> David Court wrote:
> >
> > Dave wrote:
> > > > Secondly, your challenge to tell you something "good" in the first five
> > > > books in the Bible hasn't been answered because it is a ridiculous and silly
> > > > question frankly. I will attempt to answer it out of respect to you, but
> > > > would first ask you to define "good" for me.
TOD
Good is being kind and fair. Good is being just to all. What is justice?
Punishing the guilty AND protecting the innocent. Justice is also
ensuring that the innocent aren't punished for crimes they didn't commit.
Yahweh on numerous occassions lets a guilty party go free, and punishes
others for the guilty party's crimes. Numerous examples would be:
Killing Achan's children for his sins, killing the Amalekites (including
infants) for the sins of their ancestors 450 years prior, killing David
and Bethsheba's child for his sins, killing the 70,000 Israelites for
David's crime (which Yahweh "moved" him to do in the first place), the
list goes on and on. This isn't justice. Only in the case of Achan is
the guilty party even punished in the above examples. If the Amalekites
sinned by attacking Israel, they should have been dealt with
immediately. Their descendants should not be punished.
If when Timothy
McVay goes to court, would you think justice was served if they let him
go free and sentenced his descendants 400 years in the future to death?
This is exactly the case with the Amalekites and it isn't justice in any
sense, neither is it good.
What would you think if a parent grabbed the hand of their child, forced
him to take a pack of cigarettes, deemed the act wrong, and punished the
child by killing all of his playmates in the neighborhood? This is
exactly what Yahweh does in the last chapter of 2 Samuel, and it is not
just or good.
If somebody is raising kids, they should live by their own rules, this is
a mark of a good parent. If you are a drug user and tell your kids not
to use drugs, you are setting a poor example. If you punish your kid for
hitting a boy a school by hitting him and screaming: "We don't hit people
in this house," you are setting a poor example and not being a GOOD
parent.
This is exactly what Yahweh does. In Deut. 24:16 he states: The fathers
shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be
put to death for the fathers, every man will be put to death for his own
sins." He orders many massacres that break this rule and even breaks it
himself. In essence, he says: "Don't kill others for the sins of their
ancestors," and then turns around and says: "Kill these people for the
sins of their ancestors." He has given contradicting orders. A perfect
god could never do this. A just god could never do this. Why was it
wrong to kill people for the sins of others at one time and not another?
How can an eternal, unchanging being CHANGE his stance on such an
important issue? Is this an example of objective morality that
Christians claim is to be found in the bible?
I challenge any Christian out there to name one human being that has
surpassed Yahweh in brutality and murder. Hitler killed 6 million jews,
Stalin killed 15 or 20 million, can that compare to the ENTIRE WORLD
POPULATION that was supposedly killed during the flood? Take the time to
add up the people killed by Yahweh or at
his command in the Old Testament. It goes into the millions. How about
people killed in his name after the advent of Christianity, thousands
upon thousands in the Crusades and Inquisitions, millions in the
witchtrials (and these people were merely following Yahweh's command of :
"suffer not a witch to live." found in Deut.)? What were these people
all killed for? Read the reasons given in the bible. Where most of them
being killed in self-defense? Were they committing atrocities? No, the
reasons the bible gives in over 90% of the cases are non-violent (and
mostly victimless crimes). These reasons are usually one of the
following: The worshipped another god or gods (never mind the fact that the
Israelites hadn't prostelyzed to these people, giving them the chance to
accept Yahweh), they were sexually permiscuous, they were on land that
Yahweh wanted the Israelites to occupy or they were being punished for
the sins of their ancestors (which considering that in the case of the
Amalekites the bible portrays them as undeveloped, uncivilized nomads,
they probably didn't have writing and therefore weren't even aware of
what their ancestors had done). None of these crimes deserve death. In
fact, in our FREE country, all of these are protected rights, worship the
god of your choice, sleep with who you want, land rights are protected
and absolutely nobody is punished for the crimes of their ancestors or
anyone else. This concept of freedom is what makes our country great. If
any of the Christians on this list live in America (or Canada) think that
people should be punished
for the alledged "crimes" Yahweh punished people for, then they don't
honor and respect the American way, and they should move to a theocracy
such as Iran.