Richard Swinburne defends genocide

Swinburne on Genocide is a fascinating article about how Oxford Professors of Religion have no problems with whole tribes of men, women and children being killed.

'God does not wrong the Canaanites . . . if he makes the gift of life shorter for some of them than for some other humans. If there is a God, he has made it abundantly clear that the 'gift' of life is a temporary one which he makes as long or short as he chooses. To use an analogy, I may lend you a book, saying, 'you can have this until I want it back'. I don't wrong you if I let other people use a book for a longer period than I let you use a book.'

Remember, when a child dies of malaria, it is just Swinburne's god taking his gift back.

When a tsunami wipes out 15,000 Japanese people who had done their utmost to prepare against Acts of God, it is no more than Swinburne's god taking his gift of life back.

Remember also that if Richard Swinburne gives you a present for Christmas, he will take it back from you on Boxing Day.

In the Christian world view, give to the poor, because it is only a gift, and you can always take it back.

The census 2011 - how many people should the Christian god kill?

At the upcoming Unbelievable conference on apologetics, David Instone-Brewer will be speaking.



Here is what David Instone-Brewer has to say about taking a census, and how his god equips his angels with swords.



What does an angel need with a sword, anyway? Can't the Christian god invent laser beams, or any technology that people of 2000 years did not know about? What a puny god - limited to bronze age technology by the people who invented him.



Christian Warfare

I quote from what a grown adult in the 21st century actually believes....


“Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel”
- David wanted to know how big his kingdom was, but this was evil pride
- he insisted, and God punished him by sending a plague killing 70,000 men
- David sees this as an angel with drawn sword, and fell down in repentance
- he asked God to kill himself and his family rather than any more Israelites
- the place where the angel stopped became the place for David’s Tabernacle

Of course, Mr. Instone-Brewer clean forgets to tell his readers that his imaginary god ordered this census to be taken.....



2 Samuel 24 'Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.”

John Polkinghorne on Japanese tsunamis

John Polkinghorne explains why Japanese people have to die.

'O.k. you might say, wouldn’t it have been better for God to have created a world with a solid crust, in which there were no tectonic plates. The answer is no it wouldn’t, because not only do tectonic plates slip, but also in the space between the plates mineral resources well up from the interior of the earth and replenish the surface resources of the earth, and that is absolutely essential in the ongoing history of life. If that wasn’t able to happen, life would very soon, in evolutionary terms, die out on the surface of the earth.'

Tsunami

The Bible, ever divorced from reality, claims this about the god of the Christians.



Psalm 89



Who is like you, LORD God Almighty?
You, LORD, are mighty, and your faithfulness surrounds you.
You rule over the surging sea;
when its waves mount up, you still them.



I think the writer of that Psalm needed to calibrate his reality-o-meter.



When the surging seas mounts up, no god stills the waves.