Atrocities in the name of god

by lilyflor 21 Replies latest watchtower scandals

glenster

It makes an important comment but doesn't determine that non-believers are
better because you'd get most believers and non-believers alike to agree that
offensive fighting is an atrocity--defensive would be debated. A stance that
offensive fighting disqualifies one as Christian, defines one as apostate, would
be the basis for a very different list.
Another cause for division and fighting is being too 'centric, which people
may become over race, nationality, income level, belief or non-belief view,
etc. (some of about any group try to rationalize that we're the good ones--oth-
ers are stupid, crazy, and cause all the troubles in the world). Paul taught to
spread the word among Jews and Gentiles without offense, sacrificing the self to
gain others to Jesus (1 Cor.10:32-11:1). If you take the worst behavior of a
big group other than your own that's existed for thousands of years and give it
as characterizing them, it's 'centric (like Eurocentric, etc.), a more basic
common factor of war. You want to guard against being that way or it comes off
like Rutherford for the atheists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Christianity#Compatibility_with_science
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_science
The ultimate type of human death that's part of the considerations of God's
prerogative is that everyone dies and God didn't need to have it that way.
The positive side of the debate is that He gave people life and didn't need to.
The debate tends to have people show shades of emphasis one way or the other as
favors their partiality and is brought up in Job, one of the oldest books of the
OT (basically, the devil wants Job to give up faith because of the negative side
but Job stays faithful for the positive side).
Qcmbr

These threads always worry me because they play so loose with the rules of communication:

Let's make some ground rules -

1 - Only if you actually believe in God can you even comment on whether God allows or condones atrocities. If you don't believe in God you are commenting merely on people.
2 - Only if you believe the bible to be the literal, inerrant, inspired dealings between God and man can you use biblical references to say God condones atrocities. That a scribe wrote that God said to do something doesn't mean God did. If you don't believe in God / bible you are agreeing that in fact religion and God had nothing to do with atrocities but that atrocity perps used religion as a one of many tools to do their evil work.
3 - It is more often than not that wars are fought NOT for religious reasons but actually for reasons of resources. The Roman Empire / British Empire / Mongol Empire / US Empire / Russian Empire and so forth were not religious wars or conquests. Just because a leader or country proclaims a certain faith we cannot argue that the faith itself is the main cause of the atrocity or war.
4 - Since most people don't commit atrocities and are horrified by them and on the balance are religious then the entire premise that religion condones or inspires atrocities is logically fallacious. Let us agree not to bandy around group terms - religion/faith - as though all members of such a group are equally culpable and in favour of atrocities committed by anyone else within said group.
5 - Atheism must be divorced from agnosticism. Most people who have no faith would probably fall into the less rigid agnostic bracket - i.e. 8 - most non-believers IMO don't care as opposed to actually subscribing to atheism. Atheism to have any definition must be bound by a rule - there must be no deity - and as such it must set forth an alternate worldview and promulgate that view e.g.:

"The first goal of a Leninist party is to educate the proletariat, so as to remove the various modes of false consciousness the bourgeois have instilled in them in order to make them more docile and easier to exploit economically, such as religion and nationalism."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

As such those that argue that atheism is so superior in terms of atrocity suppression must prove that all such atheist worldviews in action have not produced atrocities or in comparision to religious societies have produced demonstrably less. Without this proof I reject all claims that religion is the cause or encourager of atrocity.
6 - When we make such claims we must make balance in our arguments. How much good for mankind do religious influences make as opposed to non-religious. Have we considered social cohesion and the overcoming of nature ('red in tooth and claw') in our thoughts? What do we make of the actual individual enjoyment, bliss, happiness and practical social alteration to be more socially conscious - directly attributable to religious conversion?
7 - While many of the world's most sublime,scientifically important, peaceful , mind opening thoughts have indeed come from atheists even greater ones have come from the religious (Greek thought did not suffer because of religious overtones.) It is shallow thinking to argue that religion holds back science (which I believe is based upon the few stories we have knocking around our brains regarding Galileo. At the time of the dark ages Islamic scholars were driving forth scientific thought dramatically.) I prefer to celebrate the brilliance of humankind rather than ascribe religion or lack thereof as the chief cause or stumbling block on society. There are plenty of examples of societies that have ceased to change scientifically regardless of religion (many agriculture systems do not afford enough resources to devote time to experimentation outside the immediate needs of survival.) Let us agree not to ascribe scientific or social achievements to the presence or absence of religious thought.
8 - Let's also remember that being a 'moron' is not dependent upon belief structure. Atheists can be stupid too.
Tuesday

Very long ground-rules. You actually stated what I believe in your reasons not to comment here:
2 - Only if you believe the bible to be the literal, inerrant, inspired dealings between God and man can you use biblical references to say God condones atrocities. That a scribe wrote that God said to do something doesn't mean God did. If you don't believe in God / bible you are agreeing that in fact religion and God had nothing to do with atrocities but that atrocity perps used religion as a one of many tools to do their evil work.
That's basically it for me, I don't believe God told anyone to do anything ever but people said they were inspired by God to commit these travesties. I would like to see apologists explain much of why what was said in the OT was not condoned by God though. I'd almost be willing to pay admission to see that.
glenster

^ It's part of the God's prerogative issue--He created everything so owns
everything, including all life, which are all lesser beings. Where you might
find it unethical that He causes a death in a person to person understanding of
it, it becomes fair game at the level of God's prerogative. A rough analogy of
God's relationship to people might be people and animals--you might love a dog
but not feel you have to love all dogs, or think anything of having a ham-
burger. The dog doesn't have a case that you don't love it because you don't
love all dogs or that you're obliged to.
Once you get past the idea that He has everyone die and didn't need to, you
could conceive of Him doing other things that cause people to die, too. A hope
commitment can be a sweet thing of a very nice person. However, if anyone gets
hurt, if someone has a jet fly into the skyscraper, a kid get killed at a
border, etc., while someone could make a case that it's God's prerogative, I'd
like them to show us a miraculous sign that God needed it to be done or shut up.
Tuesday

Once you get past the idea that He has everyone die and didn't need to, you
could conceive of Him doing other things that cause people to die, too. A hope
commitment can be a sweet thing of a very nice person. However, if anyone gets
hurt, if someone has a jet fly into the skyscraper, a kid get killed at a
border, etc., while someone could make a case that it's God's prerogative, I'd
like them to show us a miraculous sign that God needed it to be done or shut up.
I don't know if this is the reason for this post. It's more so atrocities that were committed in the name of God. If applying the last sentence there "show us a miraculous sign that God needed it to be done or shut up", I think the "or shut up" is unnecessary. But if I were going to site the atrocities in the Bible I couldn't site any miraculous sign that God needed it to be done except for the fact the Bible said so. In turn it's really because Moses, Joshua, David said that God said it needed to be done. We're assuming God told the Israelites to commit the atrocities in the Old Testiment, he might not have, it might've just been some commanders of an army stating "God is on our side", but assuming that if someone says that "God told me to" is the actual reason why the atrocity is committed, that's where justification is being looked for. Dogs may be a lower life form than humans it doesn't change the fact that if I trained 100 doberman pinchers specifically to kill 100 toy poodles I'd be considered a sadistic human being. Even if I deemed the toy poodles evil for pooping on my lawn, I'd still be considered sadistic.
Just my 2 cents, I'm really interested in this subject though. I really would like to hear why people think murder in the name of God (in the bible since that's the only place we assume that God was actually in control of the killing and not just some random yahoo saying God told him to kill) is justified.
Qcmbr

You could conceivably write a history several hundred years in the future where God commanded the invasion of Iraq. The great christian leader Bush said so.
glenster

"I really would like to hear why people think murder in the name of God (in
the bible since that's the only place we assume that God was actually in control
of the killing and not just some random yahoo saying God told him to kill) is
justified."
Regarding God being justified, one thing it depends on is whether you're
looking for justification due to God's prerogative or that, even granting Him
that prerogative, you'd only believe in a God as justified if He shows all-
benevolence.
If the first is the case, if the question isn't about all-benevolence but
prerogative, the human having dogs kill dogs idea indicates you might consider
God or the human dog owner as not all-benevolent, but the person wouldn't have
the prerogative of having produced all life so owning all life before we own it
ourselves, and that it's His to do what He wants with. They could be judged as
acting without the approval of God or by other people as not having the preroga-
tive (especially if it were their dogs).
Regarding OT people, it depends on whether you think God wanted them to kill
another or not. If by justified you mean a sign, people of the past aren't
around to ask for a sign. Whether or not you believe they did or not, like the
choice about the God of the Bible itself, is a matter of faith--a hope commit-
ment choice. But the choice to believe that or not doesn't have to make a dif-
ference between what believers and non-believers behave like currently.
If I was one of the OT people, I'd ask for a sign like Abraham is given as
getting, not just somebody's belief that it was a good idea, before taking Isaac
to the alter or such, but I can only ask it of a contemporary person who pro-
posed killing for God as described above--no dice without a sign.
Jesus didn't teach to find people who believe differently and beat them up, so
the post-NT examples at the 1st post would generally be considered atrocities,
faith corrupted by politics, etc., by Bible believers and non-believers.
If the justification is looked for in all-benevolence: a God that nurtures
everyone in fair and heavenly circumstances forever is a nicer idea and elimin-
ates the problem of faulting God for having humans suffer, but that God disap-
pears with one look around. He can't exist. To be credible, your God concept
has to be reconciled with the real world, where everyone dies and not always in
fair circumstances--a nice young person starves to death and a bad person lives
to a ripe old age, etc. Police or military aren't pacifists but generally mini-
mize crime. The OT deals with it in some of the oldest parts of it, like Job.
You could still say that, from our frame of reference, God's decisions aren't
all-benevolent (why give people only so many years to live and not more, let
them die of disease or starve, etc.?). It depends which side of the prerogative
coin you emphasize. He's not unconditionally given as all-benevolent, just
benevolent as it applies. If like Job you favor faith in the positive side,
it's to be grateful that He didn't have to create any life at all yet did, and
for whatever good is found in it.
Tuesday

You could conceivably write a history several hundred years in the future where God commanded the invasion of Iraq. The great christian leader Bush said so.
This is a really good point, how do we know that those stories in the bible aren't in a similar vein. This is kind of what I'm looking for in that even when I was a witness and I believed the bible was the word of God I couldn't get past all the blood-shed in the OT. If someone asked me at the door why it was condoned the only answer I had was "Well God deemed the Philistines et. al. wicked and worthy of destruction", which is a pretty poor explination and I knew that at the time. I'm hoping to hear from some christians, if you were preaching to a potential convert and they asked "How do you condone the atrocities committed by the Israelites in the Old Testiment?" What would be the answer? Would you wax philisophic with them explaining that God might not have really ordered these atrocities, would you try to go into meanings of certain phrases to try and show the atrocities were not in fact atrocities? I really would just like to hear some of the explinations.
glenster

That's all--you're just wondering how do you know that God had something done,
like instruct a military leader during the days of establishing a nation of be-
lievers in the tribal conflicts of the OT, you can't prove evidentially? How to
analyze the sea to determine God parted it to help defeat the persecutors or
such? You can't. For the believer or non-believer, it's a faith issue, then or
now, unless you have some miraculous experience. If it's something you don't
approve of on interpersonal terms alone and you go for the God concept, it's
God's prerogative, if you don't, it's just that someone said to do something you
don't approve of.
The most toward deciding a contemporary decision about it, short of such a
revelation, would be if you interpret Rom.13 etc. that A Christian can be part
of the police or military, and decide that the example qualifies as a case of
doing good, minimizing crime, and is a case of defense and not offense.
The next link has a little about the most I know toward a secular basis for
the reasonable possibility of the basic idea. The rest is faith, and that's a
personal decision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer_Adler#God
glenster

P.S: a couple more thoughts about the deliberation on God's prerogative:
It would be nice to imagine a God that has all of us live in heaven forever
from birth, but that God disaappears with one look around. The God concept, to
be credible, has to be reconciled with the real world, meaning with all the good
and bad things about it.
In the Devil/Job concerns in the OT, the Devil-type view emphasizes that we
all die, some aren't happy, etc., so encourages the view that you should turn
from God. The Job-type view recognizes the same bad things but decides we got a
chance at life and didn't have to, and he liked what good he managed to find in
his part in it, etc., so maintains his hope for God.
To see Job's side of it, imagine deliberating over the same thing without
God--not that God set it up so what do I think of Him, but just about life. Are
you miserable about life and wish you'd never been born or are you glad you got
a shot at life and are glad for what good you managed to find in it? That's all
Job did. Then just add God to it.

Atrocities in the name of god

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