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 
Nate,
Hallucinating an alternate universe where monsters baby Hitler and Joe Stalin could be raised the way the atheist sees fit doesn’t change the reality of our present, real universe.
Had baby Hitler’s and baby Joe’s mommies exercised their atheist right to choose and had their little angels snuffed out in the womb, great evil would have been avoided.
Isn’t abortion wonderful?
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And hallucinating a reality in which killing children can be described as “moral, good,” and “beautiful” isn’t conducive to having a rational conversation, but I guess that’s where we are.
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Nate,
If you are unable to see as the ancients saw and interpret their symbols, how on earth can you expect to understand their literature?
You are interpreting the Bible from your own modern atheist viewpoint when it was written by people from a time long ago and far, far away.
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Ruth,
God eternal therefore he is uncaused.
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Besides SOM, Hitler mostly killed non-Christians, so I guess he was one of God’s most loyal servants, huh? Killing evil is beautiful, right?
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Nate,
Interpreting the symbols and metaphors of ancient people and cultures isn’t hallucinating.
It’s called scholarship and open mindedness.
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It was written by ancient people in an ancient mindset, but we’re supposed to believe it was inspired by a God who transcends time?
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Nate,
Sorry, but Hitler mass murdered over 12,000,000 innocents, 6,000,000 of which were Jews.
The death toll from the genocidal maniacs of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was 64,000,000.
But that pales before the real genocidal pros, the atheists who slaughtered over 100,000,000 innocents in less than a century.
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Nate,
So you would only believe God if the Bible were written in a manner pleasing to rich white atheists such as yourself?
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Surely they weren’t all innocents? I mean these guys we’re just doing the Lord’s work, SOM. Just like Moses and Joshua. Men after God’s own heart, just mowing down modern day Amelekites.
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Nate,
You can disagree with the facts all you want but that doesn’t change the truth.
People in Buddhist and Hindu society were dying like flies before they adopted Western ways, read that Christian ways.
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Eternity is a human constuct. No such thing.
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Nate.
The ancient world wasn’t amenable to the atheist teach-in.
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Ruth,
The story you refer to is probably one of the best lessons in ethics, ever.
Good cannot be accomplished by doing evil.
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Nate,
Excuse me, you’re right. There must have been 10 or 20 million non-innocent people who deserved to be slaughtered by genocidal maniacs.
At this point you are arguing against yourself:
God is evil because he committed genocide.
Baby Hitler and Joe weren’t so bad because they mass murdered people who weren’t truly innocent.
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Ruth,
Eternity is not a human construct.
Eternity is a word that means timeless. To get a grip on God means getting a grip on the meaning of eternity.
We are human and able to reason. We can do it. We can imagine an eternal God who is beyond time and space.
But the atheist can’t do it, refuses to do it, in fact.
That is why atheism is a brutal assault on human nature.
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No, I’m simply using your logic. If the genocide in the Bible was “beautiful,” then the modern ones couldn’t have been that bad. We all die anyway, right? Isn’t that what you guys were saying?
And if your lucky, maybe you can even get window seats in Heaven so you can enjoy all the evil folks getting what they deserve.
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Nate,
I strongly recommend that you not accuse yourself of using my logic.
Arch might take exception.
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Right because humans don’t have reflexes to just automatically try to steady (especially precious) things which might be perceived as unsteady.
Maybe God should have stricken King David dead as well for placing it on a cart instead of carrying it as God’s instructions said.
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Ruth,
The ethics lesson taught by the story you referred to is clear.
You can lead a horse to water, Buana, but you cannot make it drink.
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Silenceofmind,
It is easy to reason that since God supposedly created evil that this evil is an assault on human beings, causing their nature to be corrupted.
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Ruth,
Since no life on Earth would exist without suffering (evil), suffering is good.
Yet resisting suffering is what drives the development and evolution of all life.
Therefore, one might gain the insight that life itself possesses divine nature.
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SOM you will be interested to know that Nate has admitted that if an atrocity was committed by his children or loved ones he would consider their other virtues ad track record in deciding whether they might have had cause. When asked why he would not consider to give the same benefit to God he replied that he could not see God physically so it was not the same
SO all this moral outrage you see would be potentially less outrageous if the atrocity was committed by someone he loves and knows provided he could see them..
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Silenceofmind,
So you would agree, then, that death was necessary for human evolution?
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Silenceofmind,
Killing evil is morally good, don’t you think?
I agree. Perhaps we should begin with the creator of evil?
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