Misotheism Explained

Misotheism is the "hatred of God" or "hatred of the gods" (from the Greek adjective (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: μισόθεος) "hating the gods" or "God-hating" – a compound of, Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: [[wikt:μῖσος|μῖσος]], "hatred" and, Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: [[wikt:θεός|θεός]], "god").

A related concept is dystheism (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: δύσ θεός, "bad god"), the belief that a god is not wholly good, and is evil. Trickster gods found in polytheistic belief systems often have a dystheistic nature. One example is Eshu, a trickster god from Yoruba religion who deliberately fostered violence between groups of people for his own deeds, saying that "causing ire is my greatest happiness." Many polytheistic deities since prehistoric times have been assumed to be neither good nor evil (or to have both qualities). Likewise, the concept of the demiurge in some versions of ancient Gnosticism is often portrayed as a generally evil entity. In conceptions of God as the summum bonum (the highest good), the proposition of God not being wholly good would be an oxymoron. Nevertheless, in monotheism, the sentiment may arise in the context of theodicy (the problem of evil, the Euthyphro dilemma) or as a rejection or criticism of particular depictions or attributions of the monotheistic god in certain belief systems (as expressed by Thomas Paine, a deist). A famous literary expression of misotheistic sentiment is Goethe's Prometheus, composed in the 1770s.

A historical proposition close to dystheism is the Latin: deus deceptor, "evil demon" (French: dieu trompeur) of René Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, which has been interpreted by Protestant critics as the blasphemous proposition that God exhibits malevolent intent. But Richard Kennington^{[1] [2]} states that Descartes never declared his "evil genius" to be omnipotent, but merely no less powerful than he is deceitful, and thus not explicitly an equivalent to God, the singular omnipotent deity.

Thus, Hrafnkell, protagonist of the eponymous Hrafnkels saga set in the 10th century, as his temple to Freyr is burnt and he is enslaved, states that "I think it is folly to have faith in gods", never performing another blót (sacrifice), a position described in the sagas as Norse, Old: goðlauss, "godless". Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology observes that:

Terminology

• Misotheism first appears in the Chambers Dictionary in 1907.^{[3] [4]} The Greek Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: μισόθεος is found in Aeschylus (Agamemnon 1090). The English word appears as a nonce-coinage, used by Thomas De Quincey in 1846.^[5] It is comparable to the original meaning of Greek Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: [[:wikt:ἄθεος|atheos]] of "rejecting the gods, rejected by the gods, godforsaken". Strictly speaking, the term connotes an attitude towards the gods (one of hatred) rather than making a statement about their nature. Bernard Schweizer (2002) stated "that the English vocabulary seems to lack a suitable word for outright hatred of God... [even though] history records a number of outspoken misotheists", believing "misotheism" to be his original coinage. Applying the term to the work of Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), Schweizer clarifies that he does not mean the term to carry the negative connotations of misanthropy: "To me, the word connotes a heroic stance of humanistic affirmation and the courage to defy the powers that rule the universe."^[6]
• Dystheism is the belief that God exists but is not wholly good, or that he might even be evil. The opposite concept is eutheism, the belief that God exists and is wholly good. Eutheism and dystheism are straightforward Greek formations from eu- and dys- + theism, paralleling atheism; Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: δύσθεος in the sense of "godless, ungodly" appearing e.g. in Aeschylus (Agamemnon 1590). The terms are nonce coinages, used by University of Texas at Austin philosophy professor Robert C. Koons in a 1998 lecture. According to Koons, "eutheism is the thesis that God exists and is wholly good, [... while] dystheism is the thesis that God exists but is not wholly good." However, many proponents of dystheistic ideas (including Elie Wiesel and David Blumenthal) do not offer those ideas in the spirit of hating God.^[7] Their work notes God's apparent evil or at least indifferent disinterest in the welfare of humanity, but does not express hatred towards him because of it. A notable usage of the concept that the gods are either indifferent or actively hostile towards humanity is expressed in H. P. Lovecraft's literary philosophy of Cosmic indifferentism, which pervades the Cthulhu Mythos.^[8]
• Maltheism is an ad-hoc coining appearing on Usenet in 1985,^[9] referring to the belief in God's malevolence inspired by the thesis of Tim Maroney that "even if a God as described in the Bible does exist, he is not fit for worship due to his low moral standards."^[10] The same term has also seen use among designers and players of role-playing games to describe a world with a malevolent deity.^[11]
• Antitheism is direct opposition to theism. As such, it is generally manifested more as an opposition to belief in a god (to theism per se) than as opposition to gods themselves, making it more associated with antireligion, although Buddhism is generally considered to be a religion despite its status with respect to theism being more nebulous. Antitheism by this definition does not necessarily imply belief in any sort of god at all, it simply stands in opposition to the idea of theistic religion. Under this definition, antitheism is a rejection of theism that does not necessarily imply belief in gods on the part of the antitheist. Some might equate any form of antitheism to an overt opposition to God, since these beliefs run contrary to the idea of making devotion to God the highest priority in life, although those ideas would imply that God exists, and that he wishes to be worshiped, or to be believed in.^[12]
• Certain forms of dualism make the assertion that the thing worshiped as God in this world is actually an evil impostor, but that a true benevolent deity worthy of being called "God" exists beyond this world. Thus, the Gnostics (see Sethian, Ophites) believed that God (the deity worshiped by Jews, Greek Pagan philosophers and Christians) was really an evil creator or demiurge that stood between us and some greater, more truly benevolent real deity. Similarly, Marcionites depicted God as represented in the Old Testament as a wrathful, malicious demiurge.

Theodicy

See main article: Theodicy, Problem of evil and Holocaust theology. Dystheistic speculation arises from consideration of the problem of evil — the question of why God, who is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, would allow evil to exist in the world. Koons notes that this is a theological problem only for a eutheist, since a dystheist would not find the existence of evil (or God's authorship of it) to be an obstacle to theistic belief. In fact, the dystheistic option would be a consistent non-contradictory response to the problem of evil. Thus Koons concludes that the problem of theodicy (explaining how God can be good despite the apparent contradiction presented in the problem of evil) does not pose a challenge to all possible forms of theism (i.e., that the problem of evil does not present a contradiction to someone who would believe that God exists but that he is not necessarily good).

This conclusion implicitly takes the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma, asserting the independence of good and evil morality from God (as God is defined in monotheistic belief). Historically, the notion of "good" as an absolute concept has emerged in parallel with the notion of God being the singular entity identified with good. In this sense, dystheism amounts to the abandonment of a central feature of historical monotheism: the de facto association of God with the summum bonum.

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote: "This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings."

Critics of Calvin's doctrines of predestination frequently argued that Calvin's doctrines did not successfully avoid describing God as "the author of evil".

Much of post-Holocaust theology, especially in Judaic theological circles, is devoted to a rethinking of God's goodness. Examples include the work of David R. Blumenthal, author of Facing the Abusing God (1993) and John K. Roth, whose essay "A Theodicy of Protest" is included in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy (1982):

Notes and References

1. Book: René Descartes: Critical Assessments. Georges Joseph Daniel Moyal. 139. 1991. Routledge. 0-415-02358-0. Richard Kennington. The 'Teaching of Nature' in Descartes' Soul Doctrine.
2. Book: 146. On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy. Richard M. Kennington. The Finitude of Descartes' Evil Genius. 2004. Lexington Books. 0-7391-0815-8.
3. Book: Chamber's Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language: Pronouncing, Explanatory, Etymological, with Compound Phrases, Technical Terms in Use in the Arts and Sciences, Colloquialisms, Full Appendices, and Copiously Illustrated . 1907 . W. & R. Chambers Limited .
4. [New English Dictionary]
5. "On Christianity as an Organ of Political Movement" (1846).
6. Bernard Schweizer, 'Religious Subversion in His Dark Materials in: Millicent Lenz, Carole Scott (eds.) His Dark Materials Illuminated: Critical Essays On Philip Pullman's Trilogy (2005), p. 172, note 3.
7. Seidner, Stanley S. (June 10, 2009) "A Trojan Horse: Logotherapeutic Transcendence and its Secular Implications for Theology". Mater Dei Institute. pp. 11-12.
8. Book: Johnson . Brian . 2016 . Prehistories of Posthumanism: Cosmic Indifferentism, Alien Genesis, and Ecology from H. P. Lovecraft to Ridley Scott . https://books.google.com/books?id=-Ch0DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA97 . Sederholm . Carl H. . Weinstock . Jeffrey Andrew . The Age of Lovecraft . . . 97–116 . 10.5749/j.ctt1b9x1f3.9 . 978-0-8166-9925-4.
9. Apparently coined by Paul Zimmerman in August 1985, on net.origins referring to the misotheistic belief that God was in fact not a "Creator-God" but a "Damager-God".
10. Original Usenet posting of Maroney's "Even If I Did Believe" essay, 31 December 1983
11. Naylor et al. (1994)
12. See the example of Viktor Frankl in Seidner, Stanley S. (June 10, 2009) "A Trojan Horse: Logotherapeutic Transcendence and its Secular Implications for Theology". Mater Dei Institute. p 11.