Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?

[Written by John W Loftus] It all started recently with Richard Dawkins and his charge that the God of the Old Testament is the most unpleasant fictional character he'd ever seen. So Paul Copan, President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, wrote an article defending Yahweh's ways. Here are links to the further discussion so far. How does Copan's position fare now? This is Copan's original article: Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?: The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics. Hector Avalos wrote a devastating response to Copan: Paul Copan’s Moral Relativism: A Response from a Biblical Scholar of the New Atheism. Here is professing Christian Wes Morriston's devastating response to Copan's inerrantism: Did God Command Genocide? A Challenge to the Biblical Inerrantist. Undismayed, Copan wrote a rejoinder here: Yahweh Wars and the Canaanites: Divinely-Mandated Genocide or Corporate Capital Punishment? Anyone see Copan's Cognitive Dissonance Reduction like I do? FYI: Paul Copan knew of Avalos's response before he wrote this last article. I had emailed him about it. But he chose not to respond to it. I wonder why? HT on the Morriston paper to exapologist.