So the vast majority of the religious related posts I have made on this site have been mostly critical about Christian doctrine, and I thought I really should switch it up a bit to show that I genuinely do believe in and love Christianity. And thus, I will do my best to make this a pro-religion argument (or at least an attempted pro-Christian post).

Perhaps some of you may know Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist more known for his atheistic criticisms of the God hypothesis. He’s an extremely well-versed individual who makes some really compelling points against believing in Christianity. So I wanted to see if I could possibly respond to one of his most well-known quotes about Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament.

 “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.” –Richard Dawkins

Obviously if this is your first time reading this, you’ll probably get the notion that Dawkins is pretty hostile towards religion. After all, calling the Christian God a “megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully” would imply that no one should be following such a deity. So how would a Christian respond to such a quote? Any believer who has spent any amount of time in church will tell you they’ve learnt God is a loving, merciful, righteous, and all-powerful being (quite the opposite of Dawkins description in the quote above).  And thus, most believers would immediately move to defend the glory of God and try to argue that he’s not “unjust, racist, infanticidal, malevolent, homophobic,” or a “bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser.” And if this is the case, then they would get utterly destroyed by Dawkins in any debate setting through simply quoting the Bible itself.

Unjust

Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers. Isaiah 14:21

Infanticidal

The LORD slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast. Exodus 13:15

Bloodthirsty

Thus saith the LORD of hosts … go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. 1 Samuel 15:2-3

Capriciously Malevolent

Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark … fill the courts with the slain: go ye forth. And they went forth, and slew in the city. Ezekiel 9:4-7

Jealous 

I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Exodus 20:5

Homophobic

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. Leviticus 20:13

Racist

An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever. Deuteronomy 23:3

So instead of arguing Dawkins on each of these points, something that I’m willing to concede is that in his mind, Dawkins is absolutely correct with the exception of one key detail: the “most unpleasant character in all fiction.” He has no basis or evidence to include the word “fiction” in this quote. And this is something that is crucially important for Dawkins words to have ANY bearing in truth. 

The main point I would like to bring up is reminding all of us that if God genuinely is who he says he is (i.e. the maker of heavens and earth, transcends space and time, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, perfect in all of his ways, etc.), then it would logically follow that we cannot judge him like we would a simple human being. In fact, we would have absolutely no right to judge him at all since he is the divine judge and his word is law. 

If a being like Yahweh truly did exist, and he says “I am love,” then literally by definition HE IS LOVE. There’s genuinely nothing he can say or do that isn’t love because he is the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-capable God. And this is something that a lot of unbelievers really have a hard time wrestling with (including me for a really long time): this idea that we can’t judge God by our own moral standards. After all, if a human kills another human, we can reasonably come together as a society, condemn this action and say that it is immoral. However, when God decides to end someone’s life, we cannot go on and call God immoral; after all by definition, he is moral. He is the giver of life, perfect in all of his ways, and omniscient so that everything he does is for the greater good. We would have to concede that Yahweh ending someone’s life is (somehow) love. And as a reminder, this is only true if the Christian God does exist.

So in order for Dawkins to actually prove his point, he has to defend his idea that this is a fictitious God. And unfortunately for him, this is the only part of his entire quote that could not be proven. You cannot “disprove” God in a similar way you cannot definitively “prove” God. 

And at the end of the day, it is really a matter of faith: do we have the faith to trust in an all-loving, all-powerful God who is in control of our lives? If the answer is yes, then we look at these troublesome passages in the Bible that we do not quite understand and trust that God does everything for the greater good. If the answer is no, then we have people like Richard Dawkins who cannot seem to wrap their heads around the fact that people worship a God who does some pretty horrendous actions in the Bible by our own standards. 

The choice is yours. I know I have no right to tell people what they should or shouldn’t believe; and honestly after a really long time of wrestling with this question myself, I don’t blame people for choosing either side. I would completely understand why someone would choose to become an atheist based on our current evidence and understanding of theology, and at the same time I have grown to also understand why so many people choose to completely trust this invisible God with their entire life. 

As for me, I have made my choice to believe despite imperfect understanding. But that’s not stopping me from continuing to point out flaws and criticisms that I see within the church.