God, as depicted in the Holy Bible, is not benevolent

Black Jesus, Ill seek a win starting round two by reminding you that the argument is that God is not Benevolent or Malevolent. Your case argues he is Malevolent with most arguments against his caring for life, thereby destroying your thesis. At this point I dont see a need to respond to ensure victory but, in the spirit of debate, I will respond concerning his Benevolence, to counter your points. Since this is in essence, an attempt to understand the mind of God, which, I believe, may literally be impossible for a creation to ever truly understand its creator.. we often cant even understand the minds of other men, I will simply try to paint my picture of how I perceive God. You may have heard in the past, that math is the language of God. All things around us are based off fractal math, generally, unable to be ploted or otherwise described using Euclidean geometry.. the way plants grow, the bloodvessels in our body, river systems, pretty much all things natural. One of the most easy to spot fractals which is around us every day is a tree. It starts from a seed, a central point, and begins to fractal out in opposite directions, each small branch very similar in look to the entirety of the tree itself, though having its own distinct differences. One of the intresting things about fractal algorithms, which is part of what makes fractal art so unique and interesting, is that many of these equations are infinite by nature, and, without the restrictions of reality, such as paper size lol, they could in fact, go on forever. This matters because if I am to flatter the idea of God, I have to give him credit as the creator of all of nature. The following quote is from Genesis, the Christian creation story. "And God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants[e] yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth." And it was so." This quote speaks not to a micromanaging God, who took part in the individual creation of life, but rather reflects on a God who created within each thing, the ability to grow and survive in its given environment. Which makes since now with the discovery of DNA, and fractals. Each thing being coded if you will, for survival on this planet, based off a massive fractal algorithm. Even Stephen Hawking, in his book, "The Grand Design", though coming to a different conclusion using the same data, discovered in a sense, the existence of God mathematically. He states " Because there is a law, such as gravity, the universe can and will, create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist." Stephen hawking is refering to quantum gravity here, which requires the existence of a timeless wave function of the universe, which Hawking labels Phi. So, Phi, is a non physical principle, which is timeless, and according to his colleague Roger Penrose, Phi is a mind, as is dictated by its existence as a self collapsing wave function, which is pretty much by definition, a mind. Inother words, mathematical proof of the existence of a consciousness responsible for spontaneous creation. Another very important principle which will come into play in this debate, is that God granted free will. This is a very important concept, for without free will, we would have slavery, which, Im sure we can all agree is in essence, very evil. This free will however, and our ability to choose to be evil, would mean that this new creation must be left with some guidance. Though I do believe that God attempted to guide early man through religion, which brought ethics to the planet in a precise way, he also built this guidance into men, via the creation of our conscience. A foolproof way, that would stand within each individual, even if the written word was corrupted, or otherwise lost to history. Now, to address your points. 1) The Flood (Genesis 6:5-8): God, as he witnessed evil in the heart of every human, regretted the decision to make them, so he decided to kill each and every single animal on Earth, except Noah and his family. Later, he made the rainbow reappear after every rain as a sign of his covenant with the Earth to never again kill them all with water again. As we are created in the image of God, (Though I believe this is a metaphorical mathematical principle, which also includes the design of our conscience.) we can assume that we would have to be similar in some ways. I would bring to you this article http://arstechnica.com... We all remember this story, "Microsoft Terminates its Tay AI chatbot after she turns Nazi." Just because you identify with other humans, does not mean that God did not initially view the evil in men as a failed attempt ad 3d Artificial intelligence. Do you believe the people at Microsoft were evil for not wanting to spread an evil artificial AI? Of course not. Its only your personal feelings of attachment to humanity that halts us from being able to view this from an objective stance. If you created an environment for artificial AI, and shortly after their creation they became immoral and bloodthirsty for whatever reason, and you did not want this mentality perpetuated in your petri dish from its inception, is it then immoral to push the delete button? I think not, you may disagree, love to discuss it. 2) The Egyptian Plagues (Exodus 11:1-5): After Moses implores the Pharaoh of Egypt at the time to release his people, the Jews being enslaved by the Egyptians, and the Pharaoh stubbornly refuses. God punishes the Pharaoh until he releases the Jews with many horrid plagues including but not limited to: turning the water in the Nile into blood, locusts, darkness, death of livestock and the death of the first-born children of all Egyptians, even of the cattle. Gods methods of trying to teach us, obviously changed from the beginning, to what we encounter in the new testament. Notably, after God manifested himself through Jesus. Rather than stating all men were evil, and simply wiping the slate clean to start over again, as in the Flood story, He had the wisdom to realize, if he truly wanted to understand us and why leaders of the time were so evil, the best way would be not to view from above with disdane our actions as humans, but to literally manifest as a human, and live the experience of being human first hand. I can imagine if we had a civilization of artificial intelligence, which was behaving horribly, but we realized this was already round two, and we didnt want to again, start over, a good alternative would be to manifest in their world, and attempt to offer guidance. Ill remind you that Exodus, which contains the story you refer to, is old testament, this in between the time before Jesus had come, but after the flood. In this period, before gaining true understanding of the love in mens hearts, having not yet been manifested as a man himself, I can see how a truly good being in the universe would have viewed the behaviors of those in ancient Egypt as utterly appalling, while still being somewhat detached, possibly wondering if this was yet another failed attempt at a kind and just intelligent creation of free will. Mankind at this point, was still possibly viewed as an experimental creation, which was not having the desired outcome. In this vein of thought, while as a human you consider yourself to be important, God could have viewed humanity as our scientists view lab rats, with an emotional detachment seeking a desirable outcome moreso than instant perfection, see, instant perfection becomes tricky when beings have their own free will, yet this principle could not be disregarded lest he would have created mindless robots instead, which was not his goal. Concerning your thoughts on Leviticus. Firstly, many Christians consider old testament to be trumped by new testament after the coming of Jesus, in which these things are not repeated. Secondly, just because something is printed in the Bible, does not mean it is in fact, the word of God. Many of the things described were simply the way aincient jews conducted things within their society and social structures, and can be considered a historical evidence of the way social behavior had developed up to that premidevil time in human history. There may be reasons we dont even consider because we are so used to modern conveniences. For instance, Pork was frowned upon, probably because of the existence of trichinosis, a fatal disease from pork, which people were at the time before modern understanding, dissuaded from for their own safety. If everyone who ate pork was becoming sick and dying, abstaining would be the proper direction for the time. Is this truly from God, or simply Jewish law after elders noticed the connection? The same could be said for sodomy, and homosexuality, as staph infection could kill man easily at this time in history. Im not saying this is true, Im simply implying that everything may not be so black and white as many people view it. They are often told, this is the word of God, not, this book contains some of Gods actions, but is a historical account of ancient society, and therfore put every word on a pedestal, which may not have been intended. Conclusion, I do believe that with the existence of conscience, the development of ethics, guidance of the 10 commandments, the selfless sacrifices of Jesus, and the destruction of those he deemed to be evil, that it is in fact the intention of the Lord, to be Benevolent to his creation. I believe the respect he demands, which you consider Narcissism, is actually warranted, and owed to the creator of all existence. However, I can also see how at the inception of man he had a more detached view of his creation, before having walked in our footsteps, however, the fact that he did do this later shows his love outweighed all.