Theists i want a quick forum chat with you

[Tonus]

And yet the bible never identifies god as a liar and a murderer, despite the fact that he's wiped out thousands of people, including all the first born children of Egypt, and 185,000 sleeping Assyrian soldiers (2 Kings 19:35).

Of course not, he's the (ostensible) hero of the book. In the OT he is a reflection of certain human impulses, hence the patriarchal, wish-fulfillment nature of many of his actions and decisions and the reliance on such emotions as jealousy and anger. Why such a flawed "hero"? They had to work with what was available, and what was available was a god of war. Note that in the OT he refers to himself as Jehovah, God of Armies. In the NT he is re-shaped as a much more subtle and sophisticated character. No longer reflecting only one facet of human behavior, he needs to express himself as a wise and caring persona who is here to help. He humbles himself by taking human form, then allows his enemies to torture and kill him to further show that this is a kinder, gentler god. There is a bit of a reversal due to putting Revelation at the end; god is once more a powerful and vengeful and angry person who came down here to kick ass and take names... so he'll know the names of the asses he is kicking (or something like that).

Taken as a whole, god is the hero who wins the long struggle and Satan is the bad guy who loses big in the end. Taken as stories written over time to stand on their own, we see a bunch of moral fables that don't require an ultimate evil or even an ultimate good (the OT). It is the new testament that tries to create a binding narrative with good guys versus bad guys, and requires the creative interpretations of scripture that we see so often on these forums.