Grant it you want a "benevolent and/or perfect" one, but a dictator nonetheless, with no government input from the "governed" and no check or balance against his rule.

Now, doesn't that give us a reason why those with the fiercest religiousity, fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, even Jews...who seek both to imitate God and are influenced by the theology surrounding him...

tend to drift towards an authoritarian mind-set...and away from democracy or democratic ideals?

In other words, to seek out "God's agent" on Earth...and grant him (or her) the same dictatorial status (as well as often the same "benevolent" or "perfect" status)?

Whether that's Koresh, Jim Jones, bin Laden, on the more violent end...or even Jim Bakker, Swaggert, Haggard, the Vatican, Louis Farrakhan on the less violent end of the spectrum.

But the one portrayed by traditional Judeo-Christianity and Islam is certainly an authoritarian ruler, yes.

Or at least, those who created him always have been...

Well, yes, didn't say it overtly, but speaking of the "concept" of "God" as a dictator.

Have you read The Authoritarians? It discusses the attraction that Right Wing Authoritarian followers have toward religion and George Lakoff speaks to Why in Moral Politics. The Authoritarians also talks about the way that authoritarian leaders use this attraction to exercise control. Gott mit Uns, indeed!

God the Dictator has a certian ring to it, doesn't it?

SoreLoser:

Have you read The Authoritarians? It discusses the attraction that Right Wing Authoritarian followers have toward religion and George Lakoff speaks to Why in Moral Politics. The Authoritarians also talks about the way that authoritarian leaders use this attraction to exercise control. Gott mit Uns, indeed!

God the Dictator has a certian ring to it, doesn't it?

Well, the Left has its authoritarian mind-sets as well (Stalin's cult of personality, Mao, Kim Jong-il)....but it's important to remember that the "divine rule of kings" had that word "divine" in it and the singular leadership of both pre-democracies and The Church was analogous to the "hierarchy of Heaven".

This is trans-historic and trans-national. See, for instance, the divine emperors of China and Japan - or that matter, the divine God-King Pharoahs of Egypt - or the Roman Emperors, such as Caligula (or the posthumously elevated others, like Vespasian, who remarked on his death-bed, "Alas - I think I am becoming a god").

Confusion of the state's authority with the Divine Authority of Heaven (or the providentially inevitable Mandate of History - see Mao, Stalin, etc.) is a recurring theme in human culture. We haven't seen the last of it by any means.

Reptilicus:

Well, the Left has its authoritarian mind-sets as well (Stalin's cult of personality, Mao, Kim Jong-il)....but it's important to remember that the "divine rule of kings" had that word "divine" in it and the singular leadership of both pre-democracies and The Church was analogous to the "hierarchy of Heaven".

Well, actually "Right Wing Authoritarian" (RWA) is a technical term and refers to a personality type, not a political position. In fact RWA's support the authorities be those authorities Left, Right or Center.

From the author:

You could have left-wing authoritarian followers as well, who support a revolutionary leader who wants to overthrow the establishment. I knew a few in the 1970s, Marxist university students who constantly spouted their chosen authorities, Lenin or Trotsky or Chairman Mao. Happily they spent most of their time fighting with each other, as lampooned in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the People’s Front of Judea devotes most of its energy to battling, not the Romans, but the Judean People’s Front. But the left-wing authoritarians on my campus disappeared long ago.

Similarly in America “the Weathermen” blew away in the wind. I’m sure one can find left-wing authoritarians here and there, but they hardly exist in sufficient numbers now to threaten democracy in North America. However I have found bucketfuls of right-wing authoritarians in nearly every sample I have drawn in Canada and the United States for the past three decades. So when I speak of “authoritarian followers” in this book I mean right-wing authoritarian followers, as identified by the RWA scale.

Well, Sore, obviously I agree.

Less chance of a "Red Dawn" or "Amerika" moment in the US, than a "It Can't Happen Here" moment.

Just saying as a general concept, it can't be ignored that there were authoritarians of extreme capitalist, extreme socialist, national socialist, theocratic, etc. flavors.

We refuse to believe in a God that is not both 'all powerful' and 'all responsible', thus relieving us of our responsibility for the choices that we make. But certainly, if God and free will exist in the same universe then God is no tyrant. The notion that we should chose truth over power seems odd because it's power that we actually worship and not truth. We persist in believing, not unlike the tyrant, that given enough power we can create our own reality.

Stoneground:

But certainly, if God and free will exist in the same universe then God is no tyrant.

Oh? How did you reach this conclusion and based upon which god?

Stoneground:

We refuse to believe in a God that is not both 'all powerful' and 'all responsible', thus relieving us of our responsibility for the choices that we make. But certainly, if God and free will exist in the same universe then God is no tyrant. The notion that we should chose truth over power seems odd because it's power that we actually worship and not truth. We persist in believing, not unlike the tyrant, that given enough power we can create our own reality.

Well said.