Even if theism is a failure, it's still superior to atheism

[The Grand Nudger]

i think that much of the belief that what is called "God" is evil has to do with the belief that it involves giving man no freedom or choice in deciding his own outcome. 

Just one thing among many, but you'll have a great many more things to shitcan before you finally realize that you'd have to toss christ himself in order to rehabilitate the christian god. By and large, people just don't believe in vicarious redemption or blood sacrifice anymore, let alone the decency of either thing. We don't let people serve other peoples prison sentences, we don't accept the execution of a third party to satisfy a debt between another two. They were normal enough ideas for the time they were written, but that was quite awhile ago, and they're so far outside of contemporary moral intuitions that it's unlikely to see them make a comeback. All a part of christianity's modern identity crisis. Generally speaking, as narrative devices, when a culture leaves the moral space occupied or carved out by a particular god, that god has breathed it's last unless it can be successfully exported to some other group that still inhabits that space, or successfully revised to more closely align with the changing mores of the host culture.