I was challenged to a formal debate by a conservative. The topic is:
Is the God as described in the Bible moral according to any reasonable standards of morality?
Our side is the negative - That the biblical God is amongst the more despicable of all fictional characters ever written about.
I am working on the draft of my opening statement. These are some bullet points.
Is the God as described in the Bible moral according to any reasonable standards of morality?
Our side is the negative - That the biblical God is amongst the more despicable of all fictional characters ever written about.
I am working on the draft of my opening statement. These are some bullet points.
Any criticism?Christians do have a few gems in the otherwise bleak seas of their holy book, and one of them gets paraphrased as "You can judge a tree by it's fruit." We use this very often to condemn people who claim they are great, for instance the fruit of the 'Glorious leader' of North Korea falls short of any glory.
Likewise, one must do so for the God as described in the bible. To examine Gods true character, we must look at 3 aspects of his actions: His worst deeds, his greatest deeds, and the relative frequency with which he partakes in the said deeds.
To kick start this discussion, I will begin by diving into the evil actions of God. Now, we all know that God either personally kills or has his chosen people kill multitudes in the bible, ranging from evildoers (list reference), to mocking kids (list reference), to innocent babies (list reference), however today I would like to look at what I feel is among the most despicable acts. Specifically I am referring to Numbers 31. I listed only the chapter and not the verses for a reason: to truly see how horrid an act this is, one must read the full chapter for context.
In this verse chapter, Moses, under the command of God, leads his people to destroy the medianites, and it lists the evil deeds that these medianites do. First, they engage in armed combat with the men of the other tribe. Fair enough so far, it's not the 'turn the other cheek' mentality most Christians embrace as being the will of God, but I can understand fair combat. Moses's men beat their opponents and collect all the prisoners of war, namely the women and children.
So, what commands do they get for the women and children? Do they send them packing? Jail them with Geneva like conventions? Provide them with proper food and medical attention, and educate them about a better life and invite them to join in a grand utopia headed by God? No, they decide to slaughter them. Kill every single prisoner in cold blood, from the grieving mother to the innocent child. All of them, except for the young virgin girls. No, these young virgin girls have a life of being raped by their captors ahead of them. And I am not talking about a dozen of them, no it actually gives us a number for how many of these young virgin girls are to be given to the brutal men who just took their baby brothers and killed them in front of their eyes: 32,000!
God does however give one condition about these rape victims: Some of them must be given to his holy elect, and not just to the war heroes.
I don't know about you, but killing thousands of children in a genocidal slaughter, and raping thousands of young girls seems like something that can only come from horrendous dictator, far short of any ethical beacon. How could you call got moral when he engages in an act we consider to be upong the worst possible one, one that makes Suddam Hussain look like a saint?