Do you think God is authoritarian?

[Simon Moon]

Do you think God is more like an authoritarian figure, and absolute monarchy, and a dictatorship; if in a subtle way?

People have pictured God in a lot of different ways. 

The God that Hitchens describes, and that people tend to argue against on this forum, is certainly a tyrant. As far as I can tell, this view of God comes from a literal reading of the Old Testament and some fire-and-brimstone type preachers.

The God of Plato, of Aristotle, of Augustine, of Dante, and many etc., is not at all a tyrant or authority figure.

Hitch, and the members of this forum aren't arguing against that god you describe in a vacuum. How is it our fault the literal reading of the OT is the god we are most often presented with by the theists we encounter?

And how is the NT god any better? Infinite punishment for finite thought crimes is not invented until the NT. To my way of thinking, any god that would create infinite punishment for finite crimes, is substantially worse than one that orders genocide or condones slavery. At least those things end.

Do you really think that if a Deist wants to debate the existence of a deist god, (or someone wants to debate the God of Plato, of Aristotle, of Augustine, of Dante, etc) we will debate the OT god?

I can't speak for all atheists, but I only debate with theists about the god they present to me. It is not up to me to define their god

I never define their god for them. If I am going to get into a discussion with the theist (they usually instigate it when they find out I am an atheist), the first question I ask, is for them to define the god they believe exists.

The fact is, though, the vast majority of gods presented to me, are versions of the Abrahamic god, which are usually the one described in the Bible. Which is, even if one were to cherry pick the hell out of the Biblical god, in order to make it a benevolent Biblical god, it is still an authoritarian. Benevolent authoritarianism, is still authoritarianism.