Biblical Deaths

Originally posted by dryhump
You're predisposed to not accept my answer to your question, however, so I once again ask why you would waste your time with the question. You don't believe in God so any answer we offer is unlikely to satisfy you.

I already addressed this in my response to RBHILL. Christianity is a big religion, and as such is an important topic. Part of the problems with this world are due to people that don't try to understand those who disagree with them. I am trying to avoid that.

I recently came upon the statistics mentioned in the first post, and was interested because I never realized there were so many deaths attributed to God and his followers in the Bible. My atheism was always more on the science/logic side, and I even used to occasionally tell people that I would prefer that there was a God, I just don't believe in one. However, these statistics got me to thinking maybe I shouldn't have said that.

So I am looking for some sort of explanation from someone as to why so many people side with God despite these statistics, because in my view, many of these killings mentioned in the Bible are extremely immoral.

Robbie is the only responder so far that has made an attempt to explain and defend his beliefs, so I am going to try to follow up with him. The fact that (at least so far) most of the pro-Christians on this forum have either not responded to me, or responded with non-answers, or have questioned why I bring up the topic, is perhaps an answer in itself: that no one (again other that Robbie) feels that they can defend this position. If this is the ultimate answer, maybe that's a good thing, because I think the worst conclusion I could draw in this exercise is that this is a world where 2 billion Christians are fully aware that their Bible says that God was guilty of horrible atrocities, and yet those Christians choose to follow him anyway.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
Its rather simple, they (Christians) have submitted to Gods sovereignty rather than attempt to establish their own. If God judicially executes people then quite simply its for a reason. It can be proven from scripture that God does not arbitrarily execute anyone and thus your assertion of murder is quite ludicrous. They are in fact judicial killin ...[text shortened]... ligious and the irreligious are guilty of atrocity.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm

Could you expand on the "sovereignty" issue? When I hear that word, I hear "authority," but I get the sense that it means more than just authority to Christians. I can certainly imagine a scenario where someone has authority over someone, and is also immoral (for instance, a kidnapper), so I figure it must mean more than just authority.

Also, could you clarify your view of God and morality? Is your position that whatever God does defines morality, so it is impossible for God to be immoral? Or is your position that God has just chosen to never be immoral, but could if he wanted to? Or is it that God is constrained, and could not be immoral even if he wanted to? Or is it something else?

I suspect we will soon end up at loggerheads, because I think it is clear that many of these death stories in the bible are extremely immoral, and you obviously disagree, but thanks for at least addressing the topic.

Originally posted by PatNovak
Could you expand on the "sovereignty" issue? When I hear that word, I hear "authority," but I get the sense that it means more than just authority to Christians. I can certainly imagine a scenario where someone has authority over someone, and is also immoral (for instance, a kidnapper), so I figure it must mean more than just authority.

Also, could you c ...[text shortened]... are extremely immoral, and you obviously disagree, but thanks for at least addressing the topic.

the Caesars of ancient Rome welded authority over an entire empire and were notoriously licentious.

The idea of sovereignty is quite simple. God is more knowing in every aspect able to read the thoughts and intentions of the heart, resides out-with the constraints of time, the human by comparison is limited in knowledge and experience and subject to the rigours of time, it is therefore entirely rational to submit oneself to such an entity.

The assumption that you are making are that these acts of judicial killing on the part of God, for example in the Flood, or the conquest of the promised land are viewed as immoral as betrayed by your assertion of murder whereas to the believer they can and are justifiable, for example in the case of the flood, violence filled the earth and persons were reprobates, irredeemable from their youth up. In the instance of the Canaanites archaeology has uncovered that they practised degraded child sacrifice and were therefore worthy of censure, they were warned and refused to heed the warning etc etc etc

Yes its quite impossible for God to be immoral. The fact that he abides by his own standards of morality is seen throughout the scriptures. God being omnipotent has no motive for acting immorally and even Christ states that 'no one is good except the Father'.

Originally posted by PatNovak
I already addressed this in my response to RBHILL. Christianity is a big religion, and as such is an important topic. Part of the problems with this world are due to people that don't try to understand those who disagree with them. I am trying to avoid that.

I recently came upon the statistics mentioned in the first post, and was interested because I nev ...[text shortened]... hat God was guilty of horrible atrocities, and yet those Christians choose to follow him anyway.

Probably because we're tired of wasting our breath.

Several of us have explained before at length why your "given" is untrue. But that just gets run over in the atheist rush to convict God of "horrible atrocities", true or not.

robbie, obviously, *never* gets tired of wasting his breath.

Originally posted by PatNovak

I'm unclear what point(s) you are trying to make with the rest of your post, but I did want to reiterate what the original post is about. It is not about, as you say, "how many murders are due to God or religious people." It is specifically about how many deaths that the Christian Bible says that God and his followers are responsible for.

My comment was a bit aside from the specific topic.

You see the mentioning of resurrection demonstrates that there is a final reckoning of justice.

Virtually all of the critics I know of religious wrong doing believe every one will, after all, merely melt back into the dust of the earth forever. While being outraged at injustice they don't really believe there is any final accounting except to their own critical opinion.

It is clear from the Bible that no one but no one is getting away with anything before God. That was a point of my references to Christ being the one who will cause ALL to be raised again and ALL to be judged.

Or let me put it another way, concisely. Either we will be judged on the cross of Jesus at Calvary or we will be judged at the last judgment. It is not altogether detailed but generally this is the case.

Take every crime, sin, transgression, wrong doing, murder, or other infraction against the law of God. You will accept your judgment by God as having occurred in the crucifixion of Jesus on His cross for the sins of the world OR you will opt to be judged yourself in the last day.

The option of the Gospel of Christ is that we, by believing into Christ, may be judged at Calvary WHEN Jesus was judged by God for a substitutionary atoning redemption.

That is God's plan that He established.

Obviously, I don't think the Christian God ever killed anyone in reality, no more than I think Lord Voldemort ever killed anyone. I'm just surprised and shocked that the Bible - a book that is supposedly used to advocate worship and admiration of God - accuses him of such a high death toll.

I don't know who "Lord Voldemort" is. Sounds fictional.

But some people expect don't really read the Bible and assume expertise on it just the same. Many of these non-reading experts expect God to be like Barney the Dinosaur never dispensing displeasure for man's sins.

As a careful examiner of the Bible I see that there is quite a lot of record of God's mercy, patience, longsuffering, pardon, and forgiveness in the pages of Scripture.

However there is also some amount of evidence of His hatred for sin and sinning. There are the instances of His judgment.

Now these acts of judgment, (most strikingly in the Old Testament), lay a foundation of God's hatred for the sin of man. This makes all the more impressive His sending His Son to bear the penalty of the judgment of the sins of the whole world in His eternal redemption accomplished on Calvary.

The message is that if we believe into Christ, substitution for all our sins is accomplished by God. He then looks upon us as having never sinned at all. He did not overlook our wrongs. He judged them upon the Son of God that we might be saved from eternal punishment.

No sin goes unpaid for from all time, in all the human history. God's record of our lives is complete and infallible. And in short we will be dealt with in Christ in a redemptive way or we will answer to God without Christ at the last judgement.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Probably because we're tired of wasting our breath.

Several of us have explained before at length why your "given" is untrue. But that just gets run over in the atheist rush to convict God of "horrible atrocities", true or not.

robbie, obviously, *never* gets tired of wasting his breath.

No you have always failed to explain why your god is not morally accountable for
the actions attributed to it.

So lets try again.


I assume that you claim that your god is moral?

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
the Caesars of ancient Rome welded authority over an entire empire and were notoriously licentious.

The idea of sovereignty is quite simple. God is more knowing in every aspect able to read the thoughts and intentions of the heart, resides out-with the constraints of time, the human by comparison is limited in knowledge and experience and subje ...[text shortened]... s no motive for acting immorally and even Christ states that 'no one is good except the Father'.

I think you are arguing that because God is infinitely powerful and infinitely knowledgeable, that this also makes him infinitely moral. I'm not sure why that would follow. First, I don't think we see any sort of correlation between morality and power or morality and knowledge. Are the most powerful and/or the most knowledgeable people always the most moral people? Second, I can certainly think of a situation where a person would still likely be immoral (For example, Hitler), even if they were suddenly granted infinite power and knowledge.

As such, I think it is not only possible, but highly likely, that an all powerful and knowledgeable being would not be perfectly moral. And thus, we need to judge his actions individually, and not assume that anything he does is just.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Probably because we're tired of wasting our breath.

Several of us have explained before at length why your "given" is untrue. But that just gets run over in the atheist rush to convict God of "horrible atrocities", true or not.

robbie, obviously, *never* gets tired of wasting his breath.

I'm sure it must be tiring defending the indefensible.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
Its rather simple, they (Christians) have submitted to Gods sovereignty rather than attempt to establish their own. If God judicially executes people then quite simply its for a reason. It can be proven from scripture that God does not arbitrarily execute anyone and thus your assertion of murder is quite ludicrous. They are in fact judicial killin ...[text shortened]... ligious and the irreligious are guilty of atrocity.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm

Read the book of Numbers and Joshua for examples of God basically telling the Israelites to destroy everyone in the City of Jericho young & Old animals and everything in the city ........of course I'm not judging either way in this case just stating what the bible reads


Manny

Originally posted by PatNovak
I think you are arguing that because God is infinitely powerful and infinitely knowledgeable, that this also makes him infinitely moral. I'm not sure why that would follow. First, I don't think we see any sort of correlation between morality and power or morality and knowledge. Are the most powerful and/or the most knowledgeable people always the most moral ...[text shortened]... d thus, we need to judge his actions individually, and not assume that anything he does is just.

This is only partly the case. Its true that God is viewed as the ultimate source of morality, of virtue, of goodness, wisdom, power and love. Naturally if an entity is infinitely powerful its hard to find a motive why it needs to resort to guile in any way or who is prepared even to suffer the humiliating treatment of a beloved son for the redemption of others in an almost inconceivable act of pure unadulterated love, thus a correlation does exist if one looks for it, but whether you accept this or not is not really the point, for its relative, Gods wisdom in comparison to human wisdom, Gods morality to human morality etc. Can a heavenly kingdom be corrupted to the same extent as an earthly one? hardly. What is more the Christian has a sublime example of a moral and virtuous leader, the Christ to which no human ruler is even comparable thus its easy to see why God and his emissary are held as more moral relative to humans. Who will you offer up as an example of virtue so that we can compare Gods morality, Alexander? Caesar? Yourself?

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
This is only partly the case. Its true that God is viewed as the ultimate source of morality, of virtue, of goodness, wisdom, power and love. Naturally if an entity is infinitely powerful its hard to find a motive why it needs to resort to guile in any way or who is prepared even to suffer the humiliating treatment of a beloved son for the redemptio ...[text shortened]... er up as an example of virtue so that we can compare Gods morality, Alexander? Caesar? Yourself?

I would say I am considerably more moral than your God of the Bible. We can put genocide on God's resume for starters, but not on mine.

Originally posted by menace71
Read the book of Numbers and Joshua for examples of God basically telling the Israelites to destroy everyone in the City of Jericho young & Old animals and everything in the city ........of course I'm not judging either way in this case just stating what the bible reads


Manny

and yet Rehab the prostitute escaped the city with her entire family. Can you tell us why and what precedent this set? What about the Gibeonites who tricked Joshua, why were they not put to death? what about the Midianites who sent out their women to entice the men of Israel and to draw them into sexual immorality knowing that it would mean their destruction? thus citing a single example of the conquest of the promised land as some kind of justification for Gods morality/immorality is useless for as Rembrandt stated, pictures are meant to be looked at, not sniffed.

Originally posted by Proper Knob
I would say I am considerably more moral than your God of the Bible. We can put genocide on God's resume for starters, but not on mine.

so you think that you are more moral, so what?

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
so you think that you are more moral, so what?

Do you actually remember what you post? Try reading the last sentence three of your posts back.

Originally posted by Proper Knob
Do you actually remember what you post? Try reading the last sentence three of your posts back.

fine you are the ultimate source of morality, greater than God. Congratulations. No doubt your wisdom will span the centuries, your pithy saying fill the earth giving life to all!

Lets test you out, if there was a train on course to cross a ravine where a bridge was bust and you had the opportunity to send your son knowing it would mean his death but the saving of a few passengers would you send him to his death for these strangers?