(Pro) The Christian God is malevolent vs benevolent (Con).

I. God's killings in the Old Testament (Pro) First, Jesus and the God of the Old Testament is one and the same. That Christians believe in only one God and the Old Testament is taught to Christians. Therefore, Jesus Christ committed the killings within the Old Testament. "Did you know, for example, that God: Forced friends and family to kill each other for dancing naked around Aaron's golden calf? Burned Aaron's sons to death for offering him strange fire? Burned complainers to death, forced the survivors to eat quail until it literally came out their noses, sent "fiery serpents" to bite people for complaining about the lack of food and water, and killed 14,700 for complaining about his killings? Buried alive those that opposed Moses (along with their families)? Burned 250 men to death for burning incense? ""[3] Richard Dawkins states " "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." R13; Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion " [4] This means all those same characteristics can be said of Jesus Christ. One of the worst atrocities Jesus commits is Noah's flood. The flood was a genocide of nearly every human, animal, and plant on the planet Earth. To add insult to injury only fourteen humans were left afterwards. Meaning forced incest was the only way to reproduce and for the human race to survive. II. God's killings in the Old Testament (Con) http://biblehub.com... ; http://biblehub.com... If one fact checks what they find in Richard Dawkin"s book, you"ll find many things are actually taken out of context. For example, when you said that God "Forced friends and family to kill each other for dancing naked around Aaron's golden calf," while it is true, there is a good reason behind it. "Moses felt that he was divinely commissioned to perform this act of severity. The lives of all who had committed the idolatry were justly forfeit. Trial was unnecessary where the offence was being openly committed before the eyes of all. Such dancing and such shouting could not possibly be Jehovah-worship. It was by its very character idolatrous." "Probably these were but few in comparison with the many that were guilty; but these were the men that headed the rebellion, and were therefore picked out to be made examples of, for terror to others." So, he killed them to punish the society and to make an example of them. Children need to be punished when they are young, so that"s what God did: God punished God"s "children". Remember, that if someone is killed, there is an afterlife, so being killed isn"t exactly as bad as it is made out to be. (Of course killing is terrible, but we for this debate, we have to assume there is an afterlife. In this debate, we have to assume God is real because since some people believe God is real and God, whether real or not, has made an impact on our world.) III. Incest (Pro) " It's certain that Noah's children practiced incest. They had to. Did God really have to kill everybody except Noah and his wife and children? Don't you love it when your loving god kills all the little laughing children to satisfy his genocidal lust? " [5] IV. Incest (Con) First off, I"d like to point out that our morals and morals from back then were very different, so incest wasn"t considered a bad thing. In fact, incest was very common back then, especially as there was no scientific evidence that showed that incest could cause defects. In addition, it isn"t malicious to have siblings have children have children together; in fact, parents married their children to each other all the time back then. V. Slavery (Pro) """20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. 21 Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he [is] his money." [6] ""Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;" " [7]"" I argue that God must be malevolent condone slavery. Not only that but God cannot be the source of all moral authority be allowing slavery. VI. Slavery (Con) http://biblehub.com... "Your masters"according to the flesh."This phrase (used also in Colossians 3:12) at once implies the necessary limitation of all human slavery. It can subjugate and even kill the body, but it cannot touch the spirit; and it belongs only to the visible life of this world, not to the world to come. The slave is a man in spiritual and immortal being, not a "living tool" or "chattel," as even philosophy called him." So really, your quotes are in fact about limiting slavery. In fact, one of your quotes states that if a man beats his servants and his servants die, the master will be punished. Yes, I would agree that God would be considered malicious if he condoned slavery, but he clearly doesn"t, and your quotes and mine support that fact. VII. Eternal damnation (Pro) " Matthew 25:41English Standard Version (ESV) 41 "Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. " [8] This is the worst of the worst in my opinion. Making Jesus even more evil than the God of the Old Testament. The Judaism God only had Hell for a finite time, about a year. Jesus the so called merciful extended Hell to all eternity. This is for only finite crimes, most notably not having faith in Jesus Christ. VIII. Eternal damnation (Con) http://www.bibleinfo.com... "In English these words mean that the fire will go on forever, but in the Greek it has a different meaning. Dr. Basil Atkinson explains it this way." "When the adjective aionios,"meaning"everlasting is used in Greek"with nouns of action it has reference to the result of the act, not the process. The phrase everlasting punishment is comparable to everlasting redemption and everlasting salvation, both Scriptural phrases. No one supposes that we are being redeemed or saved forever. We were redeemed and saved once for all by Christ with eternal results. In the same way the lost will not be passing through the process of punishment forever but will be punished"once and for all with eternal results. On the other hand the noun 'life' is not a noun of action, but a noun expressing a state. Thus life itself is eternal. Basil F. C. Atkinson," Life and Immortality." An Examination of the Nature and Meaning of Life and Death as they are revealed in the Scriptures (Taunton, England, n. n.), p.101." So, according to this source, because of mistranslation, people assume that people who go to hell will burn there for eternity, but actually, they will burn once, which is much better than the year the Jewish God gives them. IX. Conclusion Therefore, the Christian God is clearly not as malicious as people make God out to be. Thank you.