The Immorality of God - The Canaanites

[Whateverist]

Many people argue that God acted immorally in the Old Testament when He ordered the Israelites to destroy the Canaanites who were living in the land that God had promised to Abraham and his descendants. However, there are several reasons why this is a poor argument.
 
First, if God does not actually exist, then the accounts of His deeds in the Old Testament are meaningless fables, and it does not matter what these stories claim about God.

You can stop right there as far as I'm concerned. Except I wouldn't call them "meaningless" fables. You expect the characters of legends and fables to be over sized and exaggerated. Personally it is the depiction of a god as hyper rationally kind which I find to be suspect.

 

Each of these points suggest that there is nothing inconsistent or contradictory about the Judeo-Christian view of a God who is both loving and capable of wiping out evil.

But don't you apologists teach that god was first and created all else? If there is evil in the world it obviously has god's blessing. If He occasionally has to reboot a particular group that would indicate He has favorites. Perhaps the evil you do to those who torment god's chosen is blessed in the eye of the lord? Would you personally be faithful enough to bash the skull of an infant if you believed it to be god's will?

Ironically, atheists often ask, “If God exists, why doesn’t He prevent evil?” The destruction of the Canaanites is an example of God putting an end to evil practices (such as child sacrifices to a false god) just as these atheists demand. Unwilling to let go of this convenient (if impotent) cudgel, however, atheists continue to object to God’s judgment and destruction of the Canaanites—a clear example of wanting to have it both ways.

The shoe may be on the other foot. It is no concern of mine that the god of bible does what I would call immoral if men did it. It causes me no conflict because I'm willing to call that spade a spade. I think it is you that is made uncomfortable by all this, not atheists. But hey, if it helps you to project one side of your internal debate out there onto atheists in order to work through your issues, I'm glad we can help.

Finally, while objections to the immorality of the God of the OT may explain why one may not be Jewish or Christian, they offer only an incomplete explanation for why someone is an atheist since there are many alternative views of God that do not require acceptance of anything from the Bible.

Promising to hear you say so. I quite agree. But thank you, no thank you. I'm not having any more gods.