Talk:Dystheism

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This Talk page briefly was the place for discussion of the Maltheism article, which has been moved back to Talk:Maltheism.

It seems pointless to have an article called Eutheism and Dystheism that covers almost exclusively Dystheism, and since the movement is on to delete or dereference the Maltheism entry, it seems this should all go in a Dystheism entry. I copied over Thaddeus Frye's edits, restored some omitted pieces (but by no means all—I have no problem with trimming the article appropriately), and cited explicit references. I will do the following with redirections:

1. Change Eutheism and Dystheism to redirect to Dystheism.
2. Change Maltheism to redirect to Dystheism.
3. Create a new Biblical support for dystheism entry to trim the fat from this article. Craig zimmerman

Contents 1 Re-redirect 2 Karl Marx 3 Response to recent edits 4 "Biblical evidence"

[edit] Re-redirect

I reverted the Eutheism and Dystheism article to get rid of the redirect, which I don't feel is appropriate. I see no reason to redirect from an article that concerns both of these terms to an article the concerns only one. The reason cited for the redirect is that the article converns mostly distheism; however Eutheism and dystheism are two very closely related terms.

If the article is mostly about Dystheism, that is only because of the last set of revisions to this article, which added a great deal of information relating to dystheism only. Moreover this latest revision is very problematic for a number of reasons:

1) Presents dystheism as an accepted term from intellectual history, which it isn't. The definition of the term must indicate the term's extremely limited usage to avoid misleading readers. 2) The article is very NPOV regarding divine command theory, which it calls: "a largely discredited approach to morality" 3) The "Historical Perspective" section here is generally questionable. Byron and his own subconscious notwithstanding, Milton was a devout Puritan, and citing PL here is not accurate. "Trickster Gods" have no relevance to these terms that pertain specifically to montheism. Wiesel and post-holocaust theology are more appropriate; however care must be taken in any "historical" section to avoid implying that any pre 1998 writers chracterized their own writings as "dystheisic" who in fact did not. 4) the list of "related terms" is abritrary and unnecessary, and includes an inaccurate definition of misotheism, which is defined in all the sources I've seen as a "hatred of God or Gods" (its only usage cited by OED refers to gods). The list of related terms also includes a reference to "Maltheism," which is not an encyclopedic term; refernces to Maltheism should be removed. 5) generally including a huge amount of inappropriate description and argument (such as eleborate defintions of related terms that are defined elsewhere in \wikipedia)

Because of these problems I will insert a redirect from this page back to Eutheism and Dystheism, which I have edited to include the strong points of this article, especially the reference to Wiesel. I will add footnotes and some more formatting to that page tomorrow.ThaddeusFrye 02:51, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Some history and discussion is archived at Eutheism and dystheism. Since the article is mostly about dystheism rather than eutheism, renaming the article seemed appropriate. Craig zimmerman 16:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Why does Theophilism redirect here?163.11.83.16 20:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Karl Marx

I read in many places that Karl Marx was a Maltheist (or at least used Maltheistic language symbolically). He even wrote a poem called Invocation of One in Despair and a play calle Oulenam, which are available at Marxists.org under A Book of Verse. It is all actually quite interesting, sounds a little bit like black metal material actually. 69.248.43.95 02:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this reference. I have incorporated it into the article. Craig zimmerman 17:40, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Response to recent edits

I was rather disturbed by the recent set of edits to the Dystheism article which clearly sought to violate NPOV guidelines, until I noticed it had been inserted by someone who had taken issue with the original maltheism and dystheism articles way back when. Even though I know this person is a serious contributor to Wikipedia, I cannot fathom the reasons for this vandalism. I call it vandalism because it attempted to diffuse the article's content in a misleading way. There was this edit:

There are, however, numerous recorded instances of spontaneous expression of "hatred of God", not as a stated theological principle but as a statement of anger or unhappiness over misfortunes attributed to Acts of God, frequently taking the form of blasphemous utterances along the lines of "may I be damned"

This text seems to have been inserted to diminish the sentiments described here. Numerous authors and artists were cited offering serious crafted works, not as impromptu bursts of anger but as statements of deep conviction about the nature of God. Why was it necessary to invoke such dismissive language, the purpose of which would seem only to be derogation of the belief being described?

A possible reason for the apparent rarity of real world dystheists is terminological: people who do believe in an evil supernatural being do not tend to identify it as "God", but rather as "demon", "devil" or similar.

Except that is not the belief being described in this article at all, and I am sure this person is aware of that. This article concerns itself with a belief about God'. The article describes the contrast between this belief and other beliefs like Gnosticism to make such distinctions clear. This sentence (and the other sentence cited above) would lead the reader to believe that such belief does not exist, even though citations of such belief are demonstrated.

Mr. Bachmann, we have talked about this in the past, you have been direct and civil in our discussions. But here you attempted to introduce a blatantly negative bias into this article, for whatever reason. You claimed, in your comments, that you had "found a reference at last"—where were you looking that you had not found references before this, especially in light of the numerous references cited? I would ask you to recuse yourself from further edits to this article, since these interjected statements violate NPOV guidelines and since you seem to have an agenda in editing it.

As to the idea that the Biblical support for dystheism article should be folded into this one: I made an initial attempt to do this very thing, and it resulted in an article that was much too long. I would propose rather that the scope of that article be broadened, to include not only the Bible but the Koran and other religious texts. There is certainly precedent for creating a list of this nature, but I don't have a good title for such an article. ("Support for dystheism in religious texts"??) Thank you. Craig zimmerman 18:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

the edits "diminish" your sentiments because Wikipedia is WP:NOT a platform for your sentiments. We have misotheism, which is essentially a dictdef. And we have allowed you to keep this article even though it is abundantly clear that you just made up "maltheism" in school one day. Your postings to online discussion groups are not encyclopedic material, sorry. "misotheism" is not "maltheism", sorry. I managed to finally add the first published source on the topic that goes beyond a simple rehash of the "problem of evil", and you call "vandalism"? The reason there are no dystheists is that if you dissociate God from "good", you lose all reason to postulate a Single God in the first place, and find yourself back in polytheism, where gods can be good or evil or both as they like. Your whole thing is a glorified corollary of the problem of evil/theodicy, and if you don't accept your essay being cleaned up, I will see it is merged into those article: there is no reason to sprawl a single idea over half a dozen articles, even on Wikipedia. dab (𒁳) 18:35, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Sigh... DAB, I didn't want to turn this into a p*ssing contest, and I'm upset that it seems to have become that. Your overtly hostile statement (with its accusations of "you just made up maltheism in school one day") really has no place here. The invocation of a royal "we" (as in "we have allowed you to keep this article" and "after we indulged in your essays for months on end") likewise. I along with several other people who edited this article came up with numerous references cited, but you seem to be saying that they didn't count, that only your managing to find one such reference yourself and declare that you "finally" provided a reference qualify as the barometer here. I don't get it.

It is you who are expressing your personal opinion in not only your edits but in your comments above. "The reason there are no dystheists is that if you dissociate God from good, you lose all reason to postulate a Single God in the first place." Is this anything more than your bold assertion? The philosophers and theologians cited in the text of the article, including Weisel and Blumenthal, have offered opinions about God's nature that contradict your assertion, which in and of themselves demonstrate that is most certainly possible to dissociate God from good and still have the thing refered to as God! Perhaps your personal belief system asserts that this dissociation is impossible, but using that alone as a basis for eviscerating the body of content in an article seems more than just harsh, it seems to me very wrong.

You and those like you asked for examples. We provided them. You asked for references and citations. We provided them. You did not "clean up" the article, you added your own bias to it, your personal opinion that maltheism/dystheism doesn't make sense... to you. All I can say is, oh well. I'm not out to convert you or anyone else, and I don't think anyone who contributed to this article is either.

I changed your dictionary citation because yours was fluffy: it stated that misotheism was merely an example entry under "miso-". I provided a dictionary citation of no lesser quality than yours that provided a full entry for the word "misotheism". The word "maltheism" also exists in Wiktionary. I am not sure what "coined ad-hoc" is supposed to mean (as opposed to the plethora of common tehcnological buzzwords similarly coined?), and I am also not sure what you mean by "similarly recent times."

This is an article that provides coverage of a kind of belief in God. Clearly it is not a belief in God that you seem to like, clearly it is a belief whose tenets you disagree with. But it would be wrong to limit coverage to only beliefs that "we" happen to like. Agreed?

The thing you appeared to be describing in your edits from earlier today is not the same thing as dystheism, misotheism, or maltheism. Those edits constitute a deflective spin claiming essentially that "no one really thinks this way or believes this, anyone who does is simply erupting in spontaneous expressions of anger or not really refering to God." If that is anything beyond a curt dismissal of a belief you happen not to like, please, explain then what it is.

I will remerge both my dictionary citation and yours, if that would be acceptable to you. Your reversion of my edits seemed very petty, and I hope that on reflection you would agree, and that we could move forward. I apologized for refering to your efforts as "vandalism" (I honestly didn't recall your handle until I started writing these talk comments) and I hope we can get past this. Thank you. Craig zimmerman 19:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Craig, the point is the first attestation, and 1907 is earlier than 1913. Why are we having this conversation? Also, you've had full two years time to provide evidence that there are dystheists. You haven't. This is an article about a position that can be argued theoretically, but is not actually held. we as in "several Wikipedians" have discussed this with you in the past. It became evident that this is your personal project, and nobody had the heart or cared enough to Afd it, and people really went out of their way to improve your "maltheism" essay. After two years, I don't think much more evidence will emerge. Per WP:OWN, you cannot keep your essay here just because you like to. I maintain that this topic now needs to be cleaned up in accordance with its notability and the evidence that has been provided. Sourced positions we can keep, your personal dialectics will have to go. dab (𒁳) 07:37, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

that said, you should understand that I am sympathetic towards the topic. I am not trying to censor you, I am trying to morph this into an encyclopedic writeup that can stand on its own. I am sorry, but Wikipedia policy will not allow rhetorical arguing of your case, you will have to use your blog for that, and I am happy to endorse the link to your blog staying on this article. If you manage to collect your writings and publish it in the form of a pamphlet or little book, I will happily cite you here and summarize your position. peace, dab (𒁳) 13:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Dab, I was very concerned (after the tone our conversation was starting to take) when I saw the magnitude of updates you had entered today. Upon deeper examination I discovered that I found most of the changes to be excellent. The concerns I still have I will mention here along with my positive assessments:

• First, I very much like your creating one "Terminology" section. I think you didn't quite finish eliminate redundancies there. I think your mention of misotheism and antitheism in the opening paragraph is fleshed out more in the Terminology section that follows. Can we combine all mentions of these terms into one place?
• I appreciate your including both dictionary references. The one you refered to from 1907 lists the word's entry as "under miso-", which sounds like the word is just one of many undefined words in a list "under miso-." The 1913 entry clearly specifies the explicit origin of the word, which indeed is much older (as I noted in one of the many references I had been supplying).
• The section (two paragraphs) beginning with "Dystheistic speculation arises from" is not terminological in focus, but it's in what's now the "Terminology" section. It should probably go after all the talk of Terminology. Agree?
• I still take strong issue with this particular rewording on your part:

“

A possible reason for the apparent rarity of real world dystheists is terminological: people who do believe in an evil supernatural being do not tend to identify it as "God", but rather as "demon", "devil" or similar. Alternatively, theists adhering to the divine command theory will argue that God is good by definition, that is, that there is no logical possibility that the terms "God" and "good" can be in opposition. The circularity of this notion has caused divine command theory to fall into disfavor, surviving from a theological perspective only in radically modified forms that many modern theologians find unsatisfying. There are, however, numerous recorded instances of spontaneous expression of "hatred of God", not as a stated theological principle but as a statement of anger or unhappiness over misfortunes attributed to Acts of God, frequently taking the form of blasphemous utterances along the lines of "may I be damned". As Bernard Schweitzer wrote, "Strange enough, though, that the English vocabulary seems to lack a suitable word for outright hatred of God... [even though] history records a number of outspoken misotheists."

”

These are statements that are clearly in violation of NPOV guidelines. You insist that "people who believe in an evil supernatural being do not tend to identify it as God." But we are talking about the very people who take the position that it is the thing identified as God that is being described as evil, and examples from literature, art, and theology were offered. Elie Wiesel's book is not called "The Trial of Some Supernatural Evil Being But Not God Because God is Defined as Good." Provoost's "The Shadow of the Ark" talks about a flood caused by God, and she suggests that we do not need and should not trust the God we have in this world. (The Provoost quote, by the way, is from an interview with her, which is cited explicitly in the references. Perhaps that was not clear.) Blumenthal and Sutherland speak of abuses by God, not abuses by some other supernatural being, and they do so as theologians from a theological perspective. In short, these statements of yours were uncalled for, and they introduce a bias that indicates that all these people are merely expressing spontaneous anger against God, "shaking their fists at him" so to speak, as if to condescendingly suggest this is just something they'll all "get over" eventually. I would like to remove these statements and replace them with the ones originally there, which did not introduce this bias. (You say you are "sympathetic" to the topic here, but I find that hard to believe with what seemed to be a deliberate injection of dismissive language.)

• Your point, that no one (or at best an insignificant number of people) flies the flag labeling themselves "dystheists" or "maltheists," is understood. But it is not "original research" to catalog in an encyclopedic article instances of a phenomenon and to give that phenomenon a name, or choose a name from among the set of available applicable words, especially if that phenomenon lacks a single definitive name. That is what this article has attempted to do.
• I could dwell on your attitude that this is all just "something I wrote in school" and that the references on the web are just "my blog" and "my posts," but that would be counterproductive. Still, I believe that this merits at least a mention here. Never mind that I pointed to virtually nothing of my own writing, the posts and the blog are my father's creation. (Perhaps he wrote them when he was in school? Does this matter, or is such language just a tool for disparagement?) Whatever. Can we skip this condescending condemnation? It's worthy of someone… still in school.
• Finally, I appreciate your enhancing of the Literature Section.

Enough said. Craig zimmerman 16:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Dab: I found a way to incorporate the statements you were making in a hopefully NPOV manner. The Dystheism#Where_Are_the_Dystheists? section now includes the following:

“

The majority of people in the modern world who do believe in the existence of an evil supernatural being tend not to identify it as "God", but rather as "demon", "devil" or similar. Such people are not dystheists; only those who would believe that the entity identified as God is evil can be considered dystheists. Likewise, the numerous examples of people spontaneously expressing "hatred of God," not as a theological principle but as a statement of anger or unhappiness over misfortunes attributed to Acts of God, are not necessarily dystheists. The majority of such people return to eutheistic belief after such "tests of faith" (often through the encouragement of clergy), but many do not.

”

Craig zimmerman 17:07, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

it's looking good. note that I'm looking towards merging the stubby misotheism into this article, hence the mention in the lead. Regarding "we are talking about the very people who take the position that it is the thing identified as God that is being described as evil, and examples from literature, art, and theology were offered", I am sorry, but this is not the case. The entire point is that there are no known voicings of that conviciton. All cited instances from literature either just entertain the possibility, or use it as an argument for atheism. The entire point is to explain why between "eutheism" and atheism, the position of "dystheism" is never taken in earnest. The answer is that "dystheism" is essentially a contradiction in terms, that is, once your God is not "good", there is no reason to assume he is Single either, and you end up in ordinary polytheism (if not atheism). No reference to any author actually defending the "dystheistic" viewpoint as correct is known. I'm confident we'll get this into shape however. regards, dab (𒁳) 19:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, dab. I think the idea of making misotheism the focus article is not a bad one at all. It is, after all, the word with the best pedigree.

What I don't get is when you assert "this is not the case." When you say "there are no known voicings of that conviction," this is plainly not correct. The very title of Blumenthal's book refers to the "abusing God"—he is talking about God (not a devil or demon), and he is refering to him as being abusive. In what sense can you assert that this is not a dystheistic/maltheistic/misotheistic sentiment? Wiesel's book puts God on trial for crimes he is responsible for as God. Again, how does this not qualify? Provoost and Rushdie likewise put God in the docket.

There is a contrast between dystheism and misotheism here, though. The former simply judges God as hateful and evil, the latter merely expresses hatred for him. Blumenthal's work might be called dystheistic but not misotheistic. You see what I mean? Misotheism and the flavor of "antitheism" that is "against God" (cf. "against religion") are more closely tied to each other than dystheism and maltheism are. One can find God to be evil yet not hate him, as I think Blumenthal and Wiesel do. Conversely, someone might hate God regardless of whether he's evil or not.

Further, your assertion about a "contradiction in terms" is false. You say "once your God is not good, there is no reason to assume he is Single either." Where does this conclusion come from? Does it follow logically? God's goodness and God's singularity are independent variables and it cannot be said that God not being good means he is not "Singular." The ideas expressed by Blumenthal, Roth, and Wiesel all speak of a singular, potentially malevolent God. I am not sure where your assertion comes from.

I too am confident we can make this right. Thanks for your help and please accept my critique of your statements in the spirit it was all intended.

Craig zimmerman 22:58, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Biblical evidence"

feel free to add examples from the Quran, we can then change the section title to "Scriptural". But don't retell the entire content of the stories, just briefly point out the dystheistic element. Even that would strictly need a clean source (it's not good enough that just you happen to think God looks bad), but I'm not going to be a prick over that, the argument is trivial enough in most cases. dab (𒁳) 08:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice—I like the usage of "Scriptural." It's the word I was looking for that would be more encompassing than just "Biblical." Thank you. Craig zimmerman 16:32, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

it's fine; as soon as you bring up actual references to the Quran, we can change the heading. As it is, all we do discuss is the Old Testament, so "Biblical" is good enough. dab (𒁳) 19:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I am calling upon people with more knowledge than I have about the Koran to contribute these. Craig zimmerman 23:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I am not aware of any "dystheistic" material in the Quran any more than in the New Testament. It's a historical thing, as you may by now have come to recognize, related to the transition of henotheism to monotheism in the final centuries BC. At best, you could bring up the much-cited passages where the Quran endorses warfare, but hey, even the Geneva convention and the charter of human rights do not prohibit warfare as such, that's maybe "ptolemotheism" (or "machotheism", as in machomai :) but hardly "dystheism". The only thing you can scrape from the NT and the Quran alike is "gender discrimination", the women's liberation being a 19th century thing. But at that stage you are really just bashing historical texts for being written in the time they were. dab (𒁳) 10:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC)