THE BIBLE GOD COMMANDS HOLOCAUSTS FOR HIS "ENEMIES" 

Judaism follows the Law of Moses which is in the first five books of the unholy Bible. These books endorse the torture and murder of apostates from God’s religion, homosexuals and kidnappers to name but a few categories. These killings are senseless therefore the killings are really about human sacrifice. Unnecessary killing in the name of God is really human sacrifice no matter if it is called execution or not.  Christians follow the Law too but in spirit.  This means that God is going to handle things himself instead of asking us to do it.  This comes across as people wanting innocent people slain and not having the guts to do it.

Pope John Paul II forbade capital punishment though tradition and the Bible command it. Catholics say that he is not saying capital punishment is wrong full stop but only that it is not necessary today and the Bible regulations are only meant to be carried out if the Church runs the state which it does not. The capital laws of the Bible were never necessary and God could not object to Christians using the state to kill people their God wants dead like heretics, homosexuals and adulterers. For him to object now, would be the same as saying he was wrong to go so far. If killing those people was right then, then it is always right. The pope is both condoning the crime of capital punishment and saying he does not – another crime. The Catholic view that capital punishment was encouraged by God to protect the state and its members is misleading because the Bible laws could have done that without commanding the killing of those people and also because the Bible says these killings are punishment. Now could they be punishment if you need them to protect others? That would not be punishment but self-defence. The laws of the Bible had nothing to do with protecting but about showing the people who was boss, God and about God getting his own back on those who ignored his law.

Deuteronomy 13:12-16 says that if a town worships another god then all who live in the town must be put to death and the livestock and all! And all must be piled up and even its riches and possessions. Then the whole lot has to be turned into a "whole burnt offering to the Lord your God". Moses is said to have spoken to God face to face unlike anybody else so Moses was in a position to tell us what God wanted if that is true.
 
The Old Testament, the Book that Jesus Christ made his CV, is an evil book. Yet Jesus said it was the word of God.
 
The destruction of pagan cities and towns by Joshua at God's behest is written about at times in a ritualised way. 

Before Shechem was destroyed, a ceremony of blessing and cursing took place. The language of devoting those towns to destruction tells us one thing. It is more than genocide that is going on. The people were being slaughtered in battle as a sacrifice. Please read the material in True Reason: Christian Responses to the Challenge of Atheism, edited by Tom Gilson and Sean McDowell. One point made in the book is how Joshua deploys a "highly ritualised character" in some of the conquests described eg with the destruction of Jericho. The word herem appears which means "devoted to destruction". The book concludes, "Joshua itself appears to be full of ritualistic, stylised, formulaic language." It does not admit that the killings were meant to be offerings to God.   Clearly, the language of genocide in the book of Joshua where the enemy is "devoted to destruction" implies a sacred ritualistic sacrifice of the victims.
 
The book argues that when Joshua speaks of completely killing nations it did not mean that Joshua targeted civilians though some of them would have died as part of the collateral damage when fighting the armies. The only grounds the book has for saying that is that some of the nations that were said to be completely annihilated are mentioned later in the Bible as still existing. But that is not evidence that civilians were not targeted. It is evidence that as thorough as Joshua was there is no such thing as completely wiping out a people. No battleaxe says that when he wipes out a nation means that he really thinks he got them all. It is a general statement not a literal one. The Bible merely asks us to use commonsense. The liquidation statements are said to be rhetoric. They are not. Rhetoric would mean that Joshua may have ruined their political structure and use exaggerated language: "I wiped them all out". That does not make sense. If the author of Joshua was sensible he would not write like that for in a warring world it would encourage more violence through bad example. To rhetorically say that if you dispossess a nation of its land that you have committed genocide against it shows that you wish it was real genocide. The book admits to only thinking that the genocide statements are rhetorical and literary. It is speculation and what right have we to take Joshua's side by pretending that he did not really butcher like Stalin? What about the people who died?
 
The Bible at Deuteronomy 7:2 and 20:16-17 demands that Israel must kill everybody that breathes among the Canaanites. True Reason: Christian Responses to the Challenge of Atheism says that since other texts demand that they be driven out that the genocide rule was not meant literally. But the two are compatible.
 
Christians resort to imagining the author of any Bible book would not contradict himself. That is nonsense and considering how hard it was to write and navigate through scrolls in those days it would be expected.
 
What about God's command that every man of Midian must be killed in Numbers 31? Did Moses add in the command sinfully and on his own authority to kill women and children as well just as True Reason: Christian Responses to the Challenge of Atheism alleges?  God in Deuteronomy said not to kill people who were not fighting.  This does not help for in war back then some people who were not fighting were ready to start and waiting for their chance.  So the only way to be safe was to slay them all.  God was not helping by saying fighters must not be attacked.  All armies say the same thing but on the battlefield it is just not going to work.  So we can dismiss it as showing that God did not mean it too literally in Numbers 31.  Even if it was not meant literally then it meant, "Kill every man in Midian but I know you will only aim to kill fighters".  It was still a command to kill.  The command was literal even if the detail to kill everybody was not.  It was still intended to kill innocents even if by accident.  It was calling the innocents collateral damage.