Fictional Bad Guys (Who Are LESS Evil Than God)
Offline From this blog post.
Here's a fun little challenge to my fellow atheists. inspired by this two part video: Find fictional characters that are considered bad, or at least morally ambiguous, who are more virtuous than the christian god. See, it's actually fairly easy to find fictional heroes that are more moral than the christian god (Superman, Spider-Man, Cornelius from Planet of the Apes, Sherlock Holmes, Kenzo Tenma from Monster, etc.) but it might be interesting and elucidating to find villains and especially nasty anti-heroes that are less evil than the christian god. The reason I think this would be interesting and enlightening is that these types of characters are supposed to be evil (they're written that way)or at least they're supposed to have a morality that is troubling to most people. Meanwhile, the god that over 2 billion people worship as the perfect ideal of goodness, well...acts worse than many cartoon villains. This is designed in part to illustrate this point, and in part to just have some fun as theologically-challenged nerds.
So, here are the rules of this challenge:
1: Characters must be either a villain or an anti-hero. If they're an anti-hero, they have to be either Type IV or Type V, or a Villain Protagonist, to count.
2: You must make a case that this character's actions and possibly their motivations are evil. This should not be hard.
3: You must make a case that the christian god, Yahweh, is more evil than that character. Bible verses illustrating your point are recommended. This also should not be hard.
I'll get the ball rolling with 3 examples of my own.
The Punisher (aka Frank Castle)
Why He's Evil: His whole gimmick is that he is a merciless killer. He kills criminals without remorse, and regularly tortures small time crooks for information. He's essentially a serial killer with good publicity.
Why He Isn't As Evil As Yahweh: Frank only kills bad people, and shows real remorse when he accidentally kills a good police officer (like in the movie Punisher: War Zone) or a civilian. Meanwhile, god took Jephtah's daughter as a sacrifice because Jephtah made a stupid promise (Judges 11:30-40), killed all the firstborn sons of Egypt, including babies (Exodus 12:29-30), and wiped out all of humanity, including babies and small children (Noah's Flood, Genesis 6-9). Also, Frank doesn't do anything to anyone after they die, while Yahweh lets Satan torment them forever.
Conan of Cimmeria (aka Conan the Barbarian)
Why He's Evil: He's been a pirate, thief, mercenary, and assassin. He's killed countless people with sword, axe, and bare hands. His motives are selfish, and he lives for the kill.
Why He's Not As Evil As Yahweh: Well, for one, he opposes slavery, while Yahweh openly condones it. In fact, outside the movies, Conan has never been a slave, so his reasons for opposing slavery are rather altruistic. As he says in the new trailer for his upcoming movie, "no man should live in chains." Conan treats women well, brags that he's never had to force a woman to have sex with him, and looks down on those who do rape. Based on Numbers 31:15-18, Yahweh disagrees.
Also, Conan's wrath ends at death, Yahweh's is eternal.
Light Yagami (aka Kira) from Death Note
Why He's Evil: After discovering a book that allows him to kill people by writing their names in said book, Light decides to rid the world of evil-doers by killing them all...and making himself the god of this new world.
Why He's Not As Evil As Yahweh: At first glance, they're very similar. Both are megalomaniacs who believe themselves above all others, both judge people, both are Light and Yahweh are bona fide psychopaths, as are any who would act like they do. However, Light is slightly better than Yahweh. All but a handful of Light's murders are mostly painless and swift (heart attacks), whereas Yahweh is willing to drown people during the Great Flood (which is a painful and long experience), have bears maul kids (II Kings 2:23-24) , and burn most of the world and subject the survivors to a thousand years of "tribulation" (the book of Revelation). And of course, Light Yagami only kills people, he certainly doesn't create a lake of fire with which to burn people for an eternity.
So, what are some of your bad guys who are less evil than Yahweh?
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Firing up my nerd circuits...
Why He's Evil: He hacked into the system of stat-boosting Rings given out to human kings, elfs and dwarves. Boosted his own stats and controlled the kings of mortals. Then embarked on MMO RTS war campaign, there he got hurt and retreated to his tower. Mordor shows his utterly unecological approach to landscape forming and the poverty and crime among his goblins is outrageous. After all, he created the goblins out of captured elves, he should show some responsibility. Sauron rules them with iron hand and works basically as a military dictator.
Why He's Not As Evil As Yahweh: Yahweh doesn't fight his own battles. Sauron had the balls to stand among his troops personally and face the danger of elven swords. He's also very vulnerable, just throw the One ring into a volcano and he's gone. Also, Sauron didn't start as an all-powerful being, he had to earn his power. Just like Gandalf, he was one of Maiara, a class of beings employed by the Iluvatar's gods. Unlike wimpy Gandalf he demonstrated his talents and got himself a whole empire.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Darth Vader, a.k.a. Anakin Skywalker. Picture unnecessary.
Evil for being the second most powerful figure in a society strongly resembling nazism.
Was as willing to kill his own daughter as yahweh was his son.
But he wouldn't have bern if he'd known she was his daughter. What's yahwehs excuse?
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
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OK, I am going to go for characters from a few movies. Not going to bother with pics though because I have a small set of actors in mind and it would just be a study in how they got old.
Mitch from “The Park is Mine” (Tommy Lee Jones): Back in the days before we had the concept of terrorism, he pulled a single handed terrorist act by taking Central Park over for three days. In one scene, He was willing to fire an RPG at two police officers but he gave them the chance to run away.
He was doing it to make a point about Vietnam veterans actually being human beings and not simply the wanton killers that then public perception held them to be.
Clint from “Black Moon Rising” (Tommy Lee Jones): A professional criminal and so good at it that his probation required him to work with the federal government to use his skills to catch other crimnals who were almost as good as him.
Inn the opening scene, he stops at a convenience store for a cup of coffee when some kid runs in with a gun to rob the place. He could have trivially wasted the kid but instead, he give the kid a full dressing down.
If memory serves, the scene went something like this:
Clint: Son, you can't just go around waving a gun and expect that people will do what you want. That is not acceptable behavior.
Kid is taken aback momentarily.
Clint (points in one corner: You see there, that is one of the cameras. Good, that is a full face shot, how about a profile?
Sirens are heard in the distance.
Clint: and here come the cops. Maybe you have a minute to get out of here. Or not.
Kid takes off.
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Luminon, I don't think that Light Yagami would fit into the technical definition of crazy, whatever that means. If Ryuk had picked the guy on the next park bench, Light would have continued with his school and grown up to be whatever he was studying. That and being the son of one of the top law enforcement officers in the nation, he was certainly raised to be fully moral by the standards of his culture.
Further, if we go with the next bench guy, he would have had different priorities. So different people would have died. Think about the matter, we all have a list of people who would be better off dead. It would be a monster of temptation to be put in that situation. I know that if I had that chance, I would clean the world up according to my priorities. Can you say that you would do better?
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If not crazy I think we can all agree that he was the stupidest person in the anime. I mean serious, almost everything he did was borderline retarded.
I agree I wouldn't call Light crazy at all, he had a plan and carried it out. The plan made rational sense. I don't see crazy anywhere involved. Sure evil, or at least twisted but nothing he did was crazy.
Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.
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OK, am not even going to go for stupid on this one. Well not fully anyway.
The first time that the police closed in on him, they set up cameras all over his house. Kind of dumb to let them get in that close but he did figure out how to do the TV in a bag of chips thing, which is kind of smart.
The second time, when he was certain he was going to jail, he made a couple of hundred notes dated moths in advance so that people would continue to die even while he was sequestered. Then he put a scrap of paper in his wallet and ordered Ryuk to make him forget the whole thing. Thus he is in jail with no idea what is going on, people are still dying and as soon as he gets his wallet back, he get a reset on the no memory thing. Really, that is not something that a stupid person would come up with.
But apart from that, I have another movie in mind.
Next.
Nicholas Cage is a stage magician in Las Vegas but nobody knows that he can see a into the future. Apart from the deception, which I would allow for stage magic, he also uses his talent to defraud the casinos. Not to any major extent but enough to double what he earns on stage.
Then there is the Homeland Security officer who tortures the shit out of him to force him to look farther into the future than he normally does. In any other setting, that would be totally morally bankrupt. However, in this case, he is doing it because he knows that there are terrorist with a nuclear weapons somewhere in the USA but not where they actually are. If Nick Cage's character will look far enough ahead, he will be able to tell them what city blows up and they can search there.
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Another movie which comes to mind is “21” starring Kevin Spacey. It does not fit the exact definition of fictional because it is based on a true story. However, J. P. Massar did recruit a bunch of ivy league students to go to Atlantic City and used an elaborate system of covert signals and card counting to let various members of the team know when to approach a blackjack table that was ripe for picking.
Not as evil as god because all that they were doing was ripping off casinos.
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(yes, I'm both joking AND deadly serious
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
More unnecessarily risky than smart. He knew the police were not watching him outside, why not find names outside of the house?
I assume you are talking about the manga, I have only seen the anime where it is done differantly i think so I cannot comment on that particular situation.
Although I can forgive all of his mistakes except one. In the end with the final confrontation with the little white haired boy. He knows where he is going to be and he trys some overly thought out trickery to get his real name. Did he consider just hiring some men with guns, he had plenty fanatics supporting him that would have done it? The note book was such a stupid, ineffective way of getting rid of him. Trying to use the notebook was borderline retarded.
Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.
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You are making an assumption that is not where I am going. Let me restate and see if you can try again.
You are not Ryuk picking the patsy to give the book to. I think that he would have been happy just to see any bit of random killing.
You are the guy who gets the book only to see Ryuk appear in front of him. Given the power to decide who dies, when and how, what would yo do if you were the guy on the bus who had the power to deal with the jackhole?
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Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Light was truly crazy, not just because he thought that killing criminals would save the world.
I almost put Dexter Morgan and Megatron on my initial list. The reasons for Dexter were too close to the ones for the Punisher and Light. Megatron's reasons why he was better than Yahweh was that he showed more real concern for his troops than Yahweh does for his servants (Megs would NEVER do to Starscream what Yahweh did to Job, and Starscream deserves it) and he really seemed to think he was looking out for his people.
This game is best when christians are involved. Feel free to forward the blog post to christian message boards you go to (don't copy/paste the article, just link it) but make sure to let me know where you post it so I can see what they say, eh?
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