God is good despite evil.

Con invokes the age old Documentary hypothesis in attempting to discredit the god of the Bible. This 19th century fossil has long since been rejected by serious Bible scholars. The Torah is considered to be a literary whole with the exception of Deuteronomy. I would disagree with them on that. The terminology is still used but the heart of the theory is long dead. The concept of YHWY evolving from a Canaanite deity is a product of this bygone canard. The earliest mention of YHWY is found in a 14th early 13th century century Egyptian document by Amenhotep the 3rd. He is mentioned in relationship to a people called the Shasu. The statement is specifically "The land of the Shasu of YHWH." The Shasu were a Semitic group of semi nomadic shepherds. These people either are the Hebrews of the Bible or are close genetic relatives. Another mention which is copied from Amenhotep's list is Ramsey's the 2nd's list who mentions the same people. Another Egyptian list mentions YHWY which is ostensibly a reference to the Shasu as well. http://www.biblearchaeology.org... The next reference to YHWY is on the Moabite stone that mentions YHWY as an enemy of one of the Canaanite gods Chemosh not as being a Canaanite god Himself. In the Wikipedia article on Canaanite religion they point out the same thing in their list of the Canaanite pantheon http://classic.net.bible.org... The artifact that depicts YHWH associating with a goddess is not until the 8th century BC. I mentioned this falling away by the people in my OP. The Bible mentions it as well. If this is an evolution of a Canaanite war god evolving into YHWH then the evolution ran backward. Con's case on this point falls flat on it's face. Let's understand something about these Canaanite's that Con spends a considerable amount of time weeping and wailing over. Their pagan religion included things like the slaughter of newborn babies on the alters of some of their gods. These people were very violent. When Abraham had first come to the land God told him that he could not yet posses the land because the sins of the people had not come to a full. What that meant was that God gives people an enormous amount of latitude and time when it comes to repenting and stopping their evil behavior. When Joshua and the Hebrews entered the land it was 400 years later and these people were still at it. When God tells Joshua or others to wipe out this or that group God is usually trying to prevent one or two things from happening. One God doesn't want their ideas and religion to spread to his people. Second if you don't kill everyone you have to deal with people growing up and taking revenge on you later. You can end up in a cycle of revenge and violence that could last for hundreds of years. God did not make these people evil the way they had become. These people left God with very few choices due to their own free will. Blaming God won't do. The Hebrew people of the late Bronze age were like other people of their time. The kept and bought slaves. They viewed women and daughters as property. God wrote laws that put limits on their behavior at that specific time and place. Again, people have REAL FREE WILL and as long as they do God will have REAL LIMITATIONS on what he can impose on us. Jesus pointed out this disparity and God's recognition of peoples unreadiness for the true morality. Matthew 19:8 "He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way." After the great flood the rules God gave us were exceedingly simple and libertarian: Genesis 9: 1-7 "And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. "The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given. "Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. "Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. "Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man's brother I will require the life of man. "Whoever sheds man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man. "As for you, be fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it." There's basically three rules: Get married and have kids, Don't be cruel to animals, and If someone commits murder execute them. So, you see the laws He have to His people in the ancient time were not His idea of ideal laws. He was taking people where they were at and trying to mold them toward where they were to go. For us to insist not that God should have done it otherwise is arrogant in the extreme. We weren't there and we aren't Him. We didn't have to deal with millions of ignorant, stubborn, primitive people who believed allot of backward things. Now to deal with some specifics, there are somethings Con says that amount to outright lies. Let's deal with those. "Would he kill a rape victim because no one could hear her call for help (Deuteronomy 22:23-24)? " This is NOT what the passage says. 23 "If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her," 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death"the young woman because she was in a town and DID NOT SCREAM for help, and the man because he violated another man"s wife. You must purge the evil from among you." So what does this mean. It means, if they get caught fooling around and all of a sudden she says "Wait! I was raped" then all you need to ask is "Then why is it that you didn't call out for someone to help you?". It was to keep an adulteress from lying her way out of a situation. And noticed SHE DOESN'T DIE ALONE. That's something Con leaves out. Here's one of the skeptics favorite modern tactics the HOMOPHOBE card. Con whines about God ordering the killing of homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13). And then forgets to mention that you'd be executed for adultery and bestiality too. Any form of sexual immorality was severely censured in ancient Israel. He brings up the execution of witches and then forgets to mention the execution of false prophets right along side them. Any teacher of a false religion was dealt with swiftly and harshly yes. But then again, these people had personally or had been told by relatives that had seen personally the Red Sea parted, manna in the wilderness, water from a stone, the 10 plagues of Egypt, the stopping of the river Jordan, the speaking of YHWH from mount Sinai etc. They would experience other miracles through future prophets as well. God had a right to expect more from them. Not to mention the fact that you could pretty much do what ever else you wanted, smoke pot, drink etc. Ezekiel 9:5-7 "Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it." Con apparently didn't read the entire passage. He failed to noticed that repentance was an option here. Con also fails to notice why God did what He did: "Then he said to me, "The guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of blood, and the city full of injustice. For they say, "The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see." 10 As for me, my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity; I will bring their deeds upon their heads." I'm out of space, so I can't answer the rest of Con's objections. YHWH values freedom above compulsion which is why He takes us where we're at. That explains the laws to his ancient people. True morality comes from love and that requires freedom.