(no subject)

[balmofgilead]

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, The God Delusion

It's true, mostly.  And the funny thing is that I never realized it, or didn't accept it, until very recently.  [A housemate said something similar to this a few years ago, and I found it really hard to accept.  But that may have been because she's a strong believer in the God 2.0 of the New Testament. (Hey--maybe 'my' god ain't so hot, but he's mine, dammit, and if I'm going to believe in a god, it'll be him.) Dawkins, on the other hand, is a strong atheist.]  Dawkins discusses how children are influenced to believe otherwise--I can't do justice to his ideas in summarizing them, but it made a lot of sense.