What if the bible were rewritten?

[Pyrrho]

It amazes me that you can describe him that way and not realize how terrifying he is.  In other words, god needs no moral cover for his actions and can do whatever he pleases and we'd better thank him for it or he'll show us just how many new ways he can make us scream in torment and horror.  And as we see in the OT, he's a needy, emotional wreck just itching for a chance to massively ruin your day.

That's the guy you want to spend eternity with.  And you think he'll never turn on you, for some reason you can't logically defend.  And you don't think there's an argument against god here.  Outstanding.

You are zeroing in on a few of the stories. There are many many places where God shows mercy and a willingness to withhold judgement. Every one of the objectionable stories you are thinking of involved judgement for individual and/or systemic wickedness (which was clearly spelled out prior to the judgment). To support your characterization of God, you would have to show that he did not have the authority to judge wickedness OR that withholding judgement would have resulted in more good (at some point in the future timeline). 

Most of you are missing a very big component. Yes, God is omnipotent, but he has created a world of beings with freewill. Knowing we would choose to sin, he, from the very beginning, planned for a process of redemption (the NT): The Edenic Covenant (Genesis 3:15); Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 12, 13, 22); Davidic Covenant (2 Samuel 7). 

There is a doctrine of God's foreknowledge which I find philosophically appealing: God (with an infinitely powerful mind), surveyed all possible worlds in which he created beings with freewill, and with knowledge of what every being would freely choose to do in any given circumstance, actualized the world with the greatest eternal good.  This includes his interactions, his commands, his answers/no answers to prayers, and of course an eventual plan of redemption.

The God you believe in is either impotent or evil.  The freewill defense is bollocks.  See:

Hey I appreciate it. Thank you. :-) 

I would keep the Christian God. 

I believe God gave us free will and allows nature to take it's coarse. 

A God that talks to us, gives us whatever we ask/want, and immediately paralizes anyone who is about to do something hurtful, sounds good in theory, but I think it would open up a whole can of worms. 

First of all, I can see people getting terribly spoiled, always asking for more and more, never being satisfied, and deeply resenting God when they did not get what they want.

If what you say is true, isn't that God's fault for making people that way?  Any imperfection in a creation is the fault of its creator.  If the creator were perfect, it could create perfect things.  That it does not means that either it does not want to create perfect things, or it is unable to create perfect things.  If the former, then God is evil, because he prefers making bad things to good things, and if the latter, then God is not omnipotent.

Second, I think physically stopping people from doing anything that He does not approve of would cause more harm than good. We would just be like children, always confined to daddy's rules and never being able to grow and learn from our mistakes, etc. 

If God gave us wisdom, we would not need to learn anything.  If we need to learn anything, it is God's fault in making us imperfect.  See above.

Third, having free will means the world is what we make it to a certain extent. A lot of the human suffering is due to corruption of man and we have no one to blame for that but ourselves.

First of all, much of what is wrong with the world has nothing to do with humans having free will.  Think of all of the diseases, earthquakes, etc.  So free will does not explain away evil.

Second, it is not entirely clear that we have free will, nor is it entirely clear that having free will is a good thing.  I will set this aside for the moment, but it needs to be established for it to be reasonable to believe your story.  (That would involve explaining what, exactly, "free will" is.)

Third, is there free will in heaven?  If so, does that mean that evil will exist in heaven?  If so, how is heaven different from life now?  And if there is free will in heaven, without evil, then having free will does not explain the existence of evil here and now.  And if there is no free will in heaven, then it must be better to not have free will, since heaven is better than here.  Isn't it?

Fourth, imagine that you and I are having a picnic together in a large park.  We are conversing agreeably, having some wine and good food.  In the distance, we observe a group of people attacking another person, raping and beating the person.  You say, "hey, we should do something" like call the police on your cell phone, go get help, go and directly help the person, whatever.  I say, "no, we can't do that!  We can't interfere with their free will!"  Now, if that really happened, what would you say of me?  Would you regard me as moral or immoral?  Well, I would be doing what God does.  So are you saying it is right to not help others?  Furthermore, we can see that this does not work anyway as an excuse, because us interfering would not affect whether they have free will or not.  We would only be affecting the outcome, not their ability to make choices.  Likewise, God interfering with outcomes would not affect anyone's free will at all.  They could still will to rape and beat and kill, without succeeding.  So this "free will" excuse really excuses nothing whatsoever.

And:

The Catholic idea is that you don't enter heaven until you are already "perfect", for lack of a better word. We believe the vast majority of us will go to Purgatory where we will really learn to love God (love goodness and love, which is what we believe God is) with a perfect love. 

Once we reach that stage, we go to Heaven. Yes, we will still have free will but at that point we will already have so much love for God and for all that is good, that we won't sin anymore. I hope that helps. Thanks for the respectful dialogue. Let me know if you have any more questions. :-)

Happy to oblige; thank you for the answers.

I think that this means that it is possible to reach a condition where we have free will, minus that part of it that would lead us to do things that would displease god.  I think that the best of all possible worlds is one where we are born/created that way; we get to enjoy god's world and one another, we get to develop as people with unique personalities and skills, and we don't hurt ourselves or one another.  A system that filters out most of us --by allowing us to hurt ourselves and those around us, and to offend god, and to wind up in an eternity of suffering-- can't be the best possible outcome.  Billions of people who were just one or two mental tweaks away from being part of a perfect society will instead spend eternity in misery and torment.  Those who make it to heaven will either bear the burden of knowing that so many were lost, or will not care, or will not be allowed to care.  It's just a poor situation all around, IMO.

I think it's possible to make a world where I can decide to be a painter or a plumber, where I can decide that yogurt-dipped raisins are better than chocolate-dipped cherries (point of fact: they're not) or that I'll pursue a relationship with Veronica instead of Betty, where I can make lots of choices that aren't sinful or harmful.  I think if that world also included a mental block that didn't allow me to pour scalding water on the arm of a three-year-old to "teach him a lesson" that would not be a bad thing at all.  I'd like to live in a world where Eve's poor judgment didn't bring thousands of years of misery and brutal mistreatment of one another, even if it means that her freedom to make catastrophically-bad choices was suppressed just enough.

Even for people who live a good and clean life --who help when they can and seek to help and never hurt-- such a world must be a better option.  There are true stories of mistreatment of people that would make nearly all of us weep helplessly.  I'm willing to trade a world where Ted Bundy never tortures young women to death for one where his freedom to choose to be a monster is curtailed.  If this is the best arrangement that god could dream up, I am sorely disappointed in him.  He created everything, including us.  I think he owes us much better than he has delivered.