I really cannot grasp how intelligent, kind people (JW or otherwise) who read this kind of thing from the OT can fail to be repulsed by this behavior and renuounce who ordered it to happen. I suppose might makes right in their minds, although they will talk circles around that idea. By these standards, what did Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot do wrong? They were more godly than anyone if you believe and love YHWH the war god of the Hebrews..
Jehovah told to Moses: "....kill every woman who has had sexual relations with a man"
by opusdei1972 70 Replies latest watchtower bible
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BU2B
How is Joshua or Moses any different than Hitler or Mao Zedong? Simply that God told them to commit genocide but Hitler did it without gods prompting it??
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sir82
I really cannot grasp how intelligent, kind people (JW or otherwise) who read this kind of thing from the OT can fail to be repulsed by this behavior and renuounce who ordered it to happen.
You've been a JW for a while, right? You've read those words before.
How did you rationalize it to yourself? "Oh, those people were wicked & incorrigible, and if Jehovah said these things, they must have deserved it."
If you were slightly more delusional, you would have said "And they'll all get resurrected anyway, so it's all good".
You are now enlightened, and rightfully repulsed.
Most JWs in your congregation are not similarly enlightened, and are still justifying the actions as you likely did in your recent past.
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cofty
I was once having a debate with a christian theist called Brock about OT morality. I posted a picture of the massacre of Palestinian children at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila in 1982.
I asked him how it was morally different from the actions of Joshua's army.
His response was chilling - He said that god had ordered one massacre but not the other.
Ideologies can turn good people into moral reprobates.
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Perry
This is a reasoned treatment of the subject.
And also here.
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JWdaughter
You can't sell her because you have "humiliated" her? That doesn't indicate any kind of consensual relation.
No wonder virgins back then bled. Heck, women who had had 3 kids probably still bled with cavemen like that rutting with them-because humiliation being the substitute word for sex (with a spouse!) indicates very unloving sex was going on. Forget loving, it just sounds like it was straight up abusive in every way.
I want to know how they KNEW whether a young woman was a virgin or not? Did they rape them all and just keep the ones that bled? Seriously, I doubt they had a resident gyno or even midwife checking a queue of females before they MURDERED them!
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steve2
Perry, the apologetics could not have been better argued by the Watchtower. PR rules okay!
All it establishes is that humans have a limitless capacity for sanitizing through argumentation heinous acts recorded in ancient "sacred" texts - especially if cherished beliefs are premised on the divine inerrancy of those texts.
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cofty
It is appalling that otherwise decent people like Perry feels the need to justify infanticide and rape.
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AndDontCallMeShirley
Perry: This is a reasoned treatment of the subject.
I read nothing in your reference that came even close to being "reasoned".
Unless, of course, you're a fundamentalist Christian and throw all humanity out the window to support your dickhead OT god...then almost anything becomes 'reasonable'.
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hamsterbait
Cofty - killing babies, children, mothers and the elderly is morally neutral.
Neither right or wrong, unless god tells you to do it. Then it is good good good.