When people were at the whim of their environment with little understanding of how natural phenomena worked, they created their answers. It gave them a sense of control. Appease this god, and maybe we won't have drought or flooding. But what about today? Knowledge is all around us. Information pours from our computer. We don't need to burn witches anymore, because we understand bacteria and have found the real cause of plague.
It isn't a matter of excusing them so much as it is a matter of understanding that we are them. The idea that we know better now because we have science is just not related to the evidence. The 20th century was brutal beyond description, yet we were very thoroughly modern and scientific. There is something about the sacrificial idea that is deeply coded in the human experience. It is folly to suppose we have somehow left all that behind. We have not. Not even the more smug and preening among us here have.
Although none of us can be sure what we would have done in another cultural context we can reflect on how we hope we would have acted.
But the whole idea, cofty, is that the brutality we read about is still part of the human condition. The shocking brutality of the Iliad, for example, is still read today simply because it speaks to these permanent aspects of how we experience life as humans. It is as impossible for us to condemn Achilles or Ajax as it is (or ought to be) for us to condemn Joshua. But one thing I don't think we can do is productively speak about how we hope we would have thought -- for actions taken at a time when the moral perspective we have now simply didn't exist, but all of the human pressures and fears did.
The great disadvantage the OT has is that it perceives the "wrongness" of some, but not all, of these violent acts. The ancient Jews were not, as it happens, guided to become 21st century Sweden, which to some of us is somehow a great moral failing.
When atheists read about the genocide and cold blooded infanticide that the bible says Yahweh ordered the armies of Joshua to carry out, we are repulsed and condemn it as barbaric.
I'm sorry, cofty, but surely you mean nice atheists like you, right? The bad ol' atheists like Stalin or Robespierre, given their acts, surely didn't bat an eyelash.
When a bible believing christian reads the same accounts they have no option but to applaud the baby murderers as icons of faith and hope they would also have had the fortitude to brutally hack their fair share of babies to death.
As a bible-believing Christian myself, could I suggest you don't know what you are talking about? I mean, I think I have some other options here than the one you have for me.
