How Apologists Defend God's Genocides

[unknown soldier]

If there's one issue that keeps Christian apologists busy, it's that thorny issue of the Biblical accounts of God killing huge numbers of people. According to one source, the death toll at God's hands totals 2.8 million people. How do apologists "apologize" for God's deadly ways?

It's important to understand that it's a tenet of apologetics that God is perfectly righteous, and therefore nothing he does can be considered evil. Starting with this conclusion, apologists seek reasons to free God from any charges of immorality. I'd appreciate everybody's input regarding their own reasons why God is good despite his murderous ways, but here are some reasons to start with:

• God's killings are actually good, it's just that we cannot understand why it was good for him to kill.
• God is able to kill anybody he wants to, so it's OK for him to kill. His might is right!
• God is the creator of all life including human life, and therefore as the creator of life he can snuff it out any time and any way he chooses to.
• Since God is perfectly just, his perfect justice cannot tolerate sin, and he must eliminate sin by eliminating sinners.
• God kills those he sees as a threat to his "chosen people."
• We Christians invented and own morality, so if unbelievers say God's killings are evil, then they are stealing our morality.

[Difflugia]

• God is the creator of all life including human life, and therefore as the creator of life he can snuff it out any time and any way he chooses to.

That's Paul's excuse in Romans 9.

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for gloryeven us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

[Miles]

If there's one issue that keeps Christian apologists busy, it's that thorny issue of the Biblical accounts of God killing huge numbers of people. According to one source, the death toll at God's hands totals 2.8 million people. How do apologists "apologize" for God's deadly ways?

From the "one source."

To say nothing of all those killed in the Great Flood.

It's important to understand that it's a tenet of apologetics that God is perfectly righteous, and therefore nothing he does can be considered evil. Starting with this conclusion, apologists seek reasons to free God from any charges of immorality. I'd appreciate everybody's input regarding their own reasons why God is good despite his murderous ways,

I don't think it's so much that God is good despite his murderous ways, but that in the eyes of Christians, Jews, and Muslims (?) he MUST be good no matter what he does in order to maintain their love, respect, and hope. More than anything it's self-deception created to fill a psychological need. Most commonly the issue of his "murderous ways" resides in the dark recesses of the believers mind, preferably to sleep forever. And when awakened, such as would be the case here, all kinds of justifications are concocted, when in reality the god of Abraham isn't a very nice guy at all.



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[unknown soldier]

• God is the creator of all life including human life, and therefore as the creator of life he can snuff it out any time and any way he chooses to.

That's Paul's excuse in Romans 9.

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for gloryeven us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

That's a good example of arbitrarily assigning goodness to something without regard to what it does. So for Paul and other Christian apologists, God is good because they say so. God is also good because he can do what he pleases; his might is right.

So it appears that I have a different view of goodness. For me, goodness is conditional, and the conditions for goodness depend on factors like love, mercy, justice, and respect. If any being, no matter how revered or feared that being may be, does not act in accordance with love, mercy, justice, and respect, then I cannot see that being as good.

[unknown soldier]

From the "one source."

To say nothing of all those killed in the Great Flood.

If we add those to be killed during the apocalypse, God's victims will total in the billions.

I don't think it's so much that God is good despite his murderous ways, but that in the eyes of Christians, Jews, and Muslims (?) he MUST be good no matter what he does in order to maintain their love, respect, and hope.

And that's exactly why I think it's important to speak put against religion. If people hang their hopes for immortality in a utopia on the destruction, death, and torture of millions of other people, then I think we as a society have a very real problem. Such utter contempt for human life can do us no good.

But apologists won't take this criticism lying down. They typically try to argue that people cannot know evil without God, so to say that God is evil makes no sense unless the critic believes in God. Contrary to this argument, I'm an atheist, yet I have no need to believe in any god to have a logical idea of good and evil.

Finally, I see that so far none of the apologists here are responding to the OP. I wonder why.

[1213]

If there's one issue that keeps Christian apologists busy, it's that thorny issue of the Biblical accounts of God killing huge numbers of people. According to one source, the death toll at God's hands totals 2.8 million people. How do apologists "apologize" for God's deadly ways?

It's important to understand that it's a tenet of apologetics that God is perfectly righteous, and therefore nothing he does can be considered evil. ...

Firstly, if we accuse God of murder(*), because of what the Bible tells, then on the same basis we should notice that He has also given life. Because He has given life, He has also right to decide how long life He gives. Even if person would be perfect, God would have right to give only a short life and not eternal life. There really is no intelligent reason to complain if God does not give eternal life for all.

By what the Bible tells, God has decided to give eternal life for righteous and others will die.

These will go away into eternal punishment, but therighteous into eternal life.
Mat. 25:46

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift ofGod is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23

I think that is good, because if unrighteous people would live forever, they would turn the eternal life into eternal suffering for all, which I think would not be nice.

I dont think death is evil. And it is interesting how atheists commonly accept euthanasia and abortion, but when God does similarly, then it mystically turns wrong, all though God has right for that, but humans dont.

And also, you speak about 2.8 million people, but hasnt there been much more people that have died in the history of earth? Why make special case of those, when every year people murder ("abort") about 54 million babies. And by what I know, even greater number of people die annually, and God allows it to happen. I dont think great flood is worse than some other reason to die. (and actually, some say that drowning is the most pleasant way to die).

However, if we speak of what the Bible tell and believe all the "murder", then we should believe also that this "life" is meant to be only a temporary lesson about good and right , and not meant to last forever. People have opportunity to continue to true life with God and so, death of a body is not really the end, in Biblical point of view. And therefore, even if God allows body to die, it is not necessary end and we cant really judge God, unless we know more about how and why things went as they went.

(* murder is unjust killing, God has right to kill and therefore He is not murderer actually).

[JehovahsWitness]

• God is the creator of all life including human life, and therefore as the creator of life he can snuff it out any time and any way he chooses to.

[...]

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for gloryeven us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

That all sounds about right to me; nothing objectionable therefore nothing that requires a defense in my opinion.






JEHOVAHS WITNESS

[JehovahsWitness]

...in the eyes of Christians, Jews, and Muslims (?) he MUST be good no matter what he does in order to maintain their love, respect, and hope.

This implies all believers suffer from either a very disturbing level of perversity or a pathelogical degree of mind control. In both cases such a conclusion, fails to recognize the possibility that there could exist morally justifiable reasons for taking a life and as such represents at the very least an almost childlike dichotomy that has little relation to reality.


JW

[Miles]

I dont think death is evil. And it is interesting how atheists commonly accept euthanasia and abortion, but when God does similarly, then it mystically turns wrong, all though God has right for that, but humans dont.

And he does it with almost a vengeance.

And also, you speak about 2.8 million people, but hasnt there been much more people that have died in the history of earth? Why make special case of those, when every year people murder ("abort") about 54 million babies.

Please point out the stage of human development where the embryo first becomes a baby.

(* murder is unjust killing, God has right to kill and therefore He is not murderer actually).

Other than Christians and Jews defending the character of their god, who says "god has right to kill (preform an act that would otherwise be considered murder)"?


.

[JehovahsWitness]

Other than Christians and Jews defending the character of their god, who says "god has right to kill (preform an act that would otherwise be considered murder)"?

Emphasis MINE

From my conversations with Muslims I'd say they do. I don't know about Hindus, but given the nature of some of their gods I suspect, Hindus too.

Indeed it is one of the fundamentals of most if not all religions thought that the gods give and take life as they so wish.

JW