If God is love, how do we explain the Old Testament passages where he commands the Israelites to eradicate entire groups of people, even the children (Josh 9:24; Num 31; 1 Sam 15)? Sometimes people say it was to punish these people for their evil practices, like child sacrifice. Well, child sacrifice is certainly a terrible thing. But does it make sense to punish child sacrifice by killing all the children?
Let’s think about this for a moment. When cultures engaged in child sacrifice, it’s not because they just loved killing children — it’s because they believed it served as some kind of propitiation, appeasing their gods for the greater good. So if God didn’t approve of child sacrifice, what seems like the most rational way to deal with it: (1) kill everyone, including all the children you don’t want killed, or (2) make yourself known to these people as the one true god and tell them that child sacrifice is not what you want? Wouldn’t option 2 be a win-win scenario?
Here’s something else to consider. If God didn’t like child sacrifice, why did he command Abraham to offer his son Isaac as one? Granted, he stopped the sacrifice before the boy was killed, but isn’t this a weird command for a deity who despises child sacrifice? And what about Psalm 137, where the inspired writer is lamenting Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem and says the following:
8 O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed,
Happy the one who repays you as you have served us!
9 Happy the one who takes and dashes
Your little ones against the rock!
Furthermore, if God wanted the Canaanites destroyed because of their heinous practices, why stop at Canaan? There were many cultures that engaged in terrible practices like this from time to time — why not send the Israelites to slaughter them all? Instead this “judgment” is only brought against people in the same geographic location that God wanted the Israelites to inhabit:
After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, saying: 2 “Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them—the children of Israel. 3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory. 5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. 6 Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.
— Josh 1:1-5So they answered Joshua and said, “Because your servants were clearly told that the Lord your God commanded His servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you; therefore we were very much afraid for our lives because of you, and have done this thing.”
— Josh 9:24
How strange that these passages focus on taking the land from the Canaanites and not on their evil natures…
As a final consideration, even if the only thing left to do with these evil Canaanites was kill them all, does it make sense that God would choose the cruelest and most agonizing way to do it? Instead of speaking them out of existence, or immediately striking them all dead, he has them besieged by invaders. They’re forced to watch their loved ones being massacred before being hacked to death themselves. Would God really command this?
How does a god who would command genocide on this scale differ from the vilest despots of the modern era? What’s the difference between this god and bin Laden? What’s the difference between a god like this and a devil? Could a god this bloody be right?
Finding Truth 
I am fully aware of the dynamics of Christianity, SOM, as an outgrowth of Judaism, but you would never have known about Yahweh without the bible…or solely oral indoctrination, as was the norm in pre-scribal days.
My question again, is, how does one have a relationship with Yahweh?
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Ron,
One of the neat things about being able to reason is that it takes man where no atheist has gone before.
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“One of the neat things about being able to reason is that it takes man where no atheist has gone before.”
ROFL….
the beautiful thing about that SOM is it only takes a few questions to get to there.
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Ark,
Jesus was a Jew whose brutal execution was arranged by the Jewish Establishment.
During such occasions as the Road to Emmaus, Jesus took the time to explain the true meaning of Jewish scripture to his disciples.
Had the Jews the foggiest idea what their scriptures meant they would have treated Jesus as the King of Kings like the Christians do.
So you share at least one thing with your ancient Jewish brethren: a total lack of understanding of what the Bible actually means.
That you people (atheists) are stuck with the ridiculous idea that God is a genocidal maniac is also proof that you wouldn’t know the dynamics of the Bible even if they walked up to you and gave you a Judas kiss on the cheek.
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@ SOM
So you don’t actually know then, do you? You’re just leaning upon your own understanding.
Thanks for your honesty.
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@ SOM
Yes, very nice, Som, thank you. But this does not answer my question.
You made the forthright statement that, ”Access to another person is not through a book but through a relationship.”
So, once again, how does one have a relationship with Yahweh?
Is is a simple, straightforward question. You obviously have such a relationship, so please tell me how?
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T,
Your rapier-like wit always cuts to the chase with a clarity of thought that is truly rare among men.
It’s amazing that the atheist response to you is like the apes’ response to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
They just grunt and belligerently wave their clubs toward the blue sky.
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Ark,
Jesus taught that when we love our neighbor we are actually loving God.
So we approach God first, through our personal relationships.
That is why good parenting is so important.
I recently told a priest where I first experienced the love of Jesus. At first, I could see he was expecting a load of spiritual BS.
But I told the good priest that the love of Jesus was put into my heart by my parents. His sigh of relieve said, “Good answer!”
This type of understanding does not come from a book, it comes from insight.
And insight comes from God who speaks to the disciple in the silence of mind.
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Ron,
If our own understanding comes by way of proper reasoning then it is reliable, not merely personal opinion.
Because the atheist cannot reason, all that remains is personal opinion which is basically worthless since one personal opinion is equal to any other.
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SOM
The point remains: you don’t know what happened before the big bang anymore than the next person. And you don’t know whether or not gods exists either. Your belief in such is based entirely upon the hearsay of others.
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Ron,
We can reason out the nature of God which is Creator, all-powerful and all-knowing.
By definition of the word, “creator” we can reason out that God is before time and space.
“Before time and space” is the meaning of the word eternal.
So you see, just by understanding the meaning of words we can reason our way to the answers that you, the atheist, find so incomprehensible.
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So therefore , awareness and a relationship with Yahweh, first develops, not by any sort of communication with ‘Him’, but rather via teaching from one’s parents or similar guardian, yes?
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Ark,
Our relationships with other people IS God communicating to us.
The whole thing is very natural and simple. Anybody can do it.
But it is Christian teachings that show us how to do it right in spite of our fallen nature.
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Now youy are going off on a tangent and I will likely get lost.
Clarify the point I made, if you will.
The primary foundation of a relationship with Yahweh generally begins with instruction from ones parents or adult guardian’.
Would you say this is correct?
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“It’s amazing that the atheist response to you is like the apes’ response to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
They just grunt and belligerently wave their clubs toward the blue sky.”
scientists have finally broken down the sign language and grunts. Apparently the gestures and hand waving is translates as
“We are smart. really. We really are. We have to be.”
In their native dialect.
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“Now youy are going off on a tangent and I will likely get lost.”
Get? 🙂
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“Our relationships with other people IS God communicating to us.
The whole thing is very natural and simple. Anybody can do it.”
SOM their whole idea is circular.
“We believe there is nothing but materialism. Therefore if God is to have a relationship with us it can only be through sound and light waves”
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I was saying, Hifzan, that there were other, more important issues you could be spending your time doing, but you’ve described your prayer sessions as one would meditation, and from that standpoint, I can see where they could be valuable. Of course, I have no need for a god, and no belief in an afterlife, but meditation, the opportunity to clear one’s mind temporarily, can be mentally healthy.
Have ytou ever asked yourself what you life might have been like, if you had been born into a family who believed in a different religion, or no religion at all?
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RE: “I am nothing if not a reasonable man” – Oh, that is SO true!
Everywhere I go, as soon as they torture me into admitting that I know Ark, their jaws drop and the first words out of their mouths is, “What a reasonable man!” Why most of them admit that they first learned the meaning of the word, “dickhead” from the Arkster! What a guy, spreading knowledge wherever he goes! There should be more like him, that’s all I can say.
So, Ark – can i get paid now? I DO have plans today, you know! It’s the anniversary of when they kicked the Poms out of our country. We celebrate that event with gusto – and sometimes a little salsa.
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“In a naturalistic worldview, the universe is indifferent to how you die. To introduce a benevolent god into the picture requires explanation”
I missed this vacuous nonsense before. Any universe with or without a God requires explanation and even more so if you argue it is its own explanation/cause.
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“before the Church published the first Bible at the end of the 4th century, there was all sorts of ‘Christian’ literature floating around authored by God knew who.” – that’s true, writing all kinds of nonsense, like your anonymous pseudo-Mark, pseudo-Matthew, pseudo-Luke and pseudo-John, with their BS stories about a census in Bethlehem, virgins having babies, guys walking on lakes and all that other crap.
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Tell me, not to put the mockers on your shenanigans, Senor Arch, but do the Native Americans share this passion for flipping the bird at the Poms as well, I wonder, or are they too busy with AA and casinos? 😉
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“The point remains: you don’t know what happened before the big bang anymore than the next person. And you don’t know whether or not gods exists either. Your belief in such is based entirely upon the hearsay”
You got to love the chihuahua barks from atheists on this as their whole premise is that materialism exists beyond the big bang
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“<God was hanging out beyond time and space.” – sounds to me like he might have been banished from somewhere – you know somewhere beyond, “beyond time and space”. Instead of just saying, “Go to your room!” they simply sent him somewhere where he could do them no harm. I mean, think about the mentality of an entity that voluntarily chooses to hang out “beyond time and space” – why, I’ll bet his god banished him, which is where he got the idea and used it on Satan! “Monkey see –”
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SOM
You postulate that a god “created” something out of nothing and that this god must be all-powerful and all-knowing. But you have no empirical evidence to validate that hypothesis. However, logic and reason can be used to disprove those those claims:
1. A god and nothingness belong to mutually exclusive sets, because philosophically speaking, a god would be something and nothingness is… well nothing. A cause acting on nothing would have no effect so a god cannot cause something to exist. It would have to act on itself to create anything.
That basically leaves you with pantheism.
2. By definition, a perfect being is a complete being, i.e., a being having no needs or desires. Therefore, a being that creates things and/or desires worship and adoration cannot be said to be perfect.
3. All-powerful and all-knowing are mutually exclusive traits. (In fact, being all-powerful is in itself contradictory. Can your god violate the rules of logic? If not, then it is not all-powerful. To argue that all-powerful has certain limits is to argue against the very definition of all-powerful.) An all-knowing being would be powerless to effect change or alter course, so an all-powerful being would not and could not know the future. Moreover, the god of the OT exhibits rage, anger, hatred, jealousy, vengefulness, grief and remorse—emotions that betray both a state of perfection and omniscience.
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