Should a monotheistic God ever be considered good or great?

Maybe. But how then would we stop a god, especially an all-powerful one, from doing what exactly it wants? (And why indeed would we want to, since it is reasonable to assume that an omniscient being would always know best?)

Or, it can be argued that by acting in a new way, God being the final standard of all things and the like, has just gone and set a new standard. Like when God, er, Jesus, tweaked things in the NT. Thus, when Jehovah drowned the entire world it was, er, necessarily, the best genocide, ever. Recognising this perhaps, the Almighty told Noah that He would not do the flood thing over ever again. Gen 9 12-13. It did however leave Him free with earthquakes, sent to punish homosexuality, apparently.

As for God not being trustworthy, one recalls times in the Bible when God works by ways not clear or honest: either putting a lying tongue in the mouths of others or by more direct action (2 Thessalonians 2:11, 1 Kings 22:23 Ezekiel 14:9, etc). Naturally for the best possible reasons. There is also the old chestnut of, if God was a trickster deity working things for secret, mischievous reasons of His own, how, given that He works in mysterious ways and all, would one ever know for sure what was true? After all there are few jokes from Jehovah in the Bible and the most accomplished comedian never laughs at his own wit.

Since one cannot determine the truth of this statement one way or another, it is meaningless, even if we accept one's favourite supernatural entity actually exists. It also assumes that there is something 'greater' than God to which He must take heed, and thus be obliged to alter His will - which is impossible since as we know "God's will will be done" - and sounds a tad heretical.



Here's some information:

(Malachi 3:6)--"For I, the Lord, do not change.."

Also, philosophers usually consider that God can change any thing except His own nature. Which is the same idea as Malachi expresses really. This of course does not mean that God can't change his mind, as that is something within His nature - as we see when He "repents" or "regrets" matters, which He does a few times(EG Genesis 6:6, 7). But then, given the character of the OT deity in particular, He needs to.




A different way of raising this issue is to ask why God is to be praised for not being other than He must be, which seems redundant. One appreciates that there can be other reasons for praise (e.g. a jealous god might like flattery) but that is besides this point.



Quite right. If thinking power was the most important thing about the Christian God, it would probably not have created an imperfect world in the first place - and then punish for the inevitable imperfections manifest when the likely problems and inefficiencies from such a Plan were obvious. It would have saved sending, er, a third of Himself to sort the ensuing mess out, and to see that third killed, and to come back, well, since God can't die. Or something.. Instead we all know the most important thing is Love, whereby through the same scheme of logic, sinners are sent into suffering forever. Because God loves them, if not the sin. That indeed takes some thinking.