(January 2, 2017 at 10:25 am)Godschild Wrote: From the Ten Commandments: Thou shall not kill.
GC
On its face, this is a ridiculous commandment since (A) Yahweh kills and orders to be killed untold numbers throughout the OT and (B) even leaving that aside, the entire sacrificial system is premised on a breathtaking amount of slaughter. Believers, of course, wave away all of that by appeal to divine command morality. If God does it or orders it, it is necessarily good no matter how arbitrary and evil it may appear (and who are you, clay pot, to question the designs of your maker?).
If the commandment is understood instead to be, "Thou shall not murder," then the commandment is pointless in a 'no shit, Sherlock' kind of way, since "murder" means unjustified/unlawful killing. But maybe the chosen people needed reminding of such a basic moral point. At least this commandment isn't directed at alleged thought crimes like so many others.
No, Christianity as such does not condone murder. But many Christians reveal much about their ethical bankruptcy when they stoop to explain and justify the atrocities in their holy book while telling the rest of us that we are unreasonable to question the 'goodness' or necessity of such bloodshed. I include the torture and execution of your savior in that observation.
