Why I am an Atheist Part 5: Biblical Genocide
August 4, 2009
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
In addition, the following acts are punishable as Genocide:
Article III
The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d ) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
- When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. (Deut 7:1,2)
- Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby. Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you,(Deut 20:15-17)
- He captured it and its king and all its cities, and they struck them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed every person who was in it. He left no survivor. Just as he had done to Hebron, so he did to Debir and its king, as he had also done to Libnah and its king. Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded. (Jos 10:39-40)
- Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. (1 Sam 15:2-3)
- You can’t get much worst than the supposed world-wide flood recorded in Gen 6-8. All done by and for god.
- Then there is also the Exodus out of Eqypt (Exodus 11 & 12), where god hardens Pharoh’s heart so he could kill all the 1st born in the nation. Pharoh had no choice in the matter. God acted in such a way that the final plague was a given, not an option that could be avoided.
There is no way around Biblical Genocide unless you decide not to take the bible literally, but then you have a whole lot of other problems you have to deal with. However, what I find even more disturbing than a god who thinks genocide is a good idea, is the length that man will go to to defend this tyrant. If you remove the word god and replace it with the name of any human being responsible for the genocides of the past, any normal person would be appalled and any court of justice would find the defense, the defense of a madman.
I’ve already dealt with the subject of a King being above his law. How can anyone say we get our morality from a god who is “not subject to the same moral obligations” as man! Especially one who has no qualms about taking “innocent” life! He continues:
What that implies is that God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites when He sees fit. How long they live and when they die is up to Him.
So the problem isn’t that God ended the Canaanites’ lives. The problem is that He commanded the Israeli soldiers to end them.
Wow. Sorry, I do have a problem with that!
Isn’t that like commanding someone to commit murder? No, it’s not. Rather, since our moral duties are determined by God’s commands, it is commanding someone to do something which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been murder. The act was morally obligatory for the Israeli soldiers in virtue of God’s command, even though, had they undertaken it on their on initiative, it would have been wrong.
It’s a moral obligation to “put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” when god commands it! Are you mad? Hasn’t god or religion been used to justify many genocides of the past? Just do a quick Google search on “religious based justification for genocide” and see what happens. Even if this was a good justification, how would you know it was god speaking to you?
On divine command theory, then, God has the right to command an act, which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been sin, but which is now morally obligatory in virtue of that command….By the time of their destruction, Canaanite culture was, in fact, debauched and cruel, embracing such practices as ritual prostitution and even child sacrifice. The Canaanites are to be destroyed “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God” (Deut. 20.18). God had morally sufficient reasons for His judgement upon Canaan, and Israel was merely the instrument of His justice…
Yeah, I’m sure that ever single person, including children, infants and animals were horribly wicked! But then god can do anything he wants even killing the innocent. Oh wait, Craig is going to talk about the innocent children:
But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to pagan nations on Israel’s part…Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.
What! The “death of these children was actually there salvation“? If Craig really believed this deep down, the absolute best thing anyone could do would be to kill every infant before they can reject their “loving” savior, Jesus Christ. After all, an assured place in heaven for all eternity is much better than to potentially burn in hell for all eternity! I can’t believe this excuse was actually put in writing. It’s amazing what length people will go to to justify an immoral god. (see Reasonable Faith- Subject: Slaughter of the Canaanites for the complete article)
I”m sorry, but no rational person, in this day and age, would approve of Israel destroying every Arab, anymore than they would approve of Islam righteously destroying all the infidels in the world and any tyrant who justified his campaign of Genocide as a mission from god would be seen as mad. I am speaking as a human here, but I can’t worship or belief in such an evil deity.