One example is Eshu, a trickster god from Yoruba religion who deliberately fostered violence between groups of people for his own deeds, saying that "causing ire is my greatest happiness."
Nevertheless, in monotheism, the sentiment may arise in the context of theodicy (the problem of evil, the Euthyphro dilemma) or as a rejection or criticism of particular depictions or attributions of the monotheistic god in certain belief systems (as expressed by Thomas Paine, a deist).
Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology observes that: It is remarkable that Old Norse legend occasionally mentions certain men who, turning away in utter disgust and doubt from the heathen faith, placed their reliance on their own strength and virtue.
Koons notes that this is a theological problem only for a eutheist, since a dystheist would not find the existence of evil (or God's authorship of it) to be an obstacle to theistic belief.
In this sense, dystheism amounts to the abandonment of a central feature of historical monotheism: the de facto association of God with the summum bonum.
[citation needed] Arthur Schopenhauer wrote: "This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings.
Thus, in spite and because of his sovereignty, this God is everlastingly guilty and the degrees run from gross negligence to mass murder... To the extent that [people] are born with the potential and power to [do evil things], credit for that fact belongs elsewhere.
[15] The accusations referenced a passage in the First Meditation where Descartes stated that he supposed not an optimal God but rather an evil demon "summe potens & callidus" ("most highly powerful and cunning").
Descartes' response to the accusations was that in that passage he had been expressly distinguishing between "the supremely good God, the source of truth, on the one hand, and the malicious demon on the other".
[15] The evil demon is omnipotent, Christian doctrine notwithstanding, and is seen as a key requirement for Descartes' argument by Cartesian scholars such as Alguié, Beck, Émile Bréhier, Chevalier, Frankfurt, Étienne Gilson, Anthony Kenny, Laporte, Kemp-Smith, and Wilson.
The progression through the First Meditation, leading to the introduction of the concept of the evil genius at the end, is to introduce various categories into the set of dubitables, such as mathematics (i.e. Descartes' addition of 2 and 3 and counting the sides of a square).
[15] Paul Erdős, the eccentric and extremely prolific Hungarian-born mathematician, referred to the notion of deus deceptor in a humorous context when he called God "the Supreme Fascist", who deliberately hid things from people, ranging from socks and passports to the most elegant of mathematical proofs.
He traces the history of ideas behind misotheism from the Book of Job, via Epicureanism and the twilight of Roman paganism, to deism, anarchism, Nietzschean philosophy, feminism, and radical humanism.
The main literary figures in his study are Percy Bysshe Shelley, Algernon Swinburne, Zora Neale Hurston, Rebecca West, Elie Wiesel, Peter Shaffer, and Philip Pullman.
[citation needed] Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus (1979) has the character Salieri rebel against a God he feels neglected and humiliated by.
The play is based on an actual trial Wiesel participated in that was conducted by inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Nazi holocaust, but it also references a number of other incidents in Jewish history including a similar trial conducted by the Hasidic Rabbi Levi Yosef Yitzhak of Berdichev:Men and women are being beaten, tortured and killed.
[citation needed]In Alan Parker's Oscar-winning 1980 feature film Fame, one of the main characters (played by Barry Miller) makes an explicit statement against God.
Playing an aspiring stand-up comedian who is asked in an acting class to talk about an experience that has affected him deeply in order to sharpen his skills as a performer, he delivers an extended uncut monologue (rare for a mainstream Hollywood film at that time) that heavily criticizes both modern capitalism and religion, concluding with the line "and then we can all go pray to the asshole God who fucked everything up in the first place".
In the film Pitch Black, anti-hero protagonist Richard B. Riddick stated his own belief, after an imam accuses him of atheism: "Think someone could spend half their life in a slam with a horse bit in their mouth and not believe?
Since then, they have been kidnapping and murdering children in order to make other parents lose faith in God and turning them into revenge-driven hollow shells of their former selves, i.e. spreading their misotheism to other people.
He has a penchant for constantly implementing allusions to major figures of both pagan and biblical theology, with him notably comparing himself to Prometheus, General Zod to Icarus, and Superman to Zeus, Horus, Apollo, Jehovah and Satan.
Dystheistic sentiment has also made its way into popular music, evincing itself in controversial songs like "Dear God"[20] by the band XTC (later covered by Sarah McLachlan) and "Blasphemous Rumours"[21] by Depeche Mode, which tells the story of a teenage girl who attempted suicide, survived, and turned her life over to God, only to be hit by a car, wind up on life support, and eventually die.
"Godwhacker" by Steely Dan from their Everything Must Go album developed from a lyric frontman Donald Fagen wrote a few days after his mother died of Alzheimer's.
"[23] In the song "Terrible Lie" by Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor expresses anger, confusion, and sadness towards God and the world he created.
In 2006, Australian artist Archie Moore created a paper sculpture called "Maltheism", which was considered for a Telstra Art Award in 2006.
The piece was intended as a representation of a church made from pages of the Book of Deuteronomy: ...and within its text is the endorsement from God to Moses for invasion of other nations.