In the spirit of Paul Copan and his book "Is God a Moral Monster," and a recent video on Youtube video made by the "One Minute Apologist" titled, How Can a Loving God Kill People in the Old Testament?
I am going to explain why such a god that is touted by Christians as being "all-loving," could not be loving at all--but would instead be a sadistic, malevolent monster.
Paul Copan's book "sugar coats" certain passages of the bible by using Humpty Dumpty semantics in order to make words mean whatever he wants them to mean; and other passages he ignores entirely, as there is not enough sugar in the world that could reconcile them to an "all-loving god."
For instance, Paul doesn't even mention Hosea 13:16, which states:
"The people of Samaria must bear their guilt,because they have rebelled against their God.
They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.”
It's easy to see why Paul fails to mention this passage, but it's not only Hosea which cannot be sugar coated. Women especially should not ignore Numbers 1:2 where Moses takes a census, but he does not include women and children, as they were regarded as property--not people.
Other passages that are ignored include those concerning Lot and daughters. (Genesis 19) Lot was willing to sacrifice his daughters to a mob intent on raping them to save his male guests, and whether or not the Israelites had strict policies on "inhospitality," as some now claim, offering his children to a rabid mob intent on raping them is one of the worst forms of misogynistic child abuse I can think of. But as women were considered property and not persons, to him it would have been the right choice to make. Note, this sexism and misogyny comes from a text that was supposedly "revealed" by god to men, i.e. they are supposed to be god's thoughts. This illustrates that Yahweh is most certainly sexist, with misogynistic tendencies, and is indeed a "Moral Monster" despite the attempted whitewash by Copan. Unless of course, the bible isn't the word of god at all, but the words of sexist, misogynistic men.
Now, I also recently spent some time arguing with a Youtuber about the above video. He gave similar arguments to Copan, and attempted to say that the incident in Hosea where pregnant women and their fetuses are murdered is "..a warning to the evil people in the city. Not an account of history." But then in the same paragraph he said, " I strongly believe that when innocent children die, they go straight to heaven. What makes you think the women were innocent? "
So he stated it wasn't historical, and at the same time he acknowledged those women were real--which is contradictory and makes no sense.
I then gave him examples of scripture (Proverbs 16:33; Psalms 139:16) to illustrate that the bible makes it clear that for believers that everything is determined by their god, which he claimed I was taking "out of context"--lol. The old, "taking it out of context argument"--but there are at least 5 other passages which say the same thing. EVERY decision is from the Lord, (Prov 16:33) and Psalm 139:16, which states: “'Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.'” are just two of them.
In the case of the Psalms passage, the definition of "ordained" is: To prearrange unalterably; predestine. This means that everything in the life of a Christian has been "prearranged, unalterably" by this god according to the bible. So if their loved ones are raped and murdered, it would god's fault, as he "prearranged, unalterably" everything--including rape, murder, incest, abortion, etc.
The bible clearly states that every decision is preordained by their god--and Christians make no decisions, which means and the rape and murder of innocent children is "prearranged unalterably" by Yahweh, which does truly make him a MORAL MONSTER of epic proportions.
