Why would it seem like that? Dawkins' reasoning could be exactly the same as my own and I'm not making that claim. It is not accepting false assumptions which is immoral, it is defending great evil which is immoral. If you accept some false belief that causes you to defend a great evil, then you are acting immorally, not by accepting those false beliefs but by defending evil.

Once again, I'm not assuming (5), so that is not the issue. Rather, I'm claiming that the genocides as described in the Bible were immoral. If Craig accepts (1)-(4), then on pains of inconsistency he is forced to reject that claim. However, since the genocides described in the Bible actually are deeply immoral (if they happened as described), and since it is morally wrong to not condemn but rather defend such evils, then Craig is doing something that is morally wrong. If you want to understand why he is doing it, you can point to the fact that he accepts some religious claims that, taken together, imply that what is immoral (defending great evil) is actually moral. But that doesn't excuse his actions, it only explains it.

I agree that defending something which you know to be immoral is itself immoral. But if Craig is operating under assumptions 1-4 then he does not know that which he is defending is immoral because under those assumptions the genocide is good.

What exactly is immoral about defending something which you believe is good?

This is why I said we should not use the term genocide as it seems to be confusing the situation. Your definition of genocide would not included the killings of the Canaanites.

What if it was that you lived in the time of Hitler (in the midst of his slaughtering millions). Let's also say that you had spent the last 20 years having a relationship with God in which God spoke directly to you and had proven that he is the creator of all reality on many many occasions and has shown you that you can trust him.

Now imagine that God said that you were an integral part of his plan for the world and that in order to save billions of people you must kill Hitler. Would you feel justified in killing Hitler? Would you refuse?

It's hard to discuss stu pidasso's argument without using the terms in it's premises.

I doubt that Stu would agree with your definition.

I would have to think about it for a while, but ultimately I think the right thing to do would be to say, "Get behind me Satan!" and refuse to kill baby Hitler.

Now, if instead of killing a single person the being I had thought was God told me to instead murder thousands or even millions of people I wouldn't even have to think about it--I would immediately refuse.

Now, in your actual scenario of attempting to assassinate Hitler once he has come to power and has already started his reign of terror, the considerations are relevantly different. There it is very easy to see how killing Hitler would lead to positive outcomes. It doesn't rely on any kind of magical knowledge at all. I don't need God to tell me to do this, I think it can probably be shown to be the correct thing to do on independent grounds.

I think you are hiding from yourself a real sense of what this whole situation would be like. Imagine that you are an Israelite military leader and your political/spiritual leader told you that God told him that you should go murder a bunch of women and children. What should you do? Obviously you should refuse. It is too easily the case that your leader is mistaken or lying for you to agree to do such horrific actions. Let's say you didn't refuse. Would God then punish you for not murdering these women and children?

Now, let's suppose that you are the political/spiritual leader and God tells you to murder these women and children. Let's say you refuse. Would God then punish you for not murdering these women and children? Seriously? (Note that Saul actually was punished for being insufficiently enthusiastic in his murder and destruction of the Amalekites.)

I do not see how a god that would do that is a good god. Sorry.

Sure. He explicitly rejected it. He thinks it's plausible that genocide isn't evil. Scary, if you ask me.

What if it was that you lived in the time of great political and economic change. Let's also say that you had spent the last 20 years deluding yourself into believing that you have a relationship with God in which God speaks directly to you and had convinced yourself that he is the creator of all reality on many many occasions and has shown you that you can trust him.

Now imagine that God said that you were an integral part of his plan for the world and that in order to save billions of people you must kill a specified group of men, women and children. Would you feel justified in killing them? Would you refuse?

I just told you. Do you need me to repeat it? Let's say that you think that slavery makes black people happy and content and so you think that slavery is a good thing. Is your defense of slavery then okay? No, because slavery is still evil.

Let's say that you believe that the Jews are a race of evil beings that should be destroyed. Thus, you think killing them is a good thing. Does that mean that your defense of the Holocaust is okay? No. The Holocaust is still immoral.

The point here is that with regards to great evils I think you have some minimal responsibilities to have true beliefs. Your defense of great evils is possibly excusable if there are good reasons you cannot fulfill your responsibility here (if you are for some reason outside of your control cognitively deficient, if there are facts that you could not reasonably be expected to know, etc). However, so far as I can tell, none of these considerations apply to Craig. He is smart and knowledgeable. The moral principles that would show that genocide in the situations described is immoral are widely available. And so on. Thus, he has no excuse for not fulfilling his minimal moral responsibility to not defend genocide.

Incidentally, these considerations also apply to the question AIF asked earlier. If you think that the Israelites didn't have reasonable alternatives to thinking that God had commanded them to commit genocide (thus making genocide moral in that case), then it might not have been blameworthy for them to have done so (although it would still have been wrong for God to command them to do so). However, I don't think this is the case. Remember, the ancient Israelites did not necessarily assume (as we do) that God always commands us to do what is moral.

This is an interesting comment. Another reason to reject premise 4.

1 Samuel 15:2,3
Thus says the Lord of hosts, “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. 3Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”

It sounds to me like you are taking on the position of being the ultimate judge of what is moral and what is immoral. What makes you a better judge then Craig?

God hates Amalekites.

If he commands you to kill them all, you are doing good. He has chosen you.

They are dirty, rotten, subhuman scoundrels.

You must obey Him.

It is written in the Scriptures.

I'm running to work so cannot supply a link, but if anyone cares to, Craig has updated his perspective on this passage within the last few months on reasonablefaith.org, his website. It's in the question and answer section.

I think it is nonsense to put genocide on some special level of evil. As Vee or whatever his name pointed out the evil in it lies in the killing of innocents without just cause. The fact that the innocents happen to belong to the same ethnic group is superfluous.

That is amazing.

He thinks murdering people based on their culture, race or ethnicity is wrong.

Membership in some ethnic group is not a "just cause" for killing someone. So even if you are right that killing innocents without just cause is the "real" evil and not genocide in and of itself, genocide is just one small baby step away from this since dare I say that neither of us can think of a realistic scenario where killing people based on membership in an ethnic or other such group could be a just cause for mass killing them.

It's not a special level, you're making things far too complicated.

My position is that murdering people based on ethnicity, religion, culture, religion, etcetera is wrong.

Call me crazy if you like, just don't live in my neighborhood, please.

And this is a compelling retort?

How many people did Hitler kill? 6 million? Not all were jews but most were. Why is it that most of those 6 million were jews somehow makes the act more evil?

If he killed 6 million people and that is evil because those people were innocent. What does it matter that they were mostly jews?

It was not wise of you to use the word "superfluous" in conjunction with the slaughter of mass numbers of the same ethnic group.

You need to read more closely. Nothing in my argument depends on whether or not I believe that the genocide in the Old Testament as described was immoral. My claim is that this genocide WAS immoral, regardless of my own views on the matter. Thus, if my claim is correct, then even if I later change my mind it would still be immoral. Furthermore, if I had never been born it would still be immoral. It is true that I disagree with Craig about the morality of the situation, but that doesn't mean that I think that my own views on the issue determine the morality of the situation.

Or, if you all you mean here is why do I think I'm right and Craig is wrong--then I'll refer you to the arguments I've already given. That is why I think I am right.

You're missing the point.

He killed for a reason. Being genocide (a targeted killing of a race, culture, ethnicity, religion, etcetera...) - we know that his reason was insufficient.

There is no race of home invaders after my wife, no culture of psychopaths, nothing exists which justifies genocide.

I don't know whats scarier - an inability to understand that genocide is evil or a reluctance to concede it.

But calling them dispicable because the hold particular religious beliefs you don't accept is okay right?