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[jimwalton]

You continue to persist in your misunderstandings, which is certainly your prerogative.

> God is clearly separating people by groups

God didn't separate people by people groups, people did. People divided themselves into communities by clan and ethnicity, and God addresses them the way they self-identify, and in a way that we all know what God is talking about. That doesn't make God discriminatory, back to your original question.

> then calling for their killing (which by ALL definitions) is genocide

His first course of action was to incorporate them into the national of Israel. They chose against that. His secondary purpose was to drive them out of the land. They chose against that. His tertiary purpose was to be rid of their religious lies and influence against truth. Then he called for their killing, but not to genocide. War and genocide are different things.

> Would you accept the same mental contortions from a Muslim who tries to reengineer the definition of 'pedophilia' to exclude Mohamed?

Of course not. (1) They're two different things, and (2) I'm not doing mental contortions. Just solid research.

> would even need to partake in such petty human crimes

He didn't.

> and prejudice

He didn't.

> because you look to justify those barbaric acts

I don't.

> And we still have the problem of God suspending free will

He didn't. Their free will was functioning the whole time, and that's how they ended up on the wrong side of the sword.

[Heart of Gold]

Justifying mass murder.

[jimwalton]

So you're talking about war? The land belonged to the Israelites, and they came back from Egypt to possess their own land. As far as justifying mass murder, you continue to ignore that God's first plan was that the people surrender and join the Israelites. That's not mass murder. The second plan was that the Canaanites leave the land: walk away peacefully and without incident. That's not mass murder. The third part of the plan is war. Now, as I've explained, this was not genocide, but war. Most of the population (90%) lived out in the countryside. The Canaanites were farmers and shepherds.

First of all, what the Israelites were waging war against were the cities—the fortresses—filled with soldiers and kings. This is who the war is against. It's not mass murder.

Secondly, if you read the text of the book of Joshua, almost all of the conquest was defensive fighting. After the Israelites conquered Jericho and Ai, a coalition of 5 kings (five cities) from the south attacked them. The Israelites defended themselves, and so came in to possession of the major cities of the south. They attacked a few other cities, and now from Jericho south was theirs.

Then they were attacked by a coalition of about 8 kings from the north. The Israelites defended themselves and won.

You call this "justifying mass murder"? It seems you are misinformed or just trying to drum up an argument where there isn't one.

[Heart of Gold]

Let's put it this way. Is God's knowledge perfect? Does He know the past, present and future perfectly? According to the Bible, He does know these things perfectly. He can't be mistaken, surprised, snuck up on or tricked.

Now go back and reread your last reply with the understanding that God knows everything. Do you now see how silly and base God's actions are when He already knows the outcome.

You have God acting with agency to kill and hand certain groups of people victories at the cost of other groups of people. Is there anything more pedestrian, more ridiculous for the creator of the universe to be meddling in than that?

[jimwalton]

Yes, God's knowledge is perfect, and what else you said in the first paragraph.

> Do you now see how silly and base God's actions are when He already knows the outcome.

No, because people have free will. They make their own decisions. Do you know the end of Jonah? The people of Nineveh repent, and God doesn't bring upon them the judgment he had planned. He's flexible in his work. It says the same thing in Jeremiah 18.1-12. If people change, God changes his plan.

But as I said, much of the conquest was defensive, not offensive. The Israelites had entered the land (granted, with intent to conquer), and they were attacked. So it wasn't that God was justifying mass murder. It was war. And it wasn't genocide. They were killing the soldiers and the kings, not slaughtering the people. The talk about "women and children" was warfare rhetoric, not warfare practice.

> You have God acting with agency to kill and hand certain groups of people victories at the cost of other groups of people.

I have a God who is like a good judge: vindicate good people and punish the bad guys. I have a God who cares about truth and will work to stop destructive deceit. Have you seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy? Do you remember the part where Sam is reflecting on why he is doing what he is doing, and he says, "There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo...and it's worth fighting for!" That's what God is doing, and that's what the Israelites were doing. I don't call that petty, pedestrian, or ridiculous, but virtuous.

Meddling? No. We can hardly be asked to believe in a God we don't know or can't know. He has promised to reveal Himself, and the way he does that is through the covenant. He chose a covenant people (through no merit of their own) through which he would reveal himself to all the world, and bless the world. He gave them a land that would represent his perpetual presence with them. He shows them that evil gets punished and good gets blessed. And he treated his people no different than the other nations (not discrimination or favoritism): when they messed up and became evil, he judged them, too. That's what righteous judges do. It's not meddling. If God ignored evil, he'd be in the wrong. But when he judges evil, you accuse him of meddling, pedestrian discrimination. It sounds like you've pronounced him guilty before any evidence and regardless of any evidence.

I'm curious: for what reason did you ask your question, if you had already made up your mind and didn't want to listen to repeated answers from several people letting you know you were misunderstanding God and the Bible?

[Drunk Armadillo]

Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

[jimwalton]

OK, let me get this straight. When Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother detonated the Boston Marathon bombs with intent to kill, that was genocide? Three people died, several hundred were injured.

When Michael Carneal shot and killed 3 students in a Bible club at his school, that was genocide?

When Abdul Razak Ali Artan rammed students with his car at Ohio State University in 2016 and injured 11 (killing no one), that was genocide?

No wonder you think the Israelites committed genocide. They did kill some people.

[Drunk Armadillo]

Difference is between government, or in this case divine, sponsorship of the activities vs. everything you listed is terrorism.
I will even go further and say the UN declaration of human rights (http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/) is far more moral and aspirational than anything present in the bible.

[jimwalton]

There's an interesting disconnect in your assertion. The very first phrase in the declaration ("Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world") is only meaningful in a theistic context, and not at all in a scientific naturalism one. Humans have no inherent dignity if we are but an agglomeration of chemicals assembled by blind natural forces over the course of time. Matter + time + chance doesn't = inherent dignity. Humanity only has inherent dignity is we are created in the image of God. Dawkins himself writes, "In a world of blind physical forces, some people are going to get hurt just as some are going to get lucky, and there is no rhyme or reason in it, nor any injustice. There is no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

Science has no methods or authority for deciding what is ethical. Science is only concerned with what is and what isn't. Right and wrong have no place in evolutionary theory. "Human rights" is a category of theism. Patricia Churchland says, "Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four Fs: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems it to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive."

The declaration speaks of justice. Again, justice is a category of theism, and only an imposed relative social construct without it. Evolution knows nothing of truth, only survival. Naturalism knows nothing of justice, only the next step. Justice is an import from theism, the workings of a just God on earth, asking humans in his image to be just in imitation of Him, as a way to perpetuate morality on the earth. And, as I said, science has no authority to decide what is moral.

It speaks of "barbarous" acts. But is nature truly barbarous? When a volcano blows, is it being barbarous? When a tree falls? When a tornado touches down? "Barbarous" is an ethical value that has no place in natural acts. And if humans are products of nature and nothing more, then "barbarism" is a meaningless term. It only has meaning within a system where there is true morality, purpose, and if evil is real. Those elements are only real in theism, that are only contrived without God.

So it's ironic that you think the UNCHR is more moral and aspirational than anything in the Bible, when the entire foundation and premise of the document is values borrowed from theism.