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 only hyper-masculine female mental patient around here would be you.
Confusing me with you is but one of your many mental-emotional pathologies.
Maybe your co-atheist royal Queen Neuro can get you hooked up with some neurotransmitter uptake meds.
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And how many American lives did it cost, Silliness, to illegally invade a country that had done nothing to us, on the pretext of its having weapons of mass destruction, so that American companies could secure the oil fields? How many American young men and women was the life of Saddam worth?
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Arch,
Countries are inanimate objects, concepts if you will. So countries can’t do anything to anybody, obviously.
But maniac tyrants like Saddam Hussein have committed atrocities from time immemorial.
Did you know that your buddy mass murder Saddam Hussein was paying Palestinian parents $25,000 a pop to turn their children into suicide bombers?
Of course not.
And that is the crying shame about atheism.
You’re all the monkeys that hear no evil, see no evil, speak evil at every opportunity.
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So, T – you’re saying you got nuthin’, right? Thought so —
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“Did you know that your buddy mass murder Saddam Hussein was paying Palestinian parents $25,000 a pop to turn their children into suicide bombers?” Uh, gonna need some proof there, SillyOne —
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Arch,
It was in the mass media way back when.
Don’t blame me for your malignant ignorance.
Do your own homework.
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I’m not going to waste my time on a wild goose chase for figments of your warped imagination.
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“So, T – you’re saying you got nuthin’, right? Thought so –”
Last I heard in the other thread you were pushing Lawrence Krauss’ theory of everything coming out of nothing so if I have nothing……
Doesn’t it mean I have everything??????
ROFL.
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“I’m not going to waste my time on a wild goose chase for figments of your warped imagination.”
You tell him Arch. You got the church of the nothing turned to everything to get ready for tomorrow morning. You got to strip down to your skivvies and wait for a quantum fluctuation to put some pants on you.
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@NN
Thanks for both those links.
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@SOM
Repeating yourself doesn’t change the facts. The Passover celebrates the malicious killing of all the first-born Egyptian males because the Middle Eastern tribal god of the Israelites named Yahweh wanted to stroke his ego.
And the only place that gods exist is as figments of the human imagination.
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Ron,
The Passover is NOT a celebration of killing of any kind. That particular idea is just you redefining the facts so they suit atheist faith and dogma.
Both the Jews and the Christians teach that the Passover is the celebration of Hebrew liberation from slavery to Pharaoh.
Atheists don’t get to redefine religions to suit their own faith and dogma. Religions are religions because they define themselves.
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Arch,
What you and every other atheist do is set yourselves up as the authorities on what is just and unjust.
And you do that based on what you know or don’t know.
Therefore, the Iraq wars were unjust because you are completely unaware of all the crimes against humanity that Saddam Hussein and his sons committed on a near daily basis.
This is why atheism is a head in the sand philosophy. Whatever facts don’t conform to your atheist faith and dogma or are outside your personal knowledge, you simply deny.
Consequently, atheism is everything you think is wrong with the religions you complain about.
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@SOM’s
Right. By that thinking, the Spanish Inquisition was just the celebration of spreading Christ’s love. The anti-Semitic pogroms were just a celebration of European liberation from those perfidious Jews.
Seems like denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
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You must take a Silliness pill every morning, just to keep up your supply – where do you think the word, “Passover” comes from? What “passed over” what? The “Angel of Death” (otherwise a really nice guy, you’d like him –) “PASSED OVER” the Hebrews’ houses, because their doorframes were drenched in – what was it again? crayon? magic marker? – oh, I remember, blood! Is that the best your god could come up with, blood?
All of the houses not painted with blood had their firstborn children murdered – SUREly you heard about this, it was in all the papers!
You’d think that an omniscient god would know which houses the Hebrews lived in, without the need for all that killing, but noooo, your god needs blood, buckets of it!
And why the need to kill all of those innocent Egyptian children? Because Pharaoh refused to let the Hebrews go? But didn’t your god magically “harden his heart,” thus removing all of his free will, so that he COULDN’T let the Hebrews go? And for what? So he could show the Egyptians how powerful he was!
If it were true, which it isn’t, we would have to believe that your god set Pharaoh up to fail, and murdered countless innocent children, to show people how great he was! That would only show me how horrible he was!
Gosh, you’d think, after such a magic show, that all of the Egyptians would begin worshiping this obscure desert god, YHWH, who couldn’t even afford to buy a vowel, but no – they didn’t.
You really don’t see how totally idiotic this all is, do you? Stay in school, don’t do drugs.
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Ron,
The Spanish Inquisition was what it was.
The Catholic Church is very up front about it.
But there is no comparison between the Spanish Inquisition and the Passover.
Which version of your atheist Bible has the Jews celebrating the Spanish Inquisition?
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“Therefore, the Iraq wars were unjust because you are completely unaware of all the crimes against humanity that Saddam Hussein and his sons committed on a near daily basis.</em" – and that was our problem, how?
Surely you don't think that it's the job of the US to go around the world, killing evil dictators? And who decides which ones to kill? What's to stop them from coming over here and killing ours?
You're so Silly.
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@SOM
You’re right. there is no comparison. The Jewish enslavement and liberation is a fable, while the Spanish Inquisition is a historical fact. And flowery language won’t paper over the atrocities committed in the name of an imaginary god—it simply reveals the lengths that some people are prepared to go to in order to justify them.
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@Arch
Funny thing is that Saddam was installed by the Reagan administration way back when. There are even photos/videos of Rumsfeld shaking their boy’s hand several months after the massacre in Du’jail for which he was eventually hanged.
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Lets call a spade a spade. Nate and company think that any killing is barbaric (except in Nate’s case where he admits that if its one of his loved ones doing it it they might have good reason). We don’t agree provided we have knowledge of the crime. To illustrate the point – this isn’t nice footage but the “killers” were not barbaric in doing what they did
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But people like SOM get their information from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and his right-wing ilk, where such things are never mentioned.
The sad thing about America, is that the rich have learned how to vote-mine the ignorant. Kerry was way ahead of W in the polls, and picking up speed – then Rove had the “Swift Boat” story released, and despite the fact that it wasn’t true, it created enough doubt among the ignorant, that Kerry, and America, lost. Now he’s trying a “Tom Eagleton” on Hillary, well in advance..
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I understand, how you interpret my responses, but you have still not clarified the point I raised, one way or another.
So, let me try again and if you are not actually trying to be obtuse on purpose then perhaps you will at least offer a straightforward answer, please.
To refresh.
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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Arch,
The world has been without a nuclear holocaust or third world war precisely because the United States, planet Earth’s only hyper-power, stepped up and saved the world from the likes of Saddam Hussein.
President Bush the Elder went to war against Hussein when he pulled an Adolf and annexed Kuwait, one of the worlds greatest oil producers.
Like Rome before her, the United States rightly held that stability was absolutely essential to peace.
Therefore, crushing destabilizing tyrants like Saddam Hussein is right and just.
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Ron,
That the Passover is a tradition passed down over the millennia is proof that it is not a fable.
I realize that you are an atheist and that means you believe everything just happened all by itself but both the existence of Israel and the Passover prove the veracity of the Old Testament.
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T,
Nate told me in a previous comment that the atheist mass murders of the 20th century were okay because some of the people slaughtered weren’t really innocent anyway.
I kid you not.
These people (atheists) are absolutely amazing.
[*** NOTE — This claim is utterly false as can be seen in the conversation beginning here and running through this comment. — Nate]
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