(February 21, 2015 at 9:33 pm)Nope Wrote: The god of the bible is a sociopath. I am curious if Christians can explain why their god is good without resorting to "Because the bible says"
What is "good"? God says a lot of things in the bible, but God never says that God is good. God says of God'self "I Am that I Am," or, "I Will Be what I Will Be," depending on the translation. The creation story says that God says that everything God made was good, as far as who wrote the creation story, go figure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_creation_narrative
David, king of Judah says that God is good from his own experience that he wrote in a psalm. People can say what they want to say in a song, I'm pretty sure David didn't know that his psalms would live on 3000 years from when he wrote them.
So, then, whether God is good or not depends on who determines what the Good is (personally, I would turn to Plato; my personal understanding of Jesus' teachings, including his very teaching style, is quite Platonian). Then we can figure out if whatever we think God is or is not is good.
I think personally, that the God of the bible is good, using the Platonian definition. I also believe that the God of the bible is beyond good in a way that I don't understand so I would have to plead agnostic in that sense, but the God that I understand from the bible is at least Platonian good.