I just feel like to need to talk about these, just to get them off my chest.
First and most important rule: this is a critique of ideas and arguments, not in any way meant to disparage or insult the individuals who expressed them. To the best of my knowledge, these are kind and decent people who I simply disagree with.
Last week, I was talking to someone as we were browsing some comics together. I showed him one that featured Ares, the god of war, and he felt the need to turn it into a religious talking point. He said that anyone who worships a god of war cannot find peace. It seems obvious that anyone worship a war god is not seeking peace, but what stood out to me was the irony of this statement coming from a Christian. Anyone with even passing familiarity of the Bible should know that the Christian god is war god. Throughout the Old Testament, he frequently demands war and violence from his followers and uses war to discipline them whenever he is not pleased. He also frequently engages in violence all the time, and describes himself as a jealous and wrathful god. When the Pharaoh was prepared to relent, god hardened his heart, causing him to act against his own intent just so god could continue rain his wrath upon the people of Egypt just to show everyone how big his d*** is. And, of course, there was that time he destroyed all life in a global flood.
Earlier today, I overheard someone quote the phrase: "there are no atheists in foxholes." In all fairness, I've never served in the military or been a war; but even if that is true, it is not the win so many people think it is. It only further highlights how it is when people are scared and vulnerable that they turn to religion; not when they are at the height of their emotional and intellectual ability.
Joined: 26 May 2024 Age: 52 Gender: Female Posts: 92 Location: UK
Yesterday, 1:47 pm
God in the Old Testament is a God of justice and his decisions of military intervention came after protacted times of trying softer approaches for change which didn't work.
I wanted to say this critically- a lot of the Bible is not litreal talk that God would unleash on everyone. It is more spiritual in style than litreal. So, like say if God's broke and enemy's yoke and neck. This could be an arrow spritual to release someone from bondage and not that God is striking everyone in the neck litreally. I like Psalm 11 which says about God's true stance on violence and that he is anti violent at heart. He destroyed the world once before as it was violent and he promised never to do so again.
May be also read a post I started here titled how religion can be used constructively in conflict resolution. viewtopic.php?t=427108
When God brought the nation of Israel into the land of Canaan, he told Israel that they had to exterminate the population. $00 years earlier he had told Abraham that those people were guilty of crimes (such as burning their children alive to the god Molech). However, their sins had not yet reach the level for extermination. Israel failed to exterminate the people and adopted their ways and were punished by God for it.
Earlier in the bible God exterminated everyone on earth except for eight people. The human worship of war is more of a youthful glorying of strength. The killing by God is more a judicial consequence.
While the Bible may say that he is a God of justice, I don’t think a just God would advocate for the slaughter of children and infants as YHWH does in various places of the Old Testament. A just God would also not allow innocent people, especially children, to suffer if he were capable of stopping it.
From my personal reading of the Bible from cover to cover, I tend to agree with Richard Dawkins on this topic (but not some other ones):
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.
This is not spiritual metaphor; it is literal. It is a command. Go to every population center within a designated geographic location and attack them. The aggressors here are the Israelites. They are commanded to take everyone within a city as slaves if they agree to submit to them. Do not try to weasel your way out of that by trying to tell me that this isn't slavery; the text makes it clear that it is forced servitude under pain of death. And if they refuse submersion? Slaughter all the men and take all the women and children as slaves. The only options here are slavery or death, for nothing more than being located on land you decided belongs to you; no different from what was done to indigenous peoples of the Americas and across the world. Colonization didn't happen in spite of Christianity; it is Christianity. And before you try to make out like being offered the chance to continue to live as slaves is somehow justice, let's look at the next verse:
Deuteronomy 20:16-17
Quote:
However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.
There is no weaseling your out of this one: the text is a clear and unmistakable command for the complete genocide of all the nations it names. There is no ambiguity in the words "do not leave alive anything that breathes."
1 Samuel 15:1-3
Quote:
Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.
Again, an unambiguous command of genocide. The text explicitly states that children and infants are to be put to the sword. The text does make it clear that this command is in response to aggression from the Amalekites; but aggression neither justifies not excuses the slaughter of children.
One way apologists attempt to weasel their way out of this one is by claiming that this verse isn't a command, but only a description of events that the Christian God supposedly never approved of. But that is clearly a lie, as the text makes it clear that God himself is commanding King Saul to carry out this genocide. And in the following verses, God rebukes Saul and removes him as king for failing to fully carry it out; so you cannot claim that was not God's intention.
1 Samuel 15:17-21
Quote:
Samuel said, “Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord?”
“But I did obey the Lord,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal.”
“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.”
Here is William Lane Craig, the supposed creme de la creme of Christian Apologists, attempting to explain that the slaughter of children is good when the Christian God commands it. Anyone who attempts to defend this filth is a despicable human being.
There is no justice in this. If any modern leader were to issue such commands, they would rightly be labeled a monstrous war criminal. You don't get to special plead for your god.
Stop trying to gaslight me, because it will not work. But more importantly; stop gaslighting yourself.
Reading the Bible and trying to believe that it’s one inspired message felt like gaslighting. You’ve got scriptures that say that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8) and that “his work is perfect, and all his ways are just” (Deuteronomy 32:4). If he were real, both of those statements would be lies. Being raised with it definitely felt like a mindf**k.
15 Jul 2025, 12:15 pm
