Wallener

Actually, they are. A female primate whose children are taken away becomes available for reproduction sooner. As one specific example, breastfeeding delays the return of the reproductive cycle in human females: take away the child, stop the breastfeeding, et voila, "heat".

However, I was referring to males increasing their reproductive success by killing the infants of competing males - a common occurence in primates and elsewhere.

Wallener

If we were the only species to do this, you might have a point. But we aren't, so you don't. "Legitimate" has nothing to do with it: either it works, or it doesn't. Nture has no other standard of success.

And...it does work.

freigeister

There is nothing new about genocide, nor about attempts to rationalize it. Apart from their magnitude, the genocides of recent times differ from others only in that they justify themselves on grounds other than God's will. In particular, the Nazis invoked materialist determinism and evolution in fabricating their racial doctrine. Once these join God on the ash-heap of history, what new phantom will people invoke to justify their murderous savagery?

As for Moses, well, he may have been a baby-killer, and he may not have been. Many charges have been laid upon him, not all justly so. The question is really not about what is laid upon Moses, however, but rather what is laid upon whatever it is that we construe as the absolute.

BadBadBad

Very good. Finally an answer to the question.

I think you're quite wrong on that.

Right, but why don't you want to do it?

Then what does it have to do with? I wouldn't do it for three reasons. One, I think it's wrong to kill and innocent child. Two, I'd have empathy and pity for the child. Three, there is no compelling reason listed in the Joshua story to overcome reasons 1 and 2.

Perhaps as a group of freed slaves living in the desert, the land, cattle, buildings, wells, and olive yards might be a compelling reason enough. Only they had an omnipotent God caring for them. A God for example that could create an entirely new universe for them to live on. So I think despite the discussion by Wallener, survival is not a legitimate reason here.

Then we have the stated reasons to satisfy God's justice and vengeance. Like Lee continued to harp on, God may have had the prerogative to kill all that breathe, but he wasn't the one having to do the dirty deed. The hypocrisy of sinners killing all that breathe because the victims were sinners would be a bit too much for me. It certainly wouldn't justify killing a three year old child that was begging to never be an Amorite again.

Why wouldn't you obey God? You seem to be saying it's morally right, just, and for a greater purpose. You've claimed butchering by sword would be efficient and painless. Why would you rebel against God and not butcher a child?

Would your loved one I hold be an issue for you? Would that factor into it?

I don't have any reason to believe these stories as history. History doesn't include the supernatural. I do have reason to believe that killing all that breathe by the edge of the sword is more brutal than words can describe. Would you like me to provide you some more links to eyewitness accounts?

It's only interesting in that you want to deny the brutality and horror these stories leave out. You want to, but there's absolutely no way any reasonable person could read these stories and not see all the horror. I find it disturbing that you're still trying even though you won't take up the sword. You've described the killing as efficient and painless and for good and moral reasons. Yet you wouldn't do it yourself. It seems you still want to keep one foot in God's boat and one in humanity's boat. You can't do that with this challenge. Either you're going to stand with humanity, or you're going to stand with God. Careful, because this is Joshua's slaughterfield and they're killing all those not with God.

First, I'm arguing that war in the story of Joshua was not necessary. Even Joshua in Numbers 31 didn't see the need to kill all that breathe. It wasn't necessary even for war. What I'm saying is that you don't kill babies for imaginary Gods. Again you're arguing for the righteousness of butchering babies, yet you personally don't believe it righteous to butcher babies.

But we're talking about objective morality as compared to subjective morality. If you believe in God, you believe it is absolutely moral and just. God knows you're facing the loss of your loved one, but he wants you to do it anyway.

Matthew 10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

rexrex4

Number 1) Nature has no standard of success is the correct view. Nature is not a living being, it is the conditions that living being cook it, interact with so that consciousness are both influencing and being influenced by that environment as time passes. Number 2) You claim it works. Unless you are god, mere mortals can only let time tell whether ‘it works’. And of course what works is subject to evolutionary as well as human evaluation. At one time slavery would be considered to work. And according to the morality you are standing up for, if it works in the future it will be soundly justified. And should aliens land on the planet and enslave us that should be roundly applauded by you. Such a criteria for morality as this ‘whether it works’, few if any evolutionist has or would ever consider adopting as a code.
I will say that it is the code god uses according to either testament since god goes around killing whomever bugs him for any reason like picking up firewood on the Sabbath, and don’t tell me god doesn’t do it because god unleashed the dogs, I didn’t; and don’t tell me the bible is fairytales designed to teach good morals because if that is what you believe please phrase everything you say with the bible is a fairytale and there is no god and here is what I have learned from these fantasy objects.
The bible is a fairytale you seem to be saying and yet you seem very concerned to run around making sure people correctly understand the Judaic view. If the bible is fairytale then it doesn’t matter what anybodies viewpoint is, they are all equally valid that is to say equalyl invalid.
And 3) the idea of the natural environment is tottally imparial with respect to morality is not supported by evolution. One does not look at survival strategies and exclaim, oh those parasites over there use that technique, let us start the parasite club next week. It doesn’t matter how many examples one could find to support a particular survival strategy, I would still have a point.
Just because something works and has worked many times before that doesn’t mean that a better system will not be found and if it can be found that is because it was possible all the time in potential, which is the impartial fact of nature, not some misconstrued tooth and claw foremost bias that you imagine.

andrewcriddle

I would in all probability not kill the child because to do so would be against my sensibilities gut instincts etc.

ie my belief that such actions are normally very wrong would override arguments (whether true or false) that the specific circumstances made such actions appropriate.

Andrew

Biff the unclean

In other words you would put your own sense of decency above God's morality.
What does this tell you about what you have been told is God's morality?

BadBadBad

Even though you say you would put your own decency above God's morality and justice, you sound like an innocent murderer, a victim killer. You plead decency, but in the same breath, you switch discourse and adjust it to the dominant ideology. You would have fit in well in Rwanda.

From here:

"We can see it for example in the testimony of this seventy-four year-old 'killer' captured by the RPF: 'I regret what I did. [...] I am ashamed, but what would you have done if you had been in my place? Either you took part on the massacre or else you were massacred yourself. So I took weapons and I defended the members of my tribe against the Tutsi.

Even as the man pleads compulsion, in the same breath he switches his discourse to adjust it to the dominant ideology. He acknowledges that he killed (under duress) harmless people, and yet he agrees with the propaganda view (which he knows to be false) by mythifying them as aggressive enemies. If the notion of guilt presupposes a clear understanding of what one is doing at the time of the crime, then there were at that time in Rwanda, to use the vivid expression coined by the historian Jean-Pierre Chretien, a lot of 'innocent murderers.' Such 'victim-killers' were often disgusted and horrified at what they were doing which is partly why large groups of Hutu peasants started to flee their Hills even before the arrival of the RPF troops."

BadBadBad

Who was it that said Lee answered that he wouldn't kill the child? Do these quotes below indicate a yes or a no to the question? He sounds like an innocent murderer and victim killer too. Lee and Andrew are both still victims of the propaganda and dominant ideology.

What ever the Amorites might of thought as they watched their loved ones be butchered. What ever the Midianites might have thought as they were being hacked to death. What ever the Cananites might have thought as they bled out on the ground, rest assured. They might think better of all this now that Lee preaches to the dead.

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

This gets to a point that it would be important to mention, the reason Moses gives is because of the sin all but the non-virgin girls would bring:

Numbers 31:16 [The women] were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the Lord in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the Lord's people.

So by implication, this will be a consequence from bringing any of the other people in. Now we need to ask why this might be, and what could be meriting death here. To address this, I would mention that the Amorites were extraordinarily tall, and although this normally comes with health difficulties, once people get above 9 feet tall, the Amorite Goliath was well over this, and carried 125 pounds of armor and his javelin was said to be like a weaver's beam.

So if the Biblical account is accurate (which is why these criticisms of these orders are being made), then there must have been supernatural abilities here, in the men, at least, who were the ones said to be extraordinarily tall. Then in reference to this, there is the passage about "The sons of God taking wives from the daughters of men" in Genesis 6, when the Nephilim were on the earth, for which an interpretation is that these were the offspring of women and fallen angels.

So this would explain the judgment, and why even children might be judged, if they were as these Nephilim.

If God has the prerogative of determining the time and manner of a person's death then … he has that prerogative. And fulfilled prophecy, as I'm hoping to discuss here, is a clear indication that God has access to knowledge we don't have.

We can't say there is a possibility, until we know there isn't one, because we know the answer?

I'm sorry I wasn't clear, what I meant was that it is possible that they could have asked for a supernatural way for this to be carried out.

I agree, and it might also be that they did not consider this possibility.

This is only the case if there was no real possibility that the judgment could have been carried out another way, we just agreed, did we not, that there was another possibility?

I have one outstanding proposal for a debate with Farrell already, when and if this one is done, another could be proposed on inerrancy proper, do remind me if I forget…

It the means were not appropriate to the end, yes, if they were appropriate, then no. I expect we don't know enough to evaluation the appropriateness of the means here, but we may take this as an indication that even a judgment of death may yet be in a person's best interest.

Why is this not indicating love for others than Israel, then?

A claim does not mean God commanded it in a given instance, though.

Well, both Andrew and I did actually address this, the command should be possible to carry out without malice and cruelty, God must indeed provide a non-sinful motive, which would be one indication that this came from God, also, as Andrew said, all that we know of God, all that he has commanded in morality, must line up with the situation of the command, and with the content.

But my point here was that there is no mention of using a sword in God's commands to them, and even a command in one instance to use a sword (though I can't think of an instance) does not mean this was implied in every other instance of commanded judgment. Some judgments were by stoning (Josh. 7:25), actually, in one instance, the walls fell down and must have caused deaths (Josh. 6:20), in another, there were hailstones as well as swords (Josh. 10:11).

This is in Scripture, though, and God knows more about the state of human hearts than I do.

The person who carries out a just sentence is not in need of mental health remediation, though, and I do hold that the same principle holds in both God's just sentence, and in the state's just sentence, and the one who may carry it out.

I would not use this way of saying this, but if God determined this was to be the time for a person to die, and I was to be carrying this out, I would act to carry it out.

Genesis 22:7-8 "But where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.

I'm saying a sin is by definition not God's command, though, and that is why it is a sin to disobey him.

This does not address my point, though, for if God bears the pain that he decrees, then this is not what people are put in jail for.

I have to stop here, for I can't respond to every point that came after this, this response is quite long already, so if you all have a point that I didn't address, please bring it to my attention...

Regards,
Lee