Belacqua Wrote:The God that Hitchens describes, and that people tend to argue against on this forum, is certainly a tyrant. As far as I can tell, this view of God comes from a literal reading of the Old Testament and some fire-and-brimstone type preachers.
The God of Plato, of Aristotle, of Augustine, of Dante, and many etc., is not at all a tyrant or authority figure.
Augustine and Dante did believe in an authoritarian god. Dante wrote about Hell where god tortures his "enemies" forever which is as authoritarian as it gets, while Augustine was also a believer in hell and in killing heretics.
While Plato and Aristotle believed in Greek gods which seem more reasonable since they did not have hell. And, if we are talking about "what atheists think about them", then they seem to be more inclined to them, like Stephen Fry explains in this clip
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
