When pressed regarding the reasoning behind God’s actions Christians will sometimes retort that ‘you cannot hope to know the mind of God’, yet all the while build their lives around some idealistic idea of what type of God would make them happiest.

 If God did in fact exist, and if you could even go as far as to say that The Bible was directly influenced (possibly even written) by that same creator God, then there would still be no reason to think that they could be considered ‘kind’, or some other positive attribute. There is no reason to even think that God’s words in The Bible hold any sort of truth. We just cannot know.

 Without direct experience of God, something which we do not have, we cannot even hope to ascribe attributes. The only trouble with this is that without attributes, believers have nothing to believe in. Adding more features to the face of God helps an individual train their mind on it, it allows them to very easily access the sort of thoughts that they feel would appease such a being. Worshiping ‘whatever out there is most powerful, but is tragically undefinable’ is never going to be popular.

I would suggest, therefore that theists define God’s attributes after they choose to ‘believe’, approaching the problem from the direction of worshipping whatever is most powerful and then deciding what attributes such a being would likely have. Thrown into the mix are plenty of characteristics that make people happy – the idea that God is loving, for example – which would point us towards concluding that these theists were never trying to define a creature that does exist, but simply seek to make themselves feel comfortable in the world.

Shaky foundations for the assertion of something that is meant to exist. I know I can’t tolerate such self-satisfying warping of the world’s truths, but I suppose not everyone would rather believe what is true and instead many simply want to opt for what makes them happy. My final word of advice would only be that one should be very careful of centring choices they make around a mistruth that they themselves have spun.

Dying for your beliefs (that you made up to make yourself feel better in this cruel world full of sharp and pointy objects) doesn’t quite feel as noble.