Would you kill 1000 helpless babies if your god told you to do it? (grace, atheist)
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I didn't just dream up this question. It is based on the first sentence in Chapter 31 of the Book of Numbers. That sentence reads:
The Lord said to Moses, “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites".
If you read more of that chapter, it describes how the Israelites won thier battle against the Midianites and slaughtered the baby boys they captured. Some people seem to think they were only doing what their god told them to do.
So what would you have done if your god gave you such a command?
I didn't just dream up this question. It is based on the first sentence in Chapter 31 of the Book of Numbers. That sentence reads:
The Lord said to Moses, “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites".
If you read more of that chapter, it describes how the Israelites won thier battle against the Midianites and slaughtered the baby boys they captured. Some people seem to think they were only doing what their god told them to do.
So what would you have done if your god gave you such a command?
Imagine someone holds a bus full of children hostage at gunpoint. They call you and say unless you murder someone within 24 hrs, he will shoot all the children on the bus. Would you kill someone?
Imagine someone holds a bus full of children hostage at gunpoint. They call you and say unless you murder someone within 24 hrs, he will shoot all the children on the bus. Would you kill someone?
If you respond to my poll, I will answer your question.
If you respond to my poll, I will answer your question.
I can't respond to your poll, because it doesn't represent me in any of the choices. If I said yes, I already know God won't ask me to do that because clearly that is not His will, so it wouldn't make sense. If I said no, I again already know His will in that He would never ask me to do that, so again it wouldn't make sense. And of course the last question doesn't represent me.
In Numbers 31 he asked Moses to do it, so why wouldn't he ask you?
Yes, God's judgment being poured out on the people because of their actions. In this instance, the people of Midian conspired to get the people of Israel to follow after other gods. Under the Law, this was a death sentence for the people of Israel. Because Midian did this thing, they fell under God's wrath, and so God told Moses to take vengeance on the Midianites.
Today is different, God has restored His connection to man through His grace. He sent His Son Jesus, to be judged for all our sins. Instead of wiping out every society who has rejected God, Jesus was put to death in our place. It's our duty to preach this message to the whole world, in hopes they will receive God's grace and be saved. Why would God tell me to kill someone, when He already died on their behalf? Jesus said He came to save, not to destroy.
By the way, when looking on the OT, how did God create the world? Where was all the death, slavery, natural disasters in the very beginning? Then tell me if it's God's will to do all those things.
I didn't vote, but I'll explain my position. I would do what God told me to do, but I would have to be 100% positive that it was God telling me to do it, and I don't know how I would ever know that for sure.
Yes, God's judgment being poured out on the people because of their actions. In this instance, the people of Midian conspired to get the people of Israel to follow after other gods. Under the Law, this was a death sentence for the people of Israel. Because Midian did this thing, they fell under God's wrath, and so God told Moses to take vengeance on the Midianites.
Today is different, God has restored His connection to man through His grace. He sent His Son Jesus, to be judged for all our sins. Instead of wiping out every society who has rejected God, Jesus was put to death in our place. It's our duty to preach this message to the whole world, in hopes they will receive God's grace and be saved. Why would God tell me to kill someone, when He already died on their behalf? Jesus said He came to save, not to destroy.
By the way, when looking on the OT, how did God create the world? Where was all the death, slavery, natural disasters in the very beginning? Then tell me if it's God's will to do all those things.
But hiker has a point here. Biblically speaking, there is precedent for God directly commanding his faithful to slaughter children, so you can't say God would never do that, He already did...
Secondly, you can't say that God would never do that now, because according to your theology, he changed his mind once, why not a second time? Either God is changable, and therefor can change again, or he is unchangable and what was moral then is moral now, i.e. killing children on His command.
The third option is that you cannot reconcile God doing something like that because God is good, and that action is not, thus showing that you are using some yardstick outside of God himself to measure the morality of an action. I don't have a problem with this approach, it is how I approach morality as an atheist, but it does mean that then God's prior actions certainly do appear immoral, and you have lost the defense of, "He is god, whatever he says goes."
It seems to me the only logically defensible positions are that God is not the source of morality, and thus his actions can be evaluated as morally good or evil, or God is the source of morality, and any action commanded by God, no matter how aweful ( child sacrifice, rape, murder, genocide) must be eagerly obeyed.
Of course this is dependent on a fairly narrow reading of Bible-god. You would have to dig into the theology of other variations (Hashem, Allah, Bramah, etc...) to see if they are equally self contradictory in this regard. I suspect from conversations with theflipflop that at least Orthodox Jewish interpretations would have the same dilemma, and I imagine Allah is probably also susceptible. Don't know much about the non-Abrahamics, so someone else would have to comment.
What you are failing to realize is that the Midianites were the cause of thousands dying of Israel. The land God gave to Abraham and thus to Israel is owned by God and He can give it to whomsoever He wills. The Midianites were worshipping Baal-Peor, a false god. God could not have these people living in the same land as the Israelites when they went into the promised land.
What you also fail to realize is that all the Midianites who died were eventually going to die anyway. God just hurried up the day of their death. He will bring them all back to life and give them all immortality and incorruption due to Christ dying for them. None of them will be upset with what God did, so why do you ascribe impropriety to God?
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