BIBLE GOD ENCOURAGES RELIGIOUS WARS

In the Bible, violence for religious reasons is encouraged and commanded.  The Passover feast was celebrated by killing animals.  God is said to be the author of the Bible and thus if it says he said something then it is claimed to be true.  God commands a lot of hate and genocide.  The first five books of the Bible are treated as unique and special in the Bible and the Bible cannot be understood without them.  The five books make up the Torah or Law.

 

The Law often interprets itself but sometimes it needs interpretation. Case law is how you apply a rule of the law. It shows what the law means or what the interpretation is. The Old Testament rules to kill other nations bore fruit in genocide so that clarifies that the laws were indeed fanatical and genocidal.  The Law also commanded genocide against adulteresses and witches in the midst of Israel.

 

You read Judges 20:16 where 700 men could sling a stone at a hair and hit it.  You read how Joseb Basebeth killed 800 men in one day with his spear in 2 Samuel 23:8.  The people of Israel killed 100,000 Syrians in one day and a wall fell on 27,000 more Syrians.  Samson was a unique killing machine who had strength given to him directly by God that was lost when he got his hair cut.  All this shows that God not only commands religious wars he gives miraculous help to kill people.  There is never the slightest word of compassion for the women and children who perished.  It is a duty to remember those and mention them first.  They are not mentioned at all.
 
In Genesis, God kills all the people on earth in the flood and spared Noah and a few others. Obviously, he did not do this to save lives which would be the only justification for murder. When God could kill people just because their morals do not fit with his perception of morals he could delegate this right to human beings. Nobody can say that God is forced to kill to save lives. Nobody can believe in God and denounce capital punishment even when it is extended to thieves and people who have sex outside marriage as an absolute evil.
 
Israel was told to wipe out nations and to fight bloody wars of religion – by the God of the Bible. They had to destroy the Canaanites and the Amorites and others (Deuteronomy 7). God specifically said that no compromise must be made with them but that they all must be destroyed. The reason he gave for this was that they would mislead Israel into pagan worship. At that time, there was no reason to think that Israel would have liked to do that and God should have waited until a significant influence started to take root. God would not let them take even the slightest risk meaning that it is always wrong not to raise the sword against people who have a different religion from you just because they do.
 
Deuteronomy 13 commands the murder of Israelite persons and groups who begin to adore false Gods. No one can say that God only commands this when it is murderous pagan religions that are followed. If God’s people could kill them then they could spare them but force them not to practice the evil side of their faith. Even if his people did murder many it would not justify killing all of them. There were plenty of pagan nations to be feared so it was nonsense to kill some of them to prevent them taking over. It would only encourage their neighbours to form a mighty coalition against Israel. Besides, God swore that a pagan takeover of Israel would not happen if it remained under his authority. The passage never mentions that only brutal paganism is meant. It would say if it did. Peaceable paganism must have been meant too. It is unlawful to slaughter pagans even if they have a religion that offers human sacrifice. The Catholic book, Radio Replies, state that God commanded the murders to bring home to his own people that idolatry was a most heinous crime (Vol 1, question 134). This sinister doctrine implies that it is better to be murdered or to die than to fall away from God.
 
In Is Religion Irrational? Keith Ward talks about Deuteronomy 20. There God commands the destruction of everything in Canaanite towns if they will not submit to Israel. He says that today no Christian or Jew will apply such rules in today's world (page 143, 144). So he is saying the command was right but just obsolete today. In reality, Christianity and Judaism don't have the guts to command such evil today!  And there is nothing new under the sun so there will be cases that are a good match and could call for being guided by the command if you don't want to see it as a command for today.  It could be implemented but not as a command. Ward writes on page 144 that Christians regard the command as obsolete for Jesus told us to love our enemies and Paul wrote that Jesus Christ was the end of the Law. But the teachings of Jesus and Paul prove no such thing. If God is love then he commanded the extermination out of love just like he allegedly commanded Jesus to embrace crucifixion for love.  Commands to be loving and fair are too general to read what Ward wants to read into them.
 
Christians say that Israel was a theocracy therefore it had the right to protect God’s authority as king by force and violence. That, of course, is an inexcusable thing to say. We don’t kill anarchists and we all live and think like anarchists a lot of the time.
 
Christians say that the pagans sinned so terribly that they had to be destroyed. There is no evidence even in the Law that they did. God said their deeds were abominations but that is not the same as saying they were wilfully evil. So, God’s silence makes it plain that pagans are to be slaughtered merely on account of their beliefs which he does not agree with. This is unsurprising for capital punishment is obligatory even though the victim could have committed the crime through some unknown mental ailment.
 
God told Saul through Samuel that he wanted to punish the people of Amalek for blocking Israel when they were coming out of Egypt by getting Israel to put them all to death and even the children (1 Samuel 15). This was commanding war both for revenge and obedience to the Lord. Christians will say that revenge was not the only reason but one reason and that the main reason was to eradicate their evil. But God would have stated the main reason if that had been right and that is what a responsible and careful god would do. God is condoning war for the purpose of vengeance. Christians say that it was good of God to command things like that because there is a life after death for the dead babies who would have inherited the evil characteristics of their parents had they not been killed and that the parents should have been killed for they were irremediably evil (page 104, Christianity for the Tough-Minded). Loads of evil parents have good children and even the Bible does not say that the Amalekites were that bad and besides God had founded no religion for them for the Hebrews did not want them in theirs and there was no trace of the doctrine of a holy and nice afterlife in Israel at that period of time. God hadn’t revealed any of it so how could the afterlife justify what the Hebrews did when they didn’t believe in it? What right had they to kill over Samuel who was only one man claiming to speak the word of God? And it is judgmental to accuse the people God told Israel to kill of extreme obstinacy in evil. It is not right that many Christians try to make up excuses – especially slanderous excuses like that - for the Bible’s version of God for that means they worship a kind of being they know is evil.

 

CONCLUSION

Religion does lead to war and suffering and intolerance and the Bible proves it. Atheism that seeks to help people in their self-development must take its place.