Thou shalt not kill?

Originally posted by epiphinehas
I'm not an Israelite schoolchild. I have no Israel national pride or prejudice. All Tamarin's study proves is nationalism. What it does not address is whether or not the God of the bible is indeed the one true God. If He is, as the bible claims, and He is perfectly righteous, as the bible also claims, then His commands are just and Joshua was right t ...[text shortened]... o conclude that God had no justification for what He commanded, then back it up scripturally.

You and Orfeo are priceless. If god commands it, then it's not murder. It's perfectly OK to slaughter 12,000 people. You two are serving to underline Mr. Tamarin's point - that your religion is not a prohibition against genocide, but an endorsement of it. There is no discernible moral code to be gotten from the bible at all. Every evil act is to be permitted, as long as god has his hand in it. Do you ever wonder why there are so many people around who find your religion to be an abomination? And the worst part is that you two are genuinely unable to see what is wrong with any of this. I don't know about you, but I'll take a humanist code of ethics over what passes for ethics in the bible any day.

Originally posted by rwingett
Go read my thread: 'Joshua and General Lin.'

God has a right over His creation. He is the one Authority. If you have a gripe, rwingett, it is with Him. My counter is, who are you to question God? What moral authority to do you have over Him? If the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is really the one God, then we need to understand what the implications of these accounts are for ourselves.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
God has a right over His creation. He is the one Authority. If you have a gripe, rwingett, it is with Him. My counter is, who are you to question God? What moral authority to do you have over Him? If the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is really the one God, then we need to understand what the implications of these accounts are for ourselves.

An Omni-everything God can do anything, therefore he does not have to kill us, he just does it anyway. This is what you worship...

Originally posted by epiphinehas
God has a right over His creation. He is the one Authority. If you have a gripe, rwingett, it is with Him. My counter is, who are you to question God? What moral authority to do you have over Him? If the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is really the one God, then we need to understand what the implications of these accounts are for ourselves.

So you see no contradiction between god issuing a commandment not to kill, and then ordering Joshua to kill 12,000 people? Why did he issue the commandment at all if it can be broken at will?

Originally posted by rwingett
You and Orfeo are priceless. If god commands it, then it's not murder. It's perfectly OK to slaughter 12,000 people. You two are serving to underline Mr. Tamarin's point - that your religion is not a prohibition against genocide, but an endorsement of it. There is no discernible moral code to be gotten from the bible at all. Every evil act is to be permitte ...[text shortened]... , but I'll take a humanist code of ethics over what passes for ethics in the bible any day.

There is no discernible moral code to be gotten from the bible at all.

The only discernible 'moral code' in the bible is obedience to God.

Do you ever wonder why there are so many people around who find your religion to be an abomination?

People will always seek a good reason to hate God.

I don't know about you, but I'll take a humanist code of ethics over what passes for ethics in the bible any day.

The only discernible 'ethics' in the bible is obedience to God.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
God has a right over His creation. He is the one Authority. If you have a gripe, rwingett, it is with Him. My counter is, who are you to question God? What moral authority to do you have over Him? If the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is really the one God, then we need to understand what the implications of these accounts are for ourselves.

What a depressing world view you have!

Sure, let's discuss its implications. If I string up a 'child of Ai', grab a baseball bat, and play a little game of human pinata, it's a morally right act, as long as God told me to do it. The child is only God's property. He has no right to live or to be treated humanely. If I fail to follow God's directive, I can expect to be punished.

So we have reduced morality to something subject to the whims of a petulant, jealous, bloodthirsty tyrant God, who must be obeyed not because his commands seem just and right to us, but because we fear reprisal.

Originally posted by TheSkipper
An Omni-everything God can do anything, therefore he does not have to kill us, he just does it anyway. This is what you worship...

It's not God's will that people disobey Him. If we do, according to His holy law he must kill us. If He hasn't yet, it's because of His mercy.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
[b]There is no discernible moral code to be gotten from the bible at all.

The only discernible 'moral code' in the bible is obedience to God.

Do you ever wonder why there are so many people around who find your religion to be an abomination?

People will always seek a good reason to hate God.

I don't know about you, but I'll take ...[text shortened]... the bible any day.

The only discernible 'ethics' in the bible is obedience to God.[/b]

So we come down to the crux of the matter. Obedience to god is all that matters. The biblical moral code consists exclusively of following his command. You agree that genocide, murder, and destruction are all acceptable as long as god commands it? What if god commanded you to destroy Jericho. Would you do it? Today the city has a population of 25,000, do you think they should all be slaughtered if god commanded it? What if some religious authority said that god had commanded him to destroy Jericho? Would you support him? What if god commanded you to kill your own child? Would you do it?

Originally posted by rwingett
The difference is that while we may enjoy the Iliad as a piece of literature, we do not hold it up as either an exemplary moral code, or as the source of all morality. The bible, because it makes pretensions on those areas, must be held to a higher standard.

Well, you've certainly done a good job of demonstrating that many Christians are completely
comfortable with the idea that God can righteously command the deaths of ten thousand people
and still be worthy of adoration.

What a sorry state of affairs!

Nemesio

Originally posted by rwingett
So we come down to the crux of the matter. Obedience to god is all that matters. The biblical moral code consists exclusively of following his command. You agree that genocide, murder, and destruction are all acceptable as long as god commands it? What if god commanded you to destroy Jericho. Would you do it? Today the city has a population of 25,000, do yo ...[text shortened]... richo? Would you support him? What if god commanded you to kill your own child? Would you do it?

If 'god' were to command that I kill my child I would disobey on one of two grounds:

1) The entity is only posing as God, encouraging me to disobey what I take to be fundamental principles
of righteous action; or

2) The entity is in fact God and I definitely don't want to spend eternity with such a monster.

Nemesio

Originally posted by rwingett
You and Orfeo are priceless. If god commands it, then it's not murder. It's perfectly OK to slaughter 12,000 people. You two are serving to underline Mr. Tamarin's point - that your religion is not a prohibition against genocide, but an endorsement of it. There is no discernible moral code to be gotten from the bible at all. Every evil act is to be permitte , but I'll take a humanist code of ethics over what passes for ethics in the bible any day.

You seem to be misunderstanding my point. It was perfectly okay to THEM to slaughter 12,000 people, it was part of their law. It doesn't MATTER for that purpose whether their law was dictated by God, or dictated by a council of elders, or voted on by a parliament, or uttered by Daisy the talking cow. It was their law, whether you like it or not. To label it as 'murder' requires a value judgment from some other reference point where such an action is NOT acceptable. In other words, you clearly already have some other source of your 'morals' which enables you to judge the Ai incident as abhorrent.

But you cannot force them to apply your code of ethics, anymore than I can prevent a country from carrying out the death penalty by expressing my moral outrage. If it's the law of the land, it can be done. That is an entirely different question to whether or not you or I think something SHOULD be done.

I haven't at any stage suggested that just because this is in the Bible, it is part of MY 'moral code' or my religion. In fact, the passage that I referred you to seems pretty clearly to be setting out the rules/laws/commandments for a specific period, the conquest of Canaan. I am not part of the Israelite nation trying to conquer Canaan in around 1400BC or whatever it was, and so I cannot safely rely on any of this material to say that God is happy for me to commit mass slaughter. 'My religion' is not simply an exact copy of early Israelite religion. In fact, I'm not a Jew of any kind, and so the importance of me adhering to the law in the first five books of the Bible is greatly diminished.

And I do see 'what's wrong with this'. But it's you who tried to paint this as a moral/ethical issue, and I was trying to get you to consider it as also a legal one. Much of what is in the Bible was the law of a particular society at a particular time, and for you to interpret it as an eternal moral code is pretty much falling into the same trap as many of the Christians you criticise.

Originally posted by Nemesio
If 'god' were to command that I kill my child I would disobey on one of two grounds:

1) The entity is only posing as God, encouraging me to disobey what I take to be fundamental principles
of righteous action; or

2) The entity is in fact God and I definitely don't want to spend eternity with such a monster.

Nemesio

I am completely happy with 1).

Having read many of your posts means that 2) doesn't surprise me, but I'd like to explore this. What are the consequences of disobeying God, if you are in fact certain that God has commanded something and you object to the commandment?

I'm interested in this because the consequences of disobedience as a Christian are rather less clear than the consequences for a Jew. Christians do not live by law, but by grace. The emphasis is on relationship, not legalistic obedience. Your comment seems to suggest that an objectionable commandment would, for you, lead to not only disobedience but a breaking of the relationship.

Originally posted by SwissGambit
What a depressing world view you have!

Sure, let's discuss its implications. If I string up a 'child of Ai', grab a baseball bat, and play a little game of human pinata, it's a morally right act, as long as God told me to do it. The child is only God's property. He has no right to live or to be treated humanely. If I fail to follow God's directive, I ...[text shortened]... e obeyed not because his commands seem just and right to us, but because we fear reprisal.

No, the implications for us are:

(1) God hates idolatry

(2) God is holy

(3) God exercises judgment against the disobedient

Are we idolatrous? Are we disobedient? If so, we are certainly testing His patience. He is deadly serious about the heinousness of both, as the OT shows.

God declares men righteous not according to their works, but because of their faith and obedience. Abraham, for example, was given a command by God to sacrifice his only son. Do you think Abraham didn't get angry with God and question him the same as you are now? At the very least it must have been difficult to reconcile his faith in God with God's command to kill his own son. But, as the scripture record shows, Abraham obeyed, and God stopped him right before the act, saying, "Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear and revere God, since you have not held back from Me or begrudged giving Me your son, your only son." If Abraham would have said to himself, "I will not obey God because His request is unjust," then God would have rejected him, and rightfully so. Similarly, Joshua had to obey God as leader of His chosen people, Israel. You portray their destruction of the city of Ai and its inhabitants as being rejoiced over with bloodthirsty glee. I believe otherwise. No doubt there was rejoicing in the Lord for delivering the enemy into their hands as He had promised, but I question whether it was relished for its own sake. For Joshua I venture to say the destruction of Ai was a decidedly somber affair.

(Remember how Saul, as leader of Israel, was commanded by God to do a similar deed and failed. The women he spared introduced Israel to their idols and led many astray. Saul was cut off and given over to sin, and replaced by David. Obedience isn't easy, but it's what's required.)

Don't get me wrong, I don't delight in anyone's death. That would be an unfair judgment to make, even though I have faith in the God of the bible.

Originally posted by orfeo
You seem to be misunderstanding my point. It was perfectly okay to THEM to slaughter 12,000 people, it was part of their law. It doesn't MATTER for that purpose whether their law was dictated by God, or dictated by a council of elders, or voted on by a parliament, or uttered by Daisy the talking cow. It was their law, whether you like it or not. To label it a ...[text shortened]... pretty much falling into the same trap as many of the Christians you criticise.

The society has changed, but the god has not. As a christian, do you agree that the god of the Old Testament is the same god as that of the New Testament? Do you think that god was right to order Joshua to slaughter 12,000 people? Can such a god be said to be a moral one?

Originally posted by rwingett
The society has changed, but the god has not. As a christian, do you agree that the god of the Old Testament is the same god as that of the New Testament? Do you think that god was right to order Joshua to slaughter 12,000 people? Can such a god be said to be a moral one?

Do I agree it's the same god? Yes.

Whether I think God was 'right' isn't really something I can answer. The more interesting question to me is to identify WHY he ordered it. It's not something I fully understand, but would like to. If I was in a position to obtain God's reasoning, then I would probably be at least able to say if I understood it even if wasn't what I would have done.

Can such a god be said to be a moral one? I genuinely have trouble understanding what that question means. It seems to be code for 'does God behave in a way that your average 21st century westerner is happy with', to which my initial response is: assuming for the sake of argument that God is real, eternal and rather powerful, why should he give a stuff about your opinion of him?

This is opening me up to the conclusion that God is a 'tyrant'. And I'm not sure I can escape that conclusion in the sense that it means a ruler with absolute power, not answerable to his subjects. I seem to remember there's a passage that suggests that all creation will bow to God eventually, and the real issue is whether it's done willingly or unwillingly. I do it willingly because I consider God to be essentially benevolent, loving and having the best interests of his subjects at heart.