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 
Arch,
The grandeur and power of the God of the Old Testament was witnessed by hundreds of thousands of thousands of people. That included Egyptians, Hebrews and about every tribe in the Palestine area,
The grandeur and power of Jesus was witnessed by thousands and thousands of people from all over the Mediterranean and the Near East.
The Apostles took the power of Jesus to be witnessed to places as far flung as India (Saint Thomas).
That witness matches what is in the Good Book.
On the other hand, atheism has no witness and it follows in the tradition of sophistry which has always been reviled by people interested in universal truth.
Your intellectual stance is on quicksand into which you have sunk way over your head.
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“Your rapier-like wit always cuts to the chase with a clarity of thought that is truly rare among men.” – I think SOM’s in love – not that there’s anything wrong with that —
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Ron,
The universe and everything in it is evidence that God must exist.
Modern discoveries in cellular and molecular biology and cosmology scream, “GOD EXISTS! BEHOLD HIS GRANDURE!”
Evidence that God exists is readily observable.
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RE: “If our own understanding comes by way of proper reasoning then it is reliable, not merely personal opinion.” – who defines, “proper reasoning”?
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Arch,
Proper reasoning is the systematic thinking first taught by Aristotle.
Aristotle is often called, “the philosopher of common sense.”
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Aristotle via Socrates 🙂
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“do the Native Americans share this passion for flipping the bird at the Poms as well?” – Naah, they’re too busy flipping the bird at us.
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SOM
The universe is evidence that the universe exists. Evidence for a god would be a god.
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Ron, PLEASE don’t confuse SOM with logic – his head could explode, and I ain’t cleanin’ that up!
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Ron,
Just as the evidence for a murder is not the murder, evidence for God is not God.
You have just been subjected to systematic thinking that is also common sense.
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Actually, “The grandeur and power of the God of the Old Testament” was WRITTEN to have been “witnessed by hundreds of thousands of thousands of people,” by unknown, superstitious, unconfirmed authors whose reliability we can never check.
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SOM
The existence of murderers has been established by way of observation (i.e. seeing people kill others.) We’d have to observe entire universes coming into being from nothing before we can establish the existence of a creator—and thus far we haven’t. So my point stands. And you haven’t addressed my previous three points yet, either.
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@ SOM
Still waiting for a response to my question:
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, SOM?
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“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?”
Well said, Ark.
Arch,
What puts the lie to your analysis is again your over reliance on books as a measure of credibility.
For example, the Jewish Passover is a tradition that has been passed down through the millennia essential unchanged.
And that tradition matches what is in the Good Book.
Your over reliance on books is probably an artifact of your Protestant upbringing (the sola scriptura doctrine).
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Ron,
What you write is simply not true.
Mankind has discovered a great deal about the universe by inference based on the laws of nature.
Under your protocol we would know almost nothing about anything. That is why your philosophy of scientism is an erroneous mode of thought.
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Sounds about right…..very, er, dare I say, Christian?
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The Passover: aka the night that God allegedly killed all the first-born Egyptian males because God had deliberately with malice aforethought hardened Pharaoh’s heart against releasing the Jews, so that God could demonstrate its badass powers to the Israelites.
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“However, logic and reason can be used to disprove those those claims”
News Flash in a rare event Ron is about to attempt to reason. Will he succeed? Or will he flop
” A cause acting on nothing would have no effect”
A cause acting would be mean there was something to act so there would not be nothing
EPIC FLOP!
” so a god cannot cause something to exist. It would have to act on itself to create anything.”
or create something from his own power
Flop!
“basically leaves you with pantheism.’
Thats not pantheism you nit. Pantheism is that everything is God. You are trying to apply physical consistency rules in nature to the supernatural and its an EPIC fail. God has the power to create things by command
FLOP!
“2. By definition, a perfect being is a complete being, i.e., a being having no needs or desires.”
BY definition the ability to extend beyond yourself to love other is perfect completeness. That state requires something to love and relationships to be formed so perfection NEEDS someone to love. the idea that perfection or completion has no needs is a crock
EPIC FLOP!
” Therefore, a being that creates things and/or desires worship and adoration cannot be said to be perfect.”
The requirement in the worlds major theisms is not that God requires love for himself but from men because it is unrighteous and wrong for men not to identify truth which includes who he is. Worship is nothing more than men recognizing to God the truth of who he is. Buy a clue
FLOP!
“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.”
STUPIDITY CUBED. Logic/WISDOM IS God’s character. So you have just argued that unless God defies himself he cannot be all powerful
Stupid stupid stupid argument
” 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”
You nit. An all powerful; being would not be bounded by time and therefore would know all the future at once. All events would be under his control in an eternal now but manifesting within time at particular moments for those inside time – not himself
EPIC FLOP!
“. 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”
Teenage concept – Love requires acts of anger. jealously and compassion. When you grow up and have children to protect you will get a grip on that reality.It also requires within earth time changes in relationship based on earthly circumstances
Go back to posting videos, quips and image links Ron. Leave the thinking to grown ups
Flop after flop after flop
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Man has discovered a great deal about the universe based on the laws of nature, none of which require “God did it” as an explanation.
Napoleon: M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.
Laplace: I have no need for this hypothesis.
A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II by Augustus De Morgan
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“Just as the evidence for a murder is not the murder, evidence for God is not God.
You have just been subjected to systematic thinking that is also common sense.”
ROFL……NIcely done!
Poor kid doesn’t know the difference between a truism and evidence either.
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“Man has discovered a great deal about the universe based on the laws of nature, none of which require “God did it” as an explanation.”
and umm these laws of nature? What are their explanation? since you um already know they don’t require God did it then surely you must know what their explanation is.
Enlighten us.
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TBlacksman’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the Internet
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
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Ark,
I am unaware that you have made any points.
All you’ve done is hallucinate the usual atheist alternate reality and then demand that people in real reality respond to your hallucination.
I don’t say that to be disrespectful, it’s just the way atheism works.
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“Mankind has discovered a great deal about the universe by inference based on the laws of nature.”
Don’t worry about that SOM. Ron is about to tell us the explanation of the laws of nature since he claims to know they do not require God.
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