The god of the Old Testament is evil depraved and vicious demanding complete subjugation.
Why do Christians even attempt to defend this, and then further say God is always good and righteous when in fact much of the Old Testament is choc full of God's actions and deeds that point to the extreme opposite of what good and righteousness is supposed to be?
I'll start off with this rather bizarre response from one of our favorite apologists on the subject of an evil God, Answers in Genesis.
Isn’t the God of the Old Testament Harsh, Brutal, Downright Evil?
I haven't read too many apologists but I find myself in the role of being one to a certain extent. However, I put God into the category of a moral being that has created an amoral creation. His intent is to try and get us to be moral in an amoral world.
God's creation (for which He is ultimately responsible (who else would keep His creation's dog off of the lawn of neighboring God's lawns?)) is a lot like us...we have our moral intents of which we often fall short. This makes us fundamentally amoral beings with an overlay of morality. This is true whether you are a believer or not.
Nature is the same. We see examples in social animal behavior and even in systemic bio-systems of behavior analogous to moral and immoral actions. We typically demote immoral to amoral when we understand that the behavior in question is done with a limited level of consciousness and forethought.
We are of nature. We are amoral beings with an overlay of moral intent. The authors of Genesis have described this reality but the author(s) of Job have addressed it head on as an issue with respect to our understanding of God's morality. It is fundamentally a mystery.
Now when God or His representatives do something wholesale nasty against innocent people (children should be generally assumed to be innocent), we get an unpleasant taste of that immorality. God let's these things happen.
When nature comes in and destroys people, God is seen as "responsible" but He is also excused in one way or another by the story-teller. For the authors of the Genesis this is as far as they will go in trying to explain this mystery. Job answers the mystery with, "okay you create a Universe that is moral...then you can talk" sort of challenge. Since we can't create like God I guess we will have to keep an open mind that natural and man-made cruelty is not only God-given but necessary in a reality that also boasts of morality.
Perhaps this is basic Taoism...what is one thing without its opposite? Can there be morality without immorality? Light without darkness? It would seem that there is no rational way to say yes to this question and so we have a mystery of our experience...one which is true for believer or non-believer.
This is God's excuse and for the atheist, they would be somewhat hypocritical to blame a believer's understanding of God and not acknowledge a plain fact of our experience of humanity and nature as capable of great evil.