Justified killing. You sicken me.

Was it justice when your God released the two she-bears upon forty-two children? 2 Kings 2:23-24
Was it justice when your God punished the innocent for the sins of the wicked, and slaughtered every first-born in Egypt? Exodus 12:29-30
Was it justice when your God annihilated every living thing on the planet in the great flood? Genesis 6-9

Or is justice merely whatever command your celestial tyrant dictates?


Bear witness, everyone, as the apologist defends each and every one of these heinous acts, no matter how many I quote.

Yes, it is just. See, the thing is, with God justice is about sin and perfection. If you are perfect then He will justly keep you alive. If you sin, He can do with you what He will. Including killing you.

Another thing to note is that as God's creation, He can do with us as He wills. Imagine a game designer deleting a unit and then you say "THATS NOT JUST!". The game designer can do what he wants with his game.

Because units are living, conscious beings...

I cried when Tassadar died ;_;



Obligatory content: It's an analogy, nude. It's not meant to be an example.

Actually, if I remember correctly, it's hard to tell if animals (that is, the animals God stated are here for human consumption) have the self awareness to feel pain. I forget the fallacy or the study behind it, but I know one of the proponents is the Mirror Test.

Related to this discussion is the concept of Stewardship, and there are many interesting books out there on both sides of this argument. Much like MA posted in one of his links, God looks down on trophy hunters because that is a waste of His gift for us. Christianity isn't the only religion that believes in a Stewardship principal, either. There is also Islam, Wiccan, or buddhism, among others.

As to Oh_Man's outrage, all I can do is direct you to Isaiah 55:8 ""For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD." I know you want to argue and say 'no, but...' but what you should be doing is gaining an understanding from a Christian's point of view. Put yourself outside of your views and really internalize why someone would feel different. I am far from trying to change your beliefs or reasoning because I know that it would take a lot of time and change for us to agree in terms of religion, change that neither of us are able to make right now on the other's terms.

This analogy makes me smile.

I told you this already in another thread. If you actually read the story the city was full of evil, including said children. The children were harassing the guy too.

The death of the first borns is not punishment of the first borns. There's the whole issue of the age of innocence. Must I go on?

Yes because very living person on the planet was evil, corrupt, and unwilling to change. Again, must I clarify myself?

sounds to me you are scared of having your petty arguments get picked apart by people with even subpar knowledge of the bible. Of course feel free to continue deluding yourself into thinking the bible is this or that with your laughable knowledge of the bible but if you want to play in our ballpark i.e. intelligent biblical discussions then you better be ready

Hate to derail here.

Yeah, last time some children were mocking me I summoned two bears to kill the lot of them. The bastards.

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Spin it how you want, Elijah could have simply ignored the insults. His life was not in endangered in any way. It was an evil act, plain and simple.

Oh, and could you quote me the part that says everyone (including the children) in the city was evil? I find that disturbingly hard to believe.

And there you have it comrades, exactly as was foretold.

Yes, the children were 'harassing' the man. "Go on up, you bald-head!" Indeed, such scathing vitriol must be punished at the very least by a duo of she-bears. I wonder which of the forty-two children made the comment that condemned them all to this fate? Or perhaps all forty-two of them said it? It doesn't seem to matter, they all perished by tooth and claw at your God's command.

What is it to be 'evil' exactly? And what extent is such 'evil' that it warrants death, let alone vicious deaths such as the those suffered by the forty-two children. You seem to use this nebulous term 'evil' to justify all sorts of heinous acts from your master. Today we live in a world where capital punishment itself has begun to be viewed as an evil, the worst people get is life imprisonment (though many escape this fate, such as a plethora of paedophilic priests). Why is it that today's morality has advanced past the point of your God's morality?



As I've shown, you will defend any act from your God no matter how abhorrent, because you think your God is omni-benevolent. Therefore everything he does is axiomatically viewed as a good and just act. I'll drop the other two examples for laziness sake and just focus on the one with the she-bears and the 42 children. I want to see how far you're willing to go with this whole 'murdering the forty-two name callers with bear attacks was a just act by a loving God' business.

At least bite the bullet like Jack has done, Jack at least actually makes sense. He admits he is just a slave under his master's yoke. (Why you wish to believe in such a thing though Jack, is beyond me...)

I did Bible Studies in school + university. I've been debating apologists and theists for a long time and I have found that I know more than they do about their own book. It's incredible how many theists haven't actually read the entirety of the Bible/Koran of their own religion. Though of course, I am sympathetic with them, it is a very dry read. I wonder if you are much different from the multitude of theists I have debated with in the past? I think it... unlikely.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 12 2012, 4:19 pm by Oh_Man.

Okay since you know so much about the Bible this will be much easier.


First of all the Bible was originally written in Hebrew. Some versions like the KJV translate the Hebrew word to "children" but it would more accurately be deemed as "young men." Same thing with 1 Kings 3:7. I'm sure you knew this already, but if not you can google this to refresh your memory.

Second, there were 42 of these people. 42 of them. A mere handful of these guys probably won't do any one much harm and can easily be ignored but if we had 40+ of them, especially if they're not young toddlers but men in their teens or more, confront me chances are I won't get to have things my way without a little help. This entire incident wouldn't have happened if he could have ignored them. A bevy of 40+ men is very unlikely to be mere coincidence and suggests something organized and possibly premeditated. I'd hardly call a handful of men a collusion.

Third, think about what these guys said. Calling him a "bald head" isn't simply making fun of his hair (or lack thereof). In the culture back then, leprosy was a huge and sensitive issue. Being called a leper essentially puts you down to the lowest of lowest (an exile, almost like a heretic). Losing hair/being bald was often associated with leprosy. For the exact reference see Leviticus 13:40-44. Others also point out that a shaved head also denotes his separation to the prophetic office, much like monks do, which again is a deep issue back then. Sure, today being called a "bald head" may not mean much but you have to take into context the culture at the time of the writing. Another term thrown around was "go up." If you look into the earlier part of this book (2 Kings 2:11-12), you'll see that this was a reference to Elijah having been caught up to Heaven. It was a religious persecution, not childish taunting.

Taking into account all of these, it is clear that this incident was an insulting demonstration against God's prophet by a large group of young individuals. Here you have Elijah trying to spread the good news to this new city and along the way he gets abused by these 40+ people. So to answer your question, was it just that two shebears killed these 42 young adults/teenagers/etc? Absolutely. Go back to that wikipedia link about "Thou Shall Not Murder" I gave you, this clearly falls under one of the justifications.

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What is appalling to me however is how you seem to think I'm so desperate as to defend every last one of these heinous acts no matter how terrible they may be. The problem is, they're not. Unless of course you think justice is an terrible thing altogether then I'm not gonna argue with you. Everything you've thrown at me can easily be answered just by picking up the book and reading it for what it actually means. It's unfortunate that you've dropped the latter two examples because those indeed stir up more controversy and I would absolutely love to clear up any confusion about them. But if you really want to dive into bigger issues we should do that in another thread.

Abused? D'aww his poor ego, being called a leper (which is a stretch). Insulting his religion? Clearly calls for a mass extermination of them all.

In my secular code of non-brutish morality, people have a right to express themselves, including heckling other people. Retaliating with violence is nothing more than pure vengeance and revenge and is completely unacceptable behavior.

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Oh and as far as calling him bald = calling him a leper, that's just bad logic. Correlation is not causation and all that jazz. Elijah must be terrible at logic... But I'm sure it would explain the voice in his head telling him killing people is okay when it tells him it is.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 13 2012, 1:18 am by Sacrieur.

Elijah didn't kill them, God did via 2 bears. Elijah asked God to kill them, God deemed it a good thing for them to die, so they did. Elijah was a prophet of God. He was the spokesperson for God, and this gang was harassing him and mocking him. By extension, they are mocking God. God doesn't like people mocking Him, so He killed them. This is perfectly just. It is also important to note that all humans, when they commit the tiniest of sins, instantly deserve eternal punishment in hell. It is only the grace of God that He doesn't send them to hell straight away.

I fail to see how your god differs from a tyrannical and egocentric dictator.

I don't accept, "I said so," as a just reason to kill someone; not even from a god.

The reason tyrannical dictators are bad is because they're human. (Unless they're a good tyrannical dictator, which doesn't really happen). God, on the other hand, is so much better at being a tyrannical dictator because He's perfectly good, perfectly just, etc.

I'd just like to point out that it would have been just as easy to predict that you would respond to the response. That was pointless, and is just an example of your trying to feed your e-penis. Bullshit like this doesn't belong in Light Discussion.

Not a God, THEE God. God can make anything he wants justified by nature of his Godliness. Of course, if you don't accept his existence in the first place, or if you accept the necessity of his non-existence, my point is moot. But you really mean to tell me that if God came down to you and said, "because I said so" you wouldn't accept it?

Oh can he? Or does he just think he can? Or is his entire existence just a small sandbox? Or is he just a computer program?

And yes, if he came down and said, "because I said so," I wouldn't accept it. Just because he can flip some switches and create the Universe doesn't mean he's omnipotent. It doesn't mean he's necessarily intelligent either. Or of good character.

You're still missing the point. As I've said, it was not just verbal abuse. Nobody in any culture or time will do anything if they are verbally abused for their religion or their appearance/status. As I've also said, this was a bevy of 40+ people (and chances are they were grown men too) not just a handful of idiots heckling Elijah for his desire to spread the good news and deeds around. If you have 40+ people surrounding you, you think you could brush them off and carry on with your travels? Elijah a few verses ago just cleansed the water supply of the city, which these people came from, and they come out and respond with such behavior? Now take note that only 42 were killed, chances are there could've easily been probably about 50 to 100+ more of these guys altogether. Obviously Elijah's life was in danger, otherwise this incident would never have occurred (oh yes a prophet of God try to spread love and goodness would be so inclined to kill at will totally makes sense).

As for the leprosy thing, take into account the culture back then, anything associated with leprosy was significant. See here for further details.

COINCIDENCE? Oh_Man is colluding with the bears!


I think the point being made is that an individual who even looked like a leper, whether they had leprosy or not, could be treated as a leper.

I was reading the first page of this thread, as it had some genuine discussion about ethics.
Then I skipped to this page, and the first thing that I saw was a biblical citation used as an excuse to be rude and derail the thread (like we've never seen THAT before)

Can we please, for once, discuss ethics without bringing in religion?

This is just a general post that talks about stuff that people have brought up elsewhere.

When we argue that it's not ethical, we don't mean that it's unethical. This is the kind of loophole that people use to justify their claims that eating meat is "unethical". It is neither ethical nor unethical. You don't say "wearing socks is ethical" or "watching television is ethical" because those are normal things that don't involve morals.

To anyone who thinks it's unethical because "animals are similar to humans in some way", well what do you want us to do? Hold hands, give cows high paying jobs, marry a chicken? That's a children's pipe dream. They're not on the same level, not even close. We've outsmarted and completely crushed the entire food chain. Just because animals can show some behaviour that all animals share doesn't make them any closer. There's no competition and the gap between us and any other species is getting ever so larger with each passing generation. Despite our disinterest for natural selection, we are still evolving.

They feel pain? Well soon we will be able to genetically engineer animals that don't feel pain. Problem solved.

Another argument I've seen is "we can sustain ourselves with alternatives, we don't need meat anymore". And? What's the point of this? That's like saying we can sustain our liquid levels with water and we don't need soda, coffee, beer, tea, or any other drinks anymore.

I think the biggest problem with our society is we've become too sensitized.


If you couldn't even watch that video without being "grossed out", then congratulations you're an asshole, because that's reality, and it has been for thousands of years. If you think it's heartless slaughter then you need to grow up.

We're sensitised because we don't kill for our own food anymore, it all goes on behind closed doors in the slaughter houses.

I don't think that's inherently a problem though, it just means people who go "ewww thats fucked up", yet eat meat - are hypocrites.
And on the other hand, you have people who go "ewww thats fucked up... and that's why I'm a vegeterian." Which isn't really a problem either, I wouldn't mind living in a world where we no longer had to kill to survive - it would be... a more moral world.

Also cool - another Smarter Every Day viewer!