Re: Several questions concerning the fall and evil
Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 12:05 pm
neo-x wrote:I would do the same, I do not think children often realize what they do, but here is something to ponder upon, most of the times adults lack this realization as well. wouldn't you agree. However my asking of this question was just to get your view, nothing else. It is a good excuse sometimes "I didn't realize what I was doing", sometimes this excuse is abused and people intentionally do stuff as well.If they were killed at their first murder, would not that save many more lives? would you agree?
I would say that I dont really find children accountable for their actions. I know that I personally did things as a child that I would never do now. Nothing terrible like murder or rape or anything but I remember a time when I was in high school and I literally cursed the mother of a boy that I was playing basketball with. The boy was somewhat of a brat, I told him he was going into highschool and I told him he would get his behind kicked at the school he was going to because of the way he was. His mother came out to chastise me for this and in my frustration I cursed at her several times. This is something I sorely regret to this day and I often wonder what possessed me to do such a thing but I realize I was just young and immature at that time. Kids bully other kids all the time for the simple reason that kids simply dont always realize the weight and severity of their actions. My brother once told our Aunt that she was fat in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner in front of the entire family. He was a small child and simply didnt realize why what he said was inappropriate and hurtful. I would say that even for something like murder I would absolutely not condone the killing of a child because children very often lack the capacity to realize the gravity of what it is they do.
I can only speak from personal experience and from personal experience I know that children generally dont grasp the full consequences of their actions.
I am not saying that its okay to kill children because they have been taught bad things, but I do think it is a good point to consider that militancy broods militancy. I do believe people deserve a chance at redemption even the most militant. My point in mentioning this was that if kids are indoctrinated at a very early age there is a very high chance that they will grow up and follow what they were told. This goes back to what I was saying, the Canaanite and the six others that were ordered by God to be killed, was because God did not want any of those nations and their rituals to be carried forward. Because you will agree with me, that killing and sacrificing humans and throwing and slaughtering your children is also an abomination. I also mentioned, perhaps you failed to realize that this was a necessary step, not a favoured one. God does not rejoice when sinners die. He is in fact grieved because his creation has turned too much corrupt. I know of a mother who killed her son, because he was going to kill his wife. I do not think this is justified either but the alternate is no better, would you agree?Okay now we come to the children's part, it seems very harsh, but I have come at a conclusion that perhaps it was the only way to end the corruption present in that land. Some times children are indoctrinated at a very young age. I mean look at Pakistan, a lot of fundamental Islam is present here. When I was in school, our text books had lines that would make you think what in the world are we coming too. In first grade these lines was actually taught
So its okay to kill children if they were taught bad things from a young age? Im almost at a loss for words here, but I could it was you at the beginning of this discussion talking about how people deserve a chance at redemption and mercy and so forth. Here is a specific quote from you: "
And Should not God use more wisdom than this if he created all life? The fallen humanity deserves a chance. There are those who abuse this grace of God and kill, torture others. If God merely wipes out everyone to get rid of these few, would it be a fair judgement? I do not think so, regardless of what you say. It won't be just. God must be just as he must be loving.
" So how do we go from fallen humanity deserving a chance to the only way to end corruption in that land being to kill all of the children along with everyone else? I would love to here how you mesh these two widely disparate claims.
I think that there will be times when people have to make tough choices like that and I take my hat off to those with the fortitude to make those choices. There is an episode of Law and Order where this lady has a father that was imprisoned for being a rapist and when he is released he is suspected of raping again. While talking to the police the daughter defends her father to the end saying that he is a loving father and there is no way he would ever do the things he has been accused of. At the end of the show the police have been called because this guy was killed in the act of raping another woman. When they walk in to talk to the person that killed him, they see that it was the daughter. The daughter walked in on her father in the act of raping her friend and she took a baseball bat and killed him with it. Now I know this was only a fictional tv show, but the point is that sometimes when life and death literally hangs in the balance, sometimes we are forced to make decisions that arent easy. Another example is the movie The Good Son. At the end of this movie a mother is holding on to two boys hanging over a cliff, her blood son and a close friend of her son. She can only save one and having come to realize that her blood born son was basically evil for all intents and purposes (and watching the movie it is clear that her son is indeed evil by any reasonable humans standard for the simple fact that he gets enjoyment out off the suffering of others) she makes the hard choice to let her son fall to his death and save the friend. She clearly would have saved both if she could, but being forced to choose she made the choice to let her evil son perish. Now tying this in with your example, the mother simply made a tough choice and I say good for her for having the resolve to take her own sons life to prevent the death of an innocent (i assume)
This is again an appeal to emotion. Yes in 20th century this seems almost the most right way. I am sure it is to some extent as well. But back in the day, it was not the norm. Lets try your view that God only ordered to kill the men and women and not the children, and the isrealites bring the children with them back and try to teach them. What do you think the children would grow up to be? They would have seen what the Israelites did and at heart they may never be one with them so it is very difficult to imagine that would endorse the view their captors.Most likely they will grow up believing what they were taught, but I fail to see how that justifies killing children especially in light of your earlier comments about fallen humanity deserving a chance. How can you claim that fallen humanity deserves a chance on one hand and then on the other claim that children to young to really think or decide for themselves? You have done basically a complete 180 from your arguments from the start of this discussion. But heres a crazy idea, instead of the Israelites killing all of the children, they could have taken them in and shown them that there are other ways to live and brought them to the Lord. What a crazy idea huh? The funny thing is that this probably would have seemed like a crazy idea to the Israelites. It probably made more sense to them to kill the children of their enemies then to allow them to live, provide for them and show them the ways of the Lord.
But here you are judging people for what you think it is likely they will do in the future. To me you spare the child and then let them pay the price for whatever choices they make when they are accountable. You are saying itit was reasonable to kill these children because they most likely would have grown up to adhere to the teaching they were indoctrinated with as a child. You dont kill children because they were taught certain things and they might adhere to those teachings when they get older. Again, this probably seems obvious now but if biblical morals can only be properly interpreted in the time frame in which it was written, then what good is it to anyone else. If the bible cannot transcend time and and make just as much sense now as it did 2000 years ago, and make just as much sense 2000 years from now, then what good is it? If the bible says that you should put homosexuals to death, then this should be a notion that would make sense to people yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I would expect a book that was supposedly divinely inspired by a God not constrained by time to itself be able to transcend time and be logical to all people. Do you think this is an unreasonable expectation? It is said that God is wise, infinitely wise even, so what sense does it make for someone with infinite wisdom and outside of the boundaries of time to make laws that will only make sense in a relatively very small time frame?
If you one day found out that the couple you thought as your parents are actually the people who killed your biological parents, would you not hate them and be the exact opposite of what they taught you?
What are your thoughts on this?
If they killed them for no just cause then I would probably despise them, if they explained to me that they killed them because they were terrible people that did terrible things to people, I think i would understand. Likewise the Israelites could explain that they wiped out their kingdom because of these practices of human sacrifices and other terrible things they were doing. There would probably be some that harbored grudges but Im sure many would understand provided they had been treated well by the Israelites.
This is of course my rationalization of the matter, there could be more to it that we are simply not aware of.
And I think its terrible that one should have to rationalize children being indiscriminately killed or that any reasonable and sane person would even try. I think its crazy that someone would rather rationalize the indiscriminate killing of children and infants rather than question their beliefs. Can I ask what objective moral standard do you follow that allows you to rationalize such things?
But this all ended when Christ came, I do not know, if you read between my lines or not, but I do think I mentioned that humanity's second chance is Christ alone, nothing else. By second chance I do not mean that you free the next serial rapist, but that people should have a chance before God to redeem themselves. I mean we are all gonna die one day. i do not think any death is something that anywould ever like. But its a reality nonetheless.
See the above for the answer to this. Also my tone has nothing to do with the argument. If you wanna attack, attack the argument, not me, that would be a waste of time. I can very well blame the ancients for not having safety belts on their camels too, you know and knowing our latest standards I would be right to blame them. The context of ancient warfare is vital to be understood. I mean ancient tribal warfare is very very different from the warfare, you have grown up to see. Back then, its a matter of family, no outsiders allowed. You are simply ignoring a lot of factors which might have prompted the Israelites to not take away the children as their own. But again, apart from these problems, I think the answer is simple, God did not want those rituals to carried forward, so therefore he ordered such a harsh commandment.This is a very different tone from your earlier claims of God not destroying evil people because fallen humanity deserves a chance. You have gone from that to now basically claiming that it was better to kill children rather than take them in and at least attempt to show them another way.
So what about when God specifically commands to kill even babies?I guess babies who cant remember anything would somehow grow up to carry out the rituals of a people they never new; is that what it is?This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
For example, lets assume that if by sparing the children, all of them turned good but only one remained which actually turned back to his tribal rituals, and he marries and settles an area and after 10 generations, he has a small tribe, and they are continuing their blood bathing rituals, would that not be a severe loss of life as well? More innocent children would die.
So kill all of the children because one day one of them might grow up to produce a tribe that does the same bad things? I think another quote of yours from earlier was that "God is not out to eradicate evil" or something very close to that. So we go from God is not out to eradicate evil, to killing children because one or some of them might one day grow up to be evil.
Again this is a lack of knowledge perhaps but, you do understand that the old testament is different from the new testament. Please tell me what is your understanding of it? cuz I do not think you are fully aware of the difference. Do you understand the difference between law and grace. Th old testament is law, if you sin you die. Hell, God didn't even forgive Israelites on their mistakes, he was still just. Not unfair. There is no grace in that period, grace came through Christ. So I really do not know what you intend to prove here. If you know the difference you would know why the in the new testament, Christ saved the women from stoning and why it is grace, Christ atoned for us so that we can are free from the law.
So considering that Jesus was/is God, why do you think he had such a complete change of heart? Why did he go from the extreme harshness of commanding stoning people to death for working on Sundays and wiping out enemies down to their babies and the sheep and donkeys they owned to the New Testament God that teaches to turn the other cheek, love your enemies and pray for those who insult you and despise you? Why do you think God changed so drastically from the old testament to the new testament?
Don't quote me out of context. Actually it was because you said that God should wipe out all humanity just to get rid of evil, that was actually a very dramatic statement of yours. That is why I said that wiping out evil does by just bulldozing everyone is simply wrong by God. He is just and fair. And he did not wipe out everyone, only the guilty parties and that so also in the old testament alone. influential as well. Because wiping out everyone doesn't get them to chance to be fixed only terminated. God loves his creation. And that chance is Christ only, before Christ God is using the law and after Christ we have grace.Thats not how it reads at all. I said I would kill all those who sought to harm other humans and you said that God should use more wisdom than that because fallen humanity deserves a chance. You specifically said it would not be just if God wiped out everyone to get rid of a few:
Okay, yeah I admit I went overboard with that.
Infact I am beginning to doubt as if you have read your bible and understood it (whenever you were Christian), else you would have seen the difference.
I only argued that wiping all humanity is wrong. God did not required Israel to eliminate all humanity, just six tribal nations, who were too far corrupt and had gone evil. I am not readjusting my position at all. If you would only not mis-match my quotes, you would save us both, time. You could very well keep on insisting that what was done was right for men but not for children. But where do you draw the line, when do you think a child is a child, what age, 10, 9, 8, 12. Can you tell me what exactly in your opinion a child is, by age?So earlier you argued that it wasnt right to eliminate everyone to get rid of a problem but now that Ive shown that this is exactly what God often required of the Israelites, you have been forced to readjust your position to the point of finding justification for killing children. Defending God and the bible is a tricky thing isnt it?
Its hard to say specifically but I would say all those ages you listed are children to me. I would say it is somewhere in your mid to late teens.
Do you know that in many tribes 10 years children are wed, 12 years old have kids. This is however not my argument, I am only pointing out that under "what about the children" you can go into too far emotionalism and miss important factors that might have genuine cause (ALSO SEE THIS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_The_Ch ... (politics)).
I told the cause, I told you the reason. You may not agree its the best solution, I never said it was the best, only it was a necessary one, one that was not given out of pride but in sadness. That is the long and short of it, you may disagree but I do think you should have a fair assessment, rather than looking through the secular shoes cuz you have been enlightened by this view.
Again its only necessary when you use an ancient book, written by and intended for the people of that time period, as some type of timeless objective standard. It was necessary because to the people who wrote it, that was life back then. An infinitely wise and timeless God would probably not have inspired them to write something that would seem primitive and barbaric in the near future. This I think is a strong indicator that the bible was not inspired by a timeless and infinitely wise entity but rather simply conceived and written by and for the people of that time. Just like the bible says for slaves to obey their masters most likely not because a timeless and infinitely wise being inspired them to write that but because for whoever wrote that (Paul I believe it was) slavery was very much a way of life at that time. This is what you expect for books written and conceived by men held to a particular time. You expect them to write things in the frame of reference of the world around them. This ties into the point about subjective notions of right vs wrong. If it was objective good and right to do such things, then it would be as good and right today as it was then but since these notions were written by mere men and their subjective ideas of good and bad, and right and wrong, it no longer makes sense from our perspective. If the bible was a divinely inspired objective standard of right and wrong, we would not have this issue.
Also did you happen to read the two papers Jac mentioned to you on the "Is God good" thread, on goodness? What is your take of it?
I promise I will read them and give my thoughts.
You have alternate standards today. Though I pretty much doubt, 3000 years ago you would have been any different.