This is a question that occurred to me a couple of months ago, while I was pondering issues philosophical. I know it's a standard claim of atheists. We often will say that God, particularly the "Judeo-Christian" version, is not something we can readily believe in. I got to thinking about all the strange, inhuman beings I encounter regularly in my fantasy and science fiction reading, and I usually have little trouble suspending my critical disbelief in them. Sauron, Voldemort, even Leto II (from "God Emperor of Dune," in case that name is less than familiar) are characters that I found I could accept while reading. YWHW, the God of Israel, isn't. I can't help wondering "Why?"
At first, I thought it was a matter of human personality traits. All fictional characters necessarily have some sort of a reflection of a human mind in them, even characters like HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey" or Sonny from the movie "I, Robot." But that doesn't really work, because the Bible does speak of God in terms of human emotions. Often rather childish emotions, true, but human emotions nonetheless.
In fact, the Bible depicts God as the ultimate in mercurial temperaments. One day, he gets upset that his creation isn't working out right and wipes everything off the face of the Earth, the next, he's creating cute little rainbows to remind us of his promise not to do it again. One day, he's railing against the "whoredomes" of his "special chosen people," the next, he's talking of protecting his children against any sort of harm. God is variously described as implacable in anger and the very embodiment of "love." It's sort of the ultimate in bi-polar roller coasters.
But there is one thing that makes God completely different from any sort of human or human-like fictional character you'll ever encounter. He has nothing to desire. Think about it. According to Christians and the Bible, God created and OWNS the universe. They believe that God can create anything that doesn't already exist. So the question ultimately asks itself... what could possibly motivate God?
Compare God to some other extremely powerful fiction characters. Sauron desires power. That's a pretty weak motivator, really, but it's understandable. Voldemort apparently fears death (this essay is being written before the release of the 6th book in the Harry Potter series, but I think I have a pretty good bead on the man), and that sentiment is pretty understandable. Even Leto II has his desire to keep the human race on his "Golden Path" for as far as he can see into the future, though that idea isn't really explored as well as I would have liked.
But what about God? What does God want? To spend eternity in heaven with sinless humans? Uh... okay, but why not just create heaven filled with sinless humans? All this bullshit about the Garden of Eden, sin, handing out laws, building a temple in Jerusalem, etc. etc. etc. seems pretty superfluous, doesn't it? They say God works in mysterious ways, but the scheme presented here isn't mysterious, it's completely stupid. Not to mention wasteful.
Now, this may have been one of the factors that led to the creation of Christianity... the idea that God became a Man in order to... Um... To do what, exactly? Make it possible for people to get into heaven? According to several early Christian writers, people were already getting into heaven. They did this by having faith, according to the books of Romans and Hebrews. So now Jesus comes along, heals people, turns water into wine and a fair number of other interesting and ultimately useless things, eventually engineering his own execution just so that people can get to heaven by what? HAVING FAITH! So even Jesus didn't much have anything to really motivate him, if you look at the Big Picture.
And that's the heart of the matter, if you ask me. God is unbelievable because there's absolutely no reason for him to desire anything.
While we're at it, let's ask the question: What about Satan? There's another interesting piece of work. What does he desire? Human suffering? First off, how could that help such a being in any sense? All depictions of Satan I've ever seen or read about have him destroying "all that is good" for no discernable reason. Now, granted, there are a good number of little kids who get a perverse pleasure in destroying things for fun. I have to admit I was one of them myself, back when I was ten years old. But to make this the eternal job of some super creature is just a little beyond what I would be willing to believe.
In the end, I think it all boils down to this: Humans are finite creatures, that all have desires that motivate them to attempt to manipulate things they have imperfect control over in order to improve their lives. While they don't all have desires we agree with, we can understand those desires and relate to them, to one degree or another. The thing we can't wrap our wits around are these critters in the sky that were dreamed up long ago, with infinite powers and infinite desires, infinite pleasures and infinite hatreds. They just don't make any sense. Any editor presented with such an idea would never pay for a story about such beings... if there weren't already a market for them called "religious."
(c) 2005 J. Eric Harrington
