The Immorality of God - The Canaanites

[brewer]

OP, they used "direction from god" as an excuse to kill. Nothing more, nothing less. The excuse continues to be used to this day. The immorality was/is with the people, not the fantasy. The people created the fantasy to justify their actions and their existence.

[downbeatplumb]

Evil is not the absence of good.
This is too binary and only a Sith deals in absolutes.
If something is not good it can be ok, something can even be bad without being evil.

[athrock]

You're ignoring my point entirely.

Hardly. I'll respond again below.

God allegedly told the Israelites to commit genocide against the Cannanites.  Sounds like a really nice guy.  

1. Genocide is a loaded word that you've chosen for effect.
2. For all you know, people were begging God to do something about the Canaanites.
3. God isn't a guy. He is God, and that means you can't view him like you would some dude he lives in the same apartment building as you.

Since the days of actually recording history and witnesses, God has not made any such announcements to people.  Is God afraid of recording devices or something?

Not likely. God is probably more concerned with not coercing anyone. However, the Bible is chock full of "actually recording history and witnesses". Just not electronically (which can be faked or altered, btw).

Instead people today merely try to attribute (falsely) things to him, such as you did with World War II.  Attributing the Allied Victory to God.  But God wasn't involved at all, at least not in the manner of the cannanites.  

You know this how?

Which suggests to me one of two things:

#1. The Israelites merely attributed their actions to the will of their 'God', and no such command was actually given.

or

#2. The Israelites were commanded by God, but then God had absolutely zero to do with anything since the advent of recording devices and mass communication quite mysteriously.

The most likely answer, of course is #1.  Much like with the course of many other things in the OT where people attributed things to 'god', but God never showed his face much like he doesn't today (most likely because he doesn't exist.  Non-existent entities have a hard time showing up!)

Or 3. God interacts with His people all the time in ways that you personally refuse to accept. Your belief that God hasn't "showed his face" since the days of Joshua is just YOUR personal opinion - one that many, many people would obviously disagree with. But we're on the verge of wandering off the Canaanite track here.

The God of the Bible (as a work of fiction) is immoral.  He's an author-insert Mary Sue who can do no wrong according to the author because he is who he is.  Really he's a badly written mary sue when committing genocide (multiple times!) is considered 'right'.  The author clearly never considered a viewpoint other than their own.  Which makes for a rather boring work of fiction.  There's no morally gray area for the character of Yahweh, because Yahweh is the super popular, super powerful jock at the high school, and everybody loves him and anyone who doesn't is 'bad'.  Of course this doesn't work so well when Theists argue for it, because today we consider other viewpoints other than our own.  Heck even the villains of the bible are poorly written.  Satan gets almost no screen time, and comes across as better than God.  Most groups committed genocide against are supposedly so terrible, but we never hear about most of their deeds.  They're just so one dimensional that it's like really bad fanfiction.    And then the NT is basically bad fanfiction of already bad fanfiction.

Lots of opinion. No substance. And no rebuttal of the OP, btw.

So tell me.  What makes God moral and just?  The fact that the bible says he is?  Because that's pretty bad fanfiction.  I could write Sauron as the hero of Lord of the Rings in really bad fanfiction, but if I leave all the terrible stuff he's done and try to paint it as 'good', then that doesn't really make him a good guy at all.  It makes him a bad guy with good publicity.  Which is what Yahweh is.  A bad guy with good publicity.  In fact if Satan were real, I'd presume he'd want to present his side of the story by inspiring his own book.

Not exactly on topic, but I'll respond simply that God is BY DEFINITION moral and just, and we don't have to be discussing the God of the Bible.

So, no, God is not moral and just because the Bible says that He is. So, it's the other way around.

The Bible says that he is moral and just because He is.

[athrock]

Is there any chance you will actually interact with the arguments presented in the OP rather than make an emotional appeal that fails to undermine them?

The key for you will be to demonstrate that God's actions are inconsistent with His character.

I look forward to your first attempt.

I'm not really interested in the character of your fictional god. I'm interested in the character of the sort of people who feel the need to justify or explain away the alleged actions of this literary figure. Do you believe that Yahweh ordered the killing of Amalekite infants (those unregenerate sinners!)? If so, am I to assume that you would have taken part in that barbarity if you were alive then and believed yourself under orders? If not, why not?

I'll repeat what I wrote to Whateverist:

As for bashing the skull of an infant, you are proposing a test of faith - like Abram being asked to sacrifice Isaac. I would rather doubt myself and what I thought I heard from God than to be wrong and take an innocent life.

But if I had just spent 40 years wandering through the desert eating manna that fell from the sky every morning, drinking water that came from a rock, watching the Jordan river part so that I could pass through on dry land, and seeing the walls of Jericho fall at the blast of my trumpet, then yes, I could probably be inclined to think that I must now kill all of the those that God commanded me to kill.

God gave His people many great signs in order to form them into a people that believed and obeyed.

How would you have responded if you had seen all of those wonders?

[athrock]

YAY!!  All of my financial problems have now been solved.  If your GOD tells you to take something, then it's not stealing!!!  And you can't say GOD didn't tell me to do it.  Rape, murder, theft - all ya gotta do, folks, is say that your GOD demanded it, and you're golden.

True.

But you better be able to prove that God actually told you to do it.

Which is why Pharaoh saw all the signs and wonders performed by Moses for example.

Or why Jesus rose from the dead after saying he would.

If you're gonna claim that God told you something, you better be prepared to back it up.

[Cecelia]

You claim that god is by definition good, but you have no proof for it. Nor do you have any proof that god has shown his face since the days of Joshua. Or even that he ever showed his face at all. So you're not going to get me to believe in your sexist, genocidal god who commands people to kill children (and kills children himself). Even if you did, you're not going to get me to worship him. He is not by any means of any definition I know "good" or "righteous".

If all it takes is for God to tell you to kill a baby to get you to do it, then I question this morality of yours. It is an act of evil whether god tells you to do it or not.

[athrock]

Fair enough. But don't you think it is reasonable to consider carefully whether God's actions are acceptable or not based upon a full set of data?


Which is both subjective and potentially wrong. Assuming you don't claim to be infallible, I would expect you to be open to arguments that might be counter to your own intuitive first glances, eh?


Apart from the fact that there is evidence that they WEREN'T literally wiped out down to the last man, woman and child, what problem do you think was being solved?


God had promised the land to Abraham and his descendants, remember?


They didn't steal it. See above.


Incorrect. The Canaanites weren't punished because they refused to worship Yahweh. They were punished because their deeds were evil. You can learn more about them from any number of sources online. Not a good group of folks.

We don't have a full set of data, because we only have one side of the story. A story told by the people who worshiping Yahweh, and felt that Canaanite lands belonged to them.

Gotcha. So, on the off-chance that the Canaanites side of the story wold exonerate them,you have decided to deny the existence of God. That doesn't really explain all the POSITIVE accounts of God, of course, but don't let THAT trouble you.

I have my opinions, and you have your opinions. But when a theist comes to be and says that at one time the paragon of goodness felt that rape, slavery, and mass murder are acceptable within certain limitations, but two men loving each other is a death-worthy crime, i find that suspect.

Ah...the shotgun approach. I told Cecelia that this is why we focus on one issue at a time.

I'm not gonna play your game, Chad. The issue at hand is the Canaanites, and your task is to prove why God was immoral for destroying them.

Yahweh promised lands to the descendants of Abraham, then the land was taken by someone else, and the descendants were enslaved. Kind of dropped the ball there, huh? And his solution to this, when he eventually gets around to freeing the Isrealites, is to tell them to go fight and die in a war over the land that was promised to them. Apparently this was the best solution Yahweh could come up with.

Let's see...God promises the land to one man, Abraham, and says that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. Then God sends them down to Egypt where Israel becomes a large nation unto itself. Through years of slavery and decades of wandering in the desert, that people becomes both tough as well as obedient to their God. So, when it finally comes time to taking possession of the land, they have the manpower and the will to do it.

Yeah, some army comes to you, and tells your family to pick up and leave, because their god said the land your family has lived on for generations told them it belonged to them now. That's stealing.

Uh, no. The Canaanites lived in the land temporarily. Now, the rightful heirs had returned.

Because their deeds were evil. How so? How were they do different from what the Isrealites did? I've heard child sacrifice was involved, but there's a verse in the bible where Yahweh commands child sacrifice of his follower. Yahweh has issues with homosexuality for vague reasons. Just because Yahweh has personal issues doesn't mean people are evil when they don't listen to him.

Good and evil doesn't mean much when you base it on a book that, again, says raping a young virgin in a field is ok as long as you can pay the bride cost, but having consentual sex with another same sex adult is a horrible thing.

There are lots of online articles available to you; I offer this Google search.

[athrock]

First, why do you use the phrase "bronze-age goat herders"? Do you think that you are more intelligent than they were? I'm not arguing that you are more knowledgeable about many things (except goat herding perhaps), but do you think that you are superior to them by virtue of the fact that we have advanced the sciences beyond what they understood?

Has this made you MORALLY superior to them? Are you a better man?

Am I more intelligent than a bronze age goat herder?

Certainly I am better educated and have access to thousands of years of accumulated knowledge, I am also less prone to superstition, so while not having a higher IQ I would certainly be better able to answer almost any question you could possibly ask.

Am I morally superior to bronze age people?

Yes.

The bronze age goat herders were rather an immoral lot stoning people left right and centre, rampaging through lands enslaving races and committing genocide and using spurious myths to excuse these hideous actions.
  
Am I a better man?

Yes.

The bronze age culture was mysoginistic and rooted in superstition which led to brutal oppression and violence, the bronze age world would resemble ISIS.

And if our society approves of things such as abortion which kills innocent children in their mothers's wombs and the use of drones which results in the deaths of innocent civilians, are we really able to say that we are morally advanced beyond the "goat herders" who would have found those things to be morally repugnant?

Do you know what happened when abortion was illegal. Of the desperate plight of women who, for whatever reason went to back street abortionists and took all sorts of risks to not have the children. Abortion is often the right choice if you have the tiniest knowledge of the facts on the subject.
So are we more morally advanced than the bronze age goat herders? yes we are.
We are more nuanced and inclusive and take on more factors. 
 

Again we see theists justifying genocide. A common trend.

Rubbish. I have EXPLAINED why that which you call "genocide" may not be inconsistent with the existence of God. You haven't really undermined that view.

It would be inconsistent with a nice god.
But again I see these things as just excuses so that they could excuse their rapine rampage. "Our diety made us do it"

God is supposed to be able to have mind control. In the exodus fable he is said to have "hardened Pharoahs heart" so surely a kinder way of dealing with them would be anything other than what the story says. To be clear the story of the canaanites is just a petty justification for a violent act perpetrated by an evil cult, the cult of the rather silly desert god Yahweh.

To be REALLY clear, the story of the Canaanites does nothing to undermine the existence of a loving, personal God who occassionally acts to wipe out evil.

To be clear the story paints a bad picture of your god and is one of the many examples of it being a dick, a bit lie the green goblin or Lex luther, it has many foul deeds in its cannon.

I'll try to get back to this post later. My time online is just about to expire and I'm out of quarters.

[athrock]

You claim that god is by definition good, but you have no proof for it.  Nor do you have any proof that god has shown his face since the days of Joshua.  Or even that he ever showed his face at all.  So you're not going to get me to believe in your sexist, genocidal god who commands people to kill children (and kills children himself).  Even if you did, you're not going to get me to worship him.  He is not by any means of any definition I know "good" or "righteous".  

If all it takes is for God to tell you to kill a baby to get you to do it, then I question this morality of yours.  It is an act of evil whether god tells you to do it or not.

I understand your response. It's based upon a powerful emotional reaction.

But not upon intellect and reason.

Try this for a thought experiment, Cecelia: create the perfect God.

Write down on a piece of paper all of the characteristics, attributes, and so-forth that you believe a supreme being should have. 

When you have that, post it and we can discuss your thoughts.

[Chad32]

I'm not gonna play your game, Chad. The issue at hand is the Canaanites, and your task is to prove why God was immoral for destroying them. There are lots of online articles available to you; I offer this Google search.

Ok, we'll stick with this. I'll take the first link. The abominations of the Canaanites.

D.
“
These evil practices were the reason the Lord was going to drive the Canaanites out of the land. Not only adherence to the false gods of Canaan was proscribed, but also the means by which the Canaanites attempted to communicate with them. Both the objects and the methods of Canaanite religious life were to be abhorred totally and rejected completely.” (Kalland, Deuteronomy, comments on Deut 18:9

One of the first comments is that Yahweh was mad that the canaanites weren't worshiping him. As I stated before, this is one of the reasons he's so angry, and it's not exactly a sympathetic one.

To the Canaanite, fertility was of major importance in worship, and both male and female temple prostitution was prevalent ... God had had enough.

This goes into the fact that Yahweh apparently has issues about sex. Though that seems like a personal problem, instead of a reason to call people who disagree with him evil.

Making their own children “pass through the fire” (Deut 18:10).