The God of the old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction; jealous and proud of it; petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desenitized to their horror. A naive person blessed with the perspective of innocence has a clearer perception. Winston Churchill's son Randolph somehow contrived to remain ignorant of scripture until Evelyn Waugh and a brother officer, in a vain attempt to keep Churchill quiet when they were posted together during the war, bet him he couldn't read the entire Bible in a fortnight. Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud " or merely slapping his side and chortling " God, isn't God a shit."
Thomas Jefferson, better read, was of a similar opinion; " The Christian God is a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust."
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