espritch

And there it is. It doesn't matter if God is moral, only that he is powerful. It is fear, not love, that makes a Christian (or a Muslim).

lpetrich

I've found William Lane Craig's Slaughter of the Canaanites, where he defends that alleged genocide.

He claimed that Biblical genocide is out of character for the God of the Bible, which is laughable -- this is a god who does not hesitate to commit mass murder.

He then went on to argue that if those mass murders were as fictional as the story of Romulus and Remus, then the problem disappears. It does NOT, because the question of their moral legitimacy still remains. And it does seem tacky to have been willing to make up a history of triumphant genocide.

He then went on to say that God has an absolute right to pull rank on us, like strike him dead whenever he pleases.

After that, he described the Canaanites has having committed terrible depravities, but does that justify killing entire populations? Including children and babies?

He followed this with a really bizarre argument that many of the Old Testament's rules were necessary to teach people how to make distinctions, which he justified by what looks to me like an odd misunderstanding.

And about babies and children, he used the Andrea Yates argument that killing them could just as well have been doing them a favor, by giving them an early sendoff to Heaven.

And he followed that by getting all weepy about how it must have been terrible for the Israelite soldiers to have to follow orders to kill all those women and children and other civilians.

Finally, I wish to mention that my first post ever in IIDB was on Biblical genocide, in a thread called Moses the war criminal?