I started reading the bible some weeks ago for fun.
I am in Book Samuel now and I just read Samuel 15:3 where god orders the death of babies.

Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

I never heard any priest tell about this in church service when I was a teenager lol.
Do people just ignore the darker parts and focus on the brighter stuff?

It’s a fairy tail bruh ,nothing more. Do you know the difference between a religion and a cult ?
Social acceptance

Growing up Methodist, in my experience only certain parts of the old Testament were discussed in Sunday school and not that much in the church sermon. It mostly focused on a message of love of God and your neighbors, the teachings of Jesus...not so much about the problem(s) of evil, metaphysics, Revelations, or even hell.

William Lane Craig did talk about the op specifically, but I forget what it was he said about it...except that I wasn't a fan of his argument.

This might be it...something about it being the soldiers fault it seems and the people didn't have to die in favor of being driven out.
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writ...tes-re-visited

Old Testament vs New Testament. Old Testament was a John Wick movie while the New Testament is a Hallmark Movie. I grew up Eastern Orthodox and the Priest didn't skimp out on all the action.

The God of the Jews is Moloch.

This somehow proves god cannot exist according to op lmao

Most Sunday pastors are wamby pamby all sunshine and rainbows Christians. They are sugar coated the gospel . Gods word >>>>> man’s delivery of gods word


Isaiah 45:7 — King James Version (KJV 1900)

7 I form the light, and create darkness:
I make peace, and create evil:
I the Lord do all these things.


Sunday not even the true day of worship

One of the reasons I don't believe in "God" of the Bible. He also ordered the massacre of 3000 people in Exodus. He "tested" Abraham by instructing him to kill his own son and also tested Job later. It's not the actions really, but the pettiness of it all that makes me disbelieve. Job's story is interesting but good luck getting people on board with believing in God while suffering when there is literally jack chit for evidence of God anywhere except in 2000 year old dusty texts cobbled together and selected as "divine." Also brb God cares whether you mix fabrics or eat certain types of meats. LMAO. Ridiculous.

Huh? Where do I say that god does not exist in the OP?

You doubt the Bible god I smite you where you post!!!!

The Amalekites made a blood oath against the God of Abraham and they were enemies of the children of Israel sworn to wipe them out.

As I understand it the proclamations against the Amalekites should not be taken literally. Harsh words were spoken back then to emphasize the seriousness of God's instructions. Later on in the bible several Amalekites appear. So when God instructs his people to wipe them off the face of the earth they did not seem to interpret that literally. There is a cultural disconnect between then and now which makes understanding the circumstances very difficult. Had you been alive back then the instructions would not have seemed so bizarre.

Of course people largely ignore those parts of the bible and we should be glad they do. Those instructions were for a specific people under specific circumstances in a certain period of time. They do not apply to modern Christians.

Most of the Bible is not meant to be taken literally.

The purpose of God wanting to destroy the Amalekites was because they were enemies of God, working against him. If you actively work against God, you will be destroyed psychologically in the long run. That’s what the story means. That’s what the entire Bible means. Just because it’s not literal objective history doesn’t mean it’s any less “true”.

Don't think you started reading the Bible, but probably went on some atheist website or pro life site and started cherry picking verses...God instructs to kill those people because He knows what will become of them. Like a rabid dog, they must be put down..it's really that simple.

If I someone is trying to get in your house intending to hurt your family..what are you going to do? Hide..or kill the attacker?

Children and infants put down like rabid dogs....what? What did the infant do? This, like so many passages in the bible (God was busy killing innocents from the Genesis Flood story to the Exodus story to others), is extremely questionable. In modern times, civilized society considers deliberately targeting and killing off children and infants....even of enemy nations at times of war.....aswar crimes: unjust, horrific actions. Amazing an apparent god of the universe commands it, demonstrating nothing resembling a reasonable, universal moral code for the ages, but instead suspiciously exactly what you might expect from ancient warring tribes: dated, primitive codes of ethics mere men might have come up with.

Remember this is all in-story criticism. It has nothing to do with actual history, which does not support tribes like the Amalekites, much less these particular events such as genocides....as everything, the question at hand is: evidence for literally any of this? Stories are not evidence for events contained within. The evidence, at the end of the day, will be the guide.

Dismissing the OT is not going to cut it or help explain anything. Even if the NT is some all-loving message and totally different than the OT, essentially rejecting the doctrines of the OT (which is a very questionable premise given Jesus's support of the OT in the text), it doesnt change that the same God (Christiansdobelieve it's the same god in both testaments, right?) still did all this at some point in time....many incredibly questionable passages like the OP, the OT is awash with this stuff. But again, this is all in-story criticism, and not associated with evidenced history in most cases.

This. Just the bits that you agree with.
e.g. Leviticus:

trying to reason a spiritual relationship with an omnipotent being isn't going to get you anywhere. Besides proclaiming your own heresy, you are trying to drag others down with you.

It does not end well for those that believe themselves higher than God

The Old Testament is just a story of a plucky group of racial supremacists who undertook a long campaign of rape, murder, slavery and genocide of other races, supported by a god who had their back so long as they committed all the rapes and murders he ordered and kept themselves racially pure, but angrily turned on them if they ever slacked off on enforcing racial purity and genocide.

Stop saying "BIBLE GOD" and say "Jewish God" because that's what it is.

When you get to the Jesus part, he says even thinking negative thoughts about others is a sin.

According to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, whatever you believe might as well be real because you will act as it if it real.

So, nonsense beliefs can get you beheaded or oppressed and it's not just a fairly tale to people who believe it. So, watch out taking things for granted.

People who believe in religion are INSANE, or evil manipulators, but people pretend they are not.

Religion is popular among idiots and the smartest men.

The smartest understand the entirety of the universe functions with an order too harmonious to write off, and it comes from humans sharing a spirit in their social efforts. You can say more about these dynamics with or without religion, though the language naturally invents itself.

Idiots believe stories everyone a little smarter than them finds contradictions in, except they never continue analyzing the world to explain a mosaic of social truth themselves, which looks like religious ideas.

pretty convenient the people that wrote the book made the tribes that were already living there look bad so they can steal the land

what the fak. You are talking about putting down infants like they are dogs.

I'm an athiest because I was raised religiously, and studied the bible very in depth for many years. You have to cherry pick the good verses, not the other way around. Passages about infanticide are part and parcel

Those babies were right to die. Don't question God's intention unless you're not a convinced Christian.

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same

It's not a diversity issue.

Think about it like this.

What does it mean to turn your back against God, or to work actively against God? You could probably write a novel about different interpretations of that, but at least in part it means to live a life of nihilism without aim or any idea of objective morality. I.E. modern day radical SJWs. It's these SJWs who have kids growing up and falling prey to clown world and want to be called alternate pronouns. These children don't have a chance in life, just like the Amalekite children.

The SJWs are the Amalekites. It's not like God wants to literally kill them. With the way they live, they are destroying themselves.

Radical white nationalists who claim to be Christians are also comparable. Nothing in the bible promotes racism, slavery, hatred, etc. People who live this way, even if they claim to be Christians, are also like the Amalekites, and are going to be destroyed regardless. Just claiming Christianity doesn't mean you're living out a christian ethic.

The bible is a work of fiction. That doesn't make it any less true. God is an abstraction that we orient towards to produce a functionally moral society. Still, God is an abstraction. That doesn't make him any less real. The principles from the bible are what are meant to be taken literally, not the stories as objective and factual historical records.

You are using a strange definition of 'true'. From a historical or description of the world perspective, yes it does make the bible less true. If you are trying to portray the bible as some story not meant to reflect events on earth, thenmanypeople will disagree with you, both religious and non-religious- read many of these OT books, including the histories and what not- down to boring as hell genealogies and long historical sections, records of various tribes, kings, and wars...... and have fun arguing these were not meant to reflect events on earth. Of course actual evidenced history, as mentioned, does not support many of these supposed points.

If you claim the book is all fiction, just the 'moral' messages are what's true, that has various problems. It strips away the underpinning of the messages in the first place- many religious feel that these are the correct principlesbecausethere is actually some God that exists, handing down these messages from above (this is misguided imo, and actually quite scary if someone only thinks murdering wrong because it was given as a dictum from a God). Without the historical source, this is basically on the level of Star Wars, which is also a fictional story that meanings could be extracted from (Buddhist teachings from Yoda for example)...or to take another example...children's fairy tales. That's what we're left with.

But the bigger problem is within this supposedly ideal moral code to build societies around, there is a s*** ton questionable things to be found, including head scratchers to be found- not only killing innocents like in the OP, but from slavery and treatment of servants, to views on women, homosexuals, views on sex and rape, witches (wtf?), to all kinds of other ideas including overemphasizing poverty as a virtue, intolerance, prioritizing a fantasy world like heaven/God (you are saying the work is a fiction after all) over life on earth. There are some good messages such as loving thy neighbor and the golden rule too, which arent really original to the bible at all, but there's a ton of questionable stuff in there too. You claim the bible doesnt represent objective and factual history and is just to be read for the important principles....I claim some of theprinciplesare questionable....and I suspect you might agree in many cases, unless of course you think burning witches, slaughtering innocents, beating slaves with rods, or death for working on Sunday or not being a virgin on the wedding night, are good principles. If you try to avoid all this and claim 'er... the bible didnt actually mean any of this, nothing is to be taken literally' .....I respond, "let the gymnastics commence!"

Applying laws to aliens isn't mistreatment. I'll give you family separation which is completely abhorrent.

What a strange response to my post. There is basically no content here responding to what I wrote. So for the record, you do think infants/children, even from enemy nations, should be put down like rabid dogs, or not? And if so, what exactly is the connection of an infant to a rabid dog?

Abraham passed the test. I believe it an example of where god says anyone who loveth their mother or father (and I think said their children aswell) is not worthy of god. Honor they mother and father. Discipline your children for in their heart is folly but the rod will drive it from them. But never put them ahead of god. Or you’re not worthy of him.

So it was a test of Abe’s love for god. Serve as a case of love for him that we all are supposed to have.

Yeah those who love anyone in their family over god is not worthy of him, and if they take that to their death, will not be written in the lambs book of life.

Hard to do, but deal with it I suppose!