If any other god.....

[Athetotheist]

"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." (1 Samuel 15:3)


"And the LORD said unto me, Fear him not: for I will deliver him, and all his people, and his land, into thy hand; and thou shalt do unto him as thou didst unto Sihon king of the Amorites, which dwelt at Heshbon....

And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city."(Deuteronomy 3:2,6)

If these directives were attributed to any deity other than Jehovah, would Bible apologists accept any excuse for them? If any apologist for another deity offered an excuse for such behavior in that deity, would Bible apologists concede and fall silent?

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to The Tanager in post #59

Where does Jesus show disapproval of these passages? Jesus always talks positively of the Hebrew scriptures, he talks about how Scripture can't be broken (John 10:35), He was a devout Scripture-believing Jew.

Then he would have taken 1 Sam. 15:3 as it's written, wouldn't he?

[The Tanager]

In other words, you still decide for yourself which text to take literally and which to take figuratively?

Everyone decides for themselves that, you and me included. This thread has displayed how we decide. You have continually asserted it’s X because…well, because of course that’s what it means by what it says unless I can prove differently. I don’t think begging the question and shifting the burden are sound reasons to hold one’s belief and so I've noted that.

How do the textual and cultural context of 1 Sam. 15:3 suggest anything other than what the text says?

One issue at a time? Then how about taking the issue of what the text says first?

The issue we’ve been discussing is your claim that the text clearly means what you think it means by what it says. This thread didn't begin with an open ended question and you not making a positive claim and then me making a positive claim. If it did, then my responses would have been different. No, you made a claim and I've been critiquing it. That's the issue that brought me to respond.

Where does Jesus show disapproval of these passages? Jesus always talks positively of the Hebrew scriptures, he talks about how Scripture can't be broken (John 10:35), He was a devout Scripture-believing Jew.

Then he would have taken 1 Sam. 15:3 as it's written, wouldn't he?[/quote]

Yes. And you've claimed it is written to mean X, but won't offer rational support for that.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to The Tanager in post #62

I don’t think begging the question and shifting the burden are sound reasons to hold one’s belief and so I've noted that.

"Begging the question" isn't what I'm doing, and you're the one shifting the burden.

you've claimed it is written to mean X, but won't offer rational support for that.

I've claimed that it's written to mean what it says and you're simply denying that. The rational support for my position is in the text itself, and when I ask you for your rational support of a different position, you keep dodging.

[TRANSPONDER]

It is surely reasonable to take it to mean what it says; it is rather for Tanager to give a good reason why it should mean something else, and 'it is embarrassing to Christianity that the Book looks so bad that we have to claim it means something else' is not a good reason.

I believe I've mentioned before that, if we can't trust a pretty pikestaff -plain passage like that as meaning what it says, why should we rely on anything the Bible says?

cue "Anything we like is literally true; anything we don'tlike really means something else."

It it not really different from denying that slavery in the Bible (which is what it is) is really not slavery at all, plus many other denials, such as hardening Pharaoh's heart, speaking in parables to ensure the Jews wouldn't be saved or the contradictions of the resurrection, which are simply omitted as though they weren't there. It is all the same faithbased denial of unwelcome, text, evidence and facts.

[The Tanager]

We have had multiple chances to change or add to what we've said and none of us have taken it, so our posts are there for anyone to come to their own conclusions. Thanks for sharing your views and allowing space for mine.

[The Nice Centurion]

[Replying to Athetotheist in post #1]
I want to enter this debate by presenting William Lane Craigs apologetic for the Caanaite Genocide.

That W.L.C. even identifies himself as an apologist for Genocide was reason enough for Richard Dawkins to refuse debating him on stage.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... lane-craig

But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to pagan nations on Israel's part. In commanding complete destruction of the Canaanites, the Lord says, 'You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods' (Deut 7.3-4). […] God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. […] Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God's grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven's incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives."

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So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli [sic] soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalising effect on these Israeli [sic] soldiers is disturbing."

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"I have come to appreciate as a result of a closer reading of the biblical text that God's command to Israel was not primarily to exterminate the Canaanites but to drive them out of the land.[…] Canaan was being given over to Israel, whom God had now brought out of Egypt. If the Canaanite tribes, seeing the armies of Israel, had simply chosen to flee, no one would have been killed at all. There was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanite peoples.
It is therefore completely misleading to characterise God's command to Israel as a command to commit genocide. Rather it was first and foremost a command to drive the tribes out of the land and to occupy it. Only those who remained behind were to be utterly exterminated. No one had to die in this whole affair."

By some it is seen as an Outrage that Dawkins refuses to give Genocide Advocacy some dignity here.
Them see this as a declarement of bancruptcy for New Atheism. Brights against Genocide they consider disrespectful.
https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproj ... lane-craig

[TRANSPONDER]

We have had multiple chances to change or add to what we've said and none of us have taken it, so our posts are there for anyone to come to their own conclusions. Thanks for sharing your views and allowing space for mine.

You are most welcome and we goddless hellspawn are grateful for the opportunity to post our views (in some countries, we'd be in jail awaiting a public thrashing). That said, running away with vague non -point, dismissal or final cheap shot may allow the Believer to think they won by denying everything, but the fact is, it is yet another win for the hellbound satanspawn, and those with discernment still operating, will see that.

To repeat myself repeatedly, it is about making the better case, not about maintaining denial in the face of that better case.

The Bible is not reliable, as history, science or a moral guide. OT or New. Apologists have excused, rewritten or ignore what is in it, and invented what isn't there and denied what is (the "Ghost" Bible) in order to insist that is says (or means) what they want rather than what it does.

I believe that people care that what they believe is true, not faithbased denialist.