Misotheism is based on the belief that the world doesn’t reflect the doings of an all-wise, benevolent, powerful, and omnipresent creator God–therefore, the God who created such a flawed world and does nothing to correct its imperfection must be indifferent, incompetent, or plainly malevolent. This internal logic does not take into consideration that the degree of chaos, pain, and injustice on this earth may well be a sign that there is no God to begin with.
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TERMINOLOGY
Misotheism first appears in a dictionary in 1907. Greek μισόθεος is found in Aeschylus (Agamemnon 1090). The English word appears as a nonce-coinage, used by Thomas de Quincey in 1846. It is comparable to the original meaning of Greek atheos of "rejecting the gods, rejected by the gods, godforsaken". Strictly speaking, the term connotes an attitude towards the gods (one of hatred) rather than making a statement about their nature. Bernard Schweizer (2002) stated "that the English vocabulary seems to lack a suitable word for outright hatred of God... [even though] history records a number of outspoken misotheists", believing "misotheism" to be his original coinage. Applying the term to the work of Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), Schweizer clarifies that he does not mean the term to carry the negative connotations of misanthropy: "To me, the word connotes a heroic stance of humanistic affirmation and the courage to defy the powers that rule the universe."
NOT ATHEISM
Atheists are not faced with the painful prospect of having to struggle against a millenia-old theistic tradition that requires the believer to worship a deity that is silent and never shows itself, except in ways that could be construed as wishful thinking, hallucination, or make-believe. Where the misotheist is burdened with the conviction that God is man’s enemy, the atheist just stands back and laughs at the moral-theological contortions of the misotheist; and he looks with bemusement at the acts of faith among “true” believers. When the atheist becomes angry, his anger is directed against the institutionalized, ecclesiastical manifestations of religious belief. An atheist cannot muster true hatred of God since it is pointless to hate something that doesn’t exist.
MISOTHEISM IN JEWISH & CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES
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