Does God have a Personality?

[LostOne4Ever]

35. I remember being in a scientific ethics class

And we were debating, if I recall right, euthanasia. We had this one fundamentalist there and a liberal Christian challenged him on his view of god. The liberal Christian said the fundamentalists view of Christianity made god sounded like a cruel, mean, bigot and that those "were the traits of man not god." The Fundamentalist responded, "well we were created in God's image, so if those are traits of man they must be traits of God too." The liberal Christian disagreed with him furiously.

My views of the God of the old testament are very mal-theistic. He drowned families begging Moses to save their children, killed the first born children of the people of Egypt because of the sins of the Pharaoh, and said:


[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Exodus Chapter 20[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

20:6 And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.


So when I think of Elohim/Jehovah I think Jealous and Cruel. Then along comes Jesus with his "don't judge unless ye be judged" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" teaching (the latter having been taught by others long before him) and then hes sounding alot nicer....BUT he also brings up the concept of Hell and the apocalypse.

Further, Hell isn't for those who are evil and wicked...its for non-believers only. Doesn't matter if you spend your whole life helping others...no belief and you go to hell. So he goes from jealous and cruel to Loving,Proud and arrogant ! So overall hes Proud, arrogant, jealous, and cruel but he loves you despite the fact he will banish you to hell for all eternity for not giving him attention.

Personally, Im not a fan.

When I think of the God of Thomas Paine, I think disinterested and neutral. Boring =P
He's indifferent to me and I am indifferent to him.