Quote:
Originally Posted by Jibninjas
The point of the OP was that when you know for a fact that someone is going to a terrible person and do terrible things, people do no feel bad killing that person. But since you know nothing about the people in the bible, which there is information out there on how horrendous they were, you assume that God was in the wrong by killing them.
Your default setting is that God is a jerk.
Nah. We judge God relatively objectively. If someone commits genocide, then it's rational to class them as bad, or at least not perfectly good. That's not a knee-jerk bias thing. Genocide is such an atrocious act that the default position of pretty much everyone is "jerk."
If I tell you someone is a mass murderer, and tell you nothing more about them, you will probably consider them a jerk. You won't generally stop to think, "oh, maybe the guy is actually an extremely good person, just because he's a mass murderer doesn't imply anything." If, in a hypothetical unrelated to God, I told you that you meet a mass murderer, you would
instantly assume "evil guy." You wouldn't stop and say "I don't know what to make of a mass murderer unless I know what kinds of people he murdered." Maybe you're a fan of Dexter, but no way when you hear about a mass murderer is your first instinct to admire the person. You'll be more likely to view them with disgust.
Because mass murder is that kind of thing. The simple act of committing it is enough to bias all reasonable people against the person in question. Heavily - if someone has committed mass murder, it's going to be
very hard for them to convince you they aren't nasty (much less that they're good and holy).
We aren't the ones using double standards - I apply the same standard to your God that I do to all other gods and all other people. You are the one using a double standard here and assuming a default position other than the one that is reasonable given the circumstances. Having a negative view of mass murder is
not an unreasonable prejudice.