When God slaughters innocent babies, He is “good.”
In a post entitled “A Seriously Warped Moral Compass,” Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism relates a discussion he had with an evangelical fellow. The topic? Hosea, chapter 13, a Bible passage in which God promises that for the crime of disbelief, the city of Samaria’s “infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.” This is one of those many Bible passages that the anti-abortion demonstrators refuse to display on their signs as they march in front of clinics.
I’ve often been in discussions similar to the one described by Ebonmuse. Such discussions are highly predictable, actually. They all lead to the same conclusion. The fundamentalists all end up insisting that whatever God does, He is still “good” or “just.”
Here’s how the encounter of Ebonmuse with his fundamentalist acquaintance:
“You’ve said that it’s perfectly okay for God to command genocide. You’ve said it’s okay for him to condemn people to be tortured for all eternity because they had some sincere doubts about his existence. And now you’re saying it’s perfectly okay for him to order the slaughter of pregnant women and their unborn children! So what would you consider immoral? Is there anything you think he can’t do and still be good? Is there any act - anything at all - that a good god would never command?”
For the first time, a shadow of disgust passed across John’s face. “Yes. A good God would never say that it’s okay for people to be gay. Homosexuality is disgusting and unnatural and God would never permit it.”
Here’s how I see it. Either God is not “good” or one can still be good even though one slaughters babies. Now, maybe those babies (some of them being unborn babies) were morally deficient and “had it coming,” but I doubt it.
In my heathen view, babies are not capable of doing anything capable of earning the death penalty. In the meantime, we’ve got a language problem. If fundamentalists keep insisting that God is good when He kills babies, we’ll just have to advise all of the dictionary makers that there is a new definition of “good.” We’ll call it “good #2” (or something like that) and it will mean something like this: evil, depraved, morally obtuse and dangerous. Once this new definition of good (#2) is commonly accepted, we can start using it commonly. For instance, if someone sticks a gun in your face to rob you, you can say, “Hey! You’re good #2!”
Here is how Ebonmuse ends his post:
People such as this have a seriously warped moral compass. They have their priorities precisely backwards, they are obsessed with precisely the wrong things. Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg once said: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
As long as fundamentalists can’t shake off the effects of the LSD they apparently take, they rest of us will just have to understand that they give God a free pass, morally speaking. He gets all the credit but none of the blame. Although He’s sometimes good, he’s often good #2. He’s always “just.” He is incapable of doing evil even when he’s busy slaughtering innocent babies. And perhaps it is because God is so good (#2) that the fundamentalists are “inspired” to be good (#3), namely, they (sometimes) refrain from killing and stealing because they’re afraid that God might be good (#2) to them too.
BTW, I’d highly recommend that you check out Ebonmuse’s site. Lots of thoughtful analysis and good clear writing.
He comes at the topic of religion from many angles, always with new fruitful observations. Here’s how he describes himself:
Part-time computer hacker, part-time freethought activist; optimist and skeptic rolled into one; a poet at heart but a scientist at mind; a thorough-going atheist who admires religious music and architecture. I contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman put it. And anyone who suggests that I’m only an atheist because of a dysfunctional family or a bad experience with church gets fifty lashes with a wet noodle blessed by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
[Note: This is not the original version of this post. While I was correcting a typo, the original post got “eaten” by an airport Internet connection].
John: Please have a seat and take a deep breath. Then, put one of your fingers in one of your ears so what I’m about to write doesn’t go in one ear and out the other. If production of offspring defines what is “natural,” then all of the following activities should be banned:
All you’ve got to do at this site to earn a modicum of respect is to admit that you don’t like gays or that gay sex creeps you out. Then we’ll know that all the religious, scientific or moralistic “reasoning” you write is driven by your unwillingness to let others live in peace. Or maybe your crusade against gays is caused (as it so often is), because you have sexual feelings for another guy.
I’d recommend that you work out these issues on your own, with a therapist, if need be. Please don’t come crawling over to this site any further with a claim that gays are “unnatural.” That excuse has caused far to many deaths, injuries, broken families, all of it needless.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
“Takes one to know one.” - said in snotty kid-voice, of course.
“What one dislikes most in others is usually a reflection of what one disdains most in oneself.”
I have no doubt that most men who protest vehemently against homosexuality have had those feelings of their own and because of their own indoctrination into the culture of roaring, big-bicepped, conquest-over-babes masculinity, are terrified of such a thing ever being accepted in the open. That culture, along with the religious warnings against gay sex, are more than those men can grapple with and come out sane. So MAKE IT GO AWAY is the only answer. They are too uncertain of their own self-identity to allow for any flexibility, any gray area, any acceptance there.
People who are comfortable in their own skin, with their own internal needs and moral codes, do not require an imaginary entity forcing a 2,000 yr. old “code of moral conduct” on their selves. I’m not saying that all religious people fit that description - most, probably, embrace religion for a variety of other reasons, including the love of ritual, a sense of community and well-being, a vehicle through which to exercise their empathy and compassion, etc. They are perfectly rational, lovely people who understand that their religion is not everyone’s religion - and that is just peachy.
The ones who push it down everyone else’s throats, regardless of which religion we are discussing - do not believe for a moment that people can be good on their own. They believe that without the external pressure of God, without the threat of eternal damnation, every one of us will dissolve into a puddle of ugly selfishness, our every action committed for self-satisfaction only - everyone else be damned. They cannot accept that anyone could WANT to do good for the sake of their fellow human beings - and even if they did, who cares? If it’s not about glorifying their deity, it wasn’t really good in the first place.
I can only assume that those people are basing their fear of utter chaos on the fear of their own inability to self-regulate without their God keeping a close eye on their every move. As for the many who find credit God with the miracle of saving them from drugs, alcohol, gambling, or sex, I would wager that for a significant number of those people, religion merely becomes the next addiction for them - not actually taking the to a new level of self-awareness and understanding, but, instead, replacing one obsession with another. And yes, I speak from experience here. I was an addict, many years ago. I overcame it with treatment and therapy, and decided I wanted to live a better life, for the sake of my own sanity but also for the sake of my family and friends. I watched many of my rehab peers dive into meetings and church with the same religious fervor they’d expended on their various additions, and almost every one who took that road relapsed. They swapped addictions, back to drugs from religion, and probably back again maybe a few more times. Kind of like the difference between behavior modification and therapeutic analysis. Not that the behavior changes aren’t valuable, of course - replacing unhealthy behavior with healthy behavior is a good move, yes. But understanding all that is behind the unhealthy behavior in order to come to terms with it, move past it and find peace, then find an internal impetus for healthy actions seems to be a much more effective - albeit more difficult - undertaking.
Religion is a great way to control oneself, if one doesn’t think one can on one’s own. If you convince yourself that God will get you if you misbehave, that you can’t hide from God so he WILL get you no matter what, and that his punishment is not just awful, it’s forever-awful, well, then maybe you can force yourself to “behave” in this lifetime. And if that is really necessary, then I guess it’s a good thing we have religion.
Damn, did I just argue myself over to the other side?! I wish Karl, John and their crowd could see that just because THEY need religion, not everyone does, just as I have now accepted that apparently SOME need it, even though I and many others do not. Uh-oh, back to the “to each his own” concept that they just can’t quite get.
Whew. I’m still on the same “side” of the argument. . . . ;->
Clothes aren’t natural, either, and clearly interfere with reproduction. Think about that. . .
Karl writes:—”I would interject that for animals this is true, but for people “might does not make right.” When you have that attitude, wars will never cease and you sentence mankind to their own destruction.”
Well, duh. Why do you think we DO have endless wars?
Watch children in a playground unsupervised and you will see, eventually, the emergence of dominance and the establishment of a pecking order. Natural as can be.
Might does not make right, you are correct, but it does make for conformity, it does make for oppression, it does make for one ideology dominating another, and it does make for the insistence that there is only one way to do thing. Might does not make right, but it often ends the argument.
Now, you know—and I know this will probably make no difference—but it doesn’t actually say anything in Genesis about homosexuality. If, in fact, all these residents of Sodom were homosexuals, why would Lot even presume they’d be interested in his daughters? What it says is they intended to abuse the messengers, which could mean anything. And in previous passages to that, the concern was that Yahweh could not find any “just” men—which is a damn sight different than the usual reading. (I am referring to the New Jerusalem Bible, the text of which I consider more accurate than most others.) Just. Which means they were likely criminals.
Sodom and Gomorrah were two of the so-called Five Cities of the Plains, along with Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar. These five cities stood as a bulwark against invasion from the east, by the armies of the Amorites, under Amraphel and his ally Chedorlaomer of Elam. They had brought down Sumer and absorbed most of the territory that had been under Sumero-Akkadian rule in the Fertile Crescent. The five cities had been paying tribute, but now they balked and resisted. Genesis 14:3 “These latter all banded together in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea). For twelve years they had been under the yoke of Chedorlaomer, but in the thirteenth year they revolted.”
Interestingly, Lot is carried off in captivity by the subsequently victorious Amorites, who took possession of the cities. Abraham whips up some followers and goes after these guys, ambushes them, kills them all and frees Lot and the other captives. The king of Sodom later comes to talk and by the account in Genesis 14, they parted amicably.
Lot goes back to live in Sodom.
Reading between the lines, Sodom and Gomorrah become the major powers in the region and apparently not very nice ones. The key line seems to be Genesis 18:20 “Then Yahweh said ‘How great an outcry there is against Sodom and Gomorrah! How grievous is their sin!”
But it doesn’t say what that sin is. From the sound of this, Yahweh has been listening to complaints from those not living in the twin cities, so I conclude that the complaints are political—taxes, bad administrators, etc. Corruption. And maybe they’ve become the Las Vegas and Reno of the Fertile Crescent, but I don’t see anything to specifically indicate homosexuality. That is a conclusion drawn later by interpreters. Not saying it’s necessarily wrong, but it is unlikely that that it is the only or even the major complaint.
Now, then. We come to the modern era and archaeology. The closest things found to these fabled cities are the sites known as Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira, early Bronze Age cities. I quote from Rast and Schaub expedition material:
“The site of Bab edh-Dhra’ has been discussed in connection with the “cities of the plain” (Gen. 13:10-13; 14;18-19) because of the traditional view that these cities were located at the south end of the Dead Sea . Albright (1926) conjectured that Bab edh-Dhra’ was a ceremonial site for these cities and that the ruins of the cities were probably located under the shallow waters of the southern basin of the Dead Sea . Lapp (1968a) interpreted Bab edh-Dhra’ as a cultic burial ground for the cities. The discovery of four other sites with Early Bronze cultural materials during a survey of the southern Ghor region in 1973 led Rast and Schaub (1974) to suggest a possible linkage to the biblical cities. Van Hattem (1981) carried this suggestion further by identifying Bab edh-Dhra’ as Sodom . In a recent article which analyzes the tradition of Sodom Rast has revised the suggestion that all the Ghor sites were historically linked with the cities of the plain, arguing that the biblical tradition centered originally on a pair of cities, Sodom and Gomorrah . The two related Early Bronze towns of Bab edh-Dhra’ and Numeria may thus have generated the popular biblical tradition (Rast 1984).”
Early Bronze Age would be 3500 B.C.E. to about 2000 B.C.E., bringing it close enough to the assumed period of Abraham. The excavations, however, show trading and manufacturing centers, traditional EBA settlements, likely with the same heterogeneous population types as anywhere else.
This is of interest:
“Excavations discovered two distinct occupational phases at the site, demonstrating the potential to investigate diachronic change at the settlement. Fascinatingly, the inhabitants of Numeira abandoned the town, but seemed to prepare the structures for that abandonment and an eventual return that never materialized. After the preparation and abandonment of Numeira, the town was burned and one of the fortification towers collapsed, crushing three individuals beneath its walls.”
There is no similar evidence of conflagration at the other site. Between both towns is an extensive collection of burials sites, which seems to have been the earliest use the area was put to.
Best estimates place Abraham at 1900 B.C.E.
It is also possible that these are not the Biblical towns. The level of the Dead Sea has actually risen since then and there may be ruins under the water yet to be found.
But the cataclysm described in Genesis is not corroborated by the geology.
Point being, the destruction of these cities may have been nothing more than what happened regularly at that time when competing empires collided and the events retrofitted for the purposes of whoever wrote Genesis—which was not Abraham and probably not Moses—the writing of which took place some four or five centuries after the events described.
To treat the drama of Sodom and Gomorrah as actual history is ludicrous. We can establish that there were such cities. We can establish the political patterns of the period from corroborative records of other empires. For all we know, however, Abraham is fabrication—not that there was no Abraham, but that the character recorded in Genesis is likely a conflation of several people, an iconic figure, like Gilgamesh or, more aptly, Melchizidek, who seems to have been several different potentates—as is Lot.
The physics of Lot’s wife being turned to salt is ridiculous.
Your assertion that Lot’s daughters had become “infected” by the sinfulness of Sodom is ludicrous, even by the statements of Genesis. This is clearly a origin story about the establishment of two tribes, not to be taken literally. It imitates, in some ways, the creation of Eve—Adam was put to sleep; Lot was made drunk to the point of unconsciousness, and the result were the Moabites and Bene-Ammon…
For someone who once claimed not to be a Biblical literalist, you certainly have a penchant for it. But you then do the common thing of interpreting to fit your preferred reading.
And again, let us be clear. It is not so much that Yahweh did something I consider unethical—remember, to me there is no Yahweh—the point is that the stories reflect the prejudices of the authors. They wanted their god to be a bad-ass MF who would smite their enemies. The OT is full of that wish-fulfillment calling upon god to do badness to our enemies. It does not reflect god’s will, but the hearts of those who claim to follow him. So it is not that Yahweh hates gays, it is that his followers do, and so their god must.
This is tiresome.
Oh, the link to the website about Numeiri etc is:
http://www.nd.edu/~edsp/index.html
Thank you very much.
Karl says:
Please read how Lot was spared not because he was actually righteous, God attempted to spare Lot and his family because God remembers Abraham (19:29).
But Peter says he was spared because he was righteous:
2 Peter 2:7-8
And [God] delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: (For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)
Hmm. Whom shall we believe? Neither, actually. Lot’s stories is one of the more abhorrent in my mind because it requires so much twisted imagination to make it an example of. . .well, anything positive.
Lot convinces the “angels” from Sodom to stay overnight. Men come from the town and demand they be sent out so they can “know” them, and Lot says no, how about raping my two virgin daughters instead? The crowd insists that another man who came into the city needs to be a judge - it seems to be that the men of the city have a gripe with these men, not that they want to initiate them into the boys’ club. So, even worse, Lot’s offering his daughters up for gang rape to protect criminals masquerading as angels.
The “angels” tell him to warn all his loved ones - sons in law, sons, and any others, to get out of the city because it’s going to be destroyed. (In fact, that THEY are going to destroy it. God gets credit after the fact.) Well, apparently not everyone in the city is into that gay stuff, or there wouldn’t be offspring to warn, and Lot’s not the only righteous one, or he wouldn’t have been allowed to pass the word around. So clearly this isn’t a situation where one and all are party to encouraging icky buttsecks.
Lot turns out to be a bit of a whiner, asking god if maybe he can go live in this itty bitty town, so small it would be easy to not destroy, rather than go hide in the scary mountains. God says OK, but then wait. . .Lot takes his daughters and goes to hide in the scary mountains after all. God rains fire down. Cities are destroyed. From the mountain, and from the POV of these primitive people, the whole world has been destroyed. Poor Lot’s daughters are worried that there won’t be any people left unless they get pregnant by their dad. They give him wine, and he doesn’t even notice when they’ve come and gone. (Is it possible for a man to be drunk enough to not know that he’s having sex? At all, much less with his daughters?) They each have sons. End of story. Until apologetics get involved, and we hear that the daughters were little virgin sluts and Lot had to be made drunk in order to do something so unrighteous.
And the moral of the story is “God hates fags.”
Plus, no innocents were harmed in the making of this story. I call shenanigans.
Gay sex unnatural? Tell it to the bonobos!
How’d we get back around to homosexuality again anyway? Was it Karl? Jeez, it’s always about the butt with that guy …
Karl, why do you seem to think that when two gay people want to marry, it is only about sex? Do you really think gay people just wait til they find one other gay person and then pitch a fit in order to marry? Are you really that daft??
The gay and lesbian couples I know dated, just like you or I would. They got to know each other, they spent time figuring out if they were compatible - in all the same ways the rest of us do. Do they balance each other, emotionally? Do they share the same passions for art and culture? Can they compromise? Do their strengths complement each other’s strengths? Do they like similar music, enjoy a similar pace of life, can they travel well together? Do they go to the same church? After time, they determine that their love for each other is of the permanent kind, the lifelong kind. The sex plays no bigger or smaller a part than it does for heterosexual couples. Some of them have chosen to raise children. Some have adopted, some have conceived with medical intervention. Some have decided not to parent.
Ooh, and guess what? Some of my heterosexual couple friends have also chosen not to parent. They are committed to each other and their careers. They go to church, even! But they married each other, knowing from the beginning that they did not desire children, BUT that they intended to have as much sex as any couple that did. They wanted to be committed to each other. Based on your response, they shouldn’t have married any more than gay couples should.
God, Karl, you are so full of shit it is hard to believe that I am still wasting time responding to your rants, but I can’t help it. You write as if YOU KNOW. And you don’t. You truly don’t. You rant on and on and ON about a topic you know nothing about. You are not qualified to speak on this. I feel quite certain that you have no gay friends. So I don’t care how many times you’ve read your bible and how many ways you’ve interpreted it, or with whose help. The bible, even if you believe it is a sacred text, is full of contradiction and “rules” we no longer impose upon people. The fact that you hold tight to this one, bring it up regularly and rant on with a completely unrealistic and distorted version of homosexuality, proves to me without a doubt that you fear your own homoerotic feelings and that you have never had any kind of friendship with a gay or lesbian person. You don’t know any of them beyond very superficially, if at all, nor have you conversed on a personal level with any one of them. Or surely you wouldn’t continue to have the audacity to portray them as some sort of predators with nothing to them but a sexual difference from yourself.
You are a bigot, Karl. I seriously doubt that ever, in this lifetime, you will be capable of seeing or admitting that - but you, sir, are a despicable bigot.
Alison,
Lot wasn’t any more righteous according to his actions and thoughts than any other man, including Abraham or King David and I dare say even of one half of Jesus’ human physical nature itself either.
Show me any person heterosexual or homosexual, that displays the fruit of the Spirit of God and I can say nothing against these characteristics in the person.
Yes alison that is true but as shown in the Bible there is an explanation for the reason and need of clothes. And yes Erich gay sex does crepp me out deeply but not because i hate the people. Homosexuals can be the most polite and friendly people in the world I know that and i am not trying to go on a crusade killing of all the gays.
A married heterosexual couple’s use of birth control to wait a few years before starting a family.
A woman’s decision to have sexual intercourse with her husband after she has gone through menopause.
The choice of a person to masturbate to relieve sexual tension or to get to sleep.
Watching a romantic movie.
A married couple’s decision to have sex even though the husband had a vasectomy or the wife had a tubal ligation.
To most of them reproduction ahs already happened and therefore it is fine, because although a vasectomy is unnatural, it is sometimes neccesary, and menopause is natural, sex has two uses, pleasure between man and wife, and reproduction. watching a romantic movie makes no sense whatsoever, and masturbation i believe is wrong.
John writes:—”To most of them reproduction ahs already happened and therefore it is fine, because although a vasectomy is unnatural, it is sometimes neccesary, and menopause is natural, sex has two uses, pleasure between man and wife, and reproduction. watching a romantic movie makes no sense whatsoever, and masturbation i believe is wrong.”
You’re making assumptions, but I’m glad we have cleared all that up! It’s good to know what is fine and what is not.
Firstly, the use of sex for pleasure is not conditional upon reproduction. Lots of people just want to have sex. They don’t need anyone’s permission for that, especially not if the precondition is to reproduce.
Sex does have two uses, but the way you frame it is off—pleasure between consenting adults. Married, unmarried, male, female, two, three, more.
Romantic movies often make no sense, I agree, but many things people do make no sense but that doesn’t make them wrong or worthless.
Masturbation is wrong? Gosh, I wondered why my hand had fallen off when I was 16…
Hey, a new player! Cool, Karl is getting far beyond dull and possibly thicker by the minute (like a good bolognese, but not nearly as useful) (though it must be said I have no great hopes for the new guy as he’s hardly distinguished himself from the usual fundy trolls we get around here).
Religion may not be the root cause of every war in history (a major contributing factor toward escalations and brutality, sure, but that’s another post) but great gosh, it sure seems to produce far more than its fair share of sexual hangups. Being gay is wrong, jerking off is wrong, telling kids how their penises and vaginas work and how to avoid getting pregnant if you happen to use them together is wrong (and don’t even mention what you can’t do if you DO get accidentally knocked up). It seems anything involving people choosing what to do with their own damn bodies (or even informing people how those bodies operate) is wrong to these puritans. But hey, what’s a religion if it doesn’t come with a long fucking list of control-freakish thou shalt nots, especially concerning private, intimate behaviour which affects nobody but the participants?
I played fundy bingo with John’s last comment - it was too easy.
“The Bible Says”
“Sex is for making babies”
“Sex is only for married couples”
“Oh Noes! Teh Gay!”
“Masturbation is a SIN!”
We also had run on sentences, punctuation fail, spelling fail, and humor fail.
I think we have a winner.
You nailed it with “control-freakish,” Hank. That is, bottom line, what it’s all about.
I’ve always found it amusing that a popular AA saying is, “Let Go, and Let God.”
In other words, if you are not capable of controlling yourself, let religion do the work for you. Scare yourself into behaving, rather than get to the root of what led you into addiction in the first place.
The solace and strength many derive from their religion is wonderful. I don’t want religion to go away. I want religion-as-power to go away. It won’t, but a girl can dream, can’t she?
When will people like Hank, Tony and Mark ever admit that I have never stated that I believe homosexual or supposed auto erotic behavior, or even mutual erotic behavior inside or outside of marriage seals anyone’s fate and judgment before God?
How one attempts to “proselytize” others into accepting or agreeing with one’s perspectives and personal behaviors and values does however help reveal the motives of your heart.
Holding marriage as an attempt at a higher human social value based upon a physical reality, only lessens it when others try to convince young people that anything can be called a marriage if the people so desire. I agree with the principles behind the realities of civil unions for anyone that wishes to declare their commitments to one another, as does the POTUS.
I value principles and relationships that are not aggressively proselytized towards those who don’t think and believe the same way. Can you all here on DI honestly say the same thing?
How dare anyone presume to judge anyone else as evil!
Read scripture especially those of you who won’t tell others the real reason why God told the Israelites to wipe out entire populations was because they were burning their own children as sacrifices.
altough maybe you all still prefer that we still have those people around so that they can offer anyone sons and and daughters as a burnt offering.
Hank, just because the Judeo-Christian-Muslim-B’hai group of religions see sex as a shame and embarassment does not mean that all religions are the same way.
Karl: Were they ALL burning their own children as sacrifices? Here we go again . . .
There may have been some members of the DONOs (department of neighborhood organizers) who kept telling these rascals they were being a little bit too inhuman and icksnay on the slaughteray. The quickest way however to stop dissent and to silence opposition is by being forcefully aggressive and inhumane.
You seem to forget that in a society, when specific leaders get known for the depths of their evil, the rest of the people who really would like to try to be moral (humane if you will have it) either flee or are held as human shields by the immoral leaders who wish to pretend they have followers that serve them willingly, but who fully recognize these others are only there to protect their own hides and increase their apparent numbers.
Look recently as what happened in Sri Lanka, and what is happening now in northern Pakistan. The people that know judgment is coming and really do not want to defend the rascals are normally so passive at this point that it takes outside intervention to help them see their only solution to the place they find themselves in is becoming a refuge and leave everything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_Civil_War
When the Bible says “all” were killed in a battle, more than likely it means “all combatants” were killed, be they men, women or children.
Karl, I did not call you evil. I called you a bigot. Personally, I think bigotry ranks right up there on the “mean” scale, but I don’t think it hits “evil” unless it becomes the basis for violence and blatant discrimination.
Oh . . . wait. . .
Nope, still, not judging you as evil. I do believe you mean well, yet are woefully misguided. You dig in and insist that your way is THE way, and since your way leads to the discrimination of many people I care about, well, it rubs me the wrong way. Really far the wrong way.
Perhaps I owe you an apology for such name-calling. I will think about that.
Karl: “When the Bible says “all” were killed in a battle, more than likely it means “all combatants” were killed, be they men, women or children.”
Your rationalizations are not supported by the text.
Numbers 31:14-18
“And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host…And Moses said unto them, have ye saved all the women alive?….Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
“But all the women children, that have not known a man…keep alive for yourselves.”
Deuteronomy 3:6-7 (”Israel destroys people of Bashan”)
“And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sibon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city.
“But all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities, we took for a prey to ourselves.”
Joshua 6:21 (The destruction of Jericho)
“And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.”
These passages are pretty clear. There are plenty more, but I don’t want to bore everyone with this dismal litany.