Genocide in the Old Testament

[Esquilax]

OK, why is "our degree of sentience and reasoning power" the cutoff?

Because being able to value our lives and future potential is what makes a sentient life of a certain intellectual threshold more valuable. Simply put, you can do more with it; it's more complex.

And I countered that you can kill entire colonies of ants with no repercussions. You haven't responded to this point.

Ants might not even be conscious, but I've said since the very beginning that when we do kill, we ideally do it for reasons. For food, or to enhance human safety, or out of mercy, and so on. If I went around killing ant colonies, methodically and persistently, for the sole reason that I was proving a point, or that I thought I could because I was bigger and more powerful than them, people wouldn't wave me off as doing something acceptable like you do every time your god kills. I'd be labelled at the very least, needlessly cruel. At most, mad.

And yet when your god does it, you'll leap to his defense...

Er, yes, people have a bigger reaction to the killing of people than to ants. Your point?

My point was that at the moment, we as a society are holding humans to a higher standard than you'll hold your god to; you say he made us, he's more intelligent, so he can kill us. If I used that reasoning to justify murdering my child, or even just killing a dog, I'd be arrested. It's just special pleading from you, over and over.