“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
You could argue that this is all cleared up in the New Testament...
But that, instead, gives evidence for a changeable God. One who is eternal changed his core in a short (for him) time frame. Doesn't sound like a reliable figure.
And if you don't believe in an omnibenevolent God, why believe in a God at all? If he does not love all, then he cares not for us. He may as well be Satan, because Satan's main sin was to question God....who, if not omnibenevolent, is just as flawed as Satan is. A non-loving God? Why would he make a heaven? Why would he reward the loving and the good? Why would he do anything but sit about? And, if all he does is nothing, then perhaps he didn't cause the universe to be in the first place. And, if he does, was it perhaps as something to amuse himself? Not something I'd want to praise. If he did create the universe, but simply doesn't love it, then the core teachings of Christianity just aren't justifiable.
-snip-
Childbirth in which the baby dies-who does that teach?
The mother obviously, but the baby also gets a chance eventually. God loves everyone, not just people who survive past a certain age.
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So God "teaches" the baby by killing it before it can comprehend the lesson it was given? And, given God values all lives equally, then he used the death of a child to teach someone else a lesson? So the mother's life lesson was more important than an entire life?
There is a point where pain on earth goes from educational to completely detrimental.