# Theistic conspiracy theories? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 27, 2014, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theistic-conspiracy-theories/699711 "2014-09-27T11:36:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theistic-conspiracy-theories/699711/1 "2014-09-27T11:36:49Z")
It seems clear to me that, based on the evidence of the real world, any god one might postulate is either not omnipotent or apathetic, at best, towards human suffering. The Abrahamic god, especially, is not just apathetic but outright evil, as described in his own autobiographies. I don’t want to dwell on this point, so I’ll just quote Richard Dawkins, who put it very well: > [@](#): > > 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. Although personally, I think Randolph Churchill put it more succinctly: > [@](#): > > God, isn’t God a shit! Presumably, most people who believe these things are atheists. However, in _His Dark Materials_: God is portrayed as, originally, a particularly powerful, but now weak and ultimately mortal, angel who has created a kind of cult and myth of his own omnipotence. If God _were_ real, it would seem reasonable to note that we only have his own word that he’s a great guy, but both his actions and his apparent fallibility cast doubt on those claims. Are there any real people who believe in God, but also believe that scripture proclaiming God’s goodness is a trick by a being who is more evil, amoral or impotent than he would have us believe: a sort of theistic conspiracy theory? ---
**Author:** ![rsat3acr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@rsat3acr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsat3acr)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theistic-conspiracy-theories/699711/2 "2014-09-27T13:52:26Z")
Don’t know about your question exactly but I think there is a lot of confirmation bias. Like someone who thanks God for helping them survive a tornado but not blaming God for causing the tornado. They want to see the good but not the bad so that is what they see. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theistic-conspiracy-theories/699711/3 "2014-09-27T14:10:36Z")
Are there people that actually believe that the Biblical god exists, but that he is basically evil? I don’t know of anyone that thinks this way, although there is the mistaken notion that many atheists are of this mindset. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theistic-conspiracy-theories/699711/4 "2014-09-27T14:24:09Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Are there people that actually believe that the Biblical god exists, but that he is basically evil? I don’t know of anyone that thinks this way, although there is the mistaken notion that many atheists are of this mindset. There have been entire, very large, Christian heresies which held that the Old Testament God was basically evil, and that Jesus Christ was the incarnation of the real God, sent us to redeem us from the world. Marcion espoused that point of view in the second century, I think the Manichaeans did about a hundred years later, and then in the high middle ages the Bogomils in the Balkans, the Albigensians in France, and some group whose name I forget in Armenia all said much the same thing. For all the problems that raises, it does neatly solve the problem of evil, which may be why it’s a conception that so many people through the ages have found appealing. The Bogomils and Albigensians actually drew a lot of people to their banners, until they were stamped out with fire and sword. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theistic-conspiracy-theories/699711/5 "2014-09-27T14:26:37Z")
The French Christian-socialist intellectual Simone Weil, in the twentieth century, espoused a sort of semi-Albigensian approach to the old testament (she viewed much of it as wicked, but was willing to allow that there was some good stuff there.) ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theistic-conspiracy-theories/699711/6 "2014-09-27T22:09:30Z")
To me, the question is “Who is the more Vain?” God, who demands to be constantly worshiped on penalty of eternal torture, or the believer, who imagines that the almighty creator of the universe gives a shit about him. And since when is Vanity a virtue? ---
**Author:** ![nani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/58956e/32.png) [@nani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nani)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theistic-conspiracy-theories/699711/7 "2014-09-27T22:54:31Z")
The way most modern writers approach pre-modern scriptures as a category is pretty strange, IMHO. But I can suggest some good examples for the OP’s question: Muslims generally believe that God sent down previous revelations and books to the world before Muhammad, but that those (including the books of Moses and the **Injeel** , the supposed original gospel brought by Jesus) were altered/corrupted by man and only the Qur’an contains what we can verify as God’s true uncorrupted message. It isn’t clear to me whether the Qur’an itself directly claims that Jewish and Christian scriptures are corrupted, but this became orthodox belief very early on. I’ve anecdotally had Hindus tell me that Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad etc. were all avatars of Vishnu that came around to mess with people. I presume that the scriptures would be included in this. There have been antinomian movements that you could characterize as being motivated by a kind of theistic conspiracy, I suppose. Russian ones I read about seemed pretty cool. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2014, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theistic-conspiracy-theories/699711/8 "2014-09-29T11:06:54Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > There have been entire, very large, Christian heresies which held that the Old Testament God was basically evil, and that Jesus Christ was the incarnation of the real God, sent us to redeem us from the world. Marcion espoused that point of view in the second century, I think the Manichaeans did about a hundred years later, and then in the high middle ages the Bogomils in the Balkans, the Albigensians in France, and some group whose name I forget in Armenia all said much the same thing. > > For all the problems that raises, it does neatly solve the problem of evil, which may be why it’s a conception that so many people through the ages have found appealing. The Bogomils and Albigensians actually drew a lot of people to their banners, until they were stamped out with fire and sword. Gnosticism is pretty famous, too. (In fact, it’s the only such philosophy I’ve heard of.) The Creator God is an evil god, since he created matter and matter is evil, a shadow of the good true world. Jesus was either an avatar for the true God who is above the Creator, or just a man who achieved “gnosis” and became one with God, and taught his followers to do the same. And [Gnosticism still exists](http://gnosis.org/gnintro.htm), for sure.