Case in point, Eden.
God creates two people to be in the Garden (depending upon which Creation account you go with and whether you count Lilith, Adam's first wife) and gives them free will but Yahweh, wanting to keep them pure, opts not to grant them the ability to tell right from wrong. With no moral compass of any kind Adam and Eve are like toddlers who haven't had any moral guidance. Much like a parent warning a child not to touch a hot stove or play in the street God tells Adam and Eve of a certain tree they aren't met to eat from.
Yahweh has planted poison right in the middle of Utopia but rather than uproot the tree, wish it out of existence or find some other Garden for his new primate pals he decides to offer Adam and Eve a warning. Unfortunately Adam and Eve have no way of determining that eating the fruit is wrong. Yes they know its not smart because God tells them it will kill them if they eat it but a consequence of death. God, again imitating a human parent, has stretched the truth, because as we will see later, Adam and Eve taste of the fruit and do not die.
Yahweh has his plans ruined by a snake, who apparently he has also given free will to, not to mention the ability of speech. In fact according to genesis the serpent was the craftiest creature God had fashioned. I guess God wanting to give the serpent some wits backfires. The snake, for reasons left unexplained by Genesis itself (and later blamed on the devil), is determined to seduce Eve into eating the fruit. Eve resists, like a good little girl, but in the end she has no moral compass and the serpent promises her the fruit will open her eyes like God's eyes are opened.
It is important to note her that the Serpent is telling the truth while Yahweh, who is suspiciously absent from the Garden while all this is happening, lied about the consequences of eating the fruit. Eve, with no mechanism with which to discern her action is wrong decides to believe the snake and shares the fruit with Adam.
Yahweh's actions after this truly cast doubt on his character. Let's go back to that analogy of the parent warning the child of the stove's heat - imagine for a moment if the child touched the stove even after the warning. Most parents would be disappointed in their child but more concerned with the child's injury and wellbeing than with the fact they disobeyed. God is not like a loving parent though, he is furious with Adam and Eve. I guess ignorance of the law is no excuse and neither is ignorance of the concepts of good and evil. Yahweh is so angry he decides to curse not just Adam and Eve but all their descendants, they must toil in the fields, endure horrible pain in child birth and leave the utopian Eden forever.
Many believers also claim that from this moment forward every living human is born dead in sin. This is, of course, not mentioned anywhere in the Genesis account but Christians the world over still choose to interpret it this way. It is much easier to indoctrinate a child if you tell them they are already a sinner, I suppose, threatening a child with hellfire unless they accept the blood sacrifice of an innocent man... and this is a MAINSTREAM religion.
So Yahweh fails miserably and in his anger toward those he blames for his failures he curses his creation, which just a few chapters earlier he assured himself was "Good". It doesn't take long, now that sin has been introduced, for human beings to spread over the Earth and become sinful. God could have simply forgiven Adam and Eve and taken back their knowledge of Good and Evil, He is, after all, ALL POWERFUL. But no, such action would be far too merciful for Yahweh. Instead He allows sin to continue unabated and after it finally builds to a breaking point his decision is to, as most of us remember from Sunday School, drown pretty much everything.
Another proof that free will mucks up God's plans is in the story of Job, where Satan's free will ends up costing Job everything he has aside from his life. The story goes like this, Satan comes to Yahweh and Yahweh, the braggart that he is, brings up Job. Job is a righteous and good man who has been blessed by God and God enjoys bragging about how much of a kiss-ass Job is. Satan admits that Job is quite the servant of Yahweh but makes the claim that Job's loyalty is based upon the blessings Yahweh bestowed upon him. Satan seduces God into handing power over Job over to Satan.
In Chapter 2 verse 3 God even says to Satan that he has been "incited" against Job "for no good reason". There are lot's of interpretations of the Job story but most of them ignore this verse and claim that the book of Job teaches nonsense about God's power and love... Yahweh has already admitted to his crime, what he allowed happen to Job had no good reason, Satan TRICKED him.
And finally we fast forward to Jesus. Yahweh, now split into three persons, has decided the best way to clear the sins of mankind (rather than instantaneously forgiving them using his ALL POWERFUL merciful nature) is to send one third of himself to get nailed to a piece of wood and then spring back to life. Even though this plan goes off without a hitch God now has the free will of billions of human beings standing between him and his goal of saving EVERYONE. What's worse is that Jesus has left no substantial evidence of his existence, crucifixion or resurrection aside from unsubstantiated religious documents written by scribes a generation AFTER the events supposedly took place.
To make matters worse by the time these Gospels are being written there are already numerous sects following the so-called Messiah and interpreting his "teachings" differently. Yahweh now must trust human beings, with their free will, to choose gullibility over evidence and put their faith in Jesus as opposed to hundreds of other Messiah's and thousands of other deities and religions. God, in the end, will have to send the majority of humanity into a Lake of Fire for ETERNITY (because Heavens super-max prisons must already be full).
In short, Yahweh fails, miserably. So how do his followers explain his All Powerful buffoonery? By pretending He's a flawless and wonderful being despite the evidence to the contrary - evidence that's right there in their "Holy" book and the good news is they have the free will to determine for themselves what to believe.
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