What would you do if you were a God? That’s a challenging question. An easier question is what wouldn’t you do?

Here is what I wouldn’t do:

• I wouldn’t wait thousands or hundreds of thousands of years to present myself to my ‘subjects’. (Or I would wait longer so that my message could spread more easily, and in high definition.)
• I wouldn’t root my religion in superstitions about the natural world.
• I wouldn’t write my holy book with references to social norms and practices that will date themselves and become embarrassingly outdated.
• I wouldn’t introduce my religion to only one geographical location and leave many others clueless to my existence. (If I did pick just one geographical location, I’d choose one where my subjects were the most literate and able to share my words more consistently and precisely.)
• I wouldn’t punish my subjects for being unbelievers, I would let their good or bad actions be the measure of their right to eternal life after death.
• I wouldn’t expect obedience, I could have created slaves rather than self-conscious beings if obedience was really important to me.
• I wouldn’t want anyone to fight expansionist wars in my name. Why pit my subjects against each other? This seems a bit egotistical for a god!

I’m not wise enough to list all the things I would do, without contradicting myself or being in some way myopic, selfish, or egotistical… that said, I could probably get together with a team of thoughtful people and improve on any and all holy texts. It would take equal or less effort compared to the apologists who defend and justify the contradictions in these texts, rather than admitting that a wise and benevolent God would never had allowed such poorly written scriptures to be written either by Him or in His name.

I have not yet seen a scripture or text written to this day that I believe a benevolent and loving God would have written. But there are many holy texts that such a kind and worthy-of-worship God would never have written.