Can we judge the acts of Yahweh?

I'd like to discuss a typical answer I see Christians give when they are faced with the immoral acts of Yahweh in the Old Testament. It goes something like this: "How can you judge whether something is good or bad? If you don't believe in God and his commandments then you can't call something immoral."

So basically Christians say that whenever skeptics question the acts of Yahweh in the Bible the skeptic has no ground to stand on since he or she does not believe in absolute morality. Similarly, they would say that skeptics cannot condemn the acts of Hitler because skeptics do not think there is an absolute, divinely-inspired standard to live by.

This is not a good come-back. I think the skeptic is well within reason to step into the Christian worldview in order to make an argument against it. It is a simple line of reasoning... If the Bible is true, then there are absolute standards. Yahweh claims to be perfect and good. If he is perfect then he should follow the absolute standards, right? So the reasoning goes like this: if you want to find whether A is true and you can find that within A there are contradictions, then you have a strong argument against the truth of A.

In other words, even though the atrocities in the old testament are horrendous in my opinion, I don't have to use my opinion as the standard that I judge by. I can use the standard within the Bible and see if Yahweh meets those standards. The Bible says that God is holy, righteous and just. So when I look at a story like the first born killing in Egypt I have to ask myself, "Does this match up with the other descriptions of God in the Bible?" (Remember, Yahweh hardened pharaoh's heart so he had no chance of repenting or stopping the massacre.) To me, the Egyptian plagues sound like a case of "our god is bigger and more terrifying than your god" which makes it look like a very man-made story.

Most Christians rather than seeing the humanness of the stories just ignore the parts they don't like and stick to the parts that they agree with. If they like a terrifying, wrathful, jealous god they can find it in there. If they like a compassionate, loving, honest god, he's there too.