Jesus Is Borg The Truth Shall Set You Free.

A popular Bible story tells how the Hebrews made a golden calf and began to worship it while Moses was on the Mount getting the ten commandments from God. Once God realized that the people had gone astray, he decided he would kill all his chosen people and start all over with Moses, making a "great nation" out of his offspring, like he had promised to do with Abraham's offspring. Moses reasons with God (a very brave thing to do considering God's short temper) telling God,

"If you kill them all, then the Egyptians will make fun of you, saying that you went through all the trouble of dragging them out of Egypt just to kill them in the desert. Besides, you already swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel that you would give the land to their seed. If you kill their seed, then you will have broken your oath." (Exodus 32 :11-13)

Apparently Moses hit God in a soft spot (God's overinflated EGO) because God changed his mind and "repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people." (Exodus 32:14) We must point out that this statement is in contradiction to elsewhere in the Bible where it states that God doesn't need to repent because he doesn't make mistakes (Numbers 23:19)

This isn't the only time that God has to be reminded of his promises or given advice on the irrationality of some of his decisions. Moses repeatedly had to keep God from utterly killing his "chosen people" by reasoning with him. When the people complained because God was not meeting their physical demands (they were starving or dying of thirst because he either forgot about them or just didn't care enough to provide them with their necessary sustenance), God responded by killing them, often by the thousands. (Numbers 11:1-2, 33) It was Moses who had to calm God down and save the people from annihilation. At one point, the people were so tired of the poor living conditions that they desired to return to bondage in Egypt rather than dying in the desert. God got angry and swore to destroy them all, once again telling Moses that he would make a great nation out of Moses' offspring instead of Abraham's. Moses told God the following:

"If you do that, the Egyptians will hear about it and they will make fun of you and they will tell all the other inhabitants of this land and then THEY will make fun of you also. They will say that God wasn't able to keep his word and take them to the land he promised them so he just killed them instead. Besides, you are supposed to have great mercy aren't you? Let's see some of that longsuffering and mercy, okay?" (Numbers 14:13-19)

Moses was once more able to change God's mind by playing on his ego and God took Moses' advice and didn't kill everybody. Believers don't want to know that a human is better able to deal with stress and use reason than their "perfect" God is, but that is exactly what happened repeatedly in the Bible.