God, the author of the biggest holocaust

[Aaran]

I know the Christian worldview has it that Satan is the Prince of Darkness and the apogee of all evil, but can it really have escaped the attention of two thousand years of Christendom that Jehovah appears to kill MANY more people in the Old Testament than the devil does?

If you asked a person to recite a litany of all of the genocides and outrages perpetrated by God over their morning bacon and eggs, I'm confident they could do it unthinkingly. 

But could they instance Satan's shenanigans with similar fluency? Has the devil actually killed anyone in the Bible?  I hope somebody more familiar with the Good Book than I might clarify this, because it seems to me that Satan and God ought to exchange jobs.

[robvalue]

I'm not sure of the sources, but I've heard a few times the devil killed 10. Conservative estimates for Yahweh are 2.5 million.

And this is in Yahweh's book!

[Aaran]

I'm not sure of the sources, but I've heard a few times the devil killed 10. Conservative estimates for Yahweh are 2.5 million.

And this is in Yahweh's book!

LOL, oh my god. The chasm is even wider than I expected. 

I think its apparent that Yahweh, in writing his lamentable book, has tried to conduct some sort of smear campaign against Satan, whom your statistics clearly demonstrate to be the gentler flower of the two.

[robvalue]

Yeah, it is kind of ridiculous!

Don Baker from the atheist experience loves to say that the most frequent interactions between God and humans in the bible is him killing them. The God number includes killings directly ordered by him as well as ones he carried out personally.

Here's a couple of examples, you can find more stuff like this all over the web

Satan kills

Yahweh kills

[Ravenshire]

Man dying at 100: 100 + infinity = infinity
Child murdered at two: 2 + infinity = infinity

The problem with an infinite afterlife.

The idea of an infinite afterlife is a carrot for simpletons who aren't willing to face the inevitable conclusion. Some on this site have said that gawd will change our natures so that the problems of infinite existence go away, but if it's going to change who and what we fundamentally are, what's the fucking point?

Add in free will and you get a whole other set of problems. Free will + humans + eternity means that sooner or later someone will eat the apple. Guaran-damn-teed. Unless gawd (once again) changes our nature, this time so that free will won't lead to sin. And, again, if it's going to change who and what we fundamentally are, what's the fucking point?

[Drich]

The 'holocaust of the children', as Greg Paul puts it, dwarfs any human caused holocaust by a wide margin. All of the mass slaughters of the 20th century combined pale by comparison. 

Here are the numbers:

Up to this point, there have been over 100 billion people ever born.

At least half of them have died, and continue to die, before they make it out of childhood. Most estimates say the figure might have been as high as 75% dead children before the advent of agriculture. 

That is 50 billion dead children. 

Over half of that number have died of natural disease.

So, this god created a universe with at least 100 billion galaxies, each with at least 100 billion stars, with an untold number of planets orbiting these stars (2000 extrasolar planets found thus far in our galactic neighborhood alone) only to pick one that is a literally a child killer. 

"But, but... The Fall of man!" i hear you exclaim. Sorry, but that does not let god off the hook. Being omniscient, he would have known the Earth was going to be a child killer, yet he let it happen anyway, 

"But, but... free will!" I hear you exclaim. Really? What age do children understand the concept of free will? What free will did the 20 billion children have that have died of malaria?

This doesn't even take into consideration, those who die pre-birth. 

Over 50% of all fertilized eggs never make it. They don't implant into the uterus, or they are naturally aborted. 

In the US alone, there are 4 million births a year out of about 8 million conceptions. There are about 1.3 million induced abortions a year, that leaves 2.7 million 'god' induced abortions a year. Figuring that prenatal care is pretty good and infant mortality is fairly low in the US, who knows how many 'god' induced abortions occurring in the rest of the world, where this isn't the case.

[jesus_wept]

"All the children are in purgatory, waiting to be resurrected into a life of pure joy and love*, so god was doing them a favour really."

*except for those who will be bought back to life so they can be needlessly killed again by being burnt in the lake of fire.

I kid you not but I've actually had someone try to argue this nonsense with me recently. Although I have shortened their long winded argument down somewhat.

[Minimalist]

God has granted to each person an infinite life: x amount of years on earth and infinity hereafter. A person who lives to 100 has the same amount of life as the child who is slaughtered at the age of two: infinite years. Their lives would look like this:

Man dying at 100: 100 + infinity = infinity
Child murdered at two: 2 + infinity = infinity

That is, quite possibly, the stupidest thing ever written by any apologist, anywhere.  And that takes some doing.

[Thackerie]

obviously stupid because for every one killed more than one has been added.

What I find obviously stupid is this ridiculously small type. PLEASE use a font size more appropriate to human eyes.

[Thackerie]

The 'holocaust of the children', as Greg Paul puts it, dwarfs any human caused holocaust by a wide margin. All of the mass slaughters of the 20th century combined pale by comparison. 

While I might agree that this is one of the tougher questions proposed by atheists, there are coherent responses.

I'll give you the condensed version, but I recommend you read the full version here:

Hard Sayings Of The Old Testament
by Jimmy Akin
http://jimmyakin.com/2007/02/hard_sayings_of.html

Akin explores this subject in some depth, so grab a cup of coffee and block out some time to get through it all.

Short version:

God has granted to each person an infinite life: x amount of years on earth and infinity hereafter. A person who lives to 100 has the same amount of life as the child who is slaughtered at the age of two: infinite years. Their lives would look like this:

Man dying at 100: 100 + infinity = infinity
Child murdered at two: 2 + infinity = infinity

Now, since God is more than capable of making sure that the child who dies at two has an infinite amount of joy and happiness of an infinite number of years, that child has not been cheated out of anything by not living to be 100. If anything, that child may have been spared 98 years of suffering and pain.

Consequently, God is equally fair and generous to all of His beloved children regardless of their circumstances in this life.

Akin provides a lot more than this, of course.

Hope this helps.

So, obviously, the moral choice is to kill babies the second they are expelled from the womb, or sooner if possible. Send them straight to infinity and spare them from suffering at all in this horrid, horrid world.