Genocide in the Old Testament

[Faith No More]

It's not arguing from a generality.

Actually you're right. It's an argument from your personal incredulity.

It is arguing from reasonable expectations. The bible is a claim, and I have to weigh that claim against my current understanding and knowledge.

- The Bible is a collection of books of various types and includes many claims. In other areas you accept overall claims without having weighed all the minutiae involved.

- Be honest. If the Bible said "Here are the attributes of a perfect god" and listed attributes of god found elsewhere in the Bible, you would still reject it.

- An omniscient creator is in a better position than you to determine what expectations are reasonable.

Are now saying that your god did not intend the message to be clear and conform to the facts?

That you can create a straw man from the message doesn't imply that the message isn't clear.

You assume a lot about someone you don't know, and your resorting to personal attacks is telling. But I forgive you, as Christianity doesn't exactly breed open-mindedness.

And I'm not creating a straw man. I'm just trying to understand what you're saying and the implications that follow.

You say an omniscient creator is in a better position than I to determine what is reasonable. True, but if the creator does not tailor the message to what I see as reasonable, how then am I to determine that the message truly comes from where it is purported? In other words, if I cannot ascertain the message is reasonable, I have no way to determine that it came from an omniscient deity, and it can be dismissed just as easily as all of the other faulty claims about deities and their messages. Trying to obfuscate that point by saying "God gets to decide what is reasonable" doesn't get us any closer to determining the source.