The Immorality of God - The Canaanites

[downbeatplumb]

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.

First, why do you use the phrase "bronze-age goat herders"? Do you think that you are more intelligent than they were? I'm not arguing that you are more knowledgeable about many things (except goat herding perhaps), but do you think that you are superior to them by virtue of the fact that we have advanced the sciences beyond what they understood?

Has this made you MORALLY superior to them? Are you a better man?

Am I more intelligent than a bronze age goat herder?

Certainly I am better educated and have access to thousands of years of accumulated knowledge, I am also less prone to superstition, so while not having a higher IQ I would certainly be better able to answer almost any question you could possibly ask.

Am I morally superior to bronze age people?

Yes.

The bronze age goat herders were rather an immoral lot stoning people left right and centre, rampaging through lands enslaving races and committing genocide and using spurious myths to excuse these hideous actions.
  
Am I a better man?

Yes.

The bronze age culture was mysoginistic and rooted in superstition which led to brutal oppression and violence, the bronze age world would resemble ISIS.

And if our society approves of things such as abortion which kills innocent children in their mothers's wombs and the use of drones which results in the deaths of innocent civilians, are we really able to say that we are morally advanced beyond the "goat herders" who would have found those things to be morally repugnant?

Do you know what happened when abortion was illegal. Of the desperate plight of women who, for whatever reason went to back street abortionists and took all sorts of risks to not have the children. Abortion is often the right choice if you have the tiniest knowledge of the facts on the subject.
So are we more morally advanced than the bronze age goat herders? yes we are.
We are more nuanced and inclusive and take on more factors. 
 

Again we see theists justifying genocide. A common trend.

Rubbish. I have EXPLAINED why that which you call "genocide" may not be inconsistent with the existence of God. You haven't really undermined that view.

It would be inconsistent with a nice god.
But again I see these things as just excuses so that they could excuse their rapine rampage. "Our diety made us do it"

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.

To be REALLY clear, the story of the Canaanites does nothing to undermine the existence of a loving, personal God who occassionally acts to wipe out evil.[/quote]

To be clear the story paints a bad picture of your god and is one of the many examples of it being a dick, a bit lie the green goblin or Lex luther, it has many foul deeds in its cannon.