Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism
Bernard Schweizer
Abstract
This book uncovers something more radical than atheism: hostility against God. Misotheists are not anti-religious, nor do they question God's existence; however, they do deny his competence and goodness. The author marshals an impressive array of evidence to demonstrate that this stance has a history of its own, although few people are aware of it. Indeed, misotheists tend to conceal their hostility to God, even while they hint at it obsessively. Hating God contains both a sweeping historical overview of the hostility against God and compelling case studies of six major authors who explore mis ... More
This book uncovers something more radical than atheism: hostility against God. Misotheists are not anti-religious, nor do they question God's existence; however, they do deny his competence and goodness. The author marshals an impressive array of evidence to demonstrate that this stance has a history of its own, although few people are aware of it. Indeed, misotheists tend to conceal their hostility to God, even while they hint at it obsessively. Hating God contains both a sweeping historical overview of the hostility against God and compelling case studies of six major authors who explore misotheistic themes: Algernon Swinburne, Zora Neale Hurston, Rebecca West, Elie Wiesel, Peter Shaffer, and Philip Pullman.The author's focus on literary artists is no coincidence, as literature has served as the principal vehicle for expressions of God-hatred over the last two hundred years. By probing the deeper mainsprings that cause rational, talented, moral people to become blasphemers, he offers answers to some of the most vexing questions that beset the human relationship with the divine. In a provocative finding the author concludes that misotheists have no morbid or perverse inclinations but instead number among them humanists of the highest caliber.
Keywords:
God-hatred,
agonistic misotheism,
absolute misotheism,
political misotheism,
atheism,
theology,
anti-theism,
Yahweh,
Jesus,
Christianity
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199751389 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2011 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751389.001.0001 |
