Verse 34:6 in the book of Exodus accurately describes God.

" Even so, all my opponent's claims appeal to objective morality, which cannot exist except derived from God. God is just because God defines justice." - I will respond to this later. "God commanded the Israelites to slaughter every living thing they can possibly slaughter, leave nothing alive that breathes, take the people they haven't slaughtered, including women and children, enslave them, and finally, eat the spoils of their enemies - "Like God has commanded you." [4]" "These people regularly burned their firstborns to death in honor of Ashoreh and did other unspeakable crimes in their pagan rituals. God was hardly being unjust in wiping the culture from the earth." - Speaking of people burning human beings to death for their Gods, it is interesting to check out Samuel 2 21: 6-9 in which the God of the Bible himself accepts human sacrifice in return for his aid to end a famine. Anyway, that the inhabitants of the land were bad people is an unsatisfactory attempt at justifying God's repeated genocides. Though I don't necessarily doubt you on this, which "other unspeakable crimes" that the nations committed are you referring to? So let's assume that they did commit other unspeakable crimes. Now, it would be one thing if the peoples' morality was the driving force behind the genocides that God helps execute. But in general, the moral status of the people is not the rationale behind the genocide - Rather, conquest is. It is all for the sake of the Israelites inheriting the land or benefiting from the possessions of other nations - and if the immorality of the nations that were to be dispossessed and wiped out in the name of God falls into place at all, it is secondary to Israel taking over the land/other spoils of war. It is an afterthought, and some times it isn't even a "thought" at all. For instance, check out Deuteronomy 20: 13 - 17; a section that I happened to have learned not too long ago in my 10th grade Bible class. Of course, there's the usual "slaughter every living thing you can possibly slaughter" and "leave nothing alive that can breathe," but then there's the "take everyone else you haven't slaughtered, take them captive, and enslave them," and the "But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shall you take to yourself; and you shall eat the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you." (< literal quote of Deuteronomy 20:14). In other verses too, there's the "Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." (< literal quote of Numbers 31: 17-18). These genocides seem to contain that element of benefit, of reward, of conquest, and, well, of thievery, quite frankly. If the inhabitants' morality is present in God's decision to mercilessly slaughter those nations, it takes a backseat to those rationales. "The Flood wasn't genocide, it was omnicide. Everyone was killed equally. The reason: they were all doing incredibly immoral practices. God knows more than anyone (including themselves) what they have done and what they deserve." - A truly powerful, loving God should want to and should be able to eradicate evil in a manner which does not involve eradicating mankind, and more importantly, every other living being on earth, including - all (most, really) of the air breathing land animals and every single one of the world's babies, infants and toddlers as well. The animals and babies, infants, and toddlers were not all doing incredibly immoral practices. "God would know better than you who was enemies and what was deserved." - Then I'll clarify what I meant - "their enemies, who in reality according to the information that the Bible has provided have done no actions to warrant being called enemies." But that wasn't my point. My point was that God's true nature and the real behavior he displays is so obvious, yet the vast majority of people remain blind to it. One can attempt at explaining how some of the actions that God's critics deem immoral are in reality not so, but the simple truth is that most people haven't even gotten around to being aware of those actions in the first place. If every single person was simply aware of them, many people's views would change instantaneously. Alas, I digress, and what I was saying in that paragraph was admittedly a tangent. So for that I apologize. Moving on - - Okay, the Dawkins comment. As I said at the beginning I would return to, you keep falling back on the fact that God cannot have any of these negative traits because he is God, and he is the one that gets to define what is negative and what is positive, therefore he is positive. It's the classic "objective morality" argument - God decides what is "just" and "unjust" because he is the sole proprietor of morality. But if this true, he is necessarily a hypocrite as well - telling the Israelities to leave nothing alive the breathes, slaughter every little thing they can possibly slaughter, killing all the firstborn sons of Egypt, sending two bears to tear forty two children to shreds for calling Elisha a baldhead, commanding the Israelities to kill girls who are not virgins when they marry [5], commanding the Israelities to put disobedient teenagers to death [6], commanding the Israelites to burn prostitutes whose fathers are priests to death [7], permitting human sacrifice, and allowing captives of war to be tossed off cliffs [8], killing 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in their sleep [9] - YET telling the Israelites "you shall not murder." God, Yahweh, Jehovah, or whatever you call him does not even follow his own "objective morality." - In addition to the aforementioned heinous acts of God, - God sets a plague upon the Israelites and kills 24,000 because some of them were having sex with Ba'al worshipers. [1] God kills seventy thousand innocent Israelites for David's sin. [2] God kills a man who tried to keep the ark of the Lord from falling during transport. [3] God kills a man (in truth, he actually sent a lion to do the job) for not smiting a prophet. [4] Just some additional perspective on God's character. "And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth..." - Exodus 34:6 Seem a little out of place? I should hope so. In light of all the acts of God that I have discussed, I do not understand how it could not seem out of place. If one was forced to list characteristics of God that can be learned out from the actions I have provided, assuming one does not have a totally warped conception of morality and is not mentally insane, the characteristics should not include "merciful" or "gracious" or "slow to anger" or even "good." I believe I am justified in saying that the verse does not accurately describe God based on the "picture that has been painted" before and after the verse in the entire Old Testament. In fact, I am convinced that one would literally have to rewrite the Bible in order to reconcile God's personality and the behavior he exhibits with Exodus 34:6, and just because the author of the Old Testament is the author of the Old Testament does not make it a fitting description of the character he put forth. If in the middle of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling decided to write "Harry Potter is a middle aged, blonde haired, blue eyed, overweight American housewife," would that make it true based on the descriptions she provided previously and the descriptions she would go on to provide? If God is anything, he is definitely not merciful, gracious, longsuffering, abundant in goodness, etc. [1] Numbers 25: 1-9 [2] Samuel 2 24: 10-15 [3] Samuel 2 6: 3-7 [4] Kings 1 20: 35-36 [5] Deuteronomy 22:13-21 [6] Deuteronomy 21:18-21 [7] Leviticus 21:9