But again I'm waiting to hear about these European conquests in Africa, or for you to finally admit you are wrong for once. Please, I am waiting.

Obi, arguing with you is like water torture--It takes four educated people to shame you into halfway admitting that one of your points is invalid,but then you throw four more points into the fray, each of which you are determined to defend to an unreasonable extent. Your biases--or your tendency to argue, I'm not sure which--seem to be preventing you from using argument as a means to arrive at the truth of a proposition. Just sayin'.

Obi, one of your claims was the the Bible advocates genocide. Just your choice of vocabulary is biased, and dubious at best--the Bible does not "advocate" genocide any more than it advocates slavery. Also, check out John Newton in Wikipedia for an example of a nominal Christian who had a conversion experience and later came to a rejection of the slave trade based on his faith. The word "Christian" has been appropriated to mean much more than a saving faith/trust in Jesus, so condemning the actions of some in "the Christian world" who were involved in the slave trade does not implicate the Christian faith, and neither do your tenuous claims that the Bible advocates slavery or genocide, as Santa has pointed out quite clearly and logically. So what's with you? If you see "logic" as a tool that you can use to bend the evidence to suit your own biases, you are violating the principles of intelligent discourse, academic argument, and rational advocacy of your points. (Granted, this this is a prevalent practice in academia, but that doesn't validate it.)

@ obi

Interpretations were never the issue here. You still hold on to the ridiculous notion that Christianity was somehow responsble for slavery. I've acknowledged that some Christians took part in it, but you still insist that it was a Christian thing regardless of the number of people who challenge you to prove it with any evidence. SC and I have both (from slightly different perspectives) pointed out that Christianity was incidental to the whole process. You imagine Christians as mindless robots who must do whatever the is stated in the Bible and accept whatever interpretation is given them. That is simply not the case. Slavers (many Christians and many not) are responsible for the slave trade. The bias in your claim is implicit in your own statements.

Look you said...

"I AM saying that Christians began the slavery mess that the Abolitionists in America ended."


Notice CHRISTIANS started the mess (ignoring the fact that it was an institution that well pre dates Christianity) and Abolitionists ended it (ignoring the fact that the majority of them were Christians). It is even false that the Roman Catholic Church acknowledged complicity. You stated "The forced conversion of native populations." Ignoring the obvious flaw that it's off topic; forced conversion is not equivalent to enslavement. The intent of the statement was not to apologize for any official Church Stance. We've already been through that and I've shown you that Hitchens was misleading you when HE made that claim.

The sermon that Pope John Paul II delivered, and you indirectly quoted, was on behalf of Roman Catholics who had done this, it was expressly not an admission of guilt on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus the Pope was only ackowleging what I've already agreed to. Yes some Christians paticipated in the slave trade. Yet if there is a claim that CHRISTIANS (and not slavers) started the slave trade, then their is an equally powerful claim the CHRISTIANS (and not merely abolitionists) ended it. You cannot have it both ways.

"When *IS* it OK to destroy an entire race, men, women, children, and defenseless newborn babies alike, hm? "

When the Amalekites had been doing the absoulte same thing to the Hebrews for 230 years. The Israelites were more than patient before finally saying we've got to put an end to this. The Old Testament God is slow to anger. 230 years of abuse on the part of the Amalekites justified a hard response from the Israelites. THink of it like a boxer who is fighting a cheater who uses low blows. Do you think it would take 230 years before he'd finally resort to a low blow himself?

Fun fact. Orthodox Jews believe the reason jews keep on being attacked is because we did not kill the amalakites. So you have Haman as an Amalakite, Hitler as an Amalakite (and indeed some say Germans in General are the decendents of the amalakites.) Bunch of bull, but interesting.

...

No.

I'm sorry, I must say...NO.

To both answers to "When *IS* genocide OK?"

You BOTH justify it by saying the Amalekites attacked the Israelites.
Fine.
There is text for that.
I do not dispute that.

But you must answer...

Why GENOCIDE, hm?

I'm NOT, after all, asking "When is WAR acceptable?"

Yes, if you are being attacked by others, war is perfectly acceptable and understandable!

But...GENOCIDE means you are killing EVERYONE...including non-combatant women and--I cannot stress this enough--CHILDREN AND *BABIES!*

How can you POSSIBLY say that a 6-month old deserves to die for...ANYTHING???

>:(

That's simply outrageous and frankly disgusting!

"But again I'm waiting to hear about these European conquests in Africa, or for you to finally admit you are wrong for once. Please, I am waiting."

...I posted that answer from Wikipedia...?

I don't get it, I really don't--

Do you not KNOW I posted my answer to that question from Wikipedia?
If so...I did. I answered your question. You can decide if I'm right, but I DID give an answer!
If you DO know I posted an answer...

Well, why are you then saying you're waiting for an answer?
I gave one!
You can say "I disagree because of A, B, and C," but you can't say I didn't give one...

I did.

Yeah. But if you leave him alive, he will grow up and try to get revenge.

@Obi - Conan (the fictional character) is a perfect example of why in those barbaric times you killed every man, woman, child, and even baby. Conan was the only one that Thulsa Doom let live. What happened to Thulsa Doom? He get his head cut off by a grown Conan.

Diplomacy is another good example. Crsh you opponent completely or he *will* come back to bite you eventually.

Just because you kept arguing for higher material wealth for some which seemed to me to suggest that you viewed it highly, sorry if I was mistaken  And thank you!

Not to go off topic but is it (the idiot) better to read as a free download or a paperback with an introduction etc? And that is a notoriety you can be proud of! Surely since you recognise the value of all these other things you realise there are still other things for people to enjoy and that gaining more material wealth is not real repayment for their contribution? Not to mention the problems I mentioned with EO opportunity…
I was going to say something else but my mind wondered off to books and reading :P

"Yeah. But if you leave him alive, he will grow up and try to get revenge."

...

What kind of half-assed sort of logic is that?!

He's a BABY!

I'm sorry, but did we kill babies in Nazi Germany when we took them out?
NO!
And when it DID occur, it was either an accident or despicable crime.

No one was going around slaughtering every last Germany, old, young, man and woman...

See, that's the sort of thing the NAZIS did with the JEWS...

And we condemned that, rightly, for being the Worst Crime in Human History!

I mean, I'm sorry, but that has to be both one of the stupidest and most immoral statements I've heard on this site in a long, LONG time...

If you let a baby grow up, it might take revenge on you, so it's better to just kill them all.
And that's completely and utterly moral.
Never mind the fact you could just leave the baby alone and have his mother raise it.
Wait--you killed his mother, too?
WHY?
What did SHE do wrong? Happen to be married to someone who attacked your tribe?
SHE still didn't do anything to hurt you...she was tens if not hundreds of miles away!
SHE was at home caring for a baby and milking goats when it all happened!
SHE didn't do a thing to hurt you!
But I suppose if you had to kill her, you could always have the grandmother--
Oh, wait, I'm sorry, that's right...
YOU KILLED HER *TOO!*
You killed the grandmothers and grandfathers, the old with the young, everyone!
Because of course an old, frail grandmother is totally complicit and deserves to die!
Because THAT'S the kind of morality that makes me think "perfect and just God!"
Well, hey, she's still an adult...maybe the older kids can look after the babies and--
Oh, you killed the children TOO?
WHAT, pray tell, did a THREE YEAR OLD GIRL do to warrant death???
HM???
She was born to the wrong tribe?
If you dare let her live and bring her up in the care of others, she may just kill you all???
REALLY?

DESPICABLE!
Don't believe me?
THE BIBLE *SAYS SO!*
How do I know?

Exodus!

OTHERWISE, if your oh-so-morally-enlightened outlook is correct...

Then PHARAOH was just as morally just in having all the male Hebrew babies killed!
But that's condemned!
That's treated as a humongous CRIME!
And it WAS!

*BECAUSE KILLING INNOCENT CHILDREN AND BABIES FOR ANY REASON, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE OF A GENOCIDE, IS A DESPICABLE ACTION WORTHY THE NAZIS AND THEIR FELLOW SCUM OF THE EARTH!!!!!!!!*

I'm sorry, but I'm honestly appalled at that answer, just how utterly shallow,
how callous,
how cold,
how cruel,
how stupid,
how ignorant,
how backward,
how illogical,
how simple-minded,
how childish,
how contradictory,
how wicked,

HOW AWFUL that is!

I don't think that can possible topped for a more juvenile justification of this...

"Conan (the fictional character) is a perfect example of why in those barbaric times you killed every man, woman, child, and even baby."

I stand corrected.

An series of books and an Arnold Schwarzenegger character are now being held up as the reason why killing millions of innocent elders, women, children, and babies is justifiable.

Because, of course, EVERY little baby is just a Conan ready to happen, right, Draug?
Because Conan the Barbarian is the epitome of realistic, insightful, serious literature.
Because Conan the Barbarian is so very, very close to real life and real life events.
Because someone who is called "the Barbarian" is the perfect example to justify this.
Because that explanation doesn't sound juvenile or thought up by a grade-schooler AT ALL.

Thank you for restoring my lack of faith in humanity there, I was almost beginning to gain hope there might be a smidgen of hope for it yet there for a while...

But justifying genocide with the arguments that leaving anyone alive will--

OH!
WAIT!
THAT'S RIGHT...

THEY *DID* leave someone alive, DIDN'T THEY???

The king!
They left the KING alive in that little story, didn't they?
Not the babies, not the kids, not the women, not the invalids, not the elderly...
But the king!

And God had a tantrum that one person survived even though everything worked out just fine otherwise in his barbaric little blood-quest, that's right!

WELL!

I'm glad we all have our priorities in order!

Kill the babies, AND the children, AND the sick, AND the elderly, AN the women...

Because otherwise, they might just all grow up to become Conan the Barbarian!

YES! Truly, yes, truly *THIS* is morality and logic that I can take seriously, and clearly is NOT just despicable, shallow, empty-headed drivel that anyone would be ASHAMED to even DARE to utter if this were anyone but a people mentioned in passing in the Old Testament and had a God written about by people thousands of years ago by unverifiable authors in a largely-illiterate part of the Middle East over hundreds of years and likely after the fact were the ones mentioned here...

Because if this were, why, any OTHER people and any OTHER case in human history...

The Holocaust...
The Armenian Genocide...
The Trail of Tears...
The Kurdish Genocide...
The Apartheid...
The War Crimes of WWI...
The War Crimes of WWII...
The Cambodian Holocaust...
The Inquisition...
The Crusades...
The Rape of Nanking...
The Policies of Modern North Korea...

ANYWHERE ELSE than Ancient Israel, ANYONE ELSE but a wiped out tribe the Bible says God wanted dead, and ANYONE ELSE but this one particular God and one particular people saying it was OK...

ANY other combination, and you'd all be miserable wretches for justifying such atrocities worthy of its own Nuremberg!

But NOPE!

Say the magic word--"God"--and suddenly, it's OK!

Gee, it's such a great thing OTHER people haven't done that throughout history to justify unspeakable acts of genocide...

OH!
WAIT!
THAT'S RIGHT.......................!

(Despicable!) >:(

I think I understand now: in spite of what the Fifth Commandment says, murder is okay in the eyes of God as long as it's for revenge.

@obi - First, look at it in context to the time period and the situation. Barbaric time when enemy is attemtping to destroy *your* race (i.e. genecidal enemy) so you commit genecide because the barbarism of the times would lead to that enemy returning with even more genecidal rage. That was how it was many millenia ago. Next, your Nazi anaology fails because the Jews didn't try to kill every Germn first, so Germany's attemtped genocide was unprovoked. *Had* the Jews (and the rest fo the world) tried to kill every German, then the world *could* have argued that Germany had been given a second chance after WWI and just tried it again, takign it to an extreme even greater than before and therefore they needed to be wiped from the face of the earth. But that would be barbaric and the context of the 20th century would find that reprehensible.

Remember, man's perceptions of God and God's word is colored by his level of civility and percep[tions of the world and the times around him. In a barbaric time, man would perceive God as being a bit barbaric and abusive of his power to explain away their woes (remember, the Jews were a persecuted people throughout history). In the "me" times of ancient Greece, the gods were viewed as being petty and jealous and were the scapegoats for the strife that the Greeks had to deal with.

In modern times, God is perceived as loving and a reason to continue even with life gets you down. He has become an inspiration to be called upon for help, not prayed to and worshipped out of fear.

The bible is colored by the world views of the various writers. So, even as the word of God, those words get twisted and distorted. Any translation will do that of any book. I seriously doubt that every single word of Les Miserable's English translation is exactly how Victor Hugo would have written it and that is more modern with a more easy literal translation.

It's very interesting how closely God sticks to the goals of the elites that claim to represent him. You'd think God would be the agenda-setter, not some mutable social norm that's going to be handwaved as obsolete in a few centuries' time.

Well, the Jewish and Christian God concept has been around for many thousands of years. I don't think he will be "obsolete" anytime this millenium.

@AWB - you think Jesus was crucified because he was sticking to the goals of the elites? Better read the story again......

@Flem I don't think AWB is talking about the Jesus in the bible. I'm sure everyone has heard a politician say something is being done by God's will. Or that something is God's will.

@obi,

" 'But again I'm waiting to hear about these European conquests in Africa, or for you to finally admit you are wrong for once. Please, I am waiting.'

"...I posted that answer from Wikipedia...?"

No, you posted some text about slaves being taken TO European colonies. SC is asking you to support your claim that the slaves came FROM European colonies/conquests in Africa. Do you understand the difference between to and from?

Please address SC's question. I'm getting interested in seeing it addressed.

Obi, arguing with you is like water torture--It takes four educated people to shame you into halfway admitting that one of your points is invalid,but then you throw four more points into the fray, each of which you are determined to defend to an unreasonable extent. Your biases--or your tendency to argue, I'm not sure which--seem to be preventing you from using argument as a means to arrive at the truth of a proposition. Just sayin'.

my first + 1 to Mujus

I'm sorry, but did we kill babies in Nazi Germany when we took them out?
NO!
And when it DID occur, it was either an accident or despicable crime.


See your history is faulty. We absolutely killed women and children in Nazi Germany. When Germany started bombing civilian populations in Battle of Britain we did likewise. Why else do you think that their cities were reduced to rubble? Nobody brought any of the pilots up for war crimes for carrying out their duty.

http://www.onlinemilitaryeducation.org/posts/10-most-devastating-bombing-campaigns-of-wwii/

But this is a smoke screen because you lost the slavery thing.....right?

We're back to this petty Amalekites thing.

The Amalekites spent 230 years killing women, children, the sick and elderly of the Hebrews. It wasn't merely revenge it was survival. What evidence do you have that after 230 years of cowardly attacks on women and children the AMalekites would have suddenly become nice guys and played by the rule? THere were no rules it was the freaking Bronze Age. They were creating the rules. The Amalekites got wiped out to show everyone else NOT TO ATTACK WOMEN AND CHILDREN IF YOU DON"T WANT THE SAME FREAKING THING TO HAPPEN TO YOU!

that how rules of warfare are decided upon.

..... since you get all indignant a yell at us obi, I figured you'd fogive me for doing the same, lol.

Is this thread now a biblical debate?

This is the most fascistic thread Ive read here, which is saying something.

Your history is faulty, the blitz happened after Germany was bombed first, not before. And nobody was charged because the winners never get charged. Btw Nazis used this preventive genocide logic, you fascists keep wonderful company.

No no, see, Putin, it's okay to kill whomever *we* want to for absolutely no reason, because my imaginary friend says it's okay. Rules of warfare? What rules of warfare?

"Church fathers such as St. Augustine were african. But the curse of Ham only applies to sub saharan "black Africans" of which, to my knowledge there are not any church fathers. There is not doubt it is a convenient innovation. But it was a convenient innovation used by the majority of society."

As it turns out, "Hamite" was often a term applied specially to the Caucasion northern Africans to distinguish them from the darker skinned sub-Saharan Africans. Taxonomy categorized them as being superior to the sub-Saharan Africans, but still not equal to European Caucasions. Abominable, of course, but I think it puts many northern African Church Fathers (including St. Augustine of Hippo) squarely in a category that ought to have been uncomfortable for those who found slavery convenient and sought to justify it through religion.

As to how dark-skinned Church Fathers actually got is anyone's guess, as you say. But it worth noting that St. Athanasius of Alexandria was termed, "the black dwarf," by his theological opponents.

Last, I wouldn't say it was a particularly convenient innovation used by the majority of society -- mainly those who directly benefited from it and their social and political peers. I have no doubt that the majority of society believed that black people were intellectually inferior. But as to whether they were worthy of basic human dignity, I don't think it was quite as overwhelming.

You guys are amazing. Nobody is telling you that genocide is okay. Genocide is obi's perjorative term. The Amalekites were trying to wipe the Hebrews out and had been trying for 230 years. When the Hebrews finally return tit for tat it's GENOCIDE and an indictment of all believers. That's the fautly logic. This was one battle not a systematic attempt to wipe anybody out.

"And nobody was charged because the winners never get charged."

So the surviving pilots of the Luftwaffe were rounded up and charged with war crimes? I missed that part at Nuremberg.

"Rules of warfare? What rules of warfare?"

Right. It was the Bronze Age and this was an instance of them being established since there weren't any yet. If you read the story you'll see that God specifically denies the Hebrews any spoils of war from this and gets pissed off when they don't obey.

Before Obi gets on his soapbox again God also gets ticked because Saul lets the Amalekite king live. That was another spoil of war. The number of kings living and gathering up crumbs under your table was a sign of a king's power and battle prowess. Essentially Saul would have been taking a slave. It's obvious to me if you read this that God was saying "Look, you've got to deal with these people before they wipe you out, but you're not going to be proud of it or profit from it".

Basically obi wants to portray this as a tale of a bloodthirsty God telling his people to go out and wipe out all opposition. That fails on several points. Number one the Hebrews didn't typically wipe out all resistance. It happened but it was the exception rather than the rule. Number two there was an element of self preservation to this as the Amalekites had been trying to do the very same thing to the Hebrews for 230 years (The approximate time span between Moses and Saul). Number three there is a very strong claim to be made that this story is a warning against killing women and children rather than an endorsement of it. Remember that the morality that you rely on didn't exist at the time; it just hadn't been placed into being. The people of the time had to wrestle with the concepts of what would and would not be permitted. The very same acts are present in wars of modern times and committed by much more "civilized" countries. The difference is that we have communication with one another and can parley agreements about how war should be fought. King Saul couldn't simply hoist a white flag and bitch about the Amalekites treatment of non-combatants. Killing the Amalekites served as a warning to others about this type of thing.
One of the most telling things about the story is that they do not white wash it. Saul isn't made into a hero. He's shown to be greedy; when God specifically said "No, you're not going to profit from this". The Hebrews are forbidden from taking slaves or any other spoils.