the Bible advocates genocide

[HelloDollyLlama]

The more I re-read the Bible, the more appalling I find it. This book is supposed to be a moral guide?

As we know from the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua, as soon as the Israelites escaped from Egypt, they went to the Holy Land and committed genocide and ethnic cleansing against all of the innocent peoples who had the bad luck to get in the way of the “chosen people�. As commanded by the “all-loving God�, they went from town to town, murdering every man, woman and child, except the pretty girls who were given to the soldiers to be raped.

But in the first book of Samuel (1 Samuel 15), it gets even worse. In that book, God commands Saul to commit genocide against the Amalekites, and slaughter all the men, women and children. Saul does commit genocide, but he fails to kill one Amalekite fast enough to suit God, and also saves some of the Amalekite animals, so they can offer them as a sacrifice, to show their love for God. And for those reasons alone, God rejects Saul. Later, Saul is having trouble on the battlefield, and Samuel rises from the dead to tell Saul, again, that because of his failure to slaughter the Amalekites completely on command, Saul himself is condemned. Soon after, Saul’s army is attacked and he is killed. God condemned Saul for not committing genocide with sufficient brutality (1 Samuel 28).

So, to win God's love, it's not enough to be a mass murderer. You must be a perfectly efficient mass murderer.

[Goat]

No society would claim to acts of genocide unless they actually did it. It happened.

Really?? Can you show me some archeological evidence? How about ancient cultures that need to puff themselves up to look bigger than they actually are to their neighbors?

[HelloDollyLlama]

Nice Straw Man argument?

No, it's called "logic".

At no point did I say that every word of the Bible was untrue.

If its authors admit to murdering thousands of people, it is logical to assume that it is probably true, because there would be no reason to make it up. And where are all those Midianites and Amalekites, anyway? They disappeared because they were massacred. In fact, many years later during the time of Hezekiah, the Israelites found a pocket of Amalekites hiding in the wild country, hunted them down and killed them. The Israelites made a point of not only exterminating them but making records of it.

If, however, its authors claim that their God built the world in six days, and now sits in heaven where he will invite only the people who do everything his priests say, including giving them a ton of cash...then that's when you throw the ***** flag (see, I used that word again!), because it is obviously a con game, employing a lot of obvious and impossible supernatural ****, to separate fools from their money.

This is called "critical thinking", the one thing religious people are terrified of. We're allowed to "pick and choose" between sensible logical assumptions and obvious *****. That's what critical thinking means.

[Edited by a moderator for profanity. Consider this a repeat of warnings given elsewhere]

No society would claim to acts of genocide unless they actually did it. It happened.

On the contrary; in the ancient world, the total extermination of one's enemies was something to be proud of and boasted about, and frequently exaggerated. Any number of Egyptian steles and Persian monuments, not to mention ancient documents, attest to that.

The archaeological evidence unambiguously and conclusively proves that there was never any genocidal "conquest of Canaan" as related in the book of Joshua. It very clearly DID NOT happen.

It is objectively and scientifically clear that the Israelite people, who were primarily indigenous to Canaan anyway, slowly spread throughout the area and intermingled with the previous inhabitants over the course of centuries. There was no whirlwind conquest as depicted in the Bible.

I find this post of yours amazing.

Do you realize that YOU, of all people, are here defending a wholly literal surface reading of the Bible as historically accurate, in direct contradiction to established science, in order to support an a priori assumption about the veracity of Scripture and the nature of God and religion?

Does that sound at all familiar to you? Have you not expressed contempt and disdain for fundamentalists who do that same sort of thing?

Why do you (rightly) dismiss narratives that are fantastic and self-serving and intended to promote the primacy and superiority of the Hebrews, but enthusiastically endorse narratives of that very same nature as literally true when they support your polemic? In other words, why is the Bible a load of ridiculous fables when you don't like the content, but dependably and literally accurate when you do?

Don't people normally call that "picking and choosing"?

[cnorman18]

Nice Straw Man argument?

No, it's called "logic".

At no point did I say that every word of the Bible was untrue.

If its authors admit to murdering thousands of people, it is logical to assume that it is probably true, because there would be no reason to make it up.

It has been pointed out to you twice that in the ancient world, the total extermination of one's enemies was not something to be ashamed of, but something to be boasted about and even exaggerated. Ignoring that point won't make it go away.

And where are all those Midianites and Amalekites, anyway? They disappeared because they were massacred. In fact, many years later during the time of Hezekiah, the Israelites found a pocket of Amalekites hiding in the wild country, hunted them down and killed them.

Then they were not totally exterminated in the first place as the Bible claimed, now were they?

As for the Midianites - I have posted this before - there seem to have been enough of them left around a few generations later for the Israelites to have been "delivered into their hands for nine years" in the book of Judges.

As I have posted elsewhere, even the internal evidence of the Hebrew text itself indicates that these events were stories intended to make a political or nationalistic point and not history. They were not recorded contemporaneously, unless you buy into Mosaic authorship of the Torah and Joshua as the author of the book bearing his name.

The Israelites made a point of not only exterminating them but making records of it.

But on the other thread, you said that one cannot compare the recordkeeping of 6 AD with that of the present day. Was it better a thousand years earlier?

These are oral traditions and folktales recorded generations later, not "records." There is more reason to dismiss the historicity of the massacres than that of the Plagues on Egypt.

If, however, its authors claim that their God built the world in six days, and now sits in heaven where he will invite only the people who do everything his priests say, including giving them a ton of cash...then that's when you throw the bullshit flag (see, I used that word again!),

Knock it off. There's no reason for it other than childishly showing off how righteously defiant you are and inflating your ego, and it WILL get you put on probation and/or banned.

... because it is obviously a con game, employing a lot of obvious and impossible supernatural crap, to separate fools from their money.

So absolutely everyone professionally involved in religion is complicit in an ongoing enterprise of deliberate deception and fraud?

I don't believe in Christianity either. But I don't think every preacher, priest and reverend on earth is a consciously hypocritical crook. For one thing, I was one.

Televangelists, yes.

This is called "critical thinking", the one thing religious people are terrified of. We're allowed to "pick and choose" between sensible logical assumptions and obvious bullshit. That's what critical thinking means.

Then think critically and not just in the service of your own assumptions.

As I said: modern science has determined that these massacres never happened. Archaeology, secular history, anthropological and linguistic studies all come to that common conclusion. Modern Biblical scholarship agrees.

Why are you resisting the conclusions of modern science in favor of a literal reading of the Bible?