Is god a bit of a dick?

I recently stumbled across a post by Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist and various other spiritual-journey-slash-coming-of-age novels.

The post was an analogy that attempts to deal with the ancient atheist argument of “if there’s a god, how come so much bad shit happens all the time?”

In this story, a man is having his haircut in a barber’s shop. He suggests that if you don’t believe in god because the world’s in such a state then perhaps you shouldn’t believe in barber shops either. After all, there are lots of men in the world with long hair and shaggy beards. If barbers exist, why all the scruffiness?

The answer is simple. Of course barbers exist, it’s just that not everybody chooses to go to them. And of course God exists, but because some people don’t pay him a weekly visit, the world’s gone tits up.

What a horrible indictment of god. Is he really so insecure that he needs everybody on earth to constantly bow their heads in prayer in order to function properly? Must we constantly blow smoke up his arse before he pulls his finger out and decides to end world poverty? Would he decide to eradicate AIDS if only more people would sing him his favourite song on a Sunday morning?

Of all the arguments and counter arguments I’ve heard for the existence of god, this is perhaps the weakest. Not only does it rely on a ludicrous comparison between an all powerful being and a hairdresser – Jesus could probably have done with a trim before he was nailed to the cross, by the way – but even if it did make a convincing case for God, it makes him sound like a total prick.