evil implies a morality that would ask you to suffer the greatest of torments to avoid telling a tiny lie if you believe that lying is always wrong.

If sin is worse than suffering then the bad God will be more interested in drawing you into sin than hurting you. If there is a good God then bad God hates him totally and is obsessed with offending him and getting us to offend him.

Sinful God made us just for sin. Good God made us just for virtue. It is not us they want but our qualities.

Suffering and happiness exist not because of them or because they are concerned about them but because they are side-effects of immorality and morality.

Incidentally, it is not sinful for Holy God to let Unholy God carry out sinful actions because he is a sinner anyway and Good God has not made evil greater than good by consenting to creation if the number of sinners is equal to the number of the holy.

The refutation:
 
* Morality with Holy God and immorality both encourage suffering so a person who has more blessings than sorrows would refute the theory. Then love or morality is sacrifice so the more suffering the better. People think suffering is okay when it is done for stopping worse suffering. That implies that suffering is evil but if suffering is evil and has to be stopped then that implies that God is evil for allowing suffering.

* The theory cannot explain why we exist for our existence does not reduce the amount of sin or virtue in the universe if there are two opposite Gods. We are not needed so why would the Gods waste their power?

Sinful God wills all our sins and wishes there was an infinity more. This is sinful for him. Sin is in the will and is an attitude. Morally, it is as bad to be willing to make people to sin as to actually do it and makes you as guilty as you would want them to be. Each sin he wills is committing a sin so he just can’t sin or will any more evil than he does so us sinning won’t make things any worse so he had no need to make us and wouldn’t have let the other God do it. Good God can’t will or do any more good than he does so he has no need for us either. It does not matter who sins or wills good as long as it is done. So whose idea was it to create? The Good God’s because to make persons even to suffer is to make what is valuable so the other God would see this as a maximisation of good and couldn’t allow it. He would have to be a God of death who puts half the creatures out of existence but the trouble is he would never let the Good God maximise what is valuable by creating human life which is totally valuable.

When a person sins Sinful God sins by willing it and that person sins too. Sinful God would still be willing that person to sin even if that person did not exist. So our existing or not existing makes no difference to the amount of sin and its opposite, holiness, that there is.

Perhaps two sinners are better than one or two saints are better than one and that is why we were made. I object that if it is only quality that counts and not persons it does not matter to either God as long as what he wants is done.

* The Gods would not have wasted power on uninhabited starts and planets.

Why would these Gods have made such a large universe with countless planets and stars which are useless? It is ridiculous especially when they are only worried about morality and immorality.

* If sinner God is nothing more than a tempter then we would experience the attraction to sin all the time but we don’t. Temptation can be good for us so it is impossible to imagine the good God stopping the bad one from not suggesting sin to us. Both Gods just act on us all the time together. But we know they do not.

* Unless half of all conscious beings are sinners then there cannot be two Gods, one good and one holy for they must be equal.

There could be beings we will never know of so we cannot be certain that half of all beings are not sinful and the remainder good. But the Gods would want us to know they existed so it would seem that all who exist would all be on the one planet so that we could be reasonably sure half are sinners. We would be able to see sin or virtue by clairvoyance. It seems ridiculous to believe that half of all free beings are sinners and fall will be sinners forever and ever. It is a contradiction.

* Some people do not believe in sin because they oppose the concept of free will so they cannot sin so Sinner God is a myth.

If the Gods could control what you choose, nobody would be enabled by them to believe in unfree will. They could prevent you from thinking that there might be no free will at all even if you are free. You can be free without thinking of everything. They would if they existed. The same is true if any kind of God exists.

* If we are free and there is two Gods then there is nothing they can do about our choices and we would be sinning one minute and not sinning the next if they could. This implies the absurd theory of indeterminism.

* If we are just here to choose between two Gods then why do we sleep? Why are babies not able to make this choice? Both would be absurd. These are simple disproofs of the doctrine of Sinner God and Holy God if we are free. They prove there can’t be any kind of God.

* We would suffer nearly the whole time for Holy God has to punish sin for punishing is a virtue and then there is the suffering caused by sin that Sinner God is indirectly responsible for.

If we are free then we sin. Holy God has to punish our sin for if we don’t pay for it then he does not seriously oppose it and is really a bad God. He punishes us because he has to not because he hates us. Perhaps he cannot punish us for it would mean too much suffering for us? Perhaps when he sees us hurt by the Sinful God it would do. He would then be obliged to treat it as punishment. It is like mummy not punishing Joey for a boy beat him up at school though it had nothing to do with her – she treats the beating as a proxy punishment for her.

Sinner God would be unable to do real evil if Holy used him to punish. Some might answer that it is his motive that counts. He does it out of hate even though it does make us pay for sin. But he can will evil without hurting us at all so he would not do Good God a favour to hurt us. Pain then would refute the theory. Sinful God would not bother creating when all he could do is will evil.

So, you should leave patients to rot in hospital for the Gods will leave them alone when they are ready. That reduces morality to good intentions without actions and allows us to do all the harm we wish as long as no malice towards God is intended.