Genocide in the Name of God:

The Paradox of Mythos Unveiled

 

A paradox lingers like a ghost in the pages of history—where sacred mythos, once a luminous guide to harmonize the inner world of the individual with Natural Law and universal values, is transmuted into a veil for atrocity. When rightly aligned with Natural Law, religious mythos honors the ancient esoteric maxim: “God is One.” In this elevated form, mythos is not dogma—it is a sacred Learning Capacity Device (LCD - my coined term), a symbolic interface designed to expand consciousness, deepen empathy, and assist in the psychological unfolding of self-realization. It serves the soul, not the state.

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As mystic Joel S. Goldsmith affirms in The Infinite Way:

“The Infinite Way reveals the nature of God to be one infinite, eternal power, presence, intelligence, and love; the nature of the individual being to be one with God’s qualities and character, expressed in infinite forms and variety.”

This understanding transforms myth from a system of control into a living stream of wisdom, flowing toward unity, wholeness, and inner illumination. But when hijacked—when this sacred technology is weaponized to sanction slavery, conquest, and genocide—it crosses into a realm of unaccountable criminality. In this inversion, the divine becomes a cloak for destruction.

 

Consider the chilling command found in Deuteronomy 20:16–17 (The Holy Bible):

“You shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them…”
This is not poetic allegory—it is a divine extermination order, etched into scripture. Such passages are not relics of some forgotten cruelty.

 

As Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan point out in Did God Really Command Genocide?:

“The traditional answers… often fail. …[These texts include] violence against children… the war texts often fail.”
Their words reflect a deep moral dissonance—how ancient religious texts, when taken literally, collapse under the weight of their ethical contradictions.

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Even in the modern era, where secularism appears to be ascendant, the power of religious mythos remains potent in shaping violence. In the book - In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century, editors Bethany Killian and Omer Bartov observe:

“Despite the widespread trends of secularization in the 20th century, religion has played an important role in several outbreaks of genocide… [and] religion has taken a position on mass killing.”

This is mythos rebranded—not for inner transformation, but for strategy, supremacy, and systemic annihilation.

 

Behind ornate altars and elaborate liturgies, we find political atheists cloaked in priestly garb—those who do not believe, but perform belief. These architects of obedience use mythos as a mask. They mouth the name of God while crafting systems of compliance, confusion, and conquest. No scheme is too small, no atrocity too great. The myth of “the chosen people”, the dogma of “one true religion”, the divine right to rule or to destroy—these are the banners under which the vilest crimes have marched, sanctified by sacred texts and cloaked in holy titles.

 

This is not faith. This is theater. A ritual of domination masquerading as divine destiny. And in its shadows, genocide finds sanctuary.