Well, we quickly saw how the canon of scripture is determined: the Word of God consists of those writings which are used in your own church. Now I'd like to move along to my next question.
Why is the God of the Bible such an evil bastard?
I'll give just three examples, but I could multiply them many times over.
Since my deconversion the thought has often occurred to me that the ancient Israelites appear to have invented genocide. Such horrors are described among other ancient peoples. Homer, for instance, mentions infants being killed at the sack of Troy, but not nearly so often, and here is the big difference: Other ancient peoples certainly looted, raped and murdered in their wars, but so far as I know the Israelites were the only ones to present it as right and proper and pleasing to God. Today when a modern military commander orders what God is supposed to have ordered, he is arrested and brought before the International Criminal Court.
There is a thread on genocide in the Old Testament. In one post Lion IRC argues: "In a world which has atomic bombs, and has used them on populations much bigger than Canaanite cities, it's a little precious to hear physicists like Krauss moralising about biblical wars." The argument is easily countered by noting that the Americans gave no orders to kill everyone including even infants, so presumably if the ancient Israelites had had modern technology, they would have murdered far more. However, that does not go to the heart of the matter. The Old Testament represents God, supposedly the standard of all morality, as a genocidal monster.
Why do so many of the Old Testament writers present God as an evil bloodthirsty tyrant? I used to say the reason was that the Bible was written by barbarians, for barbarians, about barbarians. There's an element of truth there, but it is not the whole story.
Most of the Old Testament was actually written centuries after these events were supposed to have taken place. These texts such as Numbers and Samuel received their final form ca 600—500 BC. That was after the Israelites had their collective ass kicked by the Egyptians, the Assyrians and finally the Babylonians. This stuff is propaganda about a supposedly glorious military past when the Israelites were kicking ass. It never happened. It's rather like the Germans nursing a grudge between the two World Wars, except that for the Israelites their revenge never came. What followed was that the Greek Seleucid empire kicked their ass and then the Romans did.
Why is the God of the Bible such an evil bastard?
I'll give just three examples, but I could multiply them many times over.
Quote:14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle. 15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." (Numbers 31)
Quote:1 Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. 2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'" (1 Samuel 15)
Quote:11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, 12 you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity. (Deuteronomy 25)You will note that the first two examples involve what today we would call war crimes and genocide. All the women are killed and the children right down to nursing infants. In the first case from Numbers young women who are still virgins are spared to be used sexually by the Israelite warriors. Fundamentalists, please do not demean your own intelligence by telling us that they wanted virgins just to help their wives with the spinning and cooking. The third example is so horrible, so reminiscent of the Taliban, that it needs no comment.
Since my deconversion the thought has often occurred to me that the ancient Israelites appear to have invented genocide. Such horrors are described among other ancient peoples. Homer, for instance, mentions infants being killed at the sack of Troy, but not nearly so often, and here is the big difference: Other ancient peoples certainly looted, raped and murdered in their wars, but so far as I know the Israelites were the only ones to present it as right and proper and pleasing to God. Today when a modern military commander orders what God is supposed to have ordered, he is arrested and brought before the International Criminal Court.
There is a thread on genocide in the Old Testament. In one post Lion IRC argues: "In a world which has atomic bombs, and has used them on populations much bigger than Canaanite cities, it's a little precious to hear physicists like Krauss moralising about biblical wars." The argument is easily countered by noting that the Americans gave no orders to kill everyone including even infants, so presumably if the ancient Israelites had had modern technology, they would have murdered far more. However, that does not go to the heart of the matter. The Old Testament represents God, supposedly the standard of all morality, as a genocidal monster.
Why do so many of the Old Testament writers present God as an evil bloodthirsty tyrant? I used to say the reason was that the Bible was written by barbarians, for barbarians, about barbarians. There's an element of truth there, but it is not the whole story.
Most of the Old Testament was actually written centuries after these events were supposed to have taken place. These texts such as Numbers and Samuel received their final form ca 600—500 BC. That was after the Israelites had their collective ass kicked by the Egyptians, the Assyrians and finally the Babylonians. This stuff is propaganda about a supposedly glorious military past when the Israelites were kicking ass. It never happened. It's rather like the Germans nursing a grudge between the two World Wars, except that for the Israelites their revenge never came. What followed was that the Greek Seleucid empire kicked their ass and then the Romans did.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
