Were the genocidal actions of the Old Testament God justifiable?

[Miller]

[QUOTE=Johanna]
Oh, God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on.”
—Bob Dylan, “Highway 61 Revisited”

My reading of the Abraham sacrifice story is: It’s the ancient version of the Stanford prison experiment and the Milgram obedience to authority experiment demonstrating that humans have this dangerous tendency to obey violent dictators and kill on command. And that we’d better watch out and keep this tendency in check if we value our freedom and justice. The ugly flip side of Abraham’s sacrifice story is the Nazis saying “I was just following orders.”
[/QUOTE]

Heh, I’ve been thinking this for years. I always felt that the moral of the story of Abraham was that God test Abraham, and Abe failed spectacularly. What he should have done, what any parent should have done, is refused to hurt his own child, and instead taken God’s punishment on himself.

Course, the OT God wasn’t above laying a serious smackdown on a kid because he was pissed at their parents, so that might not have worked out so well.

[Voyager]

[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
Well, a key point of the Flood story is that God sent the Flood because humanity were so depraved that they deserved it, and that Noah was saved because he was the one righteous man in existence. If you can swallow the rest of the story, why would you disbelieve this part?

If this is the same God who talked with Abraham in Genesis 18, presumably He wouldn’t have ordained the total destruction of a people if there had been even ten of them who didn’t deserve it?
[/QUOTE]

As you note, Abraham had to convince God to save the place if there were any good people there. If Noah was too busy building the boat, and didn’t try to convince god to stop the flood (and there is no evidence he did) maybe there were a few righteous people around.

And the Bible doesn’t mention babies, or women for that matter. In those days they didn’t really count, but surely there were not evil - and surely with training by Noah in some miraculous day care center, they could have grown up good. If there was room in that Tardis Ark for all those animals, surely they could have fit a few babies in. It would done wonders for genetic diversity also.

I think the Flood story could be some sort of test myself. If there is a God, and if you go to heaven for your final exam, he’ll ask you if you believe in the story. All those who say yes would get the response

@God

Shmuck! You think I’d kill all those babies? You go straight to hell!

[Voyager]

[QUOTE=xtisme]

Um…apologists wouldn’t use this arguement. They BELIEVE that the events in the bible are/were real. This is an arguement used by the other side (and, BTW, where I myself come down…i.e. it never happened, or if it did the account in the bible is so garbled as to probably be unrecognizable from the actual event. There are a LOT of examples of the bible exaggerating the relative importance of the early Hebrew tribes and what they did or didn’t do).

-XT
[/QUOTE]

In the strict definition of apolgists, true, but in the looser sense of those who believe in God, no. I don’t know the Orthodox position, but I’m fairly sure Reform Judaism would rather believe these were made up stories rather than that god was evil. It’s an excellent moral argument for Biblical errancy.

[Voyager]

[QUOTE=cerberus]
A few comments:

1. There is a fallacy in assuming that BigGiantHead is bound to the same moral/ethical laws that are imposed upon its bipedal creations.

2. I assert that BigGiantHead, being Creator and all, has the right to break/kill/alter/erase its Created Stuff, including aforementioned bipedal creations.

3. Using (2) above, BigGiantHead can order his minions, including those bipedal creations to break/kill/alter/erase its Created Stuff, including aforementioned bipedal creation (including other and assorted bipedal creations).

In short, a Creator God can break its stuff, via any mechanism it chooses, including via proxy action using other of its creations.
[/QUOTE]

I’d say the problem is believing that the act of creating something gives one absolute authority over it - especially if the thing you created was sentient.

This also means that there are no morals per se - just arbitrary rules laid down by a powerful bully, which might be inconsistent and which do not have to be followed by the bully.

The third problem is if a powerful supernatural entity tells you to do something that seems to be evil, how can you tell if this entity is God or Satan? I’m unaware of any Biblical evidence that Satan ever did or tried to do anything half as awful as what God did. How do you know, from your rules above, that Satan didn’t win? If God is genocidal, an entity saying that we should rebel against God can only be good.

[David_Simmons]

[QUOTE=Miller]
… he should have done, what any parent should have done, is refused to hurt his own child, and instead taken God’s punishment on himself.

Course, the OT God wasn’t above laying a serious smackdown on a kid because he was pissed at their parents, so that might not have worked out so well.
[/QUOTE]
As, for example, with the baby born to David and Bathsheba.

I’ve learned to look at the Old Testament as a collection of tribal legends pulled together during the Babylonian Exile. The purpose was to hold together the Israelite captives so that their identity would not be absorbed into the majority culture that surrounded them. It details what the Yahvists among them wanted their relationship to their God to be and it justified to themselves the actions they took throughout their history.

Such is not unusual. We in the US are constantly in the process of justifying our actions to ourselves. Do very many of us today concern ourselves with our action in driving out the native population and trying hard to eradicate it during much of the 1800’s?

[Johanna]

In all fairness, Christianity is an easy target here in the SDMB, it doesn’t get support from the majority of Dopers, and this thread is aimed at one of the weak spots. It seemed like the thread was opened out of astonishment that anyone would actually argue for an affirmative answer to the question in the title.

@David Simmons

it justified to themselves the actions they took throughout their history.

That’s water under the bridge. I would have a hard time justifying leaving it in any longer once it had served that purpose. And I don’t think “it has always been there” is a good enough justification for leaving it in.

That is a people that has passed away;
they have what they’ve earned,
and you have what you’ve earned.
And you will not be responsible for what they did.
—Qur’an 2:134, referring to the ancient Israelites

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=Voyager]
If God is genocidal, an entity saying that we should rebel against God can only be good.
[/QUOTE]
That’s the optimistic view; there are others. For example, God and Satan could both be equally evil; the Hitler vrs Stalin scenario. Another is that there is no God and Satan, but a single evil being; “God” and “Satan” are just handpuppets to fool us into think there is a good side and that hope exists. Yet another is that God is insane and Satan is just his temporary hallucination, taken form because he’s omnipotent.

[XT]

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
That’s one of the stupider statements I’ve heard. Feeling morally superior to someone because of their skin color is nothing at all like feeling superior to a group because they commit genocide. Prejudice is called that because you judge people before they do anything; it’s not prejudice if you don’t like people because of what they’ve actually done.
[/QUOTE]

Horseshit. Making a moral/ethical judgement on a people that are different than you…that are in a different envirionment than you, or a different time with different circumstances, moral codes, ethics, or other different background…its all the same Der. Calling a people ‘barbarians’ because they didn’t have the benifit of 2000+ years of history that formed you is about equal to calling someone a ‘nigger’ because they don’t have the same skin color you do. They were a product of them environment…just like my brown skin is a product of my ancestry. That you don’t see the distinction is not surprising to me.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Nonsense. There’s no reason why a god couldn’t be evil or amoral.
[/QUOTE]

IF there were a god, and IF it had all the wonderous powers attributed to it, then I don’t think we’d be in a position to judge whether it was good or evil. No more than a stem cell can make an informed judgement about the scientist hacking it appart for mysterious and unknown (to the stem cell) reasons. In fact, I’d have to say that IF there was an immortal being with such powers we’d be unable to relate to it in any meaningful way…we are simply wired too differently. Death means something to us.

‘Genocide’ itself is a term that is meaningful only to us in this context…after all, killing off a bunch of this race or that race isn’t ‘genocide’, as there are still plenty of OTHER humans about. Its not like race distinctions are real you know. From the perspective of an outside species (such as God), it would be a meaningless distinction. It didn’t kill ALL the humans after all (even in the flood! ), so it didn’t commit ‘genocide’. As a single entity specied (assuming there is only one God), it may view other species in a whole different light. Perhaps thinking of us as individuals as we would view a few blood cells.

However, I realize that you are unlikely to be swayed by anything other than ‘god is evil!’ (or maybe, to be fair, it would be ‘Christianity is Evil’ or ‘All religion is evil!’. At least you are consistant…thats all you want to hear/say about Bush as well.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Yes, because “genocide is bad” is such an extreme position. Yessir, that makes me a raving egomaniac; how DARE I denounce people for something as harmless as that ?!
[/QUOTE]

Exactly. Glad we got that straight.

Genocide IS bad…by our standards today. Remarkably, even in these supposed modern times, it still takes place…even when, by our own standards its definitely not acceptable. Yet, its happening even today…and its happened many times in the last century.

By the standards in place during the time period in question in this OP (and probably most of history until very recently) it was not a remarkable thing. It was a generally accepted practice in fact, and the usual result of military defeat. Conquered peoples were absorbed into the tribe, either as slaves or in some other fashion…if they weren’t simply put to the sword. Certainly their cultures were wiped clean if they were defeated.

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
It was acceptable to the Germans; that’s why they did it. By your own “logic”, the Holocaust was just. Not to mention the evils of Stalin, Pol Pot, and every other fanatic group that has ever existed.
[/QUOTE]

You kind of missed the point. It wasn’t acceptable to Germany’s PEERS…i.e. the other nations that existed at the same time. There were standards of behavior among nation states, so we can judge based on how German (and Japan, and the US, and the UK, etc etc) related to each other. We can’t (or at least we shouldn’t IMHO) judge them based on OUR time and OUR standards…but on the standards, morals and ethics of the day. Using a standard from another time such a judgement would be stupid…as the folks at that time didn’t have the same outlook, didn’t have the same history, and didn’t have the same circumstances that exist today.

-XT

[Malacandra]

[QUOTE=Blalron]
Some people argue that God, by virtue of the fact that he is the Supreme Being, is axiomatically the arbiter of right and wrong. Bullshit. Saying that is just another way of saying “might makes right”. Even if there is a God, and he exactly like the God of the Bible, and he’ll send me to hell for all eternity for opposing him, that still doesn’t make him right. In fact, I am a courageous guy for opposing an evil God that will torture me for eternity.
[/QUOTE]

God’s axiomatic position as supreme arbiter of right and wrong is founded not on His ability to send you to Hell for disagreeing with him, but on His inconceivably vaster grasp of what right and wrong is.

It’s as though I were to argue with Mozart on how to write a symphony. Mozart’s position as “supreme” arbiter is not founded on his having a gun in his pocket, but on having such a colossal understanding of the subject that he could write one at age six.

[Polycarp]

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Threw it out ? They practically embodied it, what with their fondness for genocide and rabid hatred of dissent.

Claiming to be superior to gencidal barbarians from over 2000 years ago is hardly grandiose. And, yes, I do think the people of the future will justifiably despise us.

Which is immoral, since the kid did nothing. You might as well pick some random stranger and/or animal and kill them. For that matter, just pound a rock to bits with a hammer; it has just as much to do with it.
[/QUOTE]

Let’s see here, you’re taking a collection of pronouncements over a thousand year period, identifying from it the elements you deem the absolute worst, equating the whole collection to those pronouncements, then equating that to the two all-time classic Embodiment of Evil simile objects. And then haranguing the public on their immorality in not supporting your POV. Explain to me exactly how your position differs from Karl Rove’s?

[Revenant_Threshold]

[QUOTE=cerberus]
A few comments:

1. There is a fallacy in assuming that BigGiantHead is bound to the same moral/ethical laws that are imposed upon its bipedal creations.

2. I assert that BigGiantHead, being Creator and all, has the right to break/kill/alter/erase its Created Stuff, including aforementioned bipedal creations.

3. Using (2) above, BigGiantHead can order his minions, including those bipedal creations to break/kill/alter/erase its Created Stuff, including aforementioned bipedal creation (including other and assorted bipedal creations).

In short, a Creator God can break its stuff, via any mechanism it chooses, including via proxy action using other of its creations.
[/QUOTE]
By that logic, may I kill my (imaginary) children if I so wish? Can an architect or a builder destroy a building they’ve created?

[Evil_Captor]

As I see it, the genocide and slavery condoned by the Bible only poses a problem for those believers who say the Bigble is the absolute Word of god and every word of it is true (inerrant). I think that fundamentalists exist for a reason however – when you start picking and choosing those parts of the Bible you believe to be divine in origin, your beliefs can be EXTREMELY malleable. If you will quibble at genocide and slavery, why not quibble at monogamy? Chastity? Men’s supremacy or women? Parent’s supremacy over children? If you contest any part of the Bible as the inerrant word of God, aren’t you just making the Bible conform to YOUR beliefs?

As an unbeliever I have no problem with anything the Bible says … it’s a wierd agglomeration of history and made up shit and my attitude toward those who believe in such obvious hogwash ranges from bemusement to disgust, depending on what sort of shit they’re up to based on it.

[David_Simmons]

[QUOTE=Johanna]
That’s water under the bridge. I would have a hard time justifying leaving it in any longer once it had served that purpose. And I don’t think “it has always been there” is a good enough justification for leaving it in.

That is a people that has passed away;
they have what they’ve earned,
and you have what you’ve earned.
And you will not be responsible for what they did.
—Qur’an 2:134, referring to the ancient Israelites
[/QUOTE]
Sure, but it’s hard to abandon a position in which you have been raised. I’ve long thought that if the Old Testament were to be presented to an adult as a set of brand new ideas the great majority would reject it. Having been surrounded from birth by a culture that accepts it, it is not at all hard to rationalize away the brutality of parts of it.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

[QUOTE=xtisme]
I disagree. To me its arrogance equal to the imaginary god to think that everything must comform to ones own definition of ‘good and evil’
[/quote]

You misunderstand. What I’m saying is that my own choices must conform to my own moral aesthetic and that includes choices about what gods to worship.

that there is some kind of absolute yard stick by which it can be measured, and incidentally YOUR yardstick is the correct one.

No other yardstick is available to me. Or to you either.

This is what allowed folks throughout history to BE monsters to the other guys…they aren’t like me so therefore I can kill them without thought. Its what allows bigots to put down anyone who doesn’t look and act just like they do.

I don’t know what this has to do with anything I’ve said. If you’re saying that people can be monstrous if left to their own moral guidance, you’re right but the problem is that there is no other option.

We can only judge ‘morality’ as it relates to the times and the events during a specific time period. Thus, we can judge, or at least evaluate that the Germans (to use an easy example) were immoral during WWII in their killing of the Jews…as this was completely unacceptable at the time. If we assume there was no god for a moment ( ), we can attempt to judge the purported actions of the early Hebrew tribes (well, we can judge the story, if we disconnect it from the possible reality of what may have actually happened)…and probably judge that, for the time, genocide WAS justified…it was a common response and an accepted during that time period.

It sounds like you’re a moral relativist. I’m not. I’m a moral absolutist. My moral sensibilities are abslolute, unchanging (unless they change) and completely binding on me. It’s the same for everyone else as well.

God, however, we have no common yardstick to measure by. Unless we are arrogant (as IMHO you and Der are being here), and assume WE are the ultimate yardstick for judging morality, and everyone else is wrong, then we have to base our judgement on comparisons. And what would you compare God TOO? How can we even relate to a being that has neither a beginning nor end, doesn’t age nor fear death, has the power to create all of existance, is in all times and all space…AND supposedly has some kind of master plan for creation. A creation IT created, for its own purposes and designs? What do we relate it TOO, to make a rational judgement?

I don’t have to relate it to anything. All I have to do is determine whether submitting to a particular god is consistent with my own moral aesthetic. That’s what everybody does. It can’t be any different. It’s no less “arrogant” to say that God is good than to say God is bad. Those are equally autocratic choices.

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Horseshit. Making a moral/ethical judgement on a people that are different than you…that are in a different envirionment than you, or a different time with different circumstances, moral codes, ethics, or other different background…its all the same Der.
[/quote]
No, it’s not. Such things as skin color are irrelevent; genocide matters. Why are you discounting the feelings of their victims ? Does your moral relativism only apply to the perpetrators of genocide, and not the victims ? I’m sure they didn’t agree that murdering them was ok.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
IF there were a god, and IF it had all the wonderous powers attributed to it, then I don’t think we’d be in a position to judge whether it was good or evil.
[/quote]
As victims of that god, and the ones asked to worship it, of course we are. If something asks me to commit genocide or kill my hypothetical child, I don’t need to know or understand it’s motivations to know it’s evil.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Genocide IS bad…by our standards today. Remarkably, even in these supposed modern times, it still takes place…even when, by our own standards its definitely not acceptable. Yet, its happening even today…and its happened many times in the last century.
[/quote]
So is rape; that doesn’t make rape moral. And any culture that doesn’t disapprove of genocide is evil, period.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
By the standards in place during the time period in question in this OP (and probably most of history until very recently) it was not a remarkable thing. It was a generally accepted practice in fact, and the usual result of military defeat. Conquered peoples were absorbed into the tribe, either as slaves or in some other fashion…if they weren’t simply put to the sword. Certainly their cultures were wiped clean if they were defeated.
[/quote]
Which is why human history is a nightmare, and I consider the vast majority of historical humans to be monsters.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
You kind of missed the point. It wasn’t acceptable to Germany’s PEERS…i.e. the other nations that existed at the same time.
[/quote]
I doubt that genocide is ever acceptable to it’s victims; your point appears to be that the one position that qualifies as innately evil is being a victim; if you are murdered, you deserve it. I disagree.

[QUOTE=Polycarp]
Let’s see here, you’re taking a collection of pronouncements over a thousand year period, identifying from it the elements you deem the absolute worst, equating the whole collection to those pronouncements, then equating that to the two all-time classic Embodiment of Evil simile objects. And then haranguing the public on their immorality in not supporting your POV. Explain to me exactly how your position differs from Karl Rove’s?
[/QUOTE]
The fact that I haven’t started any wars or killed thousands ? Or even tried ? As well, it was Malthus who brought up the Nazis and Communists, not me. And if the public supports genocide, of course I’m going to condemn it.

[QUOTE=Malacandra]
God’s axiomatic position as supreme arbiter of right and wrong is founded not on His ability to send you to Hell for disagreeing with him, but on His inconceivably vaster grasp of what right and wrong is.

It’s as though I were to argue with Mozart on how to write a symphony. Mozart’s position as “supreme” arbiter is not founded on his having a gun in his pocket, but on having such a colossal understanding of the subject that he could write one at age six.
[/QUOTE]
By that logic we can’t tell if he’s good or bad, and we should ignore his moral pronouncements because we can’t tell if they are lies or truth.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

God’s axiomatic position as supreme arbiter of right and wrong is founded not on His ability to send you to Hell for disagreeing with him, but on His inconceivably vaster grasp of what right and wrong is.

Morality is an aesthetic. It has no objective value. God can no more decide what is “right” for me any more than he can decide what tastes good for me. I hate broccoli. I think it tastes bad. It doesn’t matter if God thinks broccoli is delicious I still don’t like it and I’m not going to eat it.

Even more problematic for your view is that there is no way to KNOW what God thinks is right or wrong, so we are still left to our own autocratic moral choices, regardless. If God won’t TELL you what’s right or wrong, you’re right back where you started, making it up yourself. And like I said above, the choice to submit to God’s morality is IN ITSELF an autocratic moral choice made by naught but your own moral authority.

One more thing – Aren’t people suppposed to have free will? Is it possible to have free will without already knowing right from wrong? Can people be morally accountable for their choices if they don’t know right from wrong?

If (as the Bible says) humans know right from wrong, then I know right from wrong. If I know right from wrong, then I’m right that genocide is wrong and I’m right that the God who orders it is immoral.

If I DON"T know right from wrong (and the Bible is in error), then I can’t be held morally accountable for my choices and I don’t have free will.

Do I know right from wrong or don’t I?
If the answer is yes, am I morally bound to abide by my sense of right and wrong or should I ignore it?

If the answer is that I DON’T know right from wrong, that’s good news for me. That means it’s party time. I have a free pass to do anything I want with no accountability.

[Voyager]

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Horseshit. Making a moral/ethical judgement on a people that are different than you…that are in a different envirionment than you, or a different time with different circumstances, moral codes, ethics, or other different background…its all the same Der. Calling a people ‘barbarians’ because they didn’t have the benifit of 2000+ years of history that formed you is about equal to calling someone a ‘nigger’ because they don’t have the same skin color you do. They were a product of them environment…just like my brown skin is a product of my ancestry. That you don’t see the distinction is not surprising to me.

[/quote]

Bull. There is a difference between understanding the moral environment in which people did things and excusing those things. Killing children in that situation is wrong, period. If you were transported back in time, would you cheerfully join in, or would you try to convince the leaders that there was a better way? I trust the latter.
Barbarian is a term without much meaning, but I think it can stand for people who are not morally advanced enough, in relation to us, to do what we would consider the right thing. If Der Trihs had set himself up as the ultimate arbiter of morality you might have a leg to stand on here, but since he agrees that we would likely be barbarians to those 2,000 years from now, he is being consistent. Morality, like knowledge evolves over time. Calling the Greeks wrong in their scientific views is not calling them stupid. BTW, that morality does evolve over time is a great reason to not believe in God. Any god would set down a completely correct moral system from day one, and there would be no need for moral development.

IF there were a god, and IF it had all the wonderous powers attributed to it, then I don’t think we’d be in a position to judge whether it was good or evil. No more than a stem cell can make an informed judgement about the scientist hacking it appart for mysterious and unknown (to the stem cell) reasons. In fact, I’d have to say that IF there was an immortal being with such powers we’d be unable to relate to it in any meaningful way…we are simply wired too differently. Death means something to us.

The difference is that we are sentient. For those who believe, that god gave us a sense of right and wrong means that we can use it to judge god as well as each other. “Don’t ask questions, Big Brother knows better” is not a way to be a moral person.

‘Genocide’ itself is a term that is meaningful only to us in this context…after all, killing off a bunch of this race or that race isn’t ‘genocide’, as there are still plenty of OTHER humans about. Its not like race distinctions are real you know. From the perspective of an outside species (such as God), it would be a meaningless distinction. It didn’t kill ALL the humans after all (even in the flood! ), so it didn’t commit ‘genocide’. As a single entity specied (assuming there is only one God), it may view other species in a whole different light. Perhaps thinking of us as individuals as we would view a few blood cells.

Genocide means the deliberate destruction of a racial or ethnic group. It clearly does not imply complete destruction, otherwise genocide would not apply to many of the cases where it clearly does. Unless you want to claim that the Holocaust and Rwanda were not instances of genocide, you might want to rethink your definition.

[Captain_Amazing]

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Morality is an aesthetic. It has no objective value. God can no more decide what is “right” for me any more than he can decide what tastes good for me. I hate broccoli. I think it tastes bad. It doesn’t matter if God thinks broccoli is delicious I still don’t like it and I’m not going to eat it..
[/QUOTE]

But most people would disagree with you that morality is an aesthetic without objective value. To make the opposing argument to yours, an action is either right or wrong, regardless of your opinion on it. So it’s not a matter of God deciding what’s right for you…it’s a matter of God deciding what’s right, period, and then you either submitting to the will of God or not.

[Der_Trihs]

As far as the argument that “they were too primitive to know better, so we shouldn’t blame them” goes, I’ll say that they should have known better. I’m not asking their opinions on stem cell research; they were quite bright enough to realize that they were killing fellow humans, no better and no worse than them; they simply didn’t want to admit it. After all, that’s why they dragged God into it; if they didn’t think their behavior needed to be excused, they wouldn’t have bothered. If they killed some individual who attacked them, they wouldn’t have said “God told me to kill him”, since there’s no need for an excuse.

That’s why I say the people of the future will justifiably condemn us; we do things we know or should know are wrong.

[David_Simmons]

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
But most people would disagree with you that morality is an aesthetic without objective value. To make the opposing argument to yours, an action is either right or wrong, regardless of your opinion on it. So it’s not a matter of God deciding what’s right for you…it’s a matter of God deciding what’s right, period, and then you either submitting to the will of God or not.
[/QUOTE]
And if the god of the Incas demands human sacrifice that’s OK too. I don’t see how it can be argued that a particular gods moral strictures are objective when the Inca god was quite different from that of the Israelites God yet the Inca empire was quite successful and lasted a long time until destroyed by the Spanish. I don’t believe that the Spanish prevailed because their God was superior to that of the Inca, but the Spanish had gunpowder and a willingness to use it indiscriminately.