(April 27, 2015 at 4:01 pm)Alex K Wrote: ...
(April 24, 2015 at 4:09 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: In the Bible, there are many examples of God commanding people to kill. So it isn't just a matter of God killing people Himself; God commands people to kill people. So God isn't keeping his commands consistent.
Again, depending whether the original text says murder or kill, and what their definition of murder was back then. It is very plausible that back when it was written they didn't intend it as, or interpret it as, an abolition of the death penalty, and so killing in the most general sense is surely not what the writers had in mind.
I wasn't thinking of the death penalty. I was thinking of the instances when God commanded specific acts of murder. For example, the extermination of the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15 that God commands. There are other such examples, as when Abraham is told to kill Isaac, and Abraham is ready to do it. If Abraham were following the prohibition on murder, he would have refused to do it. But in the story, his willingness to do it is supposed to be good, yet it is an example of someone ignoring the 'thou shalt not kill [murder]' commandment.
If you have an issue with those examples, we can consider the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, and any others that I am forgetting, that God commanded to be murdered.
These are all examples of God specifically commanding that people do things that God specifically forbade in the commandment to not murder.
(What a bother it is to specify the specific kinds of killing in the Bible! God directly killing people, God commanding the death penalty for specific "crimes," God commanding specific acts of murder. It is the last of these that interests me in this case, and is what involves the inconsistency in God's commands.)
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
