No One Will Ever Love You But Me; Yahweh as the abusive parent

Did it ever strike you as strange that the Christian right wing (not to mention Islam) are always flipping out about single parents and gay adoption when they themselves condemn the entire universe to being from a single-parent family for all time?

We know from the Ugarit texts that Yahweh once had a consort and was part of the Caananite pantheon headed by his father, El. Current Abrahamic monotheism, however, makes out that there is no Mrs. God. So, not only did Yahweh ditch his spouse, but he tells us that we never had a mommy. Nice.

So let's look for a second at some of the typical patterns in the relationship between an abusive parent or a spouse and their victim and how they are paralleled in the ways that monotheists want us to see their god.

No one will ever love you but me

Central to the abuser's success in controlling their victim is convincing her or him that she or he has no other options. If she or he were to run away, or divorce that she or he would be alone and helpless and most likely die. Because the victim believes this, he or she follows the logic that accepting the abuse is her or his only option.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me [to which I can be compared unfavorably]" — Yahweh (paraphrased)

But he's really a good person when he isn't burning me with an iron

Abuse victims who are caught in the cycle of low self-esteem will sometimes defend their abusers because there is a component of caring in the relationship. The abuser wants the victim to continue to accept them, and that is a kind of caring even if a very twisted one. For someone who has been convinced by an abusive parent or spouse that they are unlikely to get love anywhere else, even that poisoned kind of caring is preferable to the utterly bleak landscape that has been painted around them.

Abrahamic apologists (Hi Pete!) will respond with variations on "Well, we can't prove that God isn't there, so we should all worship him just in case he's real.". Which, of course, assumes that the only choices are to worship Yahweh or be an atheist. I hope it's clear, dear readers, how strenuously I disagree with that view.

I'm the only one who really understands him; you don't know what you're talking about

Right.

Alexandria Library. Witch burnings. Inquisition. Crusade. Extermination of native peoples around the world. Women subjugated.

If he acts like an abusive parent and the institutions inspired by his stories commit atrocities for centuries without any effective resistance guess what? Yahweh is an abusive god and he belongs in rehab. Asclepius might be able to help, but better not let Brìd anywhere near the guy or he'll wind up getting a Bobbet.