The Immorality of God - The Canaanites

[downbeatplumb]

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.

This would be true if the god character wasn't believed by some people to not only be real but to be a role model and influence. Incredible I know but there are some people out there that actually live life like the stuff in holy texts is true!
 

Second, if the purpose of objecting to Old Testament accounts is to hold God and His followers to a standard of behavior, then it is reasonable to ask whose standard should be used and why?

Well I'm glad you asked that, I would judge behaviour by the standards of today. If you do judge the actions of the god character through modern morality it falls short and you will see that the actions replicate what you would expect from a poorly written being used to justify the actions of bronze age goat herders.
 

Third, if believers in the Judeo-Christian God are to answer for God’s actions in their scriptures, then it seems reasonable to examine the justifications for and explanations of those actions as offered by them including:
 

1. The Canaanites were actually a perverse people, and God patiently waited 400 years (from the time of Abraham to Joshua) allowing the Canaanites time to amend their evil ways. Instead, their wickedness actually increased, so God used the Israelites to punish the Canaanites for their sins – just as He had punished all mankind by means of the flood earlier, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and even the Israelites themselves by means of forty years spent in the wilderness and the Babylonian captivity. Clearly, God was no harder on the Canaanites than He was upon His own people.
   
2. The Canaanites had the opportunity to flee; by choosing to stay and fight, they resisted God and sealed their own fate. 
   
3. It is evident that the Israelites didn’t literally kill every single Canaanite man, woman and child, because the Canaanites continued to appear in the Bible long after the time when they were allegedly wiped out. It is more likely that the authors of the Old Testament books used metaphorical or hyperbolic language to express the message they wanted to convey about Israel’s victories over the Canaanites.
   

 
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.

Again we see theists justifying genocide. A common trend.

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.

God is supposed to be able to have mind control. In the exodus fable he is said to have "hardened Pharoahs heart" so surely a kinder way of dealing with them would be anything other than what the story says. To be clear the story of the canaanites is just a petty justification for a violent act perpetrated by an evil cult, the cult of the rather silly desert god Yahweh.[/quote]