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No

Only Judeism

Only Islam

Yes to both Judeism and Islam

[Il Palazzo]

[Acting surprised and sad about it. I mean, who the fuck did he EXPECT to come out of his house?].

His mother-in-law, obviously.

[Sheb]

Also I love how he then goes on murdering 20 cities. Gogo Team YHWH!

More seriously, we did a lot of progress since those days. Nothing like the Bible to make you feel how far we've come.

[MonkeyHead]

God "delivering them into his hands" is the equivalent of agreeing to the deal.

Even more damning is the fact that an omnipotent god would have known what was going to occur, and let events play out with zero interference. At any point during the chain of events "god" could have said no, or made him lose the battle, ensure that nobody left his house - so many things. Yet things were allowed to happen in a horrible, horrible manner. Pretty damning of a horrible narrative, frankly.

Anyway... in one of the groups I frequent related to atheism/rational scepticism, someone has postulated an interesting discussion point that might be worth throwing into the ring here, just so as I can inform myself with a wider range of responses. To those of you here that are religious - if your god commanded it, would you kill me? Can you justify why or why not?

[Helgoland]

Well, I'm not a believer, but these are two possible answers:
1) Yes, because if He told me to, there'd be a good reason.
2) No, if he tells me to kill for no reason, he's not _my_ God.

[MonkeyHead]

1) So even though the Christian god commands not to kill, it would be o.k. if they commanded it? I have a hard time understanding that line of reasoning.

2) I understand that response, though as you say, it is the response of a non-believer, and I would be surprised if many faithful individuals would come to the same conclusion.

[Helgoland]

Killing is not forbidden in all context - Christian pacifism is a recent invention, probably one of the best examples of how new ideologies can piggy-back on existing ones. Remember, the original commandment was "Thou shalt not murder", and if there's a good reason for killing you - for example you being the next Hitler -, it wouldn't exactly be murder after all.
E: A believer's rewording of 2) would probably be "God wouldn't do that", but I believe my wording is more clear.

[ggamer]

you say that, even though IIRC the jews had to spend at least a day sacrificing animals and praying before they went to war, mainly because killing was a sin.

[Frumple]

... can you point out the passages that say that? One of the oddities that struck me, personally (having been raised in an area where folks, especially kids, were generally told the mistranslation of the no-murder commandment), when I did do a quick search on the subject was that there weren't any blanket condemnations of killing. No mention, that I noticed, of it, as a general thing, being a sin. Murder, yes, but the difference between murder and killing have been noted repeatedly.

And there's a fair amount of, y'know, folks going out and getting their slaughter on with YWHW's blessing.

[MonkeyHead]

Hmm. At the risk of delving into semantics then, is an implicit instruction from a god to kill not considered a murder? I mean, killing Hitler in cold blood would still be a murder, wouldn't it?

[Helgoland]

Not if it was WWI and you were that one Canadian sniper who had him in his sights, for example. Murder generally refers to killing without justification.

[MonkeyHead]

Yeah, I suppose we can put acts of warfare as not "cold blooded".

[Graknorke]

Not if it was WWI and you were that one Canadian sniper who had him in his sights, for example. Murder generally refers to killing without justification.

Isn't assassinating leaders considered to be in bad taste nowadays? Like how bombing monuments and using gas weapons is.

[Helgoland]

Not if it was WWI and you were that one Canadian sniper who had him in his sights, for example. Murder generally refers to killing without justification.

Isn't assassinating leaders considered to be in bad taste nowadays? Like how bombing monuments and using gas weapons is.

Do note the Roman numeral behind the two w's. He was militarily useless in both wars, but in the first he did far less damage.

[ggamer]

... can you point out the passages that say that? One of the oddities that struck me, personally (having been raised in an area where folks, especially kids, were generally told the mistranslation of the no-murder commandment), when I did do a quick search on the subject was that there weren't any blanket condemnations of killing. No mention, that I noticed, of it, as a general thing, being a sin. Murder, yes, but the difference between murder and killing have been noted repeatedly.

And there's a fair amount of, y'know, folks going out and getting their slaughter on with YWHW's blessing.

Unfortunately I'm going to have to pull a major BP and not cite my sources, mainly because this is a foggy recollection from a sunday school lesson from a while ago.

Anyway, that point is that by saying that "Killing" is not a sin, but "Murder" is, you're allowing a lot of wiggle room for stupid shit to happen. As far as I can tell, you generally are supposed to avoid murder unless absolutely necessary; however, if murder is necessary, it's not something to engage in willy nilly. Every death is a sin, and something to be meditated on and prayed for,  no matter the circumstance.

Of course the usual responses are A: The Jew's rather loose morality on the subject of murder (Again refer to the sacrificing thing) and B: God murdering people several times (The whole bear story comes to mind, where people read "young people" to mean a gang of menacing ten year olds rather than the gang of 20-ish thugs that is implied.)

Going into further detail would require an hour and a serious search through my bible, and I just got off work and do not feel like doing that right now. I might later if the demand is high.

[Bohandas]

Not if it was WWI and you were that one Canadian sniper who had him in his sights, for example. Murder generally refers to killing without justification.

Isn't assassinating leaders considered to be in bad taste nowadays? Like how bombing monuments and using gas weapons is.

I've never understood that mentality. Personally I believe that assassination should always be tried first before going to war.