The nature and purpose of God has been debated for centuries by philosophers and theologians. Their arguments are frequently phrased to support a theist or atheist perspective. Hume offered an alternative approach. He believed that God was a "riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery," whose nature could not be determined. Hume was a humanist and utilitarian who was critical of many aspects of mainstream theology. He formed many arguments against intelligent design, and thought that miracles were unlikely to happen. However, he did concede in his 'Natural History of Religion' that, "the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one." This implies that Hume either thought that most people were irrational, or that miracles were necessary for a person to hold a religious belief. However, he questioned the nature of miracles, and proposed that a miracle could only be considered genuine if it would be a greater miracle that the person reporting the miracle had made a mistake or was being deceitful.

However, another possibility is that miracles are genuine but malicious in nature. I express this possibility in the next chapter, and I observe that they appear to support theologies that include aspects which can cause human suffering. This immediately leads to the question of, "Why would God behave in this way?" I am in agreement with Hume's theory that the purpose of God cannot be determined. However, I propose that this in itself is a cause of suffering, because it is opposed to a basic need for us to make sense of our environment.

The actions of God appear to parallel advanced social techniques that people use to cause psychological suffering to others. The motives for doing are always selfish and can be sexual, sadistic, a desire to eliminate competition or a desire to gain a degree of control over another person. God appears to be a model of pure selfishness, paralleling this form of human behaviour but without any apparent motive for doing so. Spiritual events are used to gain dominance over people, to cause psychological confusion and suffering and to reduce the reproductive potential of individuals (e.g. by restricting sex to marriage). In my opinion, spiritual events and aspects of the theologies that they support also propagate misinformation, which may be an attempt to make people look foolish to others. This is another method that some people use to cause suffering.

I suggest that both the actions and the existence of a God whose purpose is deliberately concealed is a cause of human suffering and is therefore malicious in nature. I suggest that the inexplicable nature of God causes the most suffering to people who are preoccupied with religious issues but are not themselves religious. In light of this theory, I believe that the best strategy to deal with this problem is to reject spiritual events wherever possible and to make an effort not to worry about the purpose of God.