Happy Birthday!

Sis. Sorry I cldnt give u a present this year =P you'll have to wait 3 months for it.

We can and must apply contemporary standards to analyse the past.

A comment in the previous post made the point that: "you can't like use our current standards to justify what happened thousands of years ago." On the contrary, we can and must use the standards of today to analyse the past. This is the only way we can learn from history and apply its lessons. How much use would history be if all that is said about it is:" Oh, thats how people do things in the past and so it is ok." For example, Hitler's anti-semitism was not unique in the early 20th century. In fact anti-semitism was widespread throughout most of the western world. Can we justify his anti-semitism based on the fact that it was just how things were done in the past? Clearly not.
Note, further, that I am treating the Bible as an accurate historical source in this discussion, which, considering some parts of the Bible, may be more than what it deserves. The part about Midianites leading the people of Israel astray holds about as much water as some Muslim fundamentalists justifying attacks on the rest of the world 'because they are leading us astray'. The adage: 'The victors write the history' also comes to mind.
The part about God having no obligation towards the Midianites clearly shows the fallacy that I denounced during the previous post, that of using the divine to justify whatever evil is done. Recall also that we only see this battle from one side, that of the victorious israelites. The Lord's Prayer itself goes: Lord, lead us not into temptation. Not Lord, help us kill all those who tempt us. And their families. And their livestock. And raze their land to the ground.
"And anyway, it doesn't mean that God is cruel and unjust now just because he unleashed his wrath onto whole nations in the old testament since the way God and Man is related now, is not the same as in OT times with the arrival of Jesus."
Yes, it does not mean so. But it does mean that he was cruel and unjust then. If the way God and Man are related have changed, presumably for the better since the arrival of Jesus, would that not mean that it was worse in the past? If that was so, then God clearly made a correction to our divine relationship, which means that there was a mistake in the relationship. Now, some will jump in now and say that the mistake was that man chose fruit from the tree of wisdom etc, thus putting all the blame onto man.(This is another argument for another time). But if so, then God took quite a long time and let a lot of people die needlessly before he decided that we have suffered enough and correct it. Is this really a God that you want to believe in? Recall Deuteronomy 24:16 which states: "Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin."

Anonymous posters don't have the guts to stand up for what they are saying...

but ill reply to them anyway. Because not many comments deserve to be ignored outright.

Firstly, given that Richard Dawkins doesn't try to justify genocide* while Lee Strobel does, yes, I do give more weight to his arguments.

Secondly, Isiah 55 v8-9 says: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than youre ways and my thoughts from your thoughts. (NIV)

I take the anonymous poster quoting this to mean that I should realise that the Lord works in mysterious ways and, to put things bluntly, accept things as they are, sweep them under the carpet and carry on.
I cannot do so, for is not the whole point of religion to try to understand what divine being(s) exist are thinking and thus do (and believe) things pleasing in their sight in return for whatever graces they allow us? Then, also, there are clearly some thoughts of the Lord which we can understand (or strive to) which leads to whatever religion document and guidelines that we live by.
Thus, even if the quote is the absolute truth, it does not mean that we should stop questioning the world around us. Upon this continuous questioning is our modern society built. I might mention that the Church has been, is and will for the foreseeable future be supressing this continuous questioning in various areas. Whether this supression of knowledge is beneficial is up for debate.

The reason why I am personally biased against some of what Lee Strobel says is because I have had good friends who actually do believe what he says. The problem is not with the inordinate killing extending to lifestock, I mean, it is a wasteful tactic with land that you would wish to occupy as the ancient israelis did, but one that might pay off in the long term in reputation, thus justifying the cost, and such occurances might have been run of the mill in those days; the problem is that these people used a divine being to justify their actions--- and people nowadays think that their justification was valid! Now, divine justification for actions is pretty common even nowadays, but when your average person, group or nation decides to annihilate the opposition just because they claim to have divine inspiration, you'd at least like to see them justify themselves in a court of law right?

I have heard of a study conducted in western countries where two groups of children(neither with racial or cultural ties to the factions in the 2 versions of the story, where one version simplifies to: " The israelites were justified in the invasion and killing of the midianites." In this version, the children agreed with the story and immediately came up with justifications like: The Lord told them to do so. When Israelites and midianites were replaced with present day countries, the children disagreed with the story and immediately questioned the intentions of the agressor. The moral of the story is that religions are powerful weapons that can be used to remove reasoning from the equation of determining right and wrong. This, I believe, is a dangerous abuse of religion which should be stopped.

Matthew 7:3 goes: Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

How can anybody condemn some religious fanatics for their assaults when they themselves believe in a flawed ideology?


*Genocide is the mass killing of a group of people as defined by Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide(CPPCG) as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
Given that the Israelites and the Midianites were both considered peoples as narrated in the bible, I believe the massacre of the Midianites can be considered genocide.