The God of the Bible is a moral monster and restricts human freedom

God, particularly as depicted in the Old Testament, is a hateful, violent, self-involved, vengeful, murderous, and immoral criminal. His restrictions on such things as sexual behavior, abortion, personal freedom, euthanasia, and life itself undermines human dignity and autonomy in all its forms. His promotion of torture, murder, rape, pillaging, and cruelty is unconscionable. You can't argue that the new testament god has become more tolerant and should be considered separately from the old testament god. God (of whom Jesus is part, according to the father/son/holy ghost formula) doesn't change his character. All Christians should agree with that because it says so in the bible:

Malachi 3:6 - For I am the LORD, I change not.

Richard Dawkins says in The God Delusion

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

Further, Jesus didn't just come along 2000 years ago and decide to shake things up. Apparently, he always existed, alongside God. In John 8:58, John is having Jesus say he had a pre-human existence as an angelic being in heaven, and that he existed even before Abraham was born:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

So, according to the biblical theory of the Trinity, and by his own words, Jesus was right there at God's side, along with the Holy Spirit, when all the old testament atrocities were occurring.

Consider these passages from the bible that show what a horrible and cruel being god actually is. They demonstrate how strongly he supports genocide, slavery, torture, murdering children, child sacrifice, and oppression:

• 1 Samuel 15:3 - This is what the Lord Almighty says ... Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.
• Psalms 137 - Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us / He who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
• Leviticus 20:13 - If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
• Leviticus 25:44-46 - ...You may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession. You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves.
• 1 Peter 2:18 - Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.
• Exodus 22:29-30 - You shall not delay to offer from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The first-born of your sons you shall give to me. You shall do likewise with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall be with its dam; on the eighth day you shall give it to me.
• Exodus 12:29 - At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock.
• 1 Ezekiel 20:25-26 - So I gave them other statutes that were not good and laws through which they could not live; I defiled them through their gifts — the sacrifice of every firstborn — that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the Lord.
• Exodous 21:20-21 - Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod ... are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
• Ephesians 5:22 - Wives, submit to you husbands as to the Lord
• Deuteronomy 3:6 - And we utterly destroyed them, ... utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city.
• Deuteronomy 13:15 - Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.
• Deuteronomy 7:2 - and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy
• Joshua 6:21 - And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.
• 2 Chronicles 15:12-13 - They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.
• Deuteronomy 2:34 - And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain.
• Exodus 22:17 - You should not let a sorceress live.
• Numbers 21:3 - And the Lord hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities.
• Numbers 31:15 - “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he <Moses> asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."
• Judges 21:10-12 - So the assembly sent twelve thousand fighting men with instructions to go to Jabesh Gilead and put to the sword those living there, including the women and children. “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin.” They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan (the Israeli army then gave the captured virgins to the Benjamites to use as sex slaves, with the approval of god, of course.)
• Romans 1:27 - In the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
• Jeremiah 51:20-21 - You are my hammer and weapon of war: with you I break nations in pieces; with you I destroy kingdoms; with you I break in pieces the horse and his rider; with you I break in pieces the chariot and the charioteer;

Etc. The list is very long, and it could go on here for pages and pages, but you get the point - don't cross god or you'll end up dead or worse. Atheist, John Loftus, wrote:

"Today's Christians say the churches of the past that committed atrocities were wrong. And that's correct. They were wrong. But not for the reasons stated. They claim the Christians of the past were wrong because they misinterpreted the Bible. The truth is that they were wrong to believe the Bible in the first place. They were wrong just like Christians of today are wrong, and just like the Christians of the future will be, too. My contention is that there is not a single statement in the Bible that reveals a divine mind behind the human authors. Everything in it can be more credibly explained by the hypothesis that it's just the musings of an ancient, superstitious, barbaric people--period."

These bible quotes are not god's words, but the words of primitive and pre-scientific human beings. These passages reflect the mores and customs of the violent, xenophobic people who wrote them. The desire to annihilate enemies, persecute individuals who don't respect the power structure, and exact violent retribution don't come from a god, but from man. The bible is the work of men, falsely ascribing their words to a god.

The answer to the question about why the bible is all over the map with respect to its moral guidance (from elevated to depraved) is that it is a book written by men, one that reflects their strengths and weaknesses, their vision and their myopia, their kindness and generosity, and their cruelty and selfishness. It is not inspired, but mundane.

See "Skeptics Annotated Bible" or "Murder in the Bible" for more examples.