Evangelist and Young Earth Creationist Ray Comfort has addressed atheists who believe the God of the Old Testament to be a "tyrannical dictator" by arguing that without God's judgment, there would be no justice in the world.
Comfort, who regularly answers challenges by atheists on his Facebook page, responded to one such commenter on Thursday who was critical of God's actions in the Old Testament:
"Save your prayers, I'm quite comfortable with myself in my own faith and comfortable enough to know if God exists, the God who created this beautiful star, he won't be the God of the Bible or any other man made religion on this planet.
"No loving God would brutally slaughter every man, woman and child of this planet in the Great Flood, pregnant women drowning at the bottom of the ocean, children screaming for help as the crushing waves devour them, just because a few people ticked him off. He wouldn't be the tyrannical dictator of the Old Testament. Of that I am sure."
In his response, Comfort argued that the non-believer's version of God would be "even more tyrannical," however, because it would mean God "coldly stands back and lets millions starve, allows rape and murder — and lets Hitler slaughter 6 million Jews."
"He gives no explanation, refuses to bring justice to the wicked, and leaves us all hopeless in the face of death," Comfort said of such a God.
"However, the God of the Bible will bring final justice to all evil, and in His great kindness offers everlasting life to guilty sinners," he argued.
Comfort has tackled several atheists' questions regarding the Great Flood story, and in February insisted that God does not have to justify Himself for wiping out most of humanity in the cataclysmic event.
"Everyone will die, because the judge of the universe has proclaimed our death sentence," Comfot wrote at the time. "We are the ones who need justification, not God, and we can be justified through repentance and faith in Jesus because of what He did on the cross."
Prominent atheists, such as HBO's Bill Maher, have criticized the Christian belief of God precisely due to the Great Flood story.
"It's about a psychotic mass murderer who gets away with it and his name is God. Genesis says God was so angry with Himself for screwing up when He made mankind so flawed that He sent the flood to kill everyone. Men, women, children, babies, what kind of tyrant punishes everyone just to get back at the few he's mad at?" Maher said in his description of the Genesis story in a March 2014 episode of his "Real Time" show.
Conservative radio host Bryan Fischer fired back, however, and said: "Remember the picture that we are given of God in Scripture — He is the potter, and we are the clay. He is the judge of the living and the dead. He is the judge of all the Earth," adding that the evil of men was the reason behind the Flood.
