Last week, I challenged Mormons to defend the genocide their god committed in 3 Nephi 8 and 9. Coincidentally, someone also recently challenged Christian apologist extraordinaire Dr. William Lane Craig to defend the genocide his god condoned in Deuteronomy 20, where Yahweh orders the Israelites to kill every man, woman, and child in the neighboring territories. Craig’s response echoes many of the sentiments that were expressed by Mormons at this blog.
Craig first defends the genocide with an appeal to divine command theory. Nixon infamously said that, “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Well, Craig would have us similarly believe that when god perpetrates genocide, that means that it is not immoral.
According to the version of divine command ethics which I’ve defended, our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a holy and loving God. Since God doesn’t issue commands to Himself, He has no moral duties to fulfill. He is certainly not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are. For example, I have no right to take an innocent life. For me to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition. He can give and take life as He chooses.
Regarding the slaughter of Canaanite children, Craig thinks it’s really a blessing in disguise.
Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.
A couple of Mormons made an identical point in defense of 3 Nephi.
It is Craig’s concluding argument that I find most appalling:
So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.
Whoa. So not only does Craig blame the victims, he even sympathizes with their killers.
In our discussion about 3 Nephi, I compared the faith of those who defended their god’s genocide(s) to the faith of Islamic jihadists. Because if you can believe in a god who sanctions genocide, you can surely believe in a god who sanctions suicide bombing. On this point, Craig and I actually agree.
The problem with Islam … is not that it has got the wrong moral theory; it’s that it has got the wrong God.
And in yet another uncanny parallel to our previous discussion, Bible scholar Dr. Robert Price responds to Craig by arguing that he needn’t defend the god of Deuteronomy, because Deuteronomy is not history and the genocides it records never happened.
We don’t need to discredit religion. The religious do it themselves all too well.
For the sake of avoiding any hasty generalizations, let’s be clear: not all Christians, much less religious people in general, hold a divine command theory. In fact, I think voluntarism or divine command theories are not only false but dangerous.
This issue is the topic of the famous / infamous Regensburg Address from Pope Benedict. You might recall the talk – it caused some outcry because of alleged insensitivity to Islam. Actually, if you read the address he is taking to task voluntarism wherever it is found, both in the western tradition as well as the Islamic. The talk is a profound defense of reason and a critique of those who would banish reason from religion and theological inquiry. It is a call for religion to be Hellenized (or, in the case of the West, re-Hellenized). It is worth reading, if nothing else it was a cultural/political event of some significance:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/b16bavaria11.htm
The controversial comment had to do with a remark about violently coerced conversion in Islam. But the real question he is asking is the relationship between will and reasonability in the Divine. A true voluntarism (which I am somewhat surprised to see Craig espouse) would say that God could will anything and it would be good.
Here is a relevant passage from Pope Benedict’s talk:
“Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.
At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?”
This really gets right to so many issues that we deal with on this blog. What is the relationship between faith and reason, philosophy and theology, and (more narrowly) religion and science? Obviously Benedict (and I) come down on the side that this conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature is not merely a Greek idea, but is one always already embedded in the Judeo-Christian revelation of God. As Benedict says,”I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God.”
Benedict remarks that “the encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance.” Both traditions concern LOGOS. God acts with LOGOS, reason and word. Logos, rather than will, takes center stage for both the Greek and the Christian tradition (at least on his interpretation, and this comes out of a long tradition in Catholic thought with Aquinas as probably the leading intellectualist in that tradition).
To nutshell this: broadly speaking there are two competing traditions here. A voluntaristic (divine command) tradition and an intellectualistic tradition. The former thinks of God as some form of pure will or at least is a tendency to over-emphasize God’s will over God’s reason. The latter encounters God as Logos and gives privilege to God’s reason.
The dangers of voluntarism should be obvious enough. Any hair brained lunatic who thinks God told him to do X thinks there is no restriction on him from doing X. Reason is marginalized as a mode of disclosure, and ceases to be a mediating balance on the hermeneutics of revelation. I am convinced that most Mormons have a voluntaristic view of God. Their God is mutable and can and has changed his will about things (polygamy comes to mind). Thankfully, you don’t see Mormons blowing up pizzerias, as you see voluntaristic Muslims doing in Tel Aviv. There are potent strains of pseudo-voluntarism (or at least anti-intellectualist strains) in some postmodern theology (I have in mind Derrida), though an increasing appreciation there of the “impossibility” of the situation when you think of it in this way.
The Catholic tradition has come down pretty heavily on the side of intellectualism. There are some exceptions, of course. Scotus is sometimes associated with voluntarism, but friends of mine that know more about Scotus than I say that is a bit wrong-headed. William of Ockham is often associated with the view (and I deeply dislike Ockham’s nominalist philosophy and I actually think he can be blamed for a fair amount of the wrong-headedness of modernity). Anyway, moral realist Christians (like me, like Aquinas) would not make the defense that Craig makes.
That said, I readily confess that we’ll have other things to explain. For anyone that has read Kierkegaard, the first thing you think of is the Abraham – Isaac affair. Don’t expect me to take the time here to explain all of that, but I thought I’d be honest that my position avoids a heinous problem but then invites other interpretive issues (issues which I obviously think can be handled).
I appreciate that not every Christian agrees with Craig. But it is my impression that the majority of believers (be they Christian or Mormon) that I’ve encountered are divine command theorists and not moral realists. At least they give lip service to divine command theory. Maybe when the rubber meets the road, they’re not so sure. I mean, I can’t imagine many Christians would sacrifice their child even if they believed they were commanded by god to do so.
I don’t know if most Christians are divine command theorists or not. They should not be. I am often told on this blog that I run with a different Christian crowd than most, but none of my Christian friends (Catholic or otherwise) are voluntarists. Dr. Sherlock really beats up on divine command theory in his ethics class, so there is at least one Mormon who is not.
The elitist in me says: Sure, most American Christians are, like Americans in general, anti-intellectual and probably go through life not thinking about much and so live with intellectually sloppy, undeveloped and immature ideas about all kinds of things. For the Christian, this might mean a pre-school “God said so” kind of mentality. Of course most atheists that I meet are thoughtless “relativists” whose ideas about ethics and philosophical anthropology don’t stand up to the least bit of scrutiny and whose passion for atheism is only matched by their ignorance about philosophical theology. What does that prove? Not much. It shows that lots of people of all different stripes are unreflective and hold knee jerk positions that don’t stand up against scrutiny. There are some atheists who are exceptions to that rule and there are Christians who are exceptions to that rule. What I am interested in is truth, not some count of how many people on each side are dumbasses.
I have to think, given Craig’s pretty formidable record as a philosopher, Christian intellectual and debater, that his view here is more nuanced than it seems from your selections. But I really don’t know his work in this area at all.
You can read Craig’s entire article on the Canaanite genocide here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5767
I don’t think I was unfair to Craig in my selections.
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Numbers 31 also has a Commanded Genocide, yet they screw up and keep the women and children alive. What happens next you ask “17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
So keep the young girls to rape for yourself, kill everything else. It gets better though; According to http://scriptures.byu.edu/ only ONE prophet, seer, or revelator has commented on these verses and that was Orson Pratt and he used this God ordained murder and rape AS JUSTIFICATION FOR POLYGAMY! (excuse the loud, excited voice).
I know this may sound callous, but not a day goes by that I feel outraged over the Caananite genocide. Just sayin’.
Is that because it’s ancient history (well…if it’s history at all), or is that because you feel it was justified?
the worst thing is that Craig’s sick, mad rationalizations about the genocides in the OT is that all of it follows perfeclty naturally if you believe in divine command theory and biblical innerancy (as Craig does)
So what if the Israelites killed every man, woman and child? Since there is no God and this only was done for their own self-interest to establish themselves, and subsequencially flourish in the land, who cares whether or not they killed every living thing. Are we to be upset because they went against the herd morality? *gasp Are we upset because they did not turn to diplomatic discussions first?
Since there is no God, what makes this immoral? Who decides that it is immoral? Who decided that the Israelites actually killed every man, woman, and child? Could it possibly be folklore that developed in such a way to portray the mighty superiority of their race and culture over and against their neighbors? A story handed down over generations that eventually became “divine”?
You’re so right. Since there is no God to enforce morality, it’s perfectly okay for us to kill whoever we want to. There’s no harm in that, right? If someone sneaks up behind you and stabs a knife into your back, oh well. One might even argue that you deserved it for not being attentive enough to fight against your own murder. If you were aware of the attack, and died in a struggle, even better: You were clearly not the fittest physical specimen. One can only hope that you didn’t have any children who will carry on the legacy of your weak genes, which are not as worthy of being passed on as those of your killer.
Clearly, without a divine being in the picture, humans should not waste their time trying to establish ordered societies with just legal systems.
I’m going to guess that you’re probably not really an atheist at all, and this is your warped, uninformed opinion of what atheists think. Whatever you are, sarcastic theist or serious atheist, one thing is certain. You’re an idiot.
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Isn’t it worse if the genocides are not historical?
If it’s not history was it fabricated, like the Genesis myths, to express a theological lesson?
Here, the same lesson as the story of Abraham and Isaac, but much more forcibly delivered since God doesn’t call off the killing at the last minute.
Not that Yahweh isn’t a God of bloody sacrifice and murder, but that it’s totally up to his arbitrary will what you have to do or not do.
One day it’s the golden rule for you and all humanity.
Another day it’s horrific, genocidal slaughter.
As they say in the army, follow the last order first.
Mr. Kleiner: surely you realize voluntarism is and has always been common in Protestant Christianty?
And that makes it all the more common even among Catholics in this age of Christian syncretism.
You write, “Obviously Benedict (and I) come down on the side that this conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature is not merely a Greek idea, but is one always already embedded in the Judeo-Christian revelation of God.”
And just that idea that this is Biblical and not just Greek thought is and has been rejected by voluntarists among the Protestants for centuries.
I have no doubt your reading of the story of Abraham and Isaac differs from the one I suggested, above.
And I’ll bet mine suits much Protestantism, just fine.
AgeofReasonXXi, sick, mad rationalization is to be found among the Catholics, too.
Malebranche held that the proper measure of deserved punishment is not the greatness of the offense but the greatness of the one offended.
Man’s sins, however trivial, offend God, infinitely great.
Hence the infinite measure of appropriate punishment quite nicely covers all the horrors of this world consequent to the Fall and an eternity in Hell for the damned, into the bargain.
Got it?
Craig’s comment about the fate of the children reminds me of the answer of a jihadist when questioned about the possible death of innocents in a suicide bombing. “There is no problem if an innocent is killed, since innocents go direct to paradise”.
This is real religion taken to its logical conclusions.
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