Seems to me that the brutal, murderous, deceitful god of the old testament would have to be male.

Most gods already have genders assigned to them. All you have to do is look them up.

Jun 14, 2012 -- 10:21AM, Sacrificialgoddess wrote:

I am not sure I understand the need for a gender-neutral god/dess. The wording alone boggles the mind.

Where the God or Goddess has a gender and the gender is relevant to the Godhood use it.  But you can't have it both ways as especially Christians try to do.  Either God is the testosterone poisoned destroyer, hater, and bigot, or Hesh is a loving, caring compasionate mix of the best of both genders.  The Catholics palm the gender card with an awesome, feared God, a fair and compasionate Jesus, and a merciful Mary.  All three with definite gender.  But the Kluge that is the Trinity doesn't work with a definite gender without elevating the Abrahamic God to the only relevant part of the trinity with all the male dysfunction that implies.  Language is important.  It is what we use to think. 

Just in case one argues that the little words are unimportant: To Predict Dating Success, the Secret's in the Pronouns.  The dating is interesting but more relevant to this discussion is at the end beginning with

But some of his most interesting work has to do with power dynamics. He says that by analyzing language you can easily tell who among two people has power in a relationship, and their relative social status.

It is the little words the pronouns, particularly the personal pronouns, that predict social status and power.

Jun 14, 2012 -- 1:54PM, Ken wrote:

From an atheist's point of view, the Abrahamic deity has far worse problems than his gender.

True, but most of them are gender related.  You may have noticed that in referring to the Abrahamic God I am usuing the conventional pronoun He.  There is no need to sanitize that.  Not even courtesy.