Further, it doesn't matter if God is holy. He's holy until he's not. He's perfect until he's not.
WRONG! Similar to what we've "talked about" above, if God is Holy, then you have to know what Holiness even means, and if you don't, you can't critique it. Holiness is like Fire; you either become like fire, OR ... not. And you know what happens if we don't. We get burned instead of warmed and comforted.
It's just like Adam and Eve. They were perfect until they weren't. Right?
Uh.....no? WRONG! Adam and Eve were never 'perfect' in any kind of way that would even begin to equate to God's own perfect nature. No, they started as 'innocent' yet limited human beings (according to the Eden Account). They weren't "perfect" as God was perfect, so let's not equivocate our terms here, just like we wouldn't if we were talking about the term 'theory' in the context of science. Where in the world have you gotten your theology and your method of interpretation, pray tell?
If God is holy then he didn't order or allow mass murder and rape. Perhaps this portion of scripture is misinterpreted, or not divinely inspired, or altered somewhere in history. But no, you just go ahead and defend atrocities.
Again, you obviously don't understand the biblical meaning of Holiness, nor do you understand the directives God gives His people about "being Holy because He is Holy"!
A failure to "be Holy" comes with a price-tag and possible repercussions: THERE'S THE RATIONALE!
Obviously, this rationale of God's not only doesn't comport with today's supposed moral sensibilities, but despite the Anti-Christian RE-rationalization against God's Rationale, we find the core of the matter isn't that we think it's wrong.......but rather that we just .... don't ... like it.
The upshot and the moral of the tale is this: If the Medianites had wanted to enjoy peace and blessing along with the Israelites, then they should have welcomed them with open arms instead of doing all of the scheming and other dastardly trickery that they did to infect and spiritually affect the people of Israel.
No rape and no murder? So... it was checkers and horse shoes after all? They "took the virgins for themselves" to play parlor games. Confirmed. No rape occurred. Good to know!
Where in America is this kind of so-called 'rape', or what we would currently call 'rape,' happening, by which we would attempt to 'measure' anachronisitically what transpires in Numbers 31? I don't know of any stories in U.S. literature where we Americans have been told by God to clean out another country, or then be told by our leaders to leave the virgins alive and to take them home as our wives. (And if they are to be wives, then biblically speaking, that is to make them become 'Israelites,' even against their will. And if they are Israelite women, well then..................that's a different story altogether.)
No, when we concern ourselves about rape victims
today, as is often depicted in Crime Scene type t.v. shows, heard about on the 10 o'clock news, or studied in the context of Criminal Law, we're usually hearing about some estranged lunatic who picks women off at the park and does terrible things to them-----it's never usually a case where we see a Perp take a women off the streets.......................and then "makes her his wife for life" with all of the care and love that a husband is responsible to muster and express. So, GET REAL! Stop all of your equivocating.
Shame on you. You know by now that I'm a logical nihilist. I've explained this to you before in great detail. Also, nice personal attack. What are you trying to do here... point out that a nihilist is more ethical than you? Mission accomplished.
I'm confident that both I and just about any Nihilist, including yourself, are
equally sinners in the eyes of God; I'm also confident that as a Christian, I'm more conscientiously ETHICAL than you, even as we may squabble about the particulars, and even as we each try day by day to positively put into action for "goodness sake" the moral deliberations that run through our heads as they filter through our Ethical frameworks.
Of course, you'll probably think this implies that I'm thinking I'm 'better' than you.
No, it doesn't. My being 'more' Ethically conscientious doesn't mean I don't have moments of hypocrisy. Like everyone else, I'm sure I do, but as a Christian, I don't excuse those moments. Neither do I run roughshod over
EITHER my being mindful of as many of the reasons and causative social factors which may have gone into my producing my hypocrisies
OR in my then having a fuller awareness of the extent to which I am responsible to identify, come to terms with and correct and rectify my moral failures.
With that said, please put away your imputations about personal attacks being supposedly made on my part upon you. You do enough of that on me by poisoning the wells with your silly inferences. And if you've noticed, that is, if you've taken the time to notice, I drop a lot of comments around here where I imply
that atheists are not always at fault for either their lack of belief or for all of the short sighted moral structures they mistakenly create in their heads. But, you don't seem to want to offer than kind of "benefit of the doubt" for Christians, not even for Christians like me. No, you just keep pushing, and when you think you have leverage, you push harder. Well, I've had enough of that! The buck stops here.
And how is it that you call me a moral relativist when you're the one saying that certain actions are acceptable depending upon who commits them? Divine command theory takes moral relativism sky high.
I'm not calling you a moral relativist, but since this thread is intertwined with dialogue with
@cvanwey, then I'm calling YOU a moral Nihilist and I'm inferring that he is a Moral Relativist (by his own admission). And by the way, I'm not a Divine Command Theorist, or at least not of the kind you're used to hearing about, so get that straight!
What a terribly disappointing conversation. But that's nothing new.
Well, all that has to happen for this to be a better conversation is for you to become better educated about various fields (like that of Hermeneutics) which are definitively germane to our being able to humanly understand what we can of the Bible ................... and I would think that for a guy like you who clearly has the cognitive chops to expand your educational horizons, that wouldn't be difficult to do. But somehow, despite your high intelligence, you can't seem to open yourself up to learning. Why is that? The only thing I can surmise is that something has happened to you that militates against your willingness to learn further and get beyond just relying on the likes of, say, Richard Carrier or Richard Dawkins. Of course, I'm guessing that "something" has remained unshared with the rest of us ... not that you should share it, but as
@cvanwey might say, "I'm just saying!"