Well, I didn't say it to provoke but I'm really having difficulty understanding.
Why would an omnipotent, omniscient creator being -- infinite in scope of power and knowledge and so utterly alien and awesome compared to us mere mortals -- have such petty human emotions as "wrath," which is considered a vice to us?
In what way does Dawkins' quote not describe the God you seem to be talking about:
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
The God you describe reminds me of what Dawkins is saying. I just want to understand why you think such an awesome being would carry such negative attributes? Or do you not consider them negative?
You have to get outside yourself.
Let's consider another and true reality. . .that of the soldier in war.
The mission he has to accomplish and the high stakes of that mission,
the survival rules he must live by and the consequences of going outside those rules,
judging which women and children are safe and the consequences of making the wrong judgment
are all a reality you know not of.
It has a different set of values, a different operating manual, different consequences for innocent mistakes of judgment, etc.
I use this illustration not as an illustriation of God, but to show what is meant by getting outside yourself.
You have to be able to comprehend a reality other than your own before your questions about God can be addressed,
because you have nothing outside yourself to which to relate the answers.
As long as you are the center of your universe, you won't be able to get here from there.
It's like a butterfly trying to explain flight to a caterpillar.
