(April 4, 2016 at 6:08 pm)KevinM1 Wrote: I mean, I can guess at your objection - it was a different era, the people involved in these murders were ordinary churchgoers rather than leaders, etc. But none of those caveats address the issue at hand: your claim (and WLC's claim) that if an order comes from god, it's good. Period. Well, these people claim to have been ordered by god to kill their children, either directly or by proxy. Were they moral acts? It's not a trick question, nor should it be difficult for you to answer.
God commanded the recognized intermediary leader of a theocracy (Moses, Joshua, or a judge--depending on what story you want to use), to carry out a battle strategy in a brutal time and in a brutal land.
You also are ignoring the context. For example, the 1 Samuel 15 story
2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
In case you don't know of the first encounter with the Amalekites when the killed the women and children at the back of the migrating Israelites:
Deuteronomy 25:17–19-- 17 “Remember what Amalek did to you son the way as you came out of Egypt, 18 how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God. 19 Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.
So, to address you question as to what was different between a woman killing her own child and this story...quite a bit actually.
