Is genocide ok if God tells you to do it?

[angellous_evangellous]

Everyone who reads this post owes me $10.

 

[fantome profane]

Everyone who reads this post owes me $10.

Send me a bill.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Send me a bill.

YouTube - Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure - The Future Council

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Everyone who reads this post owes me $10.

For the record, I didn't ...

... at least not literally.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I'm simply taking the scriptures at face value, as any layman would, ...

And that is inordinantly stupid. The narrative was not fashioned for the 21 century layman.

Was it fashioned for the inordinantly rude?

Let me ask you a question:

Pretend for a moment that you live circa 1180 BCE in the hill country of Jerusalem. Yours is a transitional agrarian economy with recent ancestral links to both northern Canaanite 'cities' and southern (Edomite) pastoralists. The political structure is clan based and tribal, but political pressures from such entities as Egypt and the Sea Peoples encourage defensive and synergistic alliances, confederacies. This combination of agrarianization and political formation in turn promotes a revisualization of both folklore and cultic practice.

You sit with your friends and family and listen to old stories informed by current reality and invested with new meaning. The story now being told is a powerful one about the binding of Isaac. The question is:

• What do you hear?
• What do you find surprising?
• What in the story holds sufficient meaning to warrant its repetition and survival?

What moves you?​

These questions cannot be answered by a 21st century skeptic "taking the scriptures at face value, as any layman would." It requires a different mindset and a different timeset. Abrahamic religion is the search for that which is holy in those answers, and none of it is an endorsement of genocide.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

For the record, I didn't ...

... at least not literally.

haha - you get a senior's discount.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

These questions cannot be answered by a 21st century skeptic "taking the scriptures at face value, as any layman would." It requires a different mindset and a different timeset. Abrahamic religion is the search for that which is holy in those answers, and none of it is an endorsement of genocide.

Great post, by the way.

The comment about the layperson really bothered me.

My seminary must have a program or something that allows the "average layperson" (read - someone not seeking a seminary degree) to sit in on courses, I guess for free.

Every lecture that I've ever given at the seminary - I gave about ten or so a term - had laypeople in it. They asked very insightful questions that reflected a lifetime (well, sometimes) of thought and a reasonable amount of knowledge.

Reducing their experience (as our friend has done) to just taking the Bible literally is a sorry attempt at justifying one's own irresponsibilities.

 

[fantome profane]

YouTube - Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure - The Future Council

Thanks, here is your change.
ted

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Thanks, here is your change.
ted

I'll see your Ted and raise you a Willie.

 

[Autodidact]

Do you know that Jews believe that the ancient Hebrews committed genocide and that God told them to do it, going against God's command "thou shalt not murder?"

Do you have - at the very least - knowledge of archaeological evidence of a genocide caused by ancient Hebrews?

If not, it's a strawman.

No, he's not asserting that any of this actually happened, merely that the OT relates that it did. Do you deny that? Consider it fictional if you like, that's not the point. The fictional character, Yahweh, fictionally ordered the fictional Hebrews to commit fictional genocide, over and over. Was it moral for the Hebrews to fictionally comply with this fictional order? Or actual order, whatever your personal belief is.

 

[Autodidact]

They most likely were going against God, lots of people do very bad things and call themself christians. but you say, lets just say, so here goes, I think you, I know I would kill under certian conditions. since we dont know the condition how do we know it to be just

How about this condition: You're a Hebrew soldier. You won the battle. You killed all the men, and took the women prisoner. Your commander relays to you God's anger that you failed to kill the women and boys, and orders you to go back and do so. Now another soldier is holding a 3 month old male infant before you so you can stab him to death with your sword. Do you do it? The baby is crying.

 

[Autodidact]

If the Bible says that "they did" and we know that they didn't, that sheds some light on how we interpret the text.

We can't accuse God of commanding / causing a genocide that never happened.

You "interpret the text" to mean it didn't happen? How do you interpret a text to mean that what it says happened, didn't happen? Wouldn't that be called "not believing the text?"

 

[angellous_evangellous]

You "interpret the text" to mean it didn't happen? How do you interpret a text to mean that what it says happened, didn't happen? Wouldn't that be called "not believing the text?"

Good question... there are many texts about gods in the ancient world, and ancient writers found it especially useful to associate mythical events that resemble historical ones, so we can imaginatively interact with the ideas the text presents.

For whatever reason - possibly human nature - we really aren't inspired by drab every day realism. We are inspired and captured by extremes.

Greek tragedy and epic poetry are great examples of this.

Euripides wanted to ask the question - "is it better to worship the gods or not, given the heartbreaks of life" and "is it better for a man not to be born" answers it with several tragedies on a grandiose scale that is completely divorced from reality with Oedipus and the Herculean tragedies. The events themselves never happened, and everyone knows, but there is an intent to say something about life and the gods.

 

[Autodidact]

If God tells you to commit a genocide on a group of people then you should close your ears and not listen because it's not God. The whole idea of a genocide completely contradicts God's principles of love.

So the Bible is just wrong then?

in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you

Deuteronomy 20

Joshua 10:

So Joshua subdued the whole region, including the hill country, the Negev, the western foothills and the mountain slopes, together with all their kings. He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded.

Numbers 21:
But the LORD said to Moses, "Do not fear him, for I have given him into your hand, and all his people, and his land. And(AP) you shall do to him as you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon." 35So they defeated him and his sons and all his people, until he had no survivor left. And they possessed his land.

Well, there are dozens of passages like this, so I'll stop in the interest of time. What do you make of the many passages in which God does just this? Lies?

 

[Autodidact]

Religious/political propaganda doesn't equal truth.

Quite frankly the modern position of not harming civilians during a war... is very very modern.
Highlighting the ancient Hebrews as bad for killing civilians is frankly pathetic given the realities of warfare prior to the Geneva Conventions.

wa:do

According to the Bible, these actions are not just tolerable, they're praiseworthy. They are what God expects and commands us. To fail to do so was sinful and merits damnation by God. That's what the Bible teaches.

 

[Autodidact]

Assuming a hypothetical in this situation just doesn't work.

I say this because if we know that the ancient Hebrews never committed genocide, and we're not even sure that God exists, it doesn't make sense to abuse ancient Hebrew myths to explore something that is obviously against both Jewish and Christian teachings.

That's why it's a strawman.

You're right. There is no God. You win.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

So the Bible is just wrong then? ....

What do you make of the many passages in which God does just this? Lies?

haha - as wrong as Euripides.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

You're right. There is no God. You win.

Baby - meet bathwater.

 

[fantome profane]

I'll see your Ted and raise you a Willie.

How many times do we have to tell you, nobody here wants to see your Willie.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

You're right. There is no God. You win.

A side question: why are you so angry and needy about all this?