How do we know God is "Good"?

Mike, I'll have to disagree with you here. Hum ans did not make the flood happen - God made the flood happen in response to human sin. I think that many have trouble reconciling a God as "good" when He would commit global genocide as a response to anything.I think God Himself sees that His judgement was "bad" regarding the flood, since He vows to never do it again: I read this as God creating mankind as evil, then punishing mankind for that evil - more out of personal regret than punishment (from my reading of Gen 6 also).Whenever God destroys the world, a nation, or a town for being entirely sinful, I find it impossible to believe - what about the infants? is often my first thought.For all of the good in the Bible, God also commits many acts and proscribes many law s that can only be described as evil.

I wasn't arguing that He doesn't exist, so this reply is illogical. Depends on your interpretation of the Bible. When God states that "man is evil from his youth", my interpretation is that He created us as evil.Otherwise, how could God justify killing all of the human infants on Earth? They were evil from their youth. But what choice to sin had those week-old infants made? Right, a "good" boss will give you a talking-to if you are always ten minutes late for work. A "bad" boss will blow your head off with a shotgun for the same tardiness.Often God's punishments are much harsher than the "evil of our doings."Like in Ezekiel 23, where the Lord has a woman's nose and ears cut off with a sword, and she is then forced to cut off her own breasts - for the crime of being lewd.That's an evil act.Can you honestly defend it as otherwise? Would you this a "good" act by any mortal, under any conceivable situation?

First of all, why the hell are you calling me an atheist? You're above name-calling, Mike.I don't think I am guilty of "first trying to blame God" - I am guilty of compassion for human infants. If you don't think the same thing, then maybe I should call you "Mike the Neonate Hater". But that doesn't really further our discussion...I think Gen 6-8 show God as a distraught Father that doesn't know how to deal with His children. First He says He regrets making the mistake of creating man; then He vows to destroy them through horrible means; He isn't able to completely destroy His creation, so He spares one family. After it is all over He regrets what He did, and vows to never do it again.If anything this is the OT God at His most openly falliable - and thus He is also particularly relatable at the Flood. However, this doesn't make the act of drowning all life on the planet a "good" thing.

Sorry Mike,I'm just catching up to your apparent assertion that there weren't any babies killed during Flood - but I must say that seems a stretch.Can you clarify your thoughts on this point?

Okay - so somehow babies were spared during the Flood. What about the killing of every first-born in Egypt in Exodus? Or in Numbers, when God commands Moses' army to kill all of the male children of the defeated Midianites?Are you actually arguing that God never killed a naive child?

Then I guess my follow up question would be this:Why did God find it necessary to describe the punishment of a city in terms of the dismemberment and mutilation of a woman?