Moral Cretinism Part IX
The ban passages, Genocide and Himmler.
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| William Lane Craig |
The following is,
in full, a blog posting by the so-called Theologian William Lane Craig in
response to two questions concerning the infamous ban passages from the Old-Testament. The terrible passages that talk about how God ordered the
Israelites to kill everyone and in some cases “all that breathed” in the towns
they took and that they exterminated the Canaanites from the land with fire and
sword.
Question 1:
These passages of
ruthless holy war represent a problem for those who believe in an all good
beneficent God that is revealed in scripture.
The following is
the questions asked and William Lane Craig’s response. The question and William
Lane Craig’s response are italicized. My responses are in regular script.
William Lane Craig's piece is from Reasonable Faith Here.
William Lane Craig's piece is from Reasonable Faith Here.
Subject: Slaughter of the Canaanites
From
Reasonable Faith – Web site of William Lane Craig
Question 1:
In the forums, there has been some good questions raised on the issue
of God commanding the Jews to commit “genocide” on the people in the promise
land. As you have pointed out in some of your written work that this act does
not fit with the Western concept of God being the big "sugar daddy" in the sky.
Now we can certainly find justification for those people coming under God judgement
because of their sins, idolatry, sacrificing their children, etc... But a
harder question is the killing of the children and infants. If the children are
young enough along with the infants are innocent of the sins that their society
has committed. How do we reconcile this command of God to kill the children
with the concept of his holiness?
Thank you,
Steven Shea
Question 2:
I have heard you justify Old Testament violence on the basis that God
had used Israelite army to judge the Canaanites and their elimination by
Israelites is morally right as they were obeying God’s command (it would be
wrong if they did not obey God in eliminating the Canaanites) . This resembles
a bit on how Muslims define morality and justify the violence of Muhammad and
other morally questionable actions (Muslims define morality as doing the will
of God). Do you see any difference between your justification of OT violence
and Islamic justification of Muhammad and violent verses of the Quran? Is the
violence and morally questionable actions and verses of the Quran, a good
argument while talking to Muslims?
Anonymous
The questions posed
are definitely worth asking in that the ban passages from the Old Testament are
difficult to reconcile with the image of an all good God. But already we can
see creeping assumptions in the very questions themselves. Assumptions that
Craig shares. One is that the picture of the Canaanites as irredeemably wicked
and deserving of the judgement of death.
Another is the assumption that God commanded this “judgment”. Both of those assumptions are made without
proof are even argument. Craig basically shares those assumptions.
It is interesting
to note that “idolatry” is assumed by both
the questioner and Craig has a bad thing
worthy of severe punishment. What this means is that the Canaanites worshipped a slew
of Gods and not the one God of the Israelites. The fact that the Canaanites had
a different religious system is assumed by both questioner and Craig as evil
and entirely worthy of punishment by death. In other words religious liberty is
evil and un-biblical.
This
questioner seems to have no particular
problem with the killing of adults. Of course some of the adults would be
insane, mentally disabled, old, and infirm and yes in any large community there
would be at least some good people. Yet the questioner has no problem dumping a
large number of people in the category of so evil has to merit death.
What we see here is
the issue of collective guilt. Basically an entire population is deemed guilty
of the offences of some of them. That this notion is basically primitive and
frankly unfair is of course obvious. Collective guilt notions are pernicious in
that they assume inherited guilt and guilt by association. The fact is if your
father, shall we say committed murder, you are not responsible or guilty. Yet
this notion plays into the idea of inherited guilt and justifies “punishing”
the guiltless.
The Bible does say
in certain passages that God punishes people for the sins of their ancestors
although it also says that people shall not be punished for transgressions that
are not their fault. A contradiction it
seems.
The second
questioner raises the question that Islamic justifications of Islamic violence
and how similar this is to what Craig is doing. Later we will find out that
Craig makes an absurd hash of dealing with that question by a series of
non-sequiters and what can only be described as lies.
Dr.
Craig responds:
According to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old
Testament), when God called forth his people out of slavery in Egypt and back
to the land of their forefathers, he directed them to kill all the Canaanite
clans who were living in the land (Deut. 7.1‐2; 20.16‐18). The destruction was
to be complete: every man, woman, and child was to be killed. The book of
Joshua tells the story of Israel’s carrying out God’s command in city after
city throughout Canaan.
These stories offend our moral sensibilities. Ironically, however, our
moral sensibilities in the West have been largely, and for many people unconsciously,
shaped by our Judeo‐Christian heritage, which has taught us the intrinsic value
of human beings, the importance of dealing justly rather than capriciously, and
the necessity of the punishment’s fitting the crime. The Bible itself inculcates
the values which these stories seem to violate.
The command to kill all the Canaanite peoples is jarring precisely
because it seems so at odds with the portrait of Yahweh, Israel’s God, which is
painted in the Hebrew Scriptures. Contrary to the vituperative rhetoric of
someone like Richard Dawkins, the God of the Hebrew Bible is a God of justice,
long‐suffering, and compassion.
Well aside from the
bias that supposedly only the Judeo-Christian heritage taught the intrinsic
value of human beings, which is false. Other traditions thought of human beings
having intrinsic value, for example the Greek tradition or the Confucianism of
China etc.
Of course what
Craig does not say is that these Biblical passages conflict with our modern
understanding of our Judeo-Christian inheritance. There were times in the past
that some Christians placed it seems little value on the lives of at least some
human beings. What he is talking about is the rise of the concept of “Human
Rights” that emerged from the Enlightenment period of the 18th
century and was in many respects a reaction against theocratic Christianity and
was also relentlessly secular.
And of course as
per usual with these sorts of Fundamentalist ideologues Craig ignores the roots of
contemporary ideas of human rights from the Greco-Roman legal and philosophical
tradition.
As for a jarring
contrast with how Israel’s God is portrayed in the Bible. That is Craig’s own
biased interpretation. It is not a jarring contrast at all. What it is a
jarring contradiction is the difference between the way God is portrayed between some passages and other passages in the Bible.
In other words God is portrayed in contradictory ways in the Bible. This
should not be a surprise given that the Bible is composed of many different
works, composed over a long period of time and for different purposes. Why not
just accept that the Bible is contradictory concerning God and leave it at
that?
Craig of course
realizes that his “faith” doesn’t accept that the Bible could be contradictory
because that would fatally undermine the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy which Craig believes in. So of
course the assumption is made by Craig that the contradictions are not really “real”.
Of the course the
fact that in much of the Old Testament God is an old style Semitic God,
capricious and brutal at times and frankly “human”, merely shows that the Israelites
lived in and absorbed the ethos of the world they were living in. The terrifying
ban passages with their holy war call for the utter destruction of enemies of
the Israelites is in many respects similar to the Assyrian ethos of their Gods
helping them in war and the various atrocities described in the Assyrian
annals has demanded by and pleasing to their Gods.
The portrayal of
God in the Old Testament is inescapably contradictory and that despite
Craig’s assertions remains so. Attempts
to “explain” that the manifest contradictions are not ‘really” contradictions
will inevitably fail when you read the Biblical text without blinkers.
After the
obligatory swipe at Dawkins, which of course ignores the vituperative and quite routine hateful
rhetoric by fundamentalists about Atheists etc., Craig claims that the God of
the Old Testament is long-suffering and compassionate. Really!? In SOME of the Old Testament God is long
suffering and compassionate and upholds justice, but in other passages which
are just as germane God is petty, vindictive and brutal. Craig seems to forget
all those passages about God punishing people down to the 13th generation for the
faults of their ancestors, hardly just.
It is fascinating
to see how Craig seeks to imagine and limit God. He doesn’t get that God is
uncanny and contradictory which is what all these contradictory notions about
God end up leading too. Not for Craig is The Book of Job`s vision of God has
uncanny, incomprehensible and justice simply doesn’t enter into it.
Of course whether
or not God is uncanny has no bearing on the question of human responsibility
and offloading that onto God doesn’t change it one iota. Craig as we find out
thinks different.
You can’t read the Old Testament prophets without a sense of God’s
profound care for the poor, the oppressed, the down‐trodden, the orphaned, and
so on. God demands just laws and just rulers. He literally pleads with people
to repent of their unjust ways that He might not judge them. “As I live, says
the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the
wicked turn from his way and live” (Ez. 33.11).
He sends a prophet even to the pagan city of Nineveh because of his
pity for its inhabitants, “who do not know their right hand from their left”
(Jon. 4.11). The Pentateuch itself contains the Ten Commandments, one of the
greatest of ancient moral codes, which has shaped Western society. Even the
stricture “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was not a prescription of
vengeance but a check on excessive punishment for any crime, serving to
moderate violence.
God’s judgement is anything but capricious. When the Lord announces His
intention to judge Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins, Abraham boldly asks, “Will you indeed sweep
away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within
the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty
righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the
righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked!
Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”
(Gen. 18.25). Like a Middle Eastern merchant haggling for a bargain, Abraham
continually lowers his price, and each time God meets it without hesitation,
assuring Abraham that if there are even ten righteous persons in the city, He
will not destroy it for their sake. So then what is Yahweh doing in commanding
Israel’s armies to exterminate the Canaanite peoples? It is precisely because
we have come to expect Yahweh to act justly and with compassion that we find
these stories so difficult to understand. How can He command soldiers to
slaughter children?
In the first two
passages Craig says little too complain about except his totally un-evidenced
assumption that God is somehow saying those things. Well Craig those passages
may have divine inspiration but they were written by men not God. Given how
uncanny, incomprehensible God is I seriously doubt anyone can get the divine
inspiration thing right all the time. In other words the Bible was written by
men not God and has such should be judged by men.
He refers to the
Book of Jonah which in several beautiful passages teaches a lesson in compassion and
even mentions that the lives of animals have value in the eyes of God and
therefore should be of value to men also.
I note Craig continues his game of assuming the Bible
is the basis of Western values, ignoring Greece and Rome for example. His
treatment of the talon or eye for an eye is correct; it was designed to limit
punishment. The punishments are still barbaric in many instances, however. I note that
Craig ignores the more brutal of the Biblical laws like ordering the stoning of
disobedient children or the taboos involving menstruating women all supposedly
dictated by God. Actually of course all it illustrates is that the laws were
products of a particular historical circumstance and not the word of God although
perhaps inspired.
Actually quite
interesting is how Craig interprets the story of Abraham talking with God
over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. The story is basically about a human
bargaining with God. In fact the trope in this story is about how humans don’t have to accept
capricious punishment but can bargain with fate or in fact with God
him/herself.
The story is not
one of man groveling before an all-powerful deity but of man debating with and
not meekly accepting authority even if it is God himself.
This being the case
the “moral” of the story is not that God is compassionate but that even the
commandments of God do not have to be meekly accepted. In other words the ways
of God have to be justified to man. Simply being the commandments of God does
not mean that we have to accept it without analysis or questioning.
The fact the God
still destroys Sodom and Gomorrah is in terms of the story sort of beside the
point. Of course Craig does not mention that the story seems to be just that a
story. Sodom and Gomorrah may never have existed and it appears neither did the
fiery destruction of same. In fact it appears that the story of Sodom and
Gomorrah emerged to explain the unusual geology of the south end of the Dead
Sea.
As it is Craig does
not explain how this works with his basic belief in biblical inerrancy.
Now before attempting to say something by way of answer to this
difficult question, we should do well first to pause and ask ourselves what is
at stake here. Suppose we agree that if God (who is perfectly good) exists, He
could not have issued such a command. What follows? That Jesus didn’t rise from
the dead? That God does not exist? Hardly! So what is the problem supposed to
be?
I’ve often heard popularizers raise this issue as a refutation of the
moral argument for God’s existence. But that’s plainly incorrect. The claim
that God could not have issued such a command doesn’t falsify or undercut
either of the two premises in the moral argument as I have defended it:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.
In fact, insofar as the atheist thinks that God did something morally
wrong in commanding the extermination of the Canaanites, he affirms premise
(2). So what is the problem supposed to be?
The problem, it seems to me, is that if God could not have issued such
a command, then the biblical stories must be false. Either the incidents never
really happened but are just Israeli folklore; or else, if they did, then
Israel, carried away in a fit of nationalistic fervour, thinking that God was on
their side, claimed that God had commanded them to commit these atrocities,
when in fact He had not. In other words, this problem is really an objection to
biblical inerrancy.
As for what is at
stake here. Well what is actually at stake here is whether or not such
behaviour, i.e., genocidal slaughter,
supposedly or in fact ordered by God can in fact be “good”.
Craig is in fact
right to assume that asserting that this command attributed to God is in fact
bogus means absolutely nothing in terms of the other assumptions a believer does
make. It does not prove that God does not exist, or that the Resurrection did
not happen if this “command” is rejected as immoral and/or likely bogus.
Of course the real
problem is the notion that God is “good”. Simply put the idea of God being the
embodiment of human conceived “goodness” is a hope which is constantly belied
by the way the universe actually behaves. The assertion that God is in fact
“good” is simply a hope and is not even remotely logical.
In The Book of Job,
Job constantly, and without contradiction from God, denies God’s goodness and denies over
and over again the assertions of his so-called friends that God is just and
that there is some sort of actual justice in how the universe operates. When
God rebukes Job, he rebukes him for being limited and whining, not for denying
that God is just. In fact God really rebukes Job’s “friends” for talking
nonsense and presuming to “know” God.
Basically God says
the world and he/she is uncanny and incomprehensible and don’t try to make
sense of reality, because it doesn’t make sense and to our little minds it
can’t and to do so is presumptive.
But like the
“friends” of Job Craig will with much presumption try to make sense of the incomprehensible,
contradictory, uncanny thing that is reality/God. In other words he will find
that God is “good” despite appearances and he will argue like the friends of
Job.
Of course Craig is
absolutely right when he says that the moral argument that God exists is not
undercut by the moral obscenity of the ban passages in the Old Testament. After
all God could simply be immoral or amoral or incomprehensible. But Craig latter on undercuts himself by
justifying those passages and the actions allegedly taken because of
them.
Craig then goofs
with his three premises, not as he claims two, are logically dubious. The first is
risible it is basically an argument from authority. God says X so that is all
there is too it. In other words “because I say so”. Well why should we accept
something simply because God said something? Why assume because God says so it
is objective?
The story of
Abraham arguing with God about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah illustrates the
argument quite well. Abraham simply didn’t meekly accept God’s decision he argued with
God. Therefore why should we accept a supposedly God derived morality. Why can
we not argue with God about it. The supposed fact that God gave it does not
prove it is objective.
The alleged fact
God is all powerful and all-knowing merely proves God is powerful and this sort
of argument is merely a repeat of the cliché “might makes right” or "justice is
the will of the powerful”. It is question begging; it does not prove the
morality in question is in fact “objective".
This of course
ignores the whole issue, which is how do we know God said so? Simply because
someone said God said so is not enough. Then there is the question of God
allegedly said so for all sorts of moralities and codes all over the world so why
should we elevate this particular code over any other?
And of course Craig
assumes that objective morality can exist. However since he just assumed that
God says so is “objective” morality he fails spectacularly to prove such a
thing. Given the large differences between moralities all over the world I have my
doubts about the existence of “objective” morality.
I think a more
reliable basis for a shared human morality is empathic understanding of what
you would want for yourself combined with an awareness that what hurts or helps
you should guide you in your relations with other people. That is a far from
foolproof way of working out ethics but it is the basically the best we can do for
now.
Of course such an
ethic entirely precludes acceptance of the ban passages as “just”.
But then we get to
the real problem with for Craig about the passages. Basically rejection of the
passages as either something that God would never order because they violate
morality or that they actually never happened are a rejection of Biblical inerrancy.
Above all else Craig must save that so the passages must describe what actually
happened. And God must actually have so ordered it.
Craig of course
ignores that many individuals and groups have said that they were/are following
God’s orders so just why should we accept that in this case it is true? So Craig
must believe that the Bible is literally absolutely true and that God’s
commands are just.
In fact, ironically, many Old Testament critics are sceptical that the
events of the conquest of Canaan ever occurred. They take these stories to be
part of the legends of the founding of Israel, akin to the myths of Romulus and
Remus and the founding of Rome. For such critics the problem of God’s issuing
such a command evaporates.
Now that puts the issue in quite a different perspective! The question
of biblical inerrancy is an important one, but it’s not like the existence of
God or the deity of Christ! If we Christians can’t find a good answer to the
question before us and are, moreover, persuaded that such a command is
inconsistent with God’s nature, then we’ll have to give up biblical inerrancy.
But we shouldn’t let the unbeliever raising this question get away with
thinking that it implies more than it does.
Now Craig mentions
the obvious that perhaps the ban passages are hyperbole, poetic inventions, and
in fact never happened for real. Of course it is not “many” Old Testament
scholars but by far the great majority who deny the historical accuracy of the
ban passages.
Craig does not
argue with this point of view, because frankly he lacks the knowledge in
archaeology etc, which have made the dubious historical validity of these passages all
too clear. It appears that the entire Conquest narrative of the Book of Joshua,
to say nothing of related passages in Numbers and in The Book of Judges, are
historically dubious. The fact is archaeology has largely destroyed the idea
that the conquest narrative is history.
It appears that in
fact Israel emerged from within Canaan and that the early Israelites were in
fact Canaanites. There are in fact passages in the Bible were it is indicated
clearly that non-Israelites continued to live in and among the Israelites.
Further the cities listed has destroyed
by the Israelites includes cities not occupied at all during the time of the
conquest, cities that were in fact NOT destroyed, and only a very few cities
in fact were destroyed at this time. Also among the cities supposedly
destroyed by the Israelites several were likely destroyed by others and not
Israelites.
There is no
evidence of an invasion from outside but plenty of evidence for the emergence of
Israel from preexisting, local Canaanite communities.
Craig doesn’t of
course deal with this material because it frankly blows away his whole notion
of Biblical inerrancy. Of course if this is the case the genocidal massacres
described never happened.
So what was the
purpose of the ban passages? Aside from the fact that they may reflect to some
extent the very brutal ways of waging war by the Assyrians, (800-600 B.C.E.),
they served the ideological purpose of underlying the difference between
Israelite beliefs and those of non-Israelites, by creating a tradition of
extreme historical difference. It also served to underline the doctrine of holy
war in defence of the faith put forth by the Priests of God in their
ideological war against local customary religion with its local shrines and
goddesses. In other words it helped to justify extreme measures to purify the
faith.
Craig obviously
doesn’t deal with this view of the passages, that they are ideological and not
historical at all, because not only would it undermine any notion of
Biblical inerrancy but because it is
likely true and he is in no position to argue against it. So he largely ignores
it.
The second passages
indicates that Craig does not want to give up Biblical inerrancy which requires,
that regardless of reality, we must accept that the passages are historically
accurate because Biblical inerrancy requires it.
Craig then proceeds
to make a hash of justifying the ban passages.
I think that a good start at this problem is to enunciate our ethical
theory that underlies our moral judgements. According to the version of divine command ethics which
I’ve defended, our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a holy and
loving God. Since God doesn’t issue commands to Himself, He has no moral duties
to fulfil. He is certainly not subject to the same moral obligations and
prohibitions that we are. For example, I have no right to take an innocent
life. For me to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition. He can
give and take life as He chooses. We all recognize this when we accuse some
authority who presumes to take life as “playing God.” Human authorities
arrogate to themselves rights which belong only to God. God is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for
another second. If He wanted to strike me dead right now, that’s His
prerogative. What that implies is that God has the right to take the lives of
the Canaanites when He sees fit. How long they live and when they die is up to
Him. So the problem isn’t that God ended the Canaanites’ lives. The problem is
that He commanded the Israeli soldiers to end them. Isn’t that like commanding
someone to commit murder? No, it’s not. Rather, since our moral duties are
determined by God’s commands, it is commanding someone to do something which,
in the absence of a divine command, would have
been murder. The
act was morally obligatory for the Israeli soldiers in virtue of God’s command,
even though, had they undertaken it on their own initiative, it would have been
wrong.
Aside from the
weird paradox of a “loving” God ordering the murder of children, etc, Craig
then basically says “Might makes Right”.
God is simply not
bound by our moral strictures. Well if that is the case than God is the
uncanny, incomprehensible deity of The Book of Job. The world is also weird and
attempts to describe God’s nature vanish in a puff of paradoxes.
Craig is not
dismayed he STILL thinks God is just, loving etc, and he will seek to justify
the ban passages as examples of God being just. Craig doesn’t seem to get it
that if God is not bound by moral precepts he/she is not moral in any sense
humans can conceive. He/she is in effect beyond good and evil and has such past
human understanding. Craig agrees that God has no moral duties to fulfil,
again that makes God totally amoral and incomprehensible.
Having accepted
that God is beyond our sense of morals then how can Craig argue that God when
for example assuming the ban order really happened, that God`s act was moral in
any human sense. It is perfectly possible to argue that given that God is
beyond human notions of good and evil that something that God ordered could be
and assuming God in fact gave the ban order that God was ordering something
from a human point of view evil.
The second
paragraph is pure God is the omnipotent dictator who has the right to do all
sorts of wicked stuff because he/she is God. Basically because God is all
powerful she/he can do what he/she likes. This is of course moral relativism.
Basically simply because God made the order the order is just.
Of course just why
should we assume that simply because God gave the order that it is just? Here Craig is like the friends of Job arguing
that God is “just” despite the problems with such a belief and of course
arguing that if bad stuff happened it was deserved. Of course the notion that if God orders it is
just is simply a variation of the superior order defence and it assumes quite
simply that something is moral simply if God commands it. In other words it is
who makes the order that determines the justice of it not the nature,
consequence and circumstance of the order, event but simply who orders it.
In other words
“might make right”, and justice is the will of the strong or in this case the
almighty. Thus the defence of superior orders turns an order that would be
immoral under other circumstances into a moral obligation and it becomes right
and just to commit a moral atrocity because a superior orders it in this case God.
Thus Craig accepts
the order to murder children as a moral obligation because of superior orders.
Of course Craig ignores the issue of all sorts of religious people have over
the years have justified committing atrocities over the years by appealing to
divine command just why should we not accept their justification of superior
orders but accept this one?
It is amusing to
see Craig use the defence of superior orders just like Eichmann or some of the
defendants at the Nuremberg trials.
On divine command theory, then, God has the right to command an act,
which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been sin, but which is
now morally obligatory in virtue of that command.
All right; but isn’t such a command contrary to God’s nature? Well,
let’s look at the case more closely. It is perhaps significant that the story
of Yahweh’s destruction of Sodom‐‐along with his solemn assurances to Abraham
that were there as many as ten righteous persons in Sodom, the city would not
have been destroyed‐‐forms part of the background to the conquest of Canaan and
Yahweh’s command to destroy the cities there. The implication is that the
Canaanites are not righteous people but have come under God’s judgement.
In fact, prior to Israel’s bondage in Egypt, God tells Abraham, “Know
for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs
and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.
. . . And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity
of the Amorites [one of the Canaanite clans] is not yet complete” (Gen. 15. 13,
16).
Think of it! God stays His judgement of the Canaanite clans 400 years
because their wickedness had not reached the point of intolerability! This is
the long‐suffering God we know in the Hebrew Scriptures. He even allows his own
chosen people to languish in slavery for four centuries before determining that
the Canaanite peoples are ripe for judgement and calling His people forth from
Egypt.
By the time of their destruction, Canaanite culture was, in fact,
debauched and cruel, embracing such practices as ritual prostitution and even
child sacrifice. The Canaanites are to be destroyed “that they may not teach
you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for
their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God” (Deut. 20.18). God had
morally sufficient reasons for His judgement upon Canaan, and Israel was merely
the instrument of His justice, just as centuries later God would use the pagan
nations of Assyria and Babylon to judge Israel.
Now Craig begins
the justification for genocidal slaughter. Aside from the fact that just why
should we accept the polemical characterization of the Canaanites as anything
but polemics, it is obvious in order to justify the ban passages the Canaanites
were turned into the “other” and vessels of utter wickedness deserving of
brutal punishment by the writers of the various Biblical books. That Craig
seems to think these passages describe reality is telling. Of course has
mentioned above it appears Israel originated within Canaan and the Biblical ban
passages are part of a polemic against non-Israelite beliefs and practices not
real history at all.
It is telling that
Craig misses the import of the debate between Abraham and God over Sodom and
Gomorrah , which is that man can debate with God over what is just and man does
not have to accept has just something simply because God commands it. In other
words man is not merely God’s abject slave but is engaged in a debate not just
with his fellow man but with reality / God over what is just, moral etc.
It is further
hilarious that Craig accepts the supposed prophecy of God waiting 400 years
before punishing the Canaanites. Well it is unlikely that the prophecy
was ever made 400 years before the alleged conquest of Canaan. In fact it is merely
part of the whole polemic to justify the holy war and the separate religious
practices of the Israelites.
I note that Craig
seems to regard the Israelites has mere instruments of God’s will with no
ability to make independent moral choices. So that when they are murdering
women and children they have absolutely no responsibility whatsoever. This
is of course the defence of superior orders writ large. Of course the
Israelites are responsible; they could of course say no, and no “But God says
so!”, can justify the atrocity.
Then of course
Craig brings up alleged Canaanite religious practices like child sacrifice and
ritual prostitution all of which” justify” the genocidal extermination of the Canaanites.
The mention of a sexual “sin” is of course par for the course for
Fundamentalist thinkers who get all hot and hysterically bothered by sexual
“sins”, thinking them worthy of savage punishment. I note that the occasional
practice of child sacrifice, assuming it really happened, and cultic
prostitution is in Craig’s twisted mind ample justification for the
extermination of the Canaanites down to the last man, woman and child. This is
moral idiocy of an extremely high order.
I note that Craig
merely assumes with no evidence that it was God’s judgment; that it was carried
out by men who had choice seems to escape him entirely.
But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of
the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to
pagan nations on Israel’s part. In commanding complete destruction of the
Canaanites, the Lord says, “You shall not intermarry with them, giving your
daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they
would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods” (Deut 7.3‐4).
This command is part and parcel of the whole fabric of complex Jewish ritual
law distinguishing clean and unclean practices. To the contemporary Western
mind many of the regulations in Old Testament law seem absolutely bizarre and
pointless: not to mix linen with wool, not to use the same vessels for meat and
for milk products, etc. The overriding thrust of these regulations is
to prohibit various kinds of mixing. Clear lines of distinction are being
drawn: this and not that. These serve as daily, tangible reminders that
Israel is a special people set apart for God Himself.
I spoke once with an Indian missionary who told me that the Eastern
mind has an inveterate tendency toward amalgamation. He said Hindus upon
hearing the Gospel would smile and say, “Sub ehki eh,
sahib, sub ehki eh!” (“All is One, sahib, All is One!” [Hindustani speakers forgive my
transliteration!]). It made it almost impossible to reach them because even
logical contradictions were subsumed in the whole. He said that he thought the reason God gave Israel so many arbitrary
commands about clean and unclean was to teach them the Law of Contradiction!
Of
course Craig is right in that the various Biblical rules served the purpose of
clearly distinguishing Israelites from others which was of course their main
purpose. As the Bible states to create a
“Nation of Priests”. Of course it also
true that many of the prohibitions etc, sound arbitrary / absurd but in their
context they do make a sort of sense. It just isn’t our sense. But Craig is
right that the main purpose is to create a distinction between Israeli and non-Israeli.
Craig
is of course assuming that the purpose and aim is God’s for which as usual he
supplies no evidence except assertion. Of course contrary to Craig’s insistence
the purposes being served were man’s not God’s unless you are willing to
contemplate that the vast number of peoples and the mass of contradictory moral, legal
etc., codes, customs that are attributed to God are all real.
The
last paragraph is rather amusing given that it does nicely sum up a theological
position held by many East Asians, that contradiction is illusion and in the
end all is one. Of course Craig does not even comprehend that such a view of
reality may in fact be truer, or has true, has his own interpretation of reality. Just why
should we accept his vision of God, God’s purposes or Biblical inerrancy rather than another. Because I say so will not do. Like the friends of
Job Craig talks about God like he can understand him/her.
When in the end all we can do is hope God is just and that hope flies right in
the face of reality.
By setting such strong, harsh dichotomies God taught
Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable. It was His way of preserving Israel’s
spiritual health and posterity. God knew that if these Canaanite children were
allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. The killing of the
Canaanite children not only served to prevent assimilation to Canaanite
identity but also served as a shattering, tangible illustration of Israel’s
being set exclusively apart for God.
Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is
extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these
children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly,
naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit
this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no
wrong in taking their lives.
So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of
the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving
of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is
wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is
the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine
what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified
woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is
disturbing.
But then, again, we’re thinking of this from a
Christianized, Western standpoint. For people in the ancient world, life was
already brutal. Violence and war were a fact of life for people living in the
ancient Near East. Evidence of this fact is that the people who told these
stories apparently thought nothing of what the Israeli soldiers were commanded
to do (especially if these are founding legends of the nation). No one was
wringing his hands over the soldiers’ having to kill the Canaanites; those who
did so were national heroes.
Firstly
it was not God who setup the rules in the Bible that were designed to set Israel
apart has a nation of priests. There is no need and no evidence to support the
assumption it came from God. Instead it
almost certainly originated from man for religious / political reasons having
to do with Israel’s relations with neighbouring peoples during post-exile
times.
Then offloading
from man the responsibility for the
murder of children; Craig claims God “knew” that allowing the children to survive
would contaminate Israel with pagan practice. How does Craig know God “knew”
this? Again Craig assumes, while once again pleading superior orders to justify
and render morally right the slaughter of children, what God knew while denying
human responsibility for wicked acts.
He then
fantasizes and rationalizes that the survival of Canaanite children would
contaminate Israel with idolatry etc. It is nice to know that Craig considers
religious pluralism as evil and religious suppression by genocidal violence as
praiseworthy if ordered by God. It is of course a little mysterious about how
we can distinguish between one alleged order to inflict genocidal slaughter
from another since so many have claimed some sort of divine sanction for such slaughter.
Craig
doesn’t explain how children, some of whom are infants could possibly
contaminate Israeli religious practices. Just how a one year old is going to
corrupt religious practice is mystifying. After all children are vastly easier to reeducate than adults. But
of course the children might grow up and resent the murder of their parents and
relatives so of course they have to be killed. It is interesting to note that the Nazis justified the slaughter of Jewish children by arguing that they would grow up to be a mortal threat to Germany. So yeah, Craig is using genocidal logic there.
Craig then assumes that the very survival of the children is a mortal threat.
This is ironic given that the Bible explicitly mentions that the Canaanites
continued to occupy parts of Canaan even after the so-called conquest, which
likely never happened. So all this genocidal massacring apparently didn’t help.
It is
interesting to see how Craig a supposed believer in absolute, objective
morality gives a series of relativistic, situational justifications for genocidal
slaughter. That the massacres were justified to separate the Israelites from
others; that they drew a clear line in the sand etc.
Craig
then talks about all this being ordered by God, an assumption he doesn’t even
pretend to support with an argument of any sort. By the way all sorts of
nations and peoples have claimed to have been set apart by God or Gods so just
why in this case should we take it as a justification for slaughter?
Then
aside from again offloading to God the deaths of children and forgetting that
men actually killed, we read that death is nothing compared to the bliss of
heaven. These deaths are nothing. The killers and God did the children a favour by
slaughtering them. According to Craig death is no big deal compared to blissful
eternity. Thus Craig should have no problem with infanticide and abortion. But
of course this time it was God doing it so it is alright; if men do it is wrong
but so long as God does it is all right.
Of
course if Craig is right then men do the children no wrong by killing them;
after all they then avoid sin and get a blissful afterlife. The fact that God punishes people for taking
the life of children begins to look rather perverse doesn’t it with this sort
of logic.
This "logic" will of course justify all sorts of atrocities and slaughter and
once again just how do you decide which God`s commands to genocidally slaughter
children are “just”.
In the end
it was men who carried out those alleged orders and so of course they would
be responsible; no amount of superior orders and the children benefited by being
murdered excuses it one bit.
Craig
assumes the existence of an afterlife, something which is seriously downplayed
in the Old Testament and something we cannot just accept as a given. The possibility must
remain that death is complete extinction in which case murdering children is
indeed heinous.
The
last paragraph is another example of Craig being relativistic and taking refuge
in moral relativism; so much for objective morality. The times were brutal, men thought like that
in those days etc. So Craig is a moral relativist after all. Craig further
assumes that people at the time were not bothered at the time by those
passages. That is an assumption. Aside from the virtual fact that the
barbarities described in the ban passages likely never happened it is strongly
likely that the ban passages were simply not taken completely seriously and
were considered extreme polemic not totally and literary true.
As for
regarding the soldiers who carried out these atrocities as national heroes –
so?
All sorts of people carrying out vicious atrocities have been considered
heroes. To Godwin myself again, the Nazi consider themselves heroes for murdering the helpless. Genghis Khan anyone. Again Craig appeals to a type of moral relativism.
But
Craig has not finished we get the crowning touch. Which is Craig’s sympathy for
the Israeli soldier who carried out the genocidal ban orders. The murdered
children got eternal life and so get no sympathy from Craig but the poor
brutalized Israeli soldiers who murdered them get his sympathy. How they must have suffered
while they smashed children’s heads open, and slit the throats of infants and
thrusts their swords in pregnant women. The agony they suffered in carrying out
this holy duty was infinitely greater than their victims whose agony is nothing
compared to the "suffering" of these soldiers who did their divinely ordered duty with a heavy heart and much difficulty. How they suffered while
crushing children’s skulls with their heels. How hard it was for them to
avoid being brutalized and too maintain their humanity in the face of carrying
out their difficult God given duty!
I think
I will get sick.
Of
course the similarity of this with the whining of Nazi butchers who whined
about their hard duty and how difficult it was to maintain their humanity and
to avoid being brutalized while carrying out their duty is of course obvious.
The self -pity and whining about how they suffered compared to their victims is
stomach turning.
Craig
imagines how horribly difficult to be someone who murders a terrified women and
her children; about how his heart bleeds for the killer. Well my sympathies are
with the terrified women and children being butchered. How terrifying that
ordeal must have been for them compared to their agony their killer’s troubles
are trifling. But then Craig is engaging in the sort of thinking that Himmler
did at Posen in 1944. There Himmler said:
Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when 500 are there or when there are 1000. And ... to have seen this through and -- with the exception of human weakness -- to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned. (From Nizkor Here .)
Craig is here exactly like Himmler all he is concerned with is the poor mass murderer
obeying a superior order.
Moreover, my point above returns. Nothing could so
illustrate to the Israelis the seriousness of their calling as a people set
apart for God alone. Yahweh is not to be trifled with. He means business, and
if Israel apostasies the same could happen to her. As C. S. Lewis puts it,
“Aslan is not a tame lion.”
Now how does all this relate to Islamic jihad? Islam sees violence as a means of propagating the Muslim faith. Islam divides the world into two camps: the dar al‐Islam (House of Submission) and the dar al‐harb (House of War). The former are those lands which have been
brought into submission to Islam; the latter are those nations which have not
yet been brought into submission. This is how Islam actually views the world!
By contrast, the conquest of Canaan represented God’s just
judgement upon those peoples. The purpose was not at all to get them to convert
to Judaism! War was not being used as an instrument of propagating the Jewish
faith. Moreover, the slaughter of the Canaanites represented an unusual
historical circumstance, not a regular means of behaviour.
The problem with Islam, then, is not that it has got the
wrong moral theory; it’s that it has got the wrong God. If the Muslim thinks
that our moral duties are constituted by God’s commands, then I agree with him.
But Muslims and Christians differ radically over God’s nature. Christians
believe that God is all‐loving, while Muslims believe that God loves only
Muslims. Allah has no love for unbelievers and sinners. Therefore, they can be
killed indiscriminately. Moreover, in Islam God’s omnipotence trumps
everything, even His own nature. He is therefore utterly arbitrary in His
dealing with mankind. By contrast Christians hold that God’s holy and loving
nature determines what He commands.
The question, then, is not whose moral theory is correct,
but which is the true God?
So God means
business according to Craig. Of course what it really means is that religious
zealots mean business and attribute it to God. Isn’t it interesting that God not
only because he is God can order immoral things, because might makes right and
superior orders, but also God is just. What!? What Craig in his diatribe has
indicated, unintentionally, is that God is NOT just in any human sense. Certainly Craig’s God is
NOT just or compassionate but uncanny. Craig however doesn’t draw this
conclusion but takes refuge in God being just in a human sense which is contradictory
if God is not bound by moral rules.
Regarding Craig’s
ignorant comments about Islam. First Muslims claim, emphatically, that Allah,
(which means “God”), is the same God as the God of Israel and the Old Testament
along with the God of the New Testament. So guess what it is the same God according to
Muslims. Please Mr. Craig deal with that.
As for Islam
dividing the world into the house of Islam and the House of War. Well aside
from being an oversimplification of an idea Craig ignores the very long
Christian tradition of spreading the faith by the sword and the long history of
forced conversion by Christians. And of course
Islam is divided into sects which have different views of various matters.
Craig is simplifying to the point of distortion.
Then he contrasts this
view with the Israeli conquest of Canaan. He says it represents God’s judgement
of the Canaanites. Of course Craig
doesn’t seem to know that in the belief of some Muslim’s judgement “war” against
non-Muslim is in fact the judgement of God.
Craig is pretending that forcible conversion is a usual feature of Islam
and he ignores just how much it was a regular feature of Christianity for quite
some time, in fact into the 20th century.
And of course Craig
assumes it was God’s judgement on the Canaanites when in fact it was mans. But then offloading to
God reprehensible acts is a popular way of dodging responsibility.
Craig repeats in
the last paragraph the idiocy that Muslims worship a separate God from the
deity of the Bible. Muslims don’t agree, neither did the prophet Mohammad
who referred to Moses, Jesus and the prophets regularly. Asserting that the
Muslim variation of God is another God is a simple assumption.
As for the
foolishness about Muslims believing that God only loves Muslims; that air headed
notion should be allowed to evaporate on its own idiocy. Craig then lies and
says that Muslims believe that God hates sinners and unbelievers and that they
can be killed indiscriminately. This is utterly false, and frankly Craig if he
doesn’t know it is false is utterly ignorant otherwise he is a calculating
liar. (Liar for Jesus of course!)
Craig then says
that the God of Islam is utterly arbitrary in his dealings with mankind. I note
that Craig seemed to miss the Muslim refrain of “Allah, the compassionate, the
merciful”. Given that Craig has in this essay said that God is not bound in the
slightest by morality but can do what he/she likes, I’m a bit puzzled as to why
he finds this alleged Muslim belief troubling.
I note that Craig
seems to think that God ordering the murder of children and wholesale massacre - genocide were determined
by God’s “holy and loving nature”.
In the end Craig
has simply engaged in another example of idiotic apologetics in order to defend
some morally reprehensible passages from the Bible describing atrocities which
very probably never happened and were put there for polemical purposes in the
first place.
Once again the
friends of Job come along to justify the alleged ways of God to man and make a
hash of it.
Bibliography
Dever, William G, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know it?,
William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2001.
“ , Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did
They Come From?, William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2006.
Steibing, William
H, Out of the Desert, Prometheus
Books, Buffalo NY, 1989.
Gottwald, Norman K,
The Tribes of Yahweh, Orbis Books,
Maryknoll NY, 1979.
Kaufman, Walter, Faith of a Heretic, Meridian Book, New
York, 1978.
Fest, Joachim, The Face of the Third Reich, Penguin
Books, London, 1983.
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