foolish question

[allsmiles]

I did answer it like a man. This is what it said

no, you answered it like a christian.

This was my response:


My response is that you are trying to create your own reality that does not take into account that war is about killing an enemy on the battlefield, and dragging his wife and child out of their home to kill them too.

i disagree with what you believe war entails.

i'm watching the Sopranos right now, i'll give this more thought later, but i want you to remind me. okay?

Killing women and children in a time of peace is a moral dilemma, as found in the abortion issue.

okay...

Killing women and children in a time of war is a normal and natural thing that has been done in every war on the planet from the time history has been recorded.

you're determining moral rightness by consensus.

could you go into more details about how slaughtering innocent women and children is a practical necessity?

The Bible is the book on morality. If you don't like it, don't take it up with me, take it up with the author: GOD.

the bible is one of many books on morality, written by men. if the only person i should be taking this up with is your god then perhaps you should stop arguing and let him fight his own battles.

If you want to continue rewriting reality to suit your own opinions, then you will continue to live in a fantasy world. :loser:

you have yet to answer the main points and questions i raise in my argument. you have avoided my direct assertions with misconceptions. any answers you have given are not based on an understanding of my position as you have to demonstrate that you understand it at all. any answers you have given have been based on a misrepresentation of my position.

survival is not a moral dilemma.

you have yet to demonstrate that you have a comprehensive, working understanding of the idea that survival is paramount among priorities and when survival is not in question no circumstances can allieve a killer from the guilt of taking innocent, defenseless lives.

demonstrate how that it is not true, do not answer it with more platitudes.

 

[koban]

Ahhh. You don't believe in God because He doesn't live up to your idea of morality?

Would you worship a god that condoned the murder of innocents? :think:

God wrote the book on morality, who are you to question it?

And the moral lessons we are to learn from this particular part of the book?

That it's OK to deliberately kill unarmed non-combatant innocents? :freak:

 

[koban]

Here is one possible reason for the killing of the women and children. It comes from a Joshua Bible Study by Abba II

The rampant venereal disease would have destroyed the Children of Israel, just like it is doing to America. Death was the only solution at the time, and there was no way to sort out who was infected and who wasn't.

No way???

No way????


Are you saying that distinguishing between those who were infected and those who were not is beyond God's power?

Is it beyond God's power to heal the afflicted child?

 

[genuineoriginal]

Would you worship a god that condoned the murder of innocents? :think:





And the moral lessons we are to learn from this particular part of the book?

That it's OK to deliberately kill unarmed non-combatant innocents? :freak:

I never said they were innocents. I said they were women and children in a war.

 

[genuineoriginal]

you have yet to demonstrate that you have a comprehensive, working understanding of the idea that survival is paramount among priorities and when survival is not in question no circumstances can allieve a killer from the guilt of taking innocent, defenseless lives.

:darwinsm:

 

[genuineoriginal]

No way???

No way????


Are you saying that distinguishing between those who were infected and those who were not is beyond God's power?

Is it beyond God's power to heal the afflicted child?

Again, I said this was one possible explanation, not the one I hold.

 

[koban]

I never said they were innocents. I said they were women and children in a war.

Can an infant, whether in a war or not, ever be anything but an innocent?

 

[Granite]

I would sooner perform an abortion.


I would not do it.

Absolutely. Same here.

 

[Stripe]

Hi, Stipe, I didn't start this thread, but it's like threads I've started before. When I side against those Christians who say they would have no problem following God's orders and would cut the children and women down to the very last one, I am not trying to demonstrate that God is either evil or nonexistent. Here's my own position on the Biblical stories: they represent the beliefs, thoughts, and interpretations of an ancient people. I think we all, as individuals and as cultures, go through various stages of moral development. As we develop, our "circle of concern" generally expands outwards, encompassing not just our selves and our families, but wider and wider circles that include more individuals and types of beings. We become more "universal" in our care and compassion. I think the Old Testament texts record the reasoning and self-justifications of people at a basic ethnocentric perspective -- one that was an improvement in many respects on more brutal (power-centered) forms of moral reasoning that had come before, but one which is still fairly harsh and "limited" compared to more modern perspectives. All individuals must go through the same basic path of development in moral perspective, so even today you will find people who resonate most with narrow circles of concern (comparable in many respects to the early Biblical ethnocentric perspective), and who spit on those who argue for wider circles of concern, just as they scorn those who are more narrow than themselves..

mm .. you might be able to see the ancient civilisations as self centered and capable of such barbary, but are you ignoring the fact that we are just as capable today as we were then. i dont think human nature changes at all. i dont think the morality changes at all. the only difference between what happened to those soldiers then and the implications for christians today is what god has done in each situation.

In my opinion, challenging Christians to question whether God really commanded and endorsed the brutal acts recorded in parts of the Old Testament is not an attempt to discredit the idea of God altogether, or even to discourage them from being Christians. Personally, for me, such exercises are meant to inspire inquiry and self-reflection (for myself as well as for others). I think it is certainly possible to "let go" of the idea that God endorsed these things -- holding instead that these are narrow interpretations of a people who were loyal to him but limited in moral vision -- without turning against God altogether.

it will be quite impossible for a christian to 'let go' of the idea that god endorsed what happened. to do that is to reject that god is incapable of action in situations like that. i also do not envy the person who chooses to try and defend that position. obviously not an easy thing to do. i would prefer not to have to try. but in refusing i would be rejecting god.

I think the Bible records a trajectory of the development of moral reasoning, with Jesus' teachings representing a higher, wider perspective.

id say more like that there are two stages. and jesus' teaching is as good as it gets. if i dont say that then i again reject god. i have to live with the implications of everything in the bible or reject god. as we all see. . its not easy.

When Christians take the Bible as equally inspired in all parts, equally representative of God's thoughts and acts in all parts, I think they "level" the moral playing field, relativizing it on a horizontal plane (emphasizing expediency, for instance) rather than grasping more vertical relations that may exist among various moral perspectives and teachings, in the Bible and outside.

and thereby reject the bible and its author.

...I do not believe the Hebrews were directly instructed by "God" to go into various cities, wipe them out, kill everything in them, and take them for themselves. If you insist that God actually did this, I think you elevate the early stages of human moral reasoning to divine status and undermine the potential for present moral growth.

and i do believe that. i dont attribute any of the actions to human moral reasoning. as i said to fool the only moral discernment we saw in the stories (off the top of the head) was the guy stealing stuff after wiping out the city's inhabitants. i also believe it will always be very difficult to respond to these allegations against gods character without being maligned by the general population. but regardless i will not reject god. please read my next post in reply to fool and consider that as well ..

Best wishes,Balder

im gonna need them .. thanks...

P.S. I dig REM, too

i told you i wanted to be wrong/but everyone is humming a song/that i dont understand

 

[genuineoriginal]

Can an infant, whether in a war or not, ever be anything but an innocent?

Considering that there was only one innocent child born in the entire history of the human race, all the other infants were something other than innocent.

 

[Granite]

Considering that there was only one innocent child born in the entire history of the human race, all the other infants were something other than innocent.

So abortion, in your opinion, is not slaughtering the innocent.

 

[On Fire]

i told you i wanted to be wrong/but everyone is humming a song/that i dont understand

I've watched the children come and go
A late long march into spring
I sit and watch those children
Jump in the tall grass
Leap the sprinkler
Walk in the ground
Bicycle clothespin spokes
The sound the smell of swingset hands

 

[Stripe]

...nstead i spend my time on entertainment at the expense of the memory of thousand year old kids.

The children may be long dead but that concept of God is still around.

or (as i choose to say) god is still around.

please consider what you will gain if you win this argument. youve just convinced the world that we are under the thumb of a god who cares nothing for humanity. hope is meaningless and nowhere to be found. all we strive for will disappear and after that .. nothing .. at best. even the illusion of advancement through science and reason will fail when the suns explode and the universe collapses .. science itself dictates its own end.

I find it very unlikely I will convince the world of anything, they don't all worship the same Gods now, so it would be a heroic task indeed to convince them all that all their Gods were evil. And yes the universe may collapse some day, I would hope that as long as there were humans that they would treat each other humanely, so that what time they did have was spent in love and not hate.

humour me here for a moment .. you took the opportunity to plump me into the middle of a hypothetical situation .. try and imagine what you would gain if suddenly you were right and everybody saw it exactly as you see it. youve shown that god exists and hes just as likely to kill you as to throw you into a pit of fire. or could possibly the god you read about have some other way of existing that wouldnt mean doom for us all..?

and please consider what a very unfair position you put the christian in when you make this argument. you ask us to take the place of a soldier from thousands of years ago in a gypsy nation wandering in a desert with numerous city-kingdoms threatening to wipe them out entirely. you then ask us to make a moral decision in a situation we know little if anything about .. a decision that you say youd make with certainty when the people who were there didnt make it. in fact the only rebellion shown was to steal money after having killed kids.

Sad indeed, they would hide a gold tea pot but not an innocent human being, a great illustation that they did percieve the incredible waste of their dealings but had their priorities skewed.

are you going to argue with me or agree with me? please make up your mind. if you cant decide then indicate which position you think is morally inferior (even if by only a millionth of a degree):

• the soldier who blindly follows orders because thats all he ever knew or
• the soldier who similarly blindly follows orders up till the point where he sees a bit of cash and disobeys orders to steal it.

you ask us to help them make the right decision and then apply that hypothetical as if wed make the same decision in todays world. well ill make a decision. if god asks me to run a kid through i wont do it. not if he reveals himself in all his glory .. not in a million years. hows that? id tell him to put it away and then id hide the kid from him so he couldnt do anything ...

Then you are in rebellion against the God of the Bible, the ramifications of this fact are something you should examine.

and here is where your entire boatload of nails sinks like an anvil in soapy molecular acid. god HASNT asked me to kill any babies. and he wont. and you cant convince me otherwise. its possible you may try ... it might be entertaining. you may quote any scripture, any science book, any of my psychologists or counsellors (past or future) and no matter how convincing you are i will never concede that i maybe even might consider the mere potential of a hypothetical situation where the maddest madman would be slightly tempted to kill a baby. everything you post along these lines i will respond to with the sound assurance that you are a bad bad man and i never want to meet you.

reasoning why is easy - its a little thing called faith. i believe in my god. i trust him. he wont do that. youre immediately going to want to say "but he DID do that" to which i have no satisfactory answer for you. youll have to reach your place of security by yourself. ill not be moved from mine.

have you won?

You just told us you wouldn't do it, I am pleased to find a rightous man who would stand against those that would wontonly butcher infants.

please make up your mind .. am i standing against men or am i standing against god? if im standing against men we wouldnt have a 6 page long thread and longer posts because the answer is obvious. if im standing against god then what ive written above is what you should be reading. if im standing against man and god then im screwed.

no you havent. youve shown what a waste of time and effort questioning god is. you question him because you hate him or you question him because you think he doesnt exist but in all of your questioning you merely imply that you are either illogical in the extreme .. or twisted beyond belief.

Enlighten yourself my friend, Yaweh is but one God of thousands that man has worshiped, and what you know of him was told to you by men who had their own ambitions. I don't hate God, I seek the true God. But when I die if the true God turns out to be a bloodthirsty egomaniac then I will hate him, and oppose him, and spend all the power of my being to defeat him, because there is such a thing as right and wrong.

enlighten myself? .. thousands of gods? thats in just one hindu village. im certainly not going to enlighten myself by burdening myself down with millions of gods. you want to seek the true god and i guess youve rejected the "true god" in the bible so youre off to make up youre own god to add to the wal-mart sale..? regardless of what doubt may be cast on the bible i will never doubt that the god i trust is the true god. that god must remain consistent with the bible no matter what i understand. this is not an eviable position and it draws fire easily. nonetheless, there is my line in the sand.

imagine trying to prove your best friends non-existence because he said you shouldnt steal anything and then tomorrow he takes your car. thats illogical in the extreme.

Why not use the real question, what if your friend killed your car?

because if you get to pose hypotheticals to your own end then i get to do the same. answer the frigging question.

now try to imagine up a few reasons as to why he may have taken your car. pretty easy right?

There is No set of circumstances that would excuse him methodicaly butchering your car with a kitchen knife, and anyone who tried to convince you that what he did was right is twisted and evil.

i love that game ..

now imagine you get to confront your friend. what do you do? call the cops on him and have him hauled away without considering anything he said or even giving him the chance to speak? thats twisted beyond belief.

You've got a dead car in your arms, what could he possibly say?

fun isnt it?

fortunately everyone always has another possible path to follow that follows logic and right morality ...

If you mean to convince themselves that black is white and wrong is right then yes they do have a path to that, it's called religion.

thats not logical or moral fool ... i dont want to have to justify killing babies, but if it means giving up my faith then i will. fortunately im not compelled to defend my faith to a dishonest and poorly thought out hypothetical thread ...

or .. wait .. what the hell am i doing posting here then?

Say hi to that bus driver for me.

s'funny.. i thought that was you ... ah well .. "hi fool"

 

[Balder]

mm .. you might be able to see the ancient civilisations as self centered and capable of such barbary, but are you ignoring the fact that we are just as capable today as we were then. i dont think human nature changes at all. i dont think the morality changes at all. the only difference between what happened to those soldiers then and the implications for christians today is what god has done in each situation.

I think there is abundant evidence that there are degrees of moral development. We see it in children, as they grow up, learn to take others' perspectives, to have concern and compassion for others, etc. And I think we see it in cultures as well. Once we thought nothing of treating some human beings as animals and property; now the idea is abhorrent to most of us. We used to engage in brutal torture of prisoners; now most of us regard that as inhuman. We used to engage in painful public executions, now most of us consider that wrong.

The reason we see people as capable today of brutality and inhumanity as the ancients were, is because no one is born at a high stage of moral development. We all have to grow and develop, and not all of us develop to the highest potentials presently available; many do not.

According to your reasoning, however, there really is no moral compass, other than God commanding it. And he might be just as likely to order genocide as he supposedly did in the past.

it will be quite impossible for a christian to 'let go' of the idea that god endorsed what happened. to do that is to reject that god is incapable of action in situations like that. i also do not envy the person who chooses to try and defend that position. obviously not an easy thing to do. i would prefer not to have to try. but in refusing i would be rejecting god.

I don't think that letting go of the idea that God commanded genocide and the murder of infants and children is tantamount to saying God is incapable of action in those situations. I think it simply asserts that that is not the sort of action that a moral being would take, and it challenges the veracity of the tale ("God told me to do it") on that basis. Certainly an all-powerful God is capable of action in any situation. But if an all-powerful God chooses these ways to accomplish his aims, that certainly reflects poorly on him. His "methods" seem pretty brutal and limited.

id say more like that there are two stages. and jesus' teaching is as good as it gets. if i dont say that then i again reject god. i have to live with the implications of everything in the bible or reject god. as we all see. . its not easy.

Well, I'm heartened that you do not find it easy to justify genocide and child murder.

I wrote: ...I do not believe the Hebrews were directly instructed by "God" to go into various cities, wipe them out, kill everything in them, and take them for themselves. If you insist that God actually did this, I think you elevate the early stages of human moral reasoning to divine status and undermine the potential for present moral growth.

stipe responded: and i do believe that. i dont attribute any of the actions to human moral reasoning. as i said to fool the only moral discernment we saw in the stories (off the top of the head) was the guy stealing stuff after wiping out the city's inhabitants. i also believe it will always be very difficult to respond to these allegations against gods character without being maligned by the general population.

They are not allegations against God's character! They are a defense of it! They are protests against attributing such evil to a just and moral being!

Best wishes,

Balder

 

[Stripe]

I've watched the children come and go
A late long march into spring
I sit and watch those children
Jump in the tall grass
Leap the sprinkler
Walk in the ground
Bicycle clothespin spokes
The sound the smell of swingset hands

this thread is about dead babies .. not burnt ones ...

Considering that there was only one innocent child born in the entire history of the human race, all the other infants were something other than innocent.

all babies are innocent up until they realise their failure. wed have enough trouble convincing someone that killing a baby with a sword is better than leaving him to burn in the desert let alone trying to defend the idea that the dead baby goes to hell...

 

[logos_x]

Yes, condemning the act of genocide on the Hebrews' part is not an endorsement or justification of the practices of the nations which were destroyed.

Wiping out all the children of a people for your God because they are evil enough to sacrifice some of their children to their god is rather darkly ironic, don't you think?

I think a lot of this has to do with the culture of the day for one thing.

I also think that there are elements to this story that are not in evidence on this thead.

The nations that God ordered wiped out wre nations that would surely have wiped out Israel if they were allowed to continue.

I also think God was making a salient point upon history. The kinds of things these nations were doing..essentially in the name of God...were wrong in the extreme and men should not tolerate them.

I also think that your focus is backward. How about the times God could've killed the wicked and did not.

Now, I know that the fucus here is upon the women and children being killed. I'm not sure how innocent the women were...but the children is a difficult thing to take. Unles you consider that...back then...children that were not yours, from another nation, or a bastard, had a rough life ahead of them. Orphans from an enemy state would be particularly subject to all kinds of abuse.

Couls be...just maybe....kiling them was a merciful thing to do.

But...that in itself opens up another can of worms, doesn't it?

 

[Granite]

Nice, so we've gone from genocide to justifying it by doing the kiddies a favor.

 

[Stripe]

I think there is abundant evidence that there are degrees of moral development. We see it in children, as they grow up, learn to take others' perspectives, to have concern and compassion for others, etc. And I think we see it in cultures as well. Once we thought nothing of treating some human beings as animals and property; now the idea is abhorrent to most of us. We used to engage in brutal torture of prisoners; now most of us regard that as inhuman. We used to engage in painful public executions, now most of us consider that wrong.

and i view history differently. i consider our world still to have both types of people just as there were both types in the ancient world. there is slavery today and there was in the past. most of us think its bad today and many thought so in the past as well ..

...According to your reasoning, however, there really is no moral compass, other than God commanding it. And he might be just as likely to order genocide as he supposedly did in the past.

and according to your reasoning our moral compass is determined by our own actions. and we are just as likely to order genocide as not if we think we can get away with it...

I don't think that letting go of the idea that God commanded genocide and the murder of infants and children is tantamount to saying God is incapable of action in those situations. I think it simply asserts that that is not the sort of action that a moral being would take, and it challenges the veracity of the tale ("God told me to do it") on that basis. Certainly an all-powerful God is capable of action in any situation. But if an all-powerful God chooses these ways to accomplish his aims, that certainly reflects poorly on him. His "methods" seem pretty brutal and limited. ... Well, I'm heartened that you do not find it easy to justify genocide and child murder.

yeah .. i agree. and i adressed this in my post to fool. it would be a lot easier for me if god had told the isrealites to drag all the women and kids with them and theyd turned into slaves .. instead i have to be seen to defend child killing ... id prefer a god that i could make up but then id be rejecting the god of the bible. and i wont do that.

They are not allegations against God's character! They are a defense of it! They are protests against attributing such evil to a just and moral being!

sorry .. i mixed up my situationals there ... im not sure what im saying if i respond to this .. so i wont. if you have some point to make along these lines you will understand what questions to ask me better than i know what to say at the moment..

 

[Balder]

Stipe, if you believe there is no way God would ever command you to cut down infants with a sword, and that only a madman would do that, then why do you find it hard to question whether God really commanded that in the OT? Don't get me wrong -- I'm happy you find that difficult to accept. I do too. I just took the next logical step: therefore, the attribution to God of such acts and modes of operation must be incorrect.

 

[Stripe]

...ion whether God really commanded that in the OT? Don't get me wrong -- I'm happy you find that difficult to accept. I do too. I just took the next logical step: therefore, the attribution to God of such acts and modes of operation must be incorrect.

sure thing. i accept the god of the bible as presented and with all the inferred difficulties .. you reject him. thats pretty straightforward.