Misotheism

Misotheism is the "hatred of God" or "hatred of the gods" (from the Greek adjective misotheos (μισόθεος) "hating the gods" or "God-hating" – a compound of, μῖσος, "hatred" and, θεός, "god").

A related concept is dystheism (Ancient Greek: δύσ θεός, "bad god"), the belief that a god is not wholly good, and is evil. Trickster gods found in polytheistic belief systems often have a dystheistic nature. One example is Eshu, a trickster god from Yoruba religion who deliberately fostered violence between groups of people for his own deeds, saying that "causing ire is my greatest happiness." Many polytheistic deities since prehistoric times have been assumed to be neither good nor evil (or to have both qualities). Likewise, the concept of the demiurge in some versions of ancient Gnosticism is often portrayed as a generally evil entity. In conceptions of God as the summum bonum (the highest good), the proposition of God not being wholly good would be an oxymoron. Nevertheless, in monotheism, the sentiment may arise in the context of theodicy (the problem of evil, the Euthyphro dilemma) or as a rejection or criticism of particular depictions or attributions of the monotheistic god in certain belief systems (as expressed by Thomas Paine, a deist). A famous literary expression of misotheistic sentiment is Goethe's Prometheus, composed in the 1770s.

A historical proposition close to dystheism is the deus deceptor, "evil demon" (dieu trompeur) of René Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, which has been interpreted by Protestant critics as the blasphemous proposition that God exhibits malevolent intent. But Richard Kennington^[1][2] states that Descartes never declared his "evil genius" to be omnipotent, but merely no less powerful than he is deceitful, and thus not explicitly an equivalent to God, the singular omnipotent deity.

Thus, Hrafnkell, protagonist of the eponymous Hrafnkels saga set in the 10th century, as his temple to Freyr is burnt and he is enslaved, states that "I think it is folly to have faith in gods", never performing another blót (sacrifice), a position described in the sagas as goðlauss, "godless". Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology observes that:

It is remarkable that Old Norse legend occasionally mentions certain men who, turning away in utter disgust and doubt from the heathen faith, placed their reliance on their own strength and virtue. Thus in the Sôlar lioð 17 we read of Vêbogi and Râdey á sjálf sig þau trûðu, "in themselves they trusted".^[3]