Horrible things in the bible

[genkaus]

Spoken like a true apologist.

1- destruction of Canaanites and everyone else. Considering that this is not a myth; I believe (I'm not saying it's right) that god ordered their killing so that his plan could come about (jesus and all)
But why kill the poor Canaanites? (I'm using a collective term)
You probably never heard of child sacrifice to Molech. With their idolatry, they were killing the children and doing other things. Read in context, that is one reason idolatry was bad. The world back then was barbaric guys. When the world's barbaric, god adheres to it; and since during Jesus' s time the world was relatively more peaceful than that, I guess god finally thought that it is time for humanity to be shown what living holy is about (because they were capable of it). Who knows, maybe if we returned to being holy creatures like Adam and Eve; we won't even need the ten commandments.

So, if the world is barbaric, your almighty god instead of changing it for the better sinks to their level of barbarism. That makes your god worse than inspirational figures like Buddha or Gandhi who actually stuck to their principles in face of barbarism.

2- The bears and 42 mauled.
First of all youth at that time meant adolescents after 16. And second, we don't know what calling someone bald back then. There were probably hundreds of people calling him bald and since we don't know how insulting it was for someone to be called bald in those days, I'd like to present a modern day scenario
If you call an African American coon, or nigger, you might get beaten up pretty bad. Same with calling gay people the f word ( I know you're going to point this out, but most catholics and the pope don't discriminate)
Whatever, but imagine if 42 (at least) people called a gay person the f word. Wouldn't he want them all to get punished? And we're talking about a prophet here! In 5000 years they'll be saying- wow that black man beat him up just because he called him a coon? That's rough!
And the bears didn't necessarily kill and eat them. Maul is sort of like a punch. You really think 2 bears waited to see if someones dead to go onto the next one.

Physical violence in retaliation to name-calling - no matter what the name-calling might be - is immoral and disgusting in the modern world and at the supposed time of bear-mauling. I can call blacks niggers, I can call gays faggots, I can call your mother a whore and I can call you mother-fucker - none of it justifies physical retaliation. This event in the bible solidifies the image of your god as an immoral and petty tyrant. Even King Joffrey was better than this.

3- judges 19 rape. This rape was never condoned by god, neither was the episode with Lots daughters. And who said the Israelites weren't punished? There was a civil war after that!

Is this the part where your god ordered the rape of all the conquered virgins? If so, that sounds like condoning to me.

4- slavery. Surely you can't compare that slavery to American slavery. It was customary to have slaves then (I prefer calling them servants) nothing wrong with that. Rich people Still have servants. Atleast god made rules so that they'd be treated properly. He could've let the hebrews do whatever they wished with them, but they didn't.

You 'prefer' calling them servants, do you? Were they paid for their services? Were they free to leave the master's service and enter someone else's? Did they have equal protection under the law like their masters? Were they treated as human beings deserving equal respect instead of property to be passed down from generation to generation?

The answer to all these is NO. Which is why there was plenty wrong with with it then and there is plenty wrong with it now. FYI, telling the masters "you can beat your slave as much as you want - just make sure he doesn't die for a day or two" is not my idea of treating them properly. If your god was a tad bit more moral, he'd have issued much stricter laws against slavery. If he was actually as moral as you seem to think he is, then he'd have abolished it altogether and to hell with what is customary.


You are not the first one here trying to make your god seem like less of a monster than he is - many have tried and all have failed. Which brings me back to the question you've avoided so far - why exchange one set of silly beliefs for another?