Why would a good and loving God condemn them forever for being exactly what (S)he designed them to be?
This is it exactly. Why even have a “chosen people” in the Israelites during the Old Testament? Why create those other people at all? Just to give random people for the Israelites to genocide like they did the Midianites/Canaanites/Hittites/10 other -ites?
And what of the world before Noah? God realizes he messed up and needs to cull all but a small handful of humans? I thought God was supposed to be unerring. Same for Sodom and Gomorrah, why allow cities to become dens of sin? Or why fear the hubris of humanity constructing the Tower of Babel (or create them with motivation to do so in the first place) if divinity remains safely unreachable to mortals?
This is it exactly. Why even have a “chosen people” in the Israelites during the Old Testament? Why create those other people at all? Just to give random people for the Israelites to genocide like they did the Midianites/Canaanites/Hittites/10 other -ites?
And what of the world before Noah? God realizes he messed up and needs to cull all but a small handful of humans? I thought God was supposed to be unerring. Same for Sodom and Gomorrah, why allow cities to become dens of sin? Or why fear the hubris of humanity constructing the Tower of Babel (or create them with motivation to do so in the first place) if divinity remains safely unreachable to mortals?
Just way too much that doesn’t make sense.