Psycho Deity

As we've seen in many previous posts. Yahweh, the god of the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, is jealous, needy, angry, paranoid, vengeful, and violent, when he's not dispensing his love to his chosen. He's also exceedingly prickly. If he thinks the Israelites are insufficiently grateful for all he'd done and overhears them complaining , or "murmuring" as it is called, he's apt to smite an entire group unless Moses can talk him down. And this doesn't cover the mass murder and collective punishment of non-Israelites, most of whom are perfectly innocent, according to the text. There are so many stories along these lines that cataloging them would seems an impossible task. Thankfully, we have the Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, whose latest video, "How Many People Did God Kill in the Bible?" is worth watching, at least in part: it is nearly two-and-a-half hours long. Mehta credits Steve Wells's book Drunk With Blood with the legwork.