@thesotiris 12 April 2026 more from that month

God is Unnecessary: How we create gods and why morality cannot come from divinity

I’ve always wondered how it was possible for good and smart people to deny the blindingly obvious atrocities in the Bible and Koran, all while babying the “god” of Abraham, an entity so demonstrably described as **a literal demon claiming to be God**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-evil-of-abraham https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-greatest-trick-the-devil-ever **The question** Here, I won’t go over every single verse depicting the **kinky, snuff pornography of Levantine superstition**, illustrated through the mass murder, rape, mutilation, and **nightmarish barbarism in Abrahamic texts**; yes, including the **Judaic branches of the New Testament and the Koran**. By the way, **reading the Bible or the Koran to a child is** **child abuse**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/defining-abrahamism https://sotiris.substack.com/p/i-asked-ai-about-the-child-abuse Instead, I’ll just pose the question: How can otherwise reasonable people — people who are undeniably much more moral than the demon-god Yahweh— conduct Olympic-level mental gymnastics, reducing themselves to unconvincing apologists for demonstrably barbaric religions? https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-greatest-trick-the-devil-ever The answer is simple. It’s *not* because they are as morally corrupt as the disgusting ideas they defend. It’s not because they are as demonic as the characters described in the Abrahamic texts: the depraved, foreskin-obsessed goat fuckers who wrote the Abrahamic, New Testament, and Koranic texts as snuff pornography to jerk off to. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-left-is-the-evolution-of-christianity Instead, **good people who defend atrocious religions** are simply incredibly committed to their morality, but through **clerical deception and brainwashing**, they just happened to have **fused their moral framework with their religion**. When they defend their religion, they believe they are defending all morality. So, when you simply point out holes in their belief systems, not due to malice, but due to your commitment to truth, they see someone attacking all morality. For good people with religious inclinations, **morality has become synonymous with Jesus, the Koran, Moses, or the fairy godmother**. The idol representing one’s moral framework is irrelevant; what is relevant is **their** **inability to separate morality from religion**. **The reality of religion** The swindle of religion is that it manages to fool us by claiming exclusive ownership of morality. Just another scam. I’ve been fooled too: I was raised a devout Christian. Yet, **religion is the most unnecessary thing in humanity**. Sure, religion provides cheap consolation amidst the cruel reality of our existence, but it’s unnecessary. Religion is like comfort food, alcohol, conspiritainment, video games, drugs, or porn: It’s an effective distraction — intoxicating escapism from the tragedy of meaningless existence. But it is not real nor meaningful. Religion is the most obvious fraud since cave-dwelling hominids first came up with the shaman scam. I mean, people today still fall for Nigerian princes and phishing scams — is it any wonder that religion is still prevalent, even in the age of generative AI, no less, when we should be questioning everything? https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-the-west-is-ngmi-part-1 But here’s another usefulness for religion: **it serves to validate one’s morals when one’s conviction in their morals is lacking**. Religion serves as a cookie-cutter, out-of-the-box set of morals for people too confused about what constitutes **objective morality**. If it’s not objective, then why abide by it, right? https://sotiris.substack.com/p/on-morality-part-1 But here’s the thing: **The quickest way to** **moral subjectivity** **is searching for objectivity where there is none**. I wish there were objective, god-given morality. But there isn’t. We’d know if there were, and wouldn’t have to endlessly debate it. And every single religion’s moral framework conflicts with those of others; even in a single religion, people keep arguing over its moral application. So, no, unfortunately, there is no objectively defined or applied morality. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/on-morality-part-1 Your morality comes from your personal values and what serves to grant you a sense of identity, purpose, and meaning. **All we need for an orderly society is to combine our need for moral identity with incentives and the implied threat of reciprocal violence, only when faced with the initiation of aggression**. https://sotiris.substack.com/t/voluntaryism But that’s another subject. **Some empathy for the religious** I get it. We are thrust into this meaningless, absurd existence, hopelessly clinging to random moral principles to try to make sense of things, to mould us into an individual identity, to grant our lives purpose, and thus some **arbitrary meaning** that isn’t for us to give to ourselves. Regardless, moral principles are vital — **we need morality,** ***not*** **because god exists, but because the demiurge has abandoned us**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/deducing-the-absurdity-of-reality **Morality grants us the illusion of meaning in the obvious meaninglessness of this reality**. We know that nothing matters — nothing — but then we create morality for a sense of meaning and transcendence. It works. Even the most fanatic nihilist abides by a set of moral guidelines. But there’s a problem: For most people, morality just for the sake of it is not convincing. Most people lack the self-discipline to apply their morality to themselves. They need help. They need validation and convincing that their morality is worth pursuing. For whatever reason, they lack conviction in themselves, in their moral framework, and in their ability to be faithful to it. They need validation; others to tell them they’re correct. What better other to encourage you than “god”? And this is why humans created gods. When good people are insecure in their sense of righteousness, they need some kind of perceived “authority” to help them validate their morality. This is why we, as a whole, always look to atrocious centralised government (the state): we lack conviction in our morality, so we seek cheap validation from pipers, faith healers, and pedophile priests and politicians alike **to reassure us that our morality “is correct and meaningful”**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-most-tragic-misunderstanding This is how low we set the bar: **we give authority through our submission to the worst people on the planet**, as long as they pretend to validate our morality for us. Both religion and the state are unnecessary evils. Whenever I see a religionist or state apologist alike, I see a lack of conviction in one’s morality. This is why people choose either the state or a religion as their god: fake validation. And yes, statism is a religion too; the worst one. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-devout-religiosity-of-statism We create kings and gods to serve as conduits for **morality verification and accreditation**. That’s it. That’s all it is. Are you a Bronze Age Levantine sheep herder obsessed with foreskins and hymens? Make up a god who commands that you chop off babies’ foreskins (for reasons), and to brutally murder non-virgin women. **Humans project onto their gods their own depravity**. It’s understandable to **create gods to give deluded meaning to an obviously meaningless existence**. The moment proto-humans got wind of the fact that there is no meaning to life — at least no meaning for our individual lives — they began creating gods and demons, fantasies on which to base their morality. But it doesn’t have to be this way. **You don’t need gods** Morality does not require a god. If you went into the trouble of creating gods and torturing yourself into believing lies you deep down know are lies, then you are already moral enough. If you value your morality so much that you went to the trouble of suffering the cognitive dissonance of deluded religion for it, then you’ve already been moral regardless of religion. You are and have always been moral enough on your own. You don’t need to create **gods that are morally inferior to you**. **Other types of religionists** I’ll make a note here: Here I talk about good people who make gods to make sense of reality, and to get some meaning for their lives. There’s another type of religionist: the narcissist, so self-obsessed they desperately need eternal life. This type is more interested in living forever than in morality. So they’ll use morality as a performative, pretentious act if that’s what’s required to secure eternal life. You’ll also find that this type is the one that is extremely subjective in the application of their morality. They don’t truly believe in their morality. They instead see it as a means to an end — a chore they must reluctantly perform for an anticipated reward. Thus, you’ll witness how hypocritically and selectively they apply their “morality”, and how good they are at making excuses for themselves when they act outside of their moral framework. I personally know people like that; in my extended family, no less. A true monster, a liar, a cheat, a sleazy narcissist who beat his wife and kids daily, but he wouldn’t miss the first row in church, flamboyantly making the sign of the cross, memorising every psalm by heart, always purchasing the biggest candle. He hadn’t attached himself to religion because he needed his morality to make sense; he did it because his narcissism needed eternal life. And if a performance of “morality” appeases the sadistic demon-god of Abraham, then so be it. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-evil-of-creation **Dynamics** Let’s go back to the truly good religionists, those who create gods, not for the reward of a meaningless, hedonistic afterlife, but instead for **validating the morals they hold so dear**. We understand that it is not for us to give meaning to ourselves. Any meaning we give to life is arbitrary and does not transcend life. This is why we create gods. **Gods** ***serve*** **us**. Gods grant us the matrix, the fantasy, the delusion of an existence with meaning, purpose, and self-identity through **moral frameworks backed by the “authority” of divinity**. We make this all up, but it works. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/trauma-is-suffering-without-meaning https://sotiris.substack.com/p/demiurgical-responsibility https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-simulation-question This is why good people will desperately hang on to painful cognitive dissonance: believing their god is somehow “love”, the same “god” described in the atrocious snuff pornography of Levantine/Hebrew superstition. Good people will witness the blatantly obvious and audaciously unapologetic evil of their god, and still believe this “god” is good. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/holding-god-accountable And it’s all a matter of timing: They fused their moral framework with a vague perception of “god” *before* they actually read the barbaric “holy” texts that describe him. And when they do actually read the barbarism in the Talmud, New Testament, and Koran, it’s too late — they have already fused morality and religion in their minds. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/god-is-dead-and-we-have-killed-him So now they have to rationalise and make excuses for their god, because it’s the only way for them to defend their sense of morality. They must simultaneously hold two mutually exclusive beliefs: the fantasy that their god is good and the obvious fact that their god is evil. At best, they’ll retreat to the admission that “*we don’t have all the answers*” while also claiming to have all the answers that matter: who made the world, why, and who deserves to be eternally tortured by sadistic gods. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/putting-god-on-trial https://sotiris.substack.com/p/who-are-you-to-judge-my-god Cognitive dissonance is painful. **Example** One of the best people I know happens to be a devout Christian; a person of true self-sacrifice, kindness, love, compassion, and mental fortitude; he’s been through the kind of suffering that would make anyone buckle. He attributes his predisposition to kindness to God. He’s said many times that he would have been the worst person on earth if he didn’t believe in God. He’s also said — about “unbelievers” like me and others — that we deep down believe in God, otherwise we wouldn’t be good people (he’s such a good person that he sees good even in people like me). But he’s got it backwards. *He* is the one who’s always been good, regardless of his faith in God. It is *because* of the natural goodness that they ended up believing in a deified version of goodness. It is *because* he’s always been fundamentally good that he gravitated towards a religion. And any religion would do; he just chose the one closer to him culturally. Good people aren’t good because a god commanded them to. Good people are and have always been good. Good people remain good even after they lose their faith in a religion. I don’t buy the myth of the ex-religionist turned evil nihilist. There is no such thing. If an ex-religionist is evil, it’s because he was already evil when he believed in gods, and just got tired of pretending. This explains why so many ex-religionists still keep, and even solidify their morality, even after they abandon their faith; especially so: When you no longer require gods and demons to impose a moral framework on you, your conviction in voluntary morality must be unwavering. When your conviction in morality is shaky, you need gods to reinforce it. **God-given morality** Good atheists aren’t good because “they deep down believe in god”. It’s the other way around: Good religionists would be good even if they didn’t believe in a god. How can I prove this claim? Religionists believe that, supposedly, “all morality comes from God.” What does that even mean? If it means we’re compelled to be moral by a divine being, then it’s not true morality; it’s compulsion, a meaningless pulling of strings. So much for “free will”. Religion apologists obsess over “free will” while their god constantly commands, interferes and “hardens hearts” (Exodus 8:15 and 8:32), after instilling in us needs, urges, and limitations that determine our will from a fundamental level. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/free-will-revisited If “all morality comes from God” means getting a set of moral dictates enforced by the carrot and stick of a sadistic demon-god like Yahweh, then again it is not meaningful morality — if you need to be bribed with 72 virgin sex slaves, or threatened with eternal sadistic torment, then again, you’re not being moral; you’re just being submissive, performative, hypocritical, and quite immoral. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-emptiness-of-abrahamic-religions https://sotiris.substack.com/p/on-morality-part-1 https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-islam-is-the-smartest-religion https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-evil-of-abraham But I’m not convinced: I think many religionists are, in fact, fundamentally good and moral, not because they fear hell or expect **infinite rewards for finite labour**, but because **they are moral regardless of religion**. Religion for good people is just a personification, an amalgamation, a branding of their moral framework that aims to serve as a clear reference point, but ends up confusing them even more. When I made the slip from devout Christian to agnostic/atheist, my sense of morality became clearer. No longer did I have to wonder what the hell Paul meant here or Jesus implied there. **No longer did I have to make excuses for the demon-god of Abraham, which made me complicit in and apologetic of atrocious evil, such as rape, genocide, infanticide, and sadism**. **No longer did I have to come to the defence of tyrannical gods**. No longer did I have to make excuses for abusive parents, as I was compelled to do so by the disgustingly atrocious ‘Ten Commandments’. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/narcissistic-parenting-part-2 https://sotiris.substack.com/p/theodicy **Conclusions** It used to baffle me how otherwise good and reasonable people still took Levantine superstition seriously. Hebrew mythology is so obviously horrible; **badly written scribbles by illiterate, goat-fucking desert dwellers so obsessed with rape, incest, foreskins, and hymens** **they wrote the** **snuff pornography of the Talmud** **to jerk off to**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/abrahamism-must-end https://sotiris.substack.com/p/alternatives-to-the-story-of-abraham https://sotiris.substack.com/p/true-blasphemy Indeed, the Talmud or Old Testament (or whatever the hell you want to call the **obscene literotica of Hebrew mythology** posing as the supposed “word of God”) is full of rape, incest, genocide, and all kinds of degeneracy. It’s laughable, as though the writers were trolling us, which I genuinely believe they were. Yet people still take it seriously, including the Hebrew branches of Judeo-Christianity and Judeo-Islam. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/why-the-west-is-ngmi-5 https://sotiris.substack.com/p/on-judeo-christianity https://sotiris.substack.com/p/islamic-feminism-and-muslim-matriarchy **People who wrote the Bible and the Koran were obviously depraved, sex-deprived, schizophrenic, flat-out evil, and hopelessly traumatised without a way to resolve or vent their frustrations other than to make up fairy tales with which to abuse others; transferring trauma to others through** **the cycle of abuse****, the easy way to somewhat mitigate one’s trauma**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-cycle-of-abuse But then I realised that the fact that so many people still make excuses for obviously evil concepts doesn’t mean these people are evil. It means **they are good** ***despite*** **their evil religion**; they just happened to attach all morality to their faith. Blame **religious brainwashing** for that. And once they fuse their moral framework with their religion, then any argument against their religion sounds like an argument against all morality. It’s understandable that they get defensive when their religion is questioned; all they perceive is attacks on morality. Militant atheists and agnostics are doing their cause a disservice by trying to point out every inconsistency and evil in religious texts. It obviously doesn’t work. **Abrahamic texts in particular are so demonstrably satanic** that they should’ve been enough to dissuade anyone. But they don’t. **The core problem with good religionists is that they’ve been conditioned to believe the lie that morality is impossible without god.** Try showing religious people that **morality is possible without god**. Be yourself moral, and good without god. Don’t tell; be an example. After you show them that morality is possible *without* god, show them that **true morality is actually impossible** ***with*** **god**. Morality does not need divinity. If anything, **morality is impossible when it fails unless imposed by a divine carrot and stick** (bribe or threat). https://sotiris.substack.com/p/incentive-based-order-without-government There can be no true morality or a glimmer of free will if morality “comes from God”. Morality cannot be true when it is forced by illusions of god-tyrants or delusions of objectivism. The motivation behind morality can only be morality itself. Morality comes from you and you alone, or it doesn’t exist. Morality is meaningful only when its source is nothing but your will. P.S.: I use the Abrahamic religions as a reference for three reasons: They are the most prevalent religions They are the most atrocious religions They are my most familiar religions This still applies to every other religion.