“Certainly, a deity who creates living beings to torture them must, by definition, be perfectly evil. In other words, the Wise Lord did not create Ariman. The Wise Lord is Ariman.”
– Gore Vidal. “Creación”
If God exists (a very possible thing), he is either indifferent or the cause of our suffering (that of the beings we feel). He would be towards us as humans are towards the turkeys at Christmas, mice or ants.
If God exists, he does not seem to be our friend, unless he is saving us from something much worse. In that last case God would be towards us as we are towards our domestic dogs and cats. We do what we can for them, but we are not omnipotent and we can not prevent them from suffering occasionally.
On the other hand, believing in imaginary characters can be very useful to achieve motivation, desire to live, to gain strength in the face of difficulties, to increase social cohesion, and to avoid addictions, as well as to manipulate others, to make us believe that we are the People or the chosen species, justify wars, murders, killings (both humans and non-human animals), torture and all kinds of terrible things.
Believing in fantasies may be fine at certain times, ensuring having a superior system of judgment to warn us when to abandon them. These systems of control exist but unfortunately most of them are governed by a selfish morality: from fantasy those things that benefit us are selectively taken, although they harm others, reinterpreting at will. As it is a fantasy and anyway it does not make sense, it is not difficult to twist it up to adapt it to our interests.
Others instead employ such unjustified beliefs (faith) to seek the greatest good for the greatest number of individuals (only human individuals in some cases, and sentient beings in general in others cases , that is, including animals), creating a great positive impact, admirable, even at the expense of his own suffering. If to these people the fantasy told them one day to hurt others, they would ignore this faith and deny it. Criticizing these people for their beliefs may lack perspective and strategy.
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