Would you rather God deprive them of free will?
Ah yes, "free will". Again, the all knowing and all powerful God created them with the will to behave a certain way and the foreknowledge of exactly how it would turn out, down to the last tiniest detail. Free will is complete bullshit if you do indeed believe an all knowing and all powerful god exists.
She was specifically warned not to look back, but she did so anyway. Are you going to blame God for somebody else's bad decision?
Yes, I bloody well am. By your logic, if I tell you not to look at me or I'll shoot you in the head, and you do it anyway, then I'm completely blameless for killing you. Needless to say, that's fucking stupid.
And the reason God took the form He did? Simple. He wanted to send a message so that He wouldn't have to do it again. And apparently, it worked.
The only possibly way such a message could possibly be heard is if an innocent happens to see him, dies of it, and another innocent witnesses the event and somehow guesses that the cause of death is seeing God in his instant death form. I really don't buy that the all loving, all powerful and all knowing god didn't have a better way making a point.
Besides, I fail to see how demolishing the city in the first place doesn't get the point across. It's not as though "God did it" was ever in doubt before he killed her.
In any case, you're basically saying it's okay to kill innocent people for the sake of sending a message. If you honestly believe that, well, I must say you kind of scare me, and that says a hell of a lot, coming from me of all people.
Well, some of it. For example, the bit about how rich people can't go to Heaven. Why would an all-loving God exclude people based on socioeconomic status? The answer: when somebody dies, they leave behind their earthly riches. Therefore, they are no longer rich when they enter Heaven. Jesus is merely saying "you can't take it with you".
But didn't Jesus also say to give away your wealth (or at least as much as you can afford) to the poor, and the whole "it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven" line was said right when he was making that point? It would seem that if you're still rich by the time you're standing at the pearly gates, then you've clearly disobeyed a direct order from God himself. Considering what normally happens when you do that, that's barely a slap on the wrist.
And you seem to have ignored the point I made about the exaggerations.
I have a hard time buying "kill and enslave everyone, including the women and children" is a mere exaggeration. It's a wee bit too specific to be explained away as such, in my book.
The only culture they were explicitly ordered to destroy was the Amalekites. And that was done after He had shown enormous patience with them. God did not give that command lightly.
It's still genocide, and the omnipotent God could've literally done anything about it, including not creating the universe in such a way that they'd end up existing in the first place.
Okay, I could have phrased that better. What I meant to say was that many among the Middle Eastern peoples have already demonstrated a willingness to change for the better. Therefore, not even the Old Testament God would have smote them. After all, He would have spared Sodom and Gomorrah if He'd been able to find ten righteous people there.
That doesn't answer my question. One more time. If the Middle East were, as you say, unwilling to change for the better, would it then be okay to glass the entire region? Yes or no.
What could He have done that didn't deprive them of free will?
Even ignoring my earlier point about free will? Literally anything. He is omnipotent, is he not?