Given the Bible, God is Morally Repugnant and Undeserving of Praise

My opponent begins with a statement that the verses I have posted show that God deserves fear... When one asks oneself, "WHY does God deserve fear?" I believe the viable answer that can come from that question is "Because this entity delivers terrible retribution for silly rules and acts immorally." I will also briefly address my opponent's 4 points on the approach to God and suffering... (1) suffering does not originate with God and will be eliminated at some point; Seems to me that in most of these cases, God delivers terrible suffering and even death to people, mainly the enemies of Israel. I'm curious as to how the pain and suffering of their death will be eliminated at some point, given that if they are non-believers, they will be cast into the fiery pits of hell (assuming God passes judgment on the enemies of Israel). (2) God works good in the midst of suffering; Again, what about the enemies of Israel? Where is the good for them? Or in the case of Job... when God inflicted terrible suffering upon Job for a period of time only to make a point to Satan? Regardless of the fact that God restored what was taken to Job, he still DID the acts. That's like saying it's moral for me to break your favorite toy as long as I fix it later. (3) not all pain is suffering in the moral sense; Um... ok? I'm not sure what moral suffering consists of. Perhaps my opponent will elaborate? (4) and physical, transient suffering and death are relatively inconsequential compared to spiritual, eternal suffering and death. Yes, this is correct. So it's clearly possible that God will punish someone for their transgressions on Earth for a period of time, and then punish them eternally. And what about the moral, non-believers that God sends to hell for this eternal suffering? Again... sounds like an immoral deity to me... ******************************* >> "Suffering, the consequence of human sin, is not caused by God, but by the sin of persons with moral responsibility... He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to provide ultimate freedom from the consequences of sin. It is wrong to indict God because suffering is not yet eliminated, just as it would be wrong to indict a doctor who treats a gunshot wound he didn't cause, simply because the wound is not healed instantly." The consequence of human sin is that they are punished according to God's rules. If the rules are inherently unjust (i.e. disproportionate punishment to the offense), then God is still liable for the suffering beyond that proportionate to the offense. The analogy is much more akin to a doctor who shoots someone for not taking their medication and then heals them later. >> "Not all pain is "bad" in the moral sense. God created us with nerve endings that use pain to protect us. Pain keeps us from burning our hands in a campfire, bending our legs back until the joint breaks, neglecting nourishment until we starve, etc. Suffering can also be a direct, just consequence of our own actions." Ah - I see now... but this has no bearing on the fact that God has caused or instructed others to inflict suffering upon people, justly or unjustly. >> "When we see innocents suffering, we should experience moral outrage." THANK YOU. Such as Job? Such as the men, women, and children that God orders killed in his name? Such as the thousands of Egyptian babies? My opponent references Romans 8:8 as a justification that "creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed" However, Rm 8:8 reads "and those who are in the flesh cannot please God." I'm not sure what he's referring to, but the entire book of Romans is one of the epistles... Paul writing to people about his thoughts, not God himself speaking. He also references the Beattitudes (Mt 5:3-10). It seems that they should include: Blessed are they who murder in the name of the Lord, for they shall be rewarded with lands and virgins aplenty. The Beattitudes are all well and good, but they don't apply to the people that God ordered to do heinous acts in his name. And what about their application to God himself? Blessed is he who advocates Genocide? Blessed is he who advocates killing homosexuals? *********************** >> "A universal barometer of morality does not exist..." Tell that to Kant - if we all act as though our action were to be a universal maxim.... (Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals). My opponent tries to present a weak argument at the end of his response that since we have accepted the Bible's guidelines for what is moral, and the Bible states that the actions of God are moral, that God cannot be immoral. However, this argument has a fatal flaw unless we consider hypocrisy to be a moral attribute: God does many things himself, mostly infanticide and genocide, that would be morally repugnant according to the view of morality presented in the Bible.