Why God: All Your Old Testament Killings and Decisions (Part 2)

Here is the second part of my commentary to the post that was entitled "Questions to God/Allah/ or whoever is in charge". See Part 1 here.

Question 3: According to the bible and many other books, You asked people to go kill others. Like when you asked Joshua to conquer Jericho remember? You had just given the 10 commandments where it clearly stipulates : Though shall not kill… Then you sent people to kill… Why not do it yourself? You could literally just snap a finger and have this whole earth gone in half of a millisecond. So if you Really needed that whole city gone you could have done it without having humans do that. So is there a reason they had to do that? Was it to prove to you that they were faithful? Was there no other way to test their faith?

In dealing with morality or the divine moral command issued to humanity, there is a principle that runs through out the Bible that could be framed as this, 'God does not contradict Himself'. In 2 Timothy 2:13, we read that "If we are faithless, He [God] remains faithful, for [God] cannot deny Himself." This lead us to the biblical text you mentioned which was spoken in mount Sinai by God to Moses stating in the book of Exodus 20:13, "Thou shalt not kill." Let me remark that the word used for "kill" literally means "murdering". The Greek version of the original text for the word 'kill' use the word "phoneuō" which means literally "to be a murderer". Many biblical versions of this verse keep that nuance such as this one from the Bible Basic English (BBE version), "Do not put anyone to death without cause." This defang the argument that those God ordered the execution or put to death in the Old Testament were about innocent killing. God never ordered a murder for it goes against the ethical construct He has advocated to the Israelite.

You raised two questions. Let me answer answer them by order:

a) Why order Killing

With this in mind, we are now capable of exploring the primordial example you raised about the killing that happened in Jericho as a mirror image of all the others. Historically, Jericho was not a citizen city but a military outpost. Those in the Jericho city were in modern language enemy combatant.  Moreover, Jericho was part of the Canaanite territorial land that God sent Israel to take over. Why then did God ordered the removal of the first inhabitants of the land while destroying their military forces? The answer for that is found four hundred years before the destruction of Jericho, for God informed Abraham that the land that his posterity will inherit was currently inhabited by a nation of Amorites which unfortunately were accruing their evilness and sins. It is clear from the text that God would only remove that nation from that land if  their evilness reaches a irredeemable peak and not anytime sooner than that. As Professor Paul Copan from Palm Beach Atlantic University put it and i quote, "God was willing to wait over 400 years because 'the sin of the Amorite was not yet filled up' (Genesis 15:16)".

From this historical perspective, God's command to remove the Canaanite including Jericho was based on a judgement and not on a capricious divine acts. The sins refereed above in Genesis of the Canaanites were as follow: Idolatry, Incest, Adultery, Child sacrifice, Homosexuality, Bestiality among other sexual deviations. An academic paper on it was written and can be read in full here. The punch-line here is that this was no innocent killing or murdering of the innocent, but rather a form of an old fashion capital punishment.

b) Why using Humans?

The subsequent question raised was why not do it Himself. Why use human being to serve moral judgement? The answer to this is not that God doesn't act to execute judgement Himself, He does sometimes. But in all culture and societies, God has always partnered with humans in order to bring law and order in any given society. We are reliably informed in the Bible that, "Let everyone put himself under the authority of the higher powers, because there is no power which is not of God, and all powers are ordered by God. For which reason everyone who puts himself against the authority puts himself against the order of God: and those who are against it will get punishment for themselves." - Rom 13:1-2

And this divine collaboration with humanity when it comes to executing judgement with the sword was forcefully expressed in this manner two thousand years ago:

 
"For rulers are not a cause of fear to the good work but to the evil. If you would have no fear of the authority, do good and you will have praise; For he is the servant of God to you for good. But if you do evil, have fear; for the sword is not in his hand for nothing: he is God's servant, making God's punishment come on the evil-doer"  - Romans 13:3-4 (BBE)

Question 4:While we are still on the Israelites, why did you leave them to be slave for so many years? Were they being punished? For what? And when you decided to save them , Why all that struggle? Like you knew the pharaoh wouldn’t believe the plagues you sent, You could have sent an angel to talk him, better yet, you could have talked to him you know, like you used to with Abraham. Annnd then when the Israelites were free, again you let them struggle to get to Canaan. You couldn’t have transported them , like in the Harry potter books, Poooof and reappear at the desired location?

a) How did Israel became slave?

Israel became slave for no fault of themselves. Actually, Israel as a nation grew and even prospered in Egypt under different Pharaohs because of the good memories of the service of a particular Israelite called Joseph offered to the kingdom of Egypt. But history being what it is, good deeds get forgotten with time and ignorance tends to precipitate unlearned leaders to take devastating decisions. This is exactly what happened in Egypt. Here is a brief account of it that might interest you in the Book of Exodus 1:8-11

"Now a new king came to power in Egypt, who had no knowledge of Joseph. And he said to his people, See, the people of Israel are greater in number and in power than we are: Let us take care for fear that their numbers may become even greater, and if there is a war, they may be joined with those who are against us, and make an attack on us, and go up out of the land. So they put overseers of forced work over them, in order to make their strength less by the weight of their work. And they made store-towns for Pharaoh, Pithom and Raamses." 

 b) Why did God took time before the rescue?

This is a difficult one since God's way of thinking is mind-boggling to us but when looked from the rear-view of history it all make sense, however without the benefit of hind-sight it just doesn't make much sense to us who makes our judgement mostly based with immediate information with no broader political, cultural, economical and geographical context.

Long before Israel came into existence, God predicted the outcome of the future enslavement of Israel to their founding father Abraham in a night vision.

"And [God] said to Abram, Truly, your seed will be living in a land which is not theirs, as servants to a people who will be cruel to them for four hundred years; But I will be the judge of that nation whose servants they are, and they will come out from among them with great wealth." - Genesis 15:13 

It would be preferable that Israel simply grew in power and wealth in Egypt until they were order to go to Canaan to possess it after the Canaanite sins had reached their paroxysm. However, God also predicted that their incubation process would not be painless as He correctly anticipated the advent of a new pharaoh who will not be kind to the Jews. Tactically, it probably would have made sense for God to do most of what you suggested but it would not have made sense from a strategic point of view. For when Israel left Egypt, they had learned so many lessons about wealth possession and dispossession, about being welcomed as a foreigners and what it means to be outcast as a foreigner, the value of having a land that you call your own and etc. All these lesson which could have never been seared in their national consciousness just through a good life. We can all relate to it as we know that most of the successful people tell us that it is through their hardship that they became who they are and that without that they would have never be nor accomplish a fraction of what they have. 

c) God's method works?

Finally, God's methods have more far reaching impact than the immediate feel good experience that we all crave but that have no redemptive value to our souls and future. Here is how God put it Himself about their walk in the desert instead of being pouff up like Harry Potter in Canaan. 

"And keep in mind the way by which the Lord your God has taken you through the waste land these forty years, so that He might make low your pride and put you to the test, to see what was in your heart and if you would keep his orders or not. And he made low your pride and let you be without food and gave you manna for your food, a thing new to you, which your fathers never saw; so that he might make it clear to you that bread is not man's only need, but his life is in every word which comes out of the mouth of the Lord. Through all these forty years your clothing did not get old or your feet become tired. Keep in mind this thought, that as a son is trained by his father, so you have been trained by the Lord your God. " - Deuteronomy 8:2-5

God is not in the magical business. He does miracles not magic tricks. God is interested in training us and only through diverse forms of experiences can He draw the best out of us and teach us meaningful lessons about life and His intended destiny for us. This logic is the same as the one used for humbling the hardened heart of Pharaoh through a series of miracles, and His prodigious miracles in Egypt is still spoken about up-to this day as a lesson on God's power and greatness. It also gave certainty to the witnesses that what was wrought wasn't just the results of sheer chance, or mere bad luck that had happened to Pharaoh or any other naturalistic explanation that could have crept in with time in the minds of the Israelite making them to doubt the existence of God's power.

"Has God ever before taken a nation for himself from out of another nation, by punishments and signs and wonders, by war and by a strong hand and a stretched-out arm and great acts of wonder and fear, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes?  All this he let you see, so that you might be certain that the Lord is God and there is no other." - Deuteronomy 4:3-35

 And Israel did also benefit of this divine reputation of what God did in Egypt later on as they were conquering their enemy combatant land. For all wars are waged both physically with material logistic as well as psychologically to weaken the enemy resolve. We have a testimonial of some of the Canaanite tribes who refused to fight against the Israelite and preferred to make an alliance with them so that they could live together. What do you think made that conquering easy? Hear the Canaanite from Hivites explain their reasons in their own words:

"And the men of Israel said to the Hivites, It may be that you are living among us; how then may we make an agreement with you? And they said to Joshua, We are your servants. Then Joshua said to them, Who are you and where do you come from? And they said to him, Your servants have come from a very far country, because of the name of the Lord your God: for the story of his great name, and of all he did in Egypt has come to our ears," - Joshua 9:7-9

We see through this that in the end that whatever God initiated in Egypt was working and made the conquest of the land easier, cost effective and less time consuming. God knows what He does even if at first glance it doesn't makes sense to our collective human brain. Allow me to end this with this quote:

"O how deep is the wealth of the wisdom and knowledge of God! no one is able to make discovery of his decisions, and his ways may not be searched out. Who has knowledge of the mind of the Lord? or who has taken part in his purposes? Or who has first given to him, and it will be given back to him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever. So be it." - Romans11:33-36

or as this other version puts it: 

"Yes, God's riches are very great! His wisdom and knowledge have no end! No one can explain what God decides. No one can understand his ways. As the Scriptures say, "Who can know what is on the Lord's mind? Who is able to give him advice?" "Who has ever given God anything? God owes nothing to anyone." Yes, God made all things. And everything continues through him and for him. To God be the glory forever! Amen."

P.S: I think that the reading of books like this could assist for detail on Holy Wars in the Bible.

The Argument For God's Existence From Creation

This conversation started on a Facebook page where someone got stuck with logic in his effort to write a defense for God's existence. So with a lady acquaintance we exchanged a bit on that long post and this below is what i essentially told her.

...............

Hi A.,

Hope you doing well in this festive season. Well, this is an interesting argumentation but it is poorly done. It sounded more like an excuse for God's existence or a plea of exception for the existence of God than a well argued case for His existence. The mistake the writer made is easily found in his introductory statement: 

"Everything comes from something. Every effect has a cause. This is a law of logic and a fact of science." 

This isn't neither true nor a law of logic. The better formulation of it is found in premise one of the Kalam cosmological argument as presented by Dr. William Lane Craig: "Everything that BEGINS to exist has a cause for its existence". Now this makes more sense - it is true and logical since it is a recurrent observable fact.

Now that we have made this important correction, we can proceed. 

The first thing we need to prove is the claim that everything that we know of in the universe begun to exist. With the Big bang model and the evidence of physics from the cosmic microwave background radiation - it is believed now that the universe begun to exist. Hence if the universe begun to exist, it then needs a cause for its existence.

Step two. What could reasonably be its cause? Logic dictates that whatever the cause of the universe is, it should have properties that transcends those of the universe. For example, if the universe is made of matter, and that the universe begun to exist - then matter also begun to exist. And if matter begun to exist, then whatever the cause of matter and the universe is - it can not be made of matter. It is by necessity non material in nature/property. We call it spiritual because it is non corporeal and cannot be quantified like matter.

Second, Time and Space also came into existence at the Big Bang according to the logic of the model - hence the cause must then also be non-temporal and spaceless in its property/ by nature. We call it Eternal because it is not subject to time and space.

Third, since the universe Cause existed prior to creation in an eternal state as per the argument above and that the effect (creation) did not exist in the eternal state but begun to exist at a given moment 'in history' - it implies that the Cause chose to bring its creation at such a given moment - hence giving the universe Cause the property of choice making. Since the reaction of the effect is not automatic to the existence of the Cause, it means that the Cause is not an automatic entity. If the universe Cause was not imbued with a choice to cause to universe but was automatic, then the the universe would have existed simultaneously with its Cause for all time (infinite).  But the universe begun to exist - hence the universe existence is not a necessary effect of its Cause. The Cause of the universe hence has a personality to make a choice to make or not to make a universe. Hence, the Cause is a conscious entity and not an unconscious entity.

Fourth, by the engineering of the universe (including biological life) and the specific laws that govern it, we can deduce that the Cause of the universe is an intelligent entity.

If we only take these few line of arguments above, we can come up with these attributes for the Cause of the universe: 1) The Cause is eternal (spaceless and timeless), 2) The Cause is spiritual (non-material), 3) The Cause is a conscious being (with obvious capacity of choosing to create at any given moment), 4) The Cause is intelligent (this is also called the teleological argument of God's existence). 

These lines of arguments are far from being called a proof but it can be called evidences and reasons of God's existence.

All these evidences point to what theologians and philosophers refers to as GOD. We are far from proving the existence of the Christian God because these attributes above is shared by believers of other religions - monotheist religions that is.

However, the arguments above can also be equally applicable to the Christian God, but not exclusively applicable to the christian God. If we assume the existence of the christian God then these arguments are also valid. The follow up question would be how do we move from the God of natural theology to the God of Christian theology? 

The easiest books that helped me to understand the transition from natural theology to christian theology are the excellent books of Drs. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek 'I dont Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist" as well as the more technical one by Dr William Lane Craig 'Reasonable Faith - 3rd edition'. C.S Lewis also does have quite an insightful approach in his book "Mere Christianity". These literatures help make a case for the Christian faith from Natural Teology.

Happy New Year in Jesus' name.

P.S: Don't forget to check out my book - Help Me Understand Jesus. Check My Book by clicking here or more here.

Predestination: Human Freedom or Divine Determinism

Since my first encounter with the Brahnamist movement in 1996, i have had endless discussion about predestination with all sorts of persons. I noticed during my discussions on this issue in my earlier days that I had a difficulty to affirm at the same time predestination and human free-will. It seemed to me at that time that the concept of predestination could not be affirmed without at the same time betraying the concept of free-will in the process. However both concept seemed equally obvious from Scriptures and could be defended with almost equal ease. After reading Charles Surgeons' booklet in 1998 entitled:
"Esceque le libre arbitre est-il libre?"* My discomfort about predestination grew. The prince of preachers as he was known didn't convince me that free-will did not exist. Other good and orthodox preachers in the same line as Spurgeons who are recognized within mainstream Christianity unlike Brahnam, also affirmed predestination as a synonym of determinism.

But since i had been tentatively glancing at the literature on God sovereignty and human free-will over the years, i started noticing that 'predestination' should not necessarily entail 'determinism'. Below is a link from Dr. Craig at Reasonablefaith.com on an aspect of this topic and i recommend its total reading for those interested on this topic:

D. A. Carson identifies nine streams of texts affirming human freedom: (1) People face a multitude of divine exhortations and commands, (2) people are said to obey, believe, and choose God, (3) people sin and rebel against God, (4) people's sins are judged by God, (5) people are tested by God, (6) people receive divine rewards, (7) the elect are responsible to respond to God's initiative, (8) prayers are not mere showpieces scripted by God, and (9) God literally pleads with sinners to repent and be saved (Divine Sovereignty and
Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, pp. 18-22). These passages rule out a deterministic understanding of divine providence, which would preclude human freedom.

Hope you'll find the link above informative as you keep thinking about this issue.

Have a nice day in Jesus name.
Check My Book here.

* "Is the Free-will free?" by C. Spurgeons

How To Succeed With New Year Resolutions - 2012

Hello all and welcome into the new year 2012. This post is just to call your attention about how you lived last year and how you are preparing to face up the future in this new year. Allow me to start my introduction with this comment:

"Have you ever made a New year's resolution and given up a few weeks or maybe a few hours into the new year? You are not alone. Researchers have discovered that 25 percent of New Year's resolutions are abandoned within the first week; 60 percent are gone within six months. Of those who fail, the majority will make the same resolution year after year for as long as ten years before they either give up or finally succeed in making a change that lasts for a least six months." (Christian Counseling, page 5. Gary R. Collins, Ph.D.; 2007)

Not very encouraging, heun?! You are right unless you do some things about it. Some things differently. Brian Tracy in his book, 'The million dollars habits', reveals that close to 4% of all those who make new year resolution without writing them up succeeds and more than 60% of those writing their new year resolutions do achieve them. What does it mean to us? It means that most of our new year resolution are often presented not as resolution but as simple wishes. Any serious resolutions are like agreements and agreement are not just verbally or imaginatively taken but they are lay down - written down. The difference between the new year resolutions agreement to other businesses or professional agreements, is that the new year resolutions are often/mostly agreement with ourselves.

Isn't it strange that when we make an agreement with ourselves we do them lightly? we do not take it seriously to the point of 'scriptwriting' it. Especially when we consider that we will live with the choices we will make and take! The year 2011 is gone and what we were not able to accomplish is also gone with it. But thank be to God we do have this new year 2012. Please, make the best of it starting by writing down and planning how to reach your expectations.

Here are some stuffs you may want to consider doing this year among many:

1. There is so many languages around you, why not plan to try and learn one new one this year.
2. There is so many knowledge preserved in books, why not start reading books on subjects that you have recently developed interest.
3. Why not starting reading one new book per month or old interesting books that you can't remember details in order to further your knowledge or your expertise?
4. Consider learning one new sport or starting going to the gym this year.
5. What about learning a new dance style or enhancing the level of the one you already know?
6. What about learning a new musical instrument?
7. Or starting reading your whole Bible within a year?

All these are good resolutions but unless it is written down with an action plan, they will just stay mere wishes or mood whims. I can only hope that you will use your intellect and your faith in God to make those dreams and wishes come into realization during this year 2011.

Remember that a year has 52 weeks. Make them count. Do not delay to take a prompt and proactive actions.

Best of luck for the year 2012 in Jesus' name.
P.S: An excerpt of my book can now be read online. Click here.

'No-True-Scotsman' Argument?

I read this at Vox Day's book: "The Irrational Atheist" page 127-129.

You might find it interesting!

God bless you and have a productive week in Jesus' name.
..................

When the deception is not so obvious, one way of detecting if someone is arguing in good faith or not is to see if his argument has been constructed as a tautology, or in other words, presented in the form "heads I win, tails you lose." Since a tautology cannot, by definition, be contradicted because it is universally true, presenting a tautology as if it were a legitimate matter for debate is inherently dishonest. One form of argument by tautology is known informally as the "No True Scotsman" argument, courtesy of a British philosopher named Antony Flew. It goes like this:

Assertion: No Scotsman drinks Jack Daniels.
Response: But my uncle Angus is from Glasgow and he drinks Jack Daniels.
Rebuttal: Then your uncle Angus is no true Scotsman!

Because the historical record of atheism is so bloody, so recent, and so well-known, Harris is forced to construct a No True Atheist argument in a preemptive attempt to ward off the inevitable response to his assertion that religious faith causes murder and genocide.

Harris: Atheists don't kill people because they have no good reason to do so.
Response: Stalin and Mao were atheists and they killed millions of people.
Harris: Then Stalin and Mao were No True Atheists.

Of course, Harris doesn't come right out and present this argument directly, because even a militant atheist would laugh in his face. Instead, he uses several deceptive techniques to try to disguise the fact that he is defending his thesis with a No True Scotsman argument.
...
The actual No True Scotsman example is as follows: 

"Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Press and Journal and seeing an article about how the `Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again.' Hamish is shocked and declares that `No Scotsman would do such a thing.' The next day he sits down to read his Press and Journal again and this time finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, `No true Scotsman would do such a thing.'" Flew, Antony, Thinking About Thinking—or do I sincerely want to be right? London: Collins Fontana, 1975.

Ispiring Christian Scientist Scholars

Three provocative and well-credentialed Christian Scientists favorites:

Dr. Vern Poythress -

"He earned a B.S. in Mathematics from California Institute of Technology (1966), where he was a Putnam fellow in 1964, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University (1970). He studied linguistics and Bible translation at the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of Oklahoma in 1971 and 1972, and he enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary, earning an M.Div. (1974) and a Th.M. in apologetics (1974). He then received an M.Litt. in New Testament from University of Cambridge (1977) and a Th.D. in New Testament from the University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa (1981)."

http://www.frame-poythress.org/poythress_articles_topic.htm


Dr. John Lennox -

"John Lennox is Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science, and Pastoral Advisor at Green Templeton College, Oxford. He is also an adjunct Lecturer at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University and at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and is a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum. In addition, he teaches for the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at the Executive Education Centre, Said Business School, Oxford University.

He studied at the Royal School Armagh, Northern Ireland and was Exhibitioner and Senior Scholar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University from which he took his MA and PhD. He worked for many years in the Mathematics Institute at the University of Wales in Cardiff which awarded him a DSc for his research. He also holds a DPhil from Oxford University and an MA in Bioethics from the University of Surrey. He was a Senior Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow at the Universities of Wuerzburg and Freiburg in Germany. In addition to over seventy published mathematical papers he is the co-author of two research level texts in algebra in the Oxford Mathematical Monographs series. "

http://johnlennox.org/



 
Dr. Ard Louis -

"Ard A. Louis is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and a Reader in Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford, where he leads an interdisciplinary research group studying problems on the border between chemistry, physics and biology. He is also International Secretary for Christians in Science and an associate of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, and served on the European advisory board of the John Templeton Foundation. He occasionally writes for BioLogos.

Prior to his post at Oxford he taught Theoretical Chemistry at Cambridge University where he was also director of studies in Natural Sciences at Hughes Hall.

He was born in the Netherlands, was raised in Gabon and received his first degree from the University of Utrecht and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University."

http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/people/ArdLouis/

All three are very insightful and approachable folks, so they say!