The Immorality of God - The Canaanites

[Nihilist Virus]

 
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 is why we use the word IF. IF God exists THEN he is a mass-murdering, slavery sanctioning, genocide ordering evil deity.
 

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?

How about the standard you threw at me? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

And why this standard? Well if you don't like it we can agree that it is to be removed from discussion.


 

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.
   

 

The Jews made a golden calf and worshiped it. Doesn't that mean they deserved to be utterly wiped out?