The gluttonous God

Saturn devouring his son, by Francisco de Goya

The God of Abraham demands constant human sacrifices, although He, His prophets and His followers deny it. In the Scriptures, by preventing Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac, this God supposedly disavows the practice, unlike other gods, who are thought of as demons. However, the reality is that, in practice, the Lord of the universe feeds on the pain and suffering of his creatures and more: He demands victims from those who worship him.

If this is not the case, how can we explain the history of His followers, at least those who are part of the majority factions of the great monotheistic religions? The majority of God's followers, with the approval of their priests, connived at persecution, oppression and murder, even when they did not directly participate in these crimes. Would most of them be wrong, then? Only a few tolerant saints went the opposite way, with their lives of material renunciation and work for those most in need.

These few are so different that they do not even seem to serve the same God as the criminals. It is this other God, followed by a handful of saints, who claims that salvation is so difficult. It is from Him that comes the teaching contained in the Gospel of Saint Matthew:

“Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!”

If the vast majority of the hateful followers of the God of this world are saved, then this passage is false, and vice-versa. Both things cannot be true. Only those few who do not bow down to the glutton, devourer of suffering and lives, drinker of tears, are saved. There is no shortage of current examples of how the worshipers of the God of this world sacrifice victims in his honor.

A few days ago, a Pakistani tourist named Mohammed Ismail was visiting the city of Madyan, in northwestern Pakistan, when he was accused of blasphemy for allegedly desecrating the Quran, the holy book of Muslims. After being chased by an excited crowd, the police took him into the police station to try to protect him and investigate the facts. However, loudspeakers at the local mosque incited the crowd to storm the police station and kill the man.

He was beaten by hundreds of people and burned alive. While he burned, his body continued to be trampled, stoned and attacked with pieces of wood and other objects. The images are shocking. The crowd also set fire to the police station and police vehicles. This was not an isolated incident in Pakistan. This kind of thing happens a lot, especially between enemies who accuse each other of blasphemy so that people will lynch them.

Pakistan has laws against blasphemy. There is even the death penalty for some cases. But while there are people serving sentences for blaspheming against Islam, including life sentences and death row convicts, the Pakistani state itself has not yet executed anyone for this crime. Not that it's necessary. Most of the accused are not even arrested and tried, as the heated spirits of the devout population ensure that they are finished off long before any due process.

And anyone who thinks that this type of violence and oppression at the hands of God's devotees is restricted to just one of the monotheisms is mistaken.

Although most historically Christian countries have long ago abolished the death penalty and imprisonment as punishment for blasphemy and other sins related to customs, the spirits fanned by the Christian religion continue to feed the earth with human blood. After all, almost two millennia of persecution, torture, forced conversions and executions — including the infamous burnings at the stake of the various Catholic and Protestant Inquisitions — are not easily erased from people's hearts.

We see Christians justifying barbarism in the name of their God all the time, trying at all costs to intrude into politics, reverse three hundred years of Enlightenment and put an end to secularism. They criticize Muslim countries but try with all their might to see their priests and pastors having the same powers of life and death as Iranian Ayatollahs and Saudi theocrats. And if we stand up to say something, we are preemptively reprimanded by moderate appeasers who say that these obscurantist monsters are not “real Christians,” as if being Christian and being kind and tolerant were synonymous.

Although less prevalent, lynchings motivated by religious fanaticism also occur among modern-day Christians. How can we forget the case of Fabiane Maria de Jesus, who was randomly accused of being a witch who sacrificed children in satanic rituals and lynched by people in Balneário Camboriú. This did not happen centuries ago, but a few years ago, in São Paulo, the richest state in Brazil. In addition to this grotesque example of collective delusion, every day, practitioners of African religions are attacked due to growing Christian fanaticism.

We can dispense with historical analysis of how the figure of Yahweh originated from an amalgam of warrior and storm gods worshiped by certain tribes of the Levant during the Bronze Age. Yes, this largely explains the massacres ordered by the God of the Old Testament, but it is not necessary. We know from observation of nature that the Creator of the universe, if He exists, ordained a bloody and amoral world, where the quest for survival is the only imperative.

In the case of man, a being supposedly created in His image and likeness, the shedding of blood for the most banal reasons is the order of the day. Therefore it follows that this is what the God of this world wants from us. Even the interreligious wars that ravaged the world between Catholics and Protestants, Shiites and Sunnis, are fought for His glory. Nothing seems to elevate Him more than seeing people who profess practically the same faith cutting each other's throats over small disagreements related to doctrine.

The blood and flesh burned alive at the stake feed a gluttonous God, eager to swallow us whole. Any man of flesh and blood who demanded from us what God demands from his followers — that they convert and impose His asinine rules down the throats of entire peoples — would be considered a moral monster, a criminal fit to be imprisoned or destroyed. However, as He is God, even the least religious among us fear disrespecting Him, as they fear upsetting a large part of the human race.

The Creator, the supposed Lord of the entire universe, is exalted when His worshipers lynch a poor guy accused of disrespecting a book. He doesn't care about the hundreds of thousands suffering in Gaza, nor the tens of millions of hungry people affected by poverty and violence around the world. But He is scandalized by homosexuals, African religions and atheists. God cares about fetuses that have not yet developed thalamocortical connections and therefore don't possess consciousness, but He does not care about children living in the streets, crushed by poverty.

This all points to a weak God, incapable of solving real problems, but jealous and selfish to the point of encouraging His followers to lynch in His name. If He were made of flesh and blood, this God would be a mere leader of a pathetic cult, feared for its cruelty and madness, nothing more. However, He is an idea existing in the heads of billions around this insignificant planet. And sadly, ideas are almost immortal.

by Fernando Olszewski