The Immorality of God - Slavery in the Old Testament

[Nihilist Virus]

Sanctioning?

Nestor, you need to read more of the OT.

God's struggle with Israel was that they kept going back to the old gods, the old ways. He never told the Israelites to sacrifice their children.

Okay, let's read it together, and try not to be dishonest about what it plainly states:

"I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live; And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord."

I'm sure if those were the words of Baal, you'd object to my use of the terms "sanctioned by their Lord."

On second thought...just stick with the New. Understanding justification should give you more than enough to think about. 

I think the concept of human sacrifice, and a penalty for unbelief, are deeply flawed and morally primitive doctrines that only highly confused people whose moral intuitions were deluded by religious storytelling could find meritable.

God is saying there that he allowed the Jews to commit atrocities as a punishment (innocent children dying is apparently incidental). It is not saying that God ordered it or even liked it.

In fairness, Mr. Technical is flat wrong, though, when he says, "He never told the Israelites to sacrifice their children." God did tell the first Israelite to do this, and then later famously revealed it was a test... although, if YHWH finds child sacrifice so abominable, you'd think that Abraham should have failed the test. But no... the test is about obedience... which actually means that if we can find a scripture of God ordering child sacrifice, our theologian friends will stretch their hands back through time to change their own arguments. They don't believe in any principles at all... just in a whimsical deity who smites you one day and blesses you another.