Why does god kill children?

by Comatose 269 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Comatose

  I was thinking about all the accounts in the bible that indicate god kills children as a punishment or teaching experience.

  1. Kills all of Egypts firstborn sons, who were innocent kids who did nothing to him or his people, who had no control over the decisions Pharoah made. How many times have you read that account or thought about it without realizing the devastating pain dealt to all those parents, and remembered those were innocent kids?

  2. Some kids jeer at a prophet and so using Holy Spirit the prophet calls a bear to shred 42 of them. A bit extreme? The WT explanation says their parents were bad and didn't respect Jehovah or his prophet, this was a lesson for them. Again, easily overlooked is the terrible pain and anguish at the loss of a child. Why not kill the parents or smite them with a plague? Why the kids?

  3. David sins with Bathsheeba, god kills the baby as punishment. In fact, the bible he struck it a blow and that it suffered for a week prior to dying. WT says this was a loving thing to do since David was worthy of death, lovingly god spared him. Screw the child though.

  4. The flood, would have killed untold numbers of children.

  5. He instructed the Israelites to let your heart not show mercy and to strike even the little ones as they fought their battles. In one case they bring back young ones and some grandmothers. He then has them kill the grandmas and baby boys, but they get to keep the 32k virgin girls. Odd.

  6. Achin sins by stealing and his whole family is put to death. You think a little kid living back then in those adult and male dominated times would have been able to do anything about their dad stealing?

  Why does god like to kill kids? In all those experiences it was unnecessary. It was chosen as a punishment or for shock value. Because the kids killed were not "gods people", we are led to feel no emotion over these deaths. As if people not a part of gods group are not like us or are subhuman and beneath our empathy. All people are equal. We all love the same. We all feel the same emotions. No child deserves to die for the wrongs of its parents. No person should be asked to callously put aside empathy and fellow feeling due to "gods will". God kills kids and there is no honest or good explanation.
• 

  diana netherton

  Kind of goes against the "God is love" BS we were taught, huh? I always had a problem with this issue. Some of the people in the Bible had it coming, but children???
• 

  Terry

  The "god" of text is the projection of those who were sociopaths...
• 

  Shador

  I never tire of occasions to use this:

  "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." - Richard Dawkins
• 

  Seraphim23

  Judaism had two main forces within its organisational setup, the priestly and the prophet class! The priestly class were satisfied with their interpretations and understanding of what God was and wanted to keep it that way with the organisational structure of religion. The prophet class on the other hand always went against the priestly class in order to correct and improve the understanding of God in various ways, breaking away from rigid organisational machinery and priestly hierarchy designed to keep the statuesque. The bible shows this battle between these two forces hence the idea of some that the biblical God kills children. The truth being that there is no biblical God as such but a reflection of what people thought God was in the bible. If there is a biblical God it would more likely be found within the lines of the text, not the text itself as that is an imperfect human reflection of a deeper truth.
• 

  donny

  One of my favorite passages of the God of Love is found at 1 Samuel 15:3.

  "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.'"

  I always enjoy listening to various apologists try to justify this command. So much for "You should not murder."

  And Psalm 137:9 is truly inspiring. "Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."
• 

  punkofnice

  I guess if one belives in god they can pray and ask him and await an answer.

  Personally I no longer believe in god so I'd say he doesn't murder anyone................it's all men that do these things.
• 

  Nika Bee

  I once asked an elder about this. He told me, as far as he is concerned, it doesn't matter, because they will be resurected anyway. I asked, and the once who were killed in the flood? He just shrugged. As he seemed to feel, that this was a very unsatisfactory answer, he continued to talk about a "study he read somewhere" about how evilness was passed on from generation to generation and therefore it was justified that godd acted like this.

  I was just speachless. And this in modern day Germany, only 50 years after the second world war, were every generation of pupils recalls the events from that time over and over again, and analyses them from every aspect.

  In fact, the formulation that Comatose uses to describe this mindset:

  As if people not a part of gods group are not like us or are subhuman and beneath our empathy.

  strikes me as analogues to Hitler's ideology.
• 

  AndDontCallMeShirley

  As if people not a part of gods group are not like us or are subhuman and beneath our empathy.

  ---

  Isn't this the real end-result of religious thinking? This idea of Provincialism actually numbs, or nullifies, a person's natural moral inclinations.

  Without the influence of religion, I think most people will gravitate naturally towards a "live and let live" attitude. Throw religion in the mix, and suddenly "live and let live" becomes extreme intolerance. And, when intolerance is done in the name of a god that demands it, invariably it progresses to violence and justification for the most inhumane actions.

  "Men, in order to do evil, must first believe that what they are doing is good." -Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• 

  jw07

  I can murder, rape, plunder, maim, vandalize if I have an imaginary friend to blame all of my actions on can I not?

  An imaginary being told me to do all of these things, he is very powerful and intelligent...but you just can't see him, or can't see him and live, according to a book He 'wrote' about Him, written by humans who don't make mistakes...oh wait...they do.

  Being an all powerful being He could have thought the most accurate literature about himself into existence, but wait, he didn't, he 'inspired' scores of random men (gender bias much) over the course of thousands of years and instructed them to write it! That's what the men who wrote his book for him said so surely it must be from God Himself!

  If I hear voices telling me to spread disease into a population, drop a bomb on a building because your all powerful imaginary friend and instructions from him are different, or strap a bomb to my chest and detonate on a bus to murder...I mean kill...I mean...stop my enemies, and attribute my psychotic break to MY all powerful imaginary friend I am right in doing so am I not?

  He told me to do all of these things for the greater good, and so I do them...

  but wait, other people say my actions are wrong and attribute them to a powerful imaginary enemywho only exists for now because my good all powerful imaginary friend allows him to be in order to prove him wrong!

  There is no God, there is no devil, neither exist, at least not according to descriptions of them by man.

  We all make choices and often seek to find a scape goat because it is hard to live with wrong choices. Or have good events happen to us, which we are not smart or aware enough to understand (and are afraid to admit it).

  Why not attribute it all to imaginary beings the same way that the Greeks had Gods for most forces of nature?

  Maybe 100 years from now there will be major belief in a single dual personality God. A God who creates only so he can later destroy to improve, thus justifying all tragedy.People would stillmurder, rape, plunder, maim, vandalize to fullfil one train of objectives for that imaginary being: to help him create or destroy.

  It has always been the same story and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

  The all powerful imaginary friend and enemy saga!