John A. Broussard

lee has already answered the question. He couldn't do it, but god could do it, and lee would approve of it if god did it.

Gamut

You are correct. Missed it.

Obviously lee would have directly disobeyed Moses, and thereby disobeyed God, albeit unknowingly. This raises the issue of whether the Isrealites should have listened to Moses and hacked the babies to death.

Obviously by this statement, lee believes it was entirely possible that Moses was lying to the army about where the idea to commit the slaughter came from.

BadBadBad

First, I'm not making an argument, yet. I'm waiting for you to answer my question. Yes or no do you have enough faith in Joshua, Moses, and God to hack a baby to death with sword? If you say you'll follow God's absolute moral judgement and butcher the baby, I'll argue from the position of my morality. Like I said initially in my hypothetical, I don't think too highly of baby butchering. He's not a goat, and I don't think it too morally ethical under any circumstances to slaughter him like one.

That's why I'm holding your loved one right here. You know, just in case you let these religious fantasies get the best of you. If you act immorally, I'm going to teach you a thing or two about how human morality works. I'm going to watch you, and then what ever you do to that child, I'm going to do exactly that to your loved one. That's the position I'll argue from if you decide to butcher the baby. It's not going to be a rational argument. It's not going to matter whether you are right or wrong. You're not going to have to thoughtfully rationalize over the intricacies of God's absolute justice in this case. You may not care about that baby you're about to kill, but when I start hacking off your daughter's arms and stabbing her in the chest and hacking a good way into her neck, and she's screaming and begging as she bleeds out in Joshua's slaughterfield, you may think twice about your philosophical arguments as to what constitutes torture, morality, justice, and humanity. I'm going to make a very strong emotional appeal that you not ever butcher babies again for any reason. Do you have any other questions as to my position as to morality?

Now, if you say you don't have the faith or courage to butcher the baby for God, then we'll have a little talk about what this means with respect to the Christian religion you want to preach to us. Only it doesn't sound like you're going to pick this option. Christianity doesn't give you much leeway there. You're either with God, or you're stiffnecked and rebellious. You're a sinner worthy of utter destruction. In fact perhaps you are really worshipping another god, not the god of Israel. Be very careful about that. You are standing in Joshua's slaughterfield, and Joshua is killing people just like you.

Yes, the narrative is a little soft on that isn't it. There's hardly a mention of gratuitous suffering, but I suppose there's not much glory in that. Perhaps they merely left that part out.

Let me ask you. How can you butcher a child while his siblings watch and not have that be tortuous to the other children and mother? Here is the next boy. Oops. He started to run away. Quick, slash him across the shoulders with your sword before he gets away. He screams in agony, and his family runs to his rescue. Get back get back you say, and you hack a hand off one of the siblings trying to protect him. In your haste, you stab him in the gut with your sword, but he's still alive. Fortunately the family backs off to give you room to work. You stab him again in the chest, but he still isn't dead. He's screaming in agony. Now you hack down on his head and finally kill him, only he squirms and writhes on the ground as he dies.

Now for the little girl.

And this continues until all seven children are dead. The little boy has just seen all of his siblings hacked down in front of him. He's seen what it's like to have your sister's head chopped off. He's seen the agony and terror of having a sword run through your brother's belly. He's seen the arterial bleeding when you cut off his sister's arm and the screaming and helplessness and terror in her eyes. He's heard the screaming and begging, but he knows now you won't stop hacking until he's dead. Now you're coming for him. The blood from his siblings is still dripping from your sword.

Then you kill him.

I don't know about you Andrew, but I can't imagine there not being gratuitous suffering for all involved as each family member is butchered by sword. I can't imagine a more tortuous and inhumane way to die especially for a helpless child. Perhaps the narrative left a little of the gratuitous suffering out.


Given the crude weapons death may or may not be very painful? Are you kidding? Perhaps we should drop all other topics and focus on this one for a while. Just what kind of blow with a crude weapon do you think would cause a painless death? Do you think it would hurt much to have your throat slashed? You know you probably wouldn't die for several minutes, and you'd be aware of bleeding out. What if you were stabbed in the chest? You know the blow would probably have to break several ribs. What if the stab just missed your heart. How long do you think you might live with a wound like that? What if you bashed their head in? Do you think if you killed a hundred people that way all of them would die instantly? Maybe 90 out of a hundred? Maybe only 80? What if you got tired after fifty or so and your axe didn't penetrate quite as deeply. Do you think that might be a bit painful?

What about with high tech weapons? Do you think that in a mass uncontrolled execution you could mow down everyone in a crowd with a machine gun killing them instantly? I mean, you pretty much have to hit them in the heart, head, or neck to kill them instantly. Otherwise I'd bet being shot is going to be pretty painful. Plus they probably fall down and then you've got to go through them one by one to make sure they're dead, while they suffer and bleed out in agony.

You see Andrew, I'm not sure where you're going with this. Killing, especially with crude weapons is pretty gruesome business. It kind of goes hand in hand with torture, agony, and terror. You really can't separate these concepts. I think it's pretty safe to assume they left that part out because they were really more focused on the glory of it all for God.

No I'm afraid not. You want to leave out the humanity in this hypothetical. In Joshua, the humanity of all the butchered was a side issue. They left that part out. To you, this child is just a cockroach that needs to be stamped out under your shoe. You know that's exactly how the Hutu's characterized the Tutsis. If it's a snake, you cut it's head off, one of the killer's declared. That's how genocide works. First you have to dehumanize the victims such that you don't have to recognize their suffering any more than you would a goat you butchered for dinner. The humanity of it all is not a side issue. It's the main issue, and I've brought your loved one into this just to make sure we don't forget about that aspect of the problem. Will you tell me her name?

No, I'm afraid that's a little too impersonal. Yes, it's safe and effective for the killers, and yes it takes out the innocent and helpless with the guilty, but that's not what we have in Joshua. We don't have indescriminate killing. Each person is killed individually one at at time. You have a choice whether to kill each person.

In Rwanda, just like in Joshua, at first, the strong men were killed. Then the women. The children were spared at first. No one wanted to kill the children. Only I remeber a story where 600 children were rounded up in the center of town. All their parents had been murdered. They had no place to go, and they stayed at the center of town for a few days. Something had to be done. There was no one to care for them. So something was done. They killed them all. Each child of 600 were killed. You don't have that problem with bombs. You don't have to take a child and look him in the eye as he begs for his life. You don't have to keep the memory of slaughtering a child the same age as your own. These are the decisions Joshua's army had to make. This is the decision I'm asking you to make. It is entirely a different problem than deciding to flip the switch and release a bomb from 30,000 feet.

You're also going to have to watch as I slaughter your child, or your mother or wife. You'll have to hear them scream. You'll see the terror in their eyes as they realize they're being killed. You'll have to watch the brutality and cruelty as I hack them to death. I don't think you'll think this is a side issue then.

That's a brilliant revelation Andrew. Are we making progress here?

That will be your decision to make, but please decide one way or another so that we can move on to analyze your choice.


Except for the main point. Perhaps you could go back to my first point and answer my question. Will you butcher this child with Joshua's sword dripping in the blood of his siblings, while his mother looks on crying uncontrollably and he begs he'll never be an Amorite again? Will you butcher the child in the name of God, or will you deny God and rebel against him?

You try to distract from the point. We're not talking about all possible circumstances. The circumstances are very clear and specific. You hold a sword to the boy's throat. I hold a sword to your loved one's throat. I've told you very clearly that I think it's immoral for you to kill the boy. Do you really care why I think it's immoral?

Look. She screams. I think I just cut her throat a little. Do you care about the Geneva convention? Do you want to argue with me? She's screaming that you shut up and put the sword down. Do you really care why I think it's immoral for you to slaughter that child? I'm getting tired of waiting. Will you put the sword down or do you intend to use it? I too am tired of discussing it, and the more you discuss it, the more I'm convinced that you will kill the boy. Why should I wait to continue this mindless discussion any further?

Biff the unclean

Now how can you drop Joshua and keep Jesus as historic without switching standards for deciding what is historic?

I find it objectionable because 1) Jewish purity is racism. If you'll recall the Jews themselves had a great deal of trouble 60 something years ago because another group is overly concerned with it's purity.
2) The story promotes genocide as a moral, God ordained, activity. Also note the mid 20th century Jews reaction when they met someone with the same aims as Joshua who had technology to back himself up.

How hard is this for you to understand? BBB keeps hoping you'll come to this conclusion on your own, but I'll spell it out for you. Your religion with it's insistance on obedience and faith promotes immorality in the guise of morality. Joshua is a prime example, the same God who gives the command "Thou shalt not kill/murder" is giving the command "Thou shalt commit genocide."

Wallener

I'm hearing you say you believe not killing a baby in a brutal fashion is - or at least should be - an absolute moral standard applicable to everyone, everywhere, all the time. Is that a fair characterization?

BadBadBad

I didn't intend on making any statements as to the morality of killing babies in all circumstances. For example, in Rwanda, people and their families were killed for not taking part in the genocide. If you saw your neighbor butchered in his front yard, and then the thugs went in and slaughtered his wife and children all because he wouldn't be a Tutsi killer, what would you do when they came to your house? Some Hutu's died with their Tutsi neighbors. Some, in fear for their lives took up their machetes and went to work killing their Tutsi neighbors. Which choice was the moral one?

That's not what happened in Joshua, and it's certainly not the case in the hypothetical I've put forward.

Wallener

Just trying to clarify your position. Are you then saying that there may be circumstances where it *is* moral to butcher babies?

Biff the unclean

Odd, he keeps asking that same question of the Christians here and gets nothing but equivocation. Does killing babies become moral...for you...when God orders you to hack them to bits as He ordered Joshua?
Or would you prefer to keep tap dancing?

Wallener

I'm not the one tap dancing. I have no problem accepting that infanticide can be the most appropriate course of action. I'm trying to understand his position: is he saying Joshua was wrong because he killed babies, or is he saying Joshua is wrong because he killed babies for unacceptable reasons?

What's your position on this, Bif?

andrewcriddle

Joshua is IMHO probably historical.

However the evidence for a historical Jesus is centuries closer to the alleged events than the evidence for a historical Joshua.

Andrew Criddle