Hello, protomenace, and welcome to EvC.
When people discuss these types of questions, about the ethics of the deity, they seem to make three fundamental but unspoken assumptions. The contradictions arises because these assumptions contradictory.
(1) There is an absolute standard of morality. So far, I have seen no compelling argument for the existence of an absolute standard of morality. Morality, by its very nature, is (or seems to me to be) subjective. So God cannot be judged to be good or bad, just or unjust, cruel or nice; or, to be more precise, God can be both good and bad, just and unjust, cruel and nice. It depends on whose viewpoint that is under consideration. That God sees himself as just and that you see him as unjust is not surprising, and not a contradiction.
(2) Even if there is an absolute standard of morality, God does not necessarily exemplify it. Maybe God is cruel and mean and unjust. Or maybe he is more or less good, but not perfectly good according to this standard. In that case, you might be correct, but you'll just have to deal with it.
(3) Finally, God might exemplify some absolute standard of good and bad; however, the problem is that your own sense of ethics and morality, based as they are on the norms of one particular culture in history (North America in the early 21st century) may not reflect this standard. In other words, God is perfectly good and just in sending you to hell despite that he has not given you the ability to discern his existence (I believe this is close to the Calvinist approach). Your going to hell is good; that you don't recognize it is your own problem.
What is amusing, of course, is that religious fundamentalist make these same three errors. While the first two might be expected, it is funny how they assume that what is good and bad must be reflected in their own cultural biases. This is why they often get tied up when they try to rationlize the killing of the first born during the first Passover, for example, or the confusing threads ongoing about evolution disproving God because God is good and evolution is bad, or something like that.
Edited to add the last clause of the last sentence.
This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 02-Apr-2006 11:43 PM
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-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)
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