The God of Genocide
Perhaps the best argument leveled against Judaism and Christianity is the angry child of a god that people construct out of choice samples of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. These criticisms should not be taken lightly nor should the texts they reference be whitewashed.
To this end, I came across an article via the Codex that I plan on reading tomorrow (for it is 2:11AM and early evening naps should be avoided, no matter how crappy one feels) entitled Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?:The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics which takes a critical look at the claims of the “New Atheists” and attempts to construct and honest and workable Christian reply to such criticisms. Take a look online via the link in the preceding paragraph, or download the 30 pages of textual goodness in this pdf.
While you are reading that article, I recommend you also read the one which referenced it over at the Codex entitled Yahweh - a Moral Monster?, which begins a discussion on the Canaanite genocide.
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Comments
Thanks for the ref Tom, I’ll check that out. I think you might be interested in the conversation between Danny and Smiles over at hundiejo on this issue they are going at it from the conservative Church of Christ and atheist perspectives. I hope to join in later this weekend.
[...] A few days ago I linked to a an article that addressed the “evil” god found in the Old Testament. Throughout history different Christians have dealt with the sanctioned genocides and murder of infants etcetera in a variety of different ways. Some people say God can kill anyone he wants and have anyone kill anyone he wants because he is lord over all. Others say that god as portrayed in the Old Testament is a different god than the God in the New Testament. Quite a few Christian groups during the first few centuries after the resurrection were attracted to this idea. Other people use this issue to deconstruct, discredit, and ridicule Christianity, constructing Christianity as a fragile house of cards as if criticizing one or several things throughout the 4000+ year history/literary development of our faith negates everything else. With that said though, we Christians need to wade through these issues because we risk becoming that house of cards if we ignore or gloss over this problem. [...]
Over on Greg Boyd’s page, he’s been discussing this issue since like March. He’s trying to make a biblically compelling argument that these things weren’t actually commanded by Yahweh. I remain unconvinced even though I would like to be. This is, indeed, a tough subject.