Is a god who orders the killing of his children a monster?

[_guy sajer]

When should we expect threads offering Biblical justifications for child sexual molestation? After all, I understand that Biblical cultures didn't necesarily have a problem with this one.

Or can my opposition to child sexual molestation be dismissed as a function of my presentism?

[_Lucretia MacEvil]

Imagine you live in 2nd Millennium BC Mesopotamia. You live in a small village along the Euphrates that barely eeks out a living from its agriculture and the sporadic trade caravan passing through. A far off village has grown because of nearby natural resources and is growing beyond its capacity to feed itself. This growing city has begun to pillage neighbors to be able to feed its growing population and maintain its capacity for specialization (a carpenter or bronze craftsman doesn't have time to grow crops for his family, so he's got to trade with someone who does. When all your people are craftsmen, who's gonna grow the crops?). The pillaging is getting closer and closer to your village, and you've got to militarize or be destroyed. You have a problem, though. Your farmers can either grow food for your village or they can fight, but they can't do both. You have weaker neighbors who have plenty of food. What do you do? Your choices are to 1) try to negotiate, 2) let your town and all its people be destroyed, or 3) militarize and destroy your neighbors and take their food. Negotiating is absolutely out of the question. You have nothing to offer them except for your food, and why would they trade when they can just kill you? A market economy will not exist for thousands of years, and not even the Greeks could figure out that helping the other guy will ultimately help you. Negotiating is out of the question. Letting your town get destroyed is absolutely out of the question. You only have one option, and that option was played out thousands of times throughout the ancient Near East for centuries. In the ancient Near East you can be a jerk or you can be dead. Today it's easy to turn the other cheek. Generally our pride is the worst thing that gets hurt when we do, but back then if you turned the other cheek you died. Period. Moses was commanded to kill because leaving competing cultures thriving as you try to squeeze into the land in the Near East was not a possibility.

My conclusion is this: today killing another group of people is bad, but 3,500 years ago it meant your kids got to live, and your head didn't end up as decoration in some guy in Mari's garden. If you think God's a monster for having ordered the death of others then you're left with a loving God who prefers your death, because he's not gonna save your butt from absolutely everyone else in the continent just because you want to be the bigger person. A rudimentary understanding of the ancient Near Eastern socio-political context makes the apparent contradiction in the morality of the Old Testament God utterly disappear.

Your thoughts?

The people of those times were violent and primitive and the God of the Old Testament was created in their image. He was nothing but a war god. Too bad he hasn't outlived his usefullness.

[_maklelan]

Does the absurdity of your position strike you?

No. Actually, it's quite logical, while the absurdity of turning the other cheek in the 2nd Millennium BC Levant is quite striking.

You’re trying to construct an argument justifying killing and/or murder from a religious point of view.

That's correct.

You realize, do you not, that outside of your apologetic framework, the rest of civil society would consider your arguments equally as absurd as I do?

That's because they do not have a good understanding of ancient history or ancient morals. Let's examine your assertion:

From a book by non-religionists, speaking about ancient attitudes towards war and killing (The Origins of Western Warfare: Militarism and Morality in the Ancient World, Doyne Dawson, James Doyne Dawson):

"As for pacifism in the modern sense, it literally did not exist. Premodern thinkers were not all militaristic by any means, but they were almost all 'bellicist.' They assumed warfare was a normal and natural feature of the world, to be accepted fatalistically like any other great force of nature. It is easy to find in premodern thought expressions of bitter antiwar sentiment that is often mistaken for pacifism. But these Stoic and Christian complaints about warfare are not political programs; they are the equivalent of complaining about the weather. Only toward the end of the eighteenth century did any appreciable number of serious thinkers begin to entertain the hope that war might be abolished."

All the sources I can find agree with the above, that war was as natural as the weather. I'd supply them all, but that would be pointless. People who have studied ancient morals know that killing was a part of life, pure and simple.

(As an aside, I wonder if I killed someone and then tried to argue that, from a Biblical point of view, it wasn’t really murder and was justifiable, whether this would fly?)

If you lived in 1000 BC in Palestine and the other person posed a threat, immediate or not, to your people, yes, it would be perfectly justifiable.

What is it about religion that makes what appear to be normal, reasonable persons like yourself try to justify what you would condemn in any other context?

Now you're just insulting me. You know perfectly well that I am addressing a context that does not exist anymore, and that the morals have changed.

While we’re at it, was God’s killing of every man, woman, and child in the flood murder or killing?

It was killing.

Explain to me why the children deserved to die, please.

This is a loaded question. If I answer it I admit that children who have died now and in the past deserved to die, but that's a red herring and an appeal to emotion.

Do you agree, then, that death is justifiable punishment for non-belief?

Of course not, why would you think I would say that that is the case?

Do I deserve to die like those in Noah’s time?

I have no idea. I don't even know who you are.

Who should kill me? You? God? Would that be murder or killing?

Now you're just ranting.

Whatever the standards were in the Old Testament times, I hold God to higher standards, not bound by the ignorant cultural traditions of pre-modern societies. If man was solely responsible, that’s one thing, but this is man killing/murdering as God’s agent, and it is God himself killing/murdering. This tells me enough about God not to believe in him and to conclude that he is, as portrayed, a psychopathic b*****d. (What else to you call someone who kills millions of men, women, and children in a hissy fit because they aren’t subservient enough to him?)

You haven't listened to a word I've said. You never listen, you just spew assertions with no evidence. If you look above you will see several reassertions of your initial one, but not a single shred of evidence or logic to back it up. You're argument is a joke, from top to bottom.

[_maklelan]

I HATE THAT! (I just lost another post to the cyberspace monster).

One more time:

The Old Testament is a collection of stories that ancient men used to try to explain what happened in their lives. A flood that kills lots of people? God did it because man was so evil. A lunar or solar eclipse? God ate the sun. People die and it's not fair? No problem... God just took them home. People get sick from eating inadequately cooked pork? God says to not eat pork.

The Old Testament is simply man trying figure out the unknowable, and what they came up with is: God did it, God said so, God... God... God...

Now, we know many more answers than they did, so our questions list has shrunk, and we think some of their answers are weird, strange, or downright pathelogical.

That's a wonderful thesis, now please provide the body of your argument.

[_maklelan]

Hi Maklelan,

My belief is that if it's kill or be killed, the gospel calls us to be killed.

That's true, and the Book of Mormon alludes to the same point in some places, but we're not talking about the gospel, we're talking about four thousand years ago when they didn't have the gospel.

Particularly where women and children would be the object of our killing. Did I mention that the Israelites invaded Canaan, and were therefore the aggressors in this genocidal narrative? I cannot in good conscience justify that. Can you?

Yes. They had just left Egypt and needed a place to settle. The closest place had people dwelling in it, and when people came passing through they were automatically assumed to be the enemy. A preemptive strike is not an illogical or immoral course of action in the ancient Near East. You might want to take a look at the book I cited in my response to guy. It talks about the modern perception of a defensive and offensive war and how that dichotomy did not exist before Hellenization.

[_maklelan]

When should we expect threads offering Biblical justifications for child sexual molestation? After all, I understand that Biblical cultures didn't necesarily have a problem with this one.

Or can my opposition to child sexual molestation be dismissed as a function of my presentism?

Actually they did. Study more. Now you're just trying to compare my topic to the most offensive thing you can imagine to try to taint it. You're pathetic.

[_maklelan]

The people of those times were violent and primitive and the God of the Old Testament was created in their image. He was nothing but a war god. Too bad he hasn't outlived his usefullness.

Same as harmony, that's a wonderful thesis, now where's the body of your argument?

[_guy sajer]

When should we expect threads offering Biblical justifications for child sexual molestation? After all, I understand that Biblical cultures didn't necesarily have a problem with this one.

Or can my opposition to child sexual molestation be dismissed as a function of my presentism?

Actually they did. Study more. Now you're just trying to compare my topic to the most offensive thing you can imagine to try to taint it. You're pathetic.

And murder isn't offensive?

Why is trying to justifying child moslestation more offensive than trying to justify murder, particularly when many of the victims in question are innocent children?

Besides, my comment wasn't meant to be factually accurate, but to demonstrate the absurdity of your position through juxtaposition.

In any case, ancient societies had varying attitudes and mores toward treatment of (and sex with) under age children. You need to study more. The cultural mores in the West regarding protection of children are relatively recent, and certainly not shared by pre-modern societies, nor by many contemporary non-Western societies.

Ok, how about another example? How about economic exploitation of children? Did ancient societies protect children from gross economic exploitation (e.g., child labor)? If I found that God sanctioned such behavior, and that his prophets practiced such behavior, would my moral disgust be explained by my presentism?

You miss the general point, which you have not addressed, and that is whether one has the right to hold God and those acting on his behalf to exhibit higher morals than base morals of contemporary society and culture, regardles of the age. Does God have eternal laws of morality, or is God's morality bound by our cultural conventions?

Your argument implies for latter; I am arguing the former.

[_harmony]

Yes. They had just left Egypt and needed a place to settle. The closest place had people dwelling in it, and when people came passing through they were automatically assumed to be the enemy. A preemptive strike is not an illogical or immoral course of action in the ancient Near East. You might want to take a look at the book I cited in my response to guy. It talks about the modern perception of a defensive and offensive war and how that dichotomy did not exist before Hellenization.

Why are the needs of the ancient Isrealites of more importance than the needs of the ancient Canaanites? So what if they needed a place to settle! That doesn't give them the right to invade another group's territory.

[_maklelan]

Why are the needs of the ancient Isrealites of more importance than the needs of the ancient Canaanites?

More important to whom?

So what if they needed a place to settle! That doesn't give them the right to invade another group's territory.

There was no rule of law back then. You had whatever rights you could keep by force. You're still projecting your own morals into a society where that means nothing.