Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were saying it was rational to have these biases, not rational to believe those biases exist.
Ah, you adopt the view that the New Testament invalidates the Old, in case of conflict. So we are free then to condemn God’s behavior in the Old Testament, since it contradicts what he tells us in the New.
Agreed. It’s only acceptable when he tells you to do it. Which he does quite frequently.
Of course it’s not the only way. It’s not a way at all. But if you use reason to figure out whether revelation is true, you have just disposed of revelation as a way of knowing; now it’s just a way of suggesting hypotheses. Now I suppose your reason tells you that your revelation is true while other people’s is false. But is that an unbiased determination? Should it be trusted?
Not if I can help it. You are free to point out where my bias gets in the way, and we’ll see if I agree. However, I wouldn’t call what I have an anti-religious bias; it’s more of a conclusion based on observation, subject to change. Though again, my experience suggests that nothing will be found to support such a change. Could be wrong about that.
Only if we presumptuously assume we have all the resources at our command required to analyze and judge God in those circumstances, time and place in history. Thoughts, @AllenWitmerMiller?
This betrays an incorrect understanding of how Christians understand Biblical ethics. Christians regard the whole Bible as inspired and infallible, and consistent with itself. That is the starting axiom. if we want to ask the question of whether genocide is allowed within Christian morality, then we have to look at the teachings of the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. In the New Testament:
Jesus’ Beatitudes blesses those who are meek and merciful (Matthew 5:2-11).
Jesus proclaims that not only murder, but even hatred towards one’s brother is just as bad as murder (Matthew 5:21-16).
Jesus commands us not to retaliate and to love our enemies (Matthew 5:38-48).
In the parable of the unforgiving servant, Jesus teaches that those who do not forgive will not be forgiven (Matthew 18:21-35).
Christians are commanded to be like Jesus. Throughout all the gospels, Jesus never engages in physical violence even against his harshest critics, the Pharisees who are always obstructing him. The only exception is when Jesus cleanses the Temple (Matthew 21:12-17, John 2:13-22) to drive out those who are profiting from religion.
Paul writes that the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23).
With this in mind, now we turn to the Old Testament. In the Ten Commandments, God clearly commands the Israelites not to murder (Exodus 20:13). So what do we make of his commands to Israel to destroy and exterminate the Canaanites? We have to look at those commands in context. God was using the Israelites for a specific mission: to punish the idolatrous Canaanites, who worshiped other gods and practiced child sacrifice. In the same way, God would also use the Babylonians and Persians to punish the Israelites later when they were also disobedient to God’s commands. The Israelites were on a specific, limited mission which certainly does not apply to anyone living today, who is living in the age of the New Testament, where Jesus has fulfilled the law.
To summarize, based on this mini-systematic study of the Bible on the topic of genocide, we see that there are many commands in the Bible which urge love, mercy, meekness, forgiveness, restraint, and forbidding murder, which clearly point towards forbidding genocide. This is not a matter of picking and choosing different the parts of the Bible randomly, but deciding what the Bible teaches based on careful, reasoned, systematic study of the entire Bible, which we hold to be authoritative as a whole for faith and practice.
That excuse could be made by anyone doing any kind of atrocity. Just you wait until some unspecified time in the future, you’ll see how it worked out to everyone’s advantage and made the world a better place, you just can’t understand it right now. But you will eventually.
Regarding those that think they used to be Christians…
That demonstrates a misunderstanding of what a Christian is. Becoming a Christian literally takes a miracle, it is not just something that you merely decide. I mean, after all, who really believes that a corpse rose from the dead?! It is also something that cannot be undone.
Why would that prevent me from judging the morality of genocide? Let me for a moment consider the conditions under which genocide would be proper…OK, I’m back: there are no such conditions. Genocide is always wrong. If God commands it, condones it, or performs it, God is wrong. Turns out that was easy.
Yes, revelation is just another word for testimony. I designed new skids for my snowblower last week and had them cut on a CNC plasma table. There. I’ve just revealed to you, given you a revelation of, something that you did not know. You have my testimony.
Some of them do. Are you confusing all Christians with yourself, or is this a No True Scotsman thing?
Of course not. You’re picking and choosing systematically to mention only the parts that don’t encourage genocide while ignoring the parts that do. And of course you do mention one case of genocide but say that it was a good thing. I have no idea how you can reconcile it, but you certainly claim to.