[dharmatech]

> the character of God is frequently portrayed as nothing short of sociopathic and psychopathic.

I've heard critics of religion make this claim but I don't fully understand it.

I of course wouldn't expect you to go forth with a thesis here on this topic. :-)

So I'll ask, do you think there's a good author that makes this case? I'm sure someone has written on that.

I'm familiar with Bart Eherman's work. He left the faith due to "the problem of evil".

[soulofmischief]

God is a great author to reference. The Bible is filled with enough atrocities and inconsistencies that it remains my number one recommendation for deprogramming Christians.

God told Abraham to kill his son as a test of fealty, then psyched him at the end:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac

God flooded the entire fucking earth, killing countless innocent people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_flood_narrative

God rained sulfur upon a city because they were sucking too much dick, and turned a guy's wife into salt:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2019&ve...

Now, you could point out that many of the stories in Genesis, including the Garden of Eden, can actually be traced back to older works, such as the epic of Gilgamesh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh#Relationship...

And I would agree, and this further weakens the legitimacy of the Christian mythos.

[dharmatech]

I'm surprised you cited Genesis 22. :-)

Some people, when confronted with Gen22, simply say "wow, I want nothing to do with this religion", and walk away.

Other's see the story and say "wow... how do Christian's get around this one?". And so volumes have been written on this story. There's a ton of rich theology there for folks who were wiling to look past the initial hurdle.

I.e. the argument that "look at this horrific story" only really works for a small subset of people who aren't willing to look into the theology of it.

Now, one could argue that people who find the theology of the story satisfying are somehow demented, but that's a different argument.