Originally posted by @vivify
So then God didn't create evil, he just does evil things: creates calamity, tortures people for eternity, the doctrine of "election", that says some people are doomed to hell before they were even born, commanded stoning women for not being virgins, threatened rape for disobedience, the stoning of gays, etc., etc.
You’ve quite a bit there.
What you view as calamity could easily be interpreted as God getting someone or a population’s attention and drawing them to Him. It’s a fact of life that we tend to ignore God when things are going well and only turn to Him in earnest when things go bad and we feel like we have nowhere else to turn. That said, some of what I think you ascribe as “evil things” could also be God chastising us to correct sins.
“And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.”
(Hebrews 12:5-11)
But I wouldn’t ascribe every misfortune (or even most misfortunes) to God, particularly if the misfortune has no purpose to it. Sometimes bad things happen as a result of man’s free will and sin and oftentimes “innocent people” are affected by it, sometimes severely.
BTW, I put innocent people in quotes because none of us are truly innocent due to original sin.