Atheist philosopher Erik Wielenberg is currently the leading exponent of secular moral realism. For the philosophically inclined, here's a takedown of his attack on divine command ethics:
Showing posts with label Matt Flannagan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matt Flannagan. Show all posts
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Wednesday, May 02, 2018
Saturday, October 07, 2017
Tuesday, September 05, 2017
"An everlasting Auschwitz"
I had a brief exchange with Christian apologist and annihilationist Matt Flanagan on Facebook:
BTW, [John] Wenham double-edged sword. For instance, he says:
Unending torment speaks to me of sadism, not justice. It is a doctrine which I do not know how to preach without negating the loveliness and glory of God. From the days of Tertullian it has frequently been the emphasis of fanatics. It is a doctrine which makes the Inquisition look reasonable.
That is, of course, the classic moralistic objection to eternal punishment. In my experience, annihilationists of the Rethinking Hell stripe avoid that argument because it divulges the essentially sentimental motivation for annihilationism, which is bad PR if you're endeavoring to make an intellectually respectable case for annihilationism.
In addition, Wenham was consistent enough to take his position to a logical extreme:
When I analyze my own thoughts, I find that (rightly or wrongly) everlastingness has virtually no place in my concept of eternal life. Everlasting harp playing or hymn singing or even contemplation is not attractive.
So he's prepared to sacrifice eternal heaven to eliminate eternal hell. Both the saints and the damned face eventual oblivion.
"The Case For Conditional Immortality" Facing Hell: The Story of a Nobody, An Autobiography 1913 - 1996 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998), chap. 27.
I originally said:
We need to draw an elementary distinction between informed biblical scholars who happen to espouse annihilationism, and informed biblical scholars who endeavor to make a detailed case for annihilationism. Mere name-dropping is a fallacious argument from authority. So, for instance, Wenham did attempt to make a detailed case for his positions.
Matt counters by saying:
The comment is a few sentences of an article which contains 20 pages of argument which is entirely devoted to exegetical argument…So Steve its rather misleading to take that one paragraph out of context and suggest Wenham based his conclusion on sentimental emotion.
Notice Matt acts as if he's correcting my characterization, when in fact his observation is entirely consistent with my original statement that Wenham makes a detailed case for his position.
To ignore a person’s actual arguments, and dismiss it on alleged motives is the ad hominin circumstiantal argument, and basing this fallacy on the reading a few lines omitted from there context suggests something of a straw man is being attacked.
i) It was never my aim in a Facebook discussion to present a systematic refutation of Wenham's arguments. Facebook is not an efficient medium for that kind of analysis. I have in fact engaged the exegetical arguments for annihilationism on other occasions.
ii) As far as that goes, there's nothing inherently fallacious about ad hominin circumstantial argument. When, say, we're assessing the credibility of an expert witness or putative eyewitness, it is not invalid to take into consideration a vested interest or conflict of interest.
iii) In addition, Wenham is not the only annihilationist who tips his hand in that regard. Take Clark Pinnock's statement that everlasting punishment
...pictures God acting like a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for his enemies whom he does not even allow to die.
Or John Stott's statement that
I want to repudiate with all the vehemence of which I am capable the glibness, what almost appears to be the glee, the Schadenfreunde, with which some Evangelicals speak about hell. It is a horrible sickness of mind or spirit…Well, emotionally, I find the concept intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterising their feelings or cracking under the strain.
Does that disprove annihilationism? No. But I notice that proponents at Rethinking Hell are less candid than Stott, Wenham, and Pinnock.
iv) Moreover, it's entirely consonant with motivated reasoning to make a detailed case for your position. For instance, Dale Tuggy rejects the Trinity and Incarnation because by his lights that's incompatible with the law of identity. He then proceeds to reinterpret all the prooftexts for the deity of Christ.
Or take people who reject or reinterpret Bible passages condemning homosexuality because that offends their moral sensibilities.
Or, to take an issue dear to Matt's heart, consider critics who reject the historicity and/or inerrancy of OT holy war commands and war narratives because that conflicts with their preconception of divine benevolence.
In the previous sentence Wenham shows he is using the word 'everlastingness' in contrast to eternity understood as timelessness, This is confirmed by the very next sentence, omitted from your quote, where he describes eternity as involving 'deliverance from sin and the bliss of being with God in heaven, knowing that the inexorable march of death has been abolished for ever ' So, its simply misleading to suggest that Wenham here is suggesting heaven is finite in duration. You have to snip the quote carefully so the previous sentence and proceeding sentence are omitted to give that impression. What Wenham says is that, as opposed to being an existence that is everlasting in duration. Heaven is a timeless existence in which there is no death.
i) Biological immortality doesn't entail a timeless mode of subsistence. What does that even mean? Biological life necessitates biological *processes*. If the final state involves the resurrection of the body, then that can't be timeless. Processes are inherently temporal.
ii) If by "heaven", Matt means the intermediate state, then there's no death in heaven because the saints are already dead. Death is a prerequisite to enter the intermediate state.
Put another way, the intermediate state is a discarnate state. In that condition, they can't die again because they no longer have a body. Biological death presumes biological life which presumes a physical body.
I don't know if Matt is a physicalist or substance dualist, but his claims make no sense on either position.
iii) Moreover, this fails to address the underlying issue. Annihilationists need to offer a consistent meaning for aionios. A meaning that applies equally to promises of eschatological reward as well as threats of eschatological just desert. The dilemma is how to finesse the asymmetry in the respective fates of the saints and the damned if aionios has a consistent sense.
Sunday, June 18, 2017
LGBT "rights"
Matt Flannagan is a Christian ethicist who draws some useful distinctions in response to militant atheist Keith Parsons:
He makes one mistake about American history, which isn't surprising since he's not American:
The Jim Crow laws didn't allow businesses to discriminate against black customers. Just the opposite: they mandated discrimination.
It's the difference between the legal freedom to discriminate and the legal obligation to discriminate.
It was right to strike down the Jim Crow laws, which violated the 13-14th Amendments.
So that's not analogous to requiring businesses to practice nondiscrimination.
Here's black economist Thomas Sowell in the history:
Sunday, April 02, 2017
Secular moral realism
Erik Wielenberg is a leading secular moral realist. Christian command theorist Matt Flanagan has been conducting a multipart critique of Wielenberg:
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Richard Carrier on the rampage
I'm going to comment on a screed by Richard Carrier:
You have to wonder if Carrier had to much to drink when he wrote it. It's an attack on Matt Flanagan's Divine Command Theory. In commenting on Carrier's post, I'm not going to get into the weeds of DCT. That's Flanagan's specialty, so I will leave that to him. He can more than hold his own against the likes of Carrier. But much of what Carrier says isn't tied to DCT, per se.
Before delving into the details, I'd like to make a general observation. Carrier evidently regards atheism as synonymous with secular humanism. His attack on DCT goes way beyond the negative, minimalistic definition of atheism as "nonbelief in God or gods." Rather, he proceeds as though atheism entails social obligations.
Theology has no salvageable theory of morality. Theists complain atheists have no reason to be moral. But in fact theists have no reason to actually be moral, as in: to elevate compassion, honesty, and reasonableness above all authority, even the authority of their own gods.
There's nothing inherently wrong with the argument from authority if the appeal is to someone who is, in fact, a legitimate authority figure.
Unless they covertly adopt a naturalistic moral theory (and most do), they are not actually moral people. They are minions. Theists are essentially the unquestioning gestapo of whatever monster manufactured the universe. Or rather, whatever monster some men made up and duped them into thinking it made the universe. Which means, they are essentially the gestapo of whatever random ignorant madmen wrote their scriptures and now thumps their pulpits with sufficiently fiery claims of special divine communications at bedtime.
Atheists are not actually moral people. They are minions. Atheists are essentially the unquestioning gestapo of amoral physical determinism, which duped them into thinking their beliefs are rational. Which means, they are essentially the gestapo of whatever mindless, random natural process wired their brains and pushes their buttons.
I’m sorry to say, but that’s the truth. Theism actually has no moral theory.
I’m sorry to say, but that’s the truth. Atheism actually has no moral theory.
This is why.
Hannibal Lecter created the universe? He escaped from a future holodeck simulation and then used a stolen TARDIS to Make the Universe after evaporating God by discovering the Babel Fish? Oh crap. Well, I guess we better get down with murder and elegant cannibalism or else he’ll be angry with us and send us to hell. Because he is now eternal and the supreme being and made the universe. So we can’t deny, his will and character is now the ground of all morality. And, oh yeah. This all totally makes sense.Is that any more sensible than…?
That's an argument from analogy minus the supporting argument. Carrier needs to demonstrate that this is, in fact, parallel to Christianity. All he's done is to stipulate an invidious comparison.
A cosmic Jewish zombie named Jesus who telekinetically fathered himself by a virgin and now resides in outer space, is possessed by the spirit of a supernal ghost that is in some sort of parallel-dimensioning identical with but distinct from himself and an ancient Canaanite storm god, and promises to make you live forever in an alternate dimension if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood, and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that has eternally tainted our mammalian flesh ever since a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. So you better do what he says.
Carrier has strung together a series of caricatures. What does that accomplish? Since it's not an accurate description of Christian theology, how does ridiculing a caricature disprove Christian theology? Let's run through some of these descriptors:
"Cosmic"
No. The Son is not a part of the cosmos. Rather, he essentially exists outside the physical universe.
"Zombie"
No, Jesus is not an ambulatory, cannibalistic corpse with minimal brain function. Rather, he died, then was not only restored to life, but glorified, so that he now has an ageless, youthful, immortal, disease-free body. His mental faculties are fully intact.
"telekinetically, telepathically"
Carrier uses this terminology because he thinks telepathy and telekinesis are ridiculous. Yet these are well-attested phenomena.
"fathered himself"
I take it that Carrier is suggesting that's an oxymoron. But that ignores the preexistence of the Son.
"by a virgin"
A miracle, which functions a sign.
"now resides in outer space"
Where did Carrier come up with that? The Bible doesn't say that. Does Carrier equate the Biblical concept of "heaven" with "outer space"?
"is possessed by the spirit of a supernal ghost"
A ghost is the soul of a dead human being. The Holy Spirit isn't human, and never died. Indeed, the Holy Spirit isn't "alive" in the biological sense.
"That is in some sort of parallel-dimensioning identical with but distinct from himself"
Carrier's attempt to parody the Trinity. A more accurate analogy would be a mirror symmetry.
"and promises to make you live forever in an alternate dimension"
If that's an allusion to the intermediate state, then it's not a physical dimension. Discarnate souls don't exist in space.
If that's an allusion to the final state, then that's not an alternate dimension, but the renewed earth.
"if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood"
Most evangelicals don't think you acquire eternal life by celebrating the Lord's Supper.
"a rib-woman"
Is there something antecedently false about the idea that God made the first woman from a tissue sample of the first man?
"by a talking snake"
The Hebrew designation is probably a pun that trades on the multiple senses and connotations of the word (snake, diviner, shining one).
"to eat from a magical tree"
The text doesn't indicate that the tree of knowledge is a magical tree. That's like saying the ark of the covenant is a magical box, or that Moses' staff is a magical stick. Rather, what we have is a divinely assigned correlation. These are ordinary objects. They have no special power. The result comes from God, not the object.
Is Carrier deliberately misrepresenting Christian theology, or is he actually that ignorant?
And lest we forget, that’s the Jesus who has nothing to say against slavery or the subjugation and disenfranchisement of women
Argument from silence. For that matter, Jesus said nothing against the disenfranchisement of men. It's not as if Roman rule was democratic. Most men had not vote.
or the execution of homosexuals, other than, at best,
It's striking to see contemporary atheists jump on the bandwagon of "gay rights." I don't recall atheists in the past spearheading the campaign for "gay rights." Were Antony Flew, A. J. Ayer, J. L. Mackie, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow, Charles Bradlaugh, Robert Ingersoll, Thomas Huxley, Thomas Paine, and Alexander White in the vanguard of the "gay rights" movement? Did I miss that? How did this suddenly become a self-evident moral maxim when so many prominent atheists of yore failed to discern it?
Rather, atheists waited until it was safe to champion "gay rights." Waited until they felt the wind behind their backs.
that you shouldn’t invite sluts and homos to legally murder the sluts and homos because that would be hypocritical (John 7:52-8:11, a forgery).
The fact that the Pericope Adulterae is a scribal interpolation is hardly news. Any standard edition of the Bible will footnote that familar fact.
Oh no, you are supposed to wait for Jesus to murder them (Matthew 3:12).
i) To begin with, that text does't single out "sluts and homos."
ii) How does Carrier infer "murder" from that text? It's about eschatological judgment. It doesn't even say God kills them. Rather, that might well be postmortem punishment. Not to mention the figurative imagery.
And even if God did kill then, killing isn't synonymous with murder.
if the conditions he imagines existed, rape would be ethical—namely, if it was the loving and just thing to do (and we can imagine scenarios, though Flannagan wisely avoids attempting it: like, maybe, being forced to rape someone lest, the coercer informs you, the victim will be killed instead.
Carrier fails to explain why, from the standpoint of secular ethics, it would be unethical to rape someone if the alternative is the victim's death. If that's a forced option, isn't allowing the victim to be murdered worse than saving the victim's life, even if that entails rape? What is the secular basis for Carrier's disapproval? In fact, Carrier later says:
To successfully argue that “loving and just” decisions are moral requires (i) appealing to the consequences of “loving and just” decisions and the consequences of “unloving or unjust” decisions, and then (ii) appealing to which of those consequences the moral agent prefers. But DCT can accomplish neither, except in exactly the same way ethical naturalism does. Therefore, DCT reduces to ethical naturalism in practical fact. It therefore cannot be an improvement on it.
So he himself stipulates that taking the consequences into account are a necessary element in ethical decision-making. According to his own hypothetical, the end-result of one choice is the death of the victim, while the end-result of the other choice is saving the victim's life–albeit by rape. If ethical decision-making comes down to weighing the respective consequences, then on what secular basis does Carrier conclude that rape would be wrong in that situation?
DCT produces “infantile” moral reasoning, not only by reducing it to obeying what someone else says God wants, rather than applying one’s own critical reasoning to ascertain what is right, but also by eliminating any stable adult motivation to be moral. As atheists well know, from all the theists who terrifyingly admit they would murder and rape everyone but for their fear of hell, this is profoundly immature moral reasoning.
Where are all the theists who allegedly admit that "they would murder and rape everyone but for their fear of hell"? I haven't encountered them. To begin with, there's no reason to suppose theists in general even want to rape or murder everyone.
The actual argument is this: if a person would like to commit rape or murder, would he refrain even though he could do so with impunity? It doesn't imply that he in fact desires to rape or murder anyone, much less everyone. Rather, it's a conditional or hypothetical scenario. If someone happens to feel that way about someone else, would he act on his impulse if he could get away with it? It doesn't mean he normally has that impulse. He may never have that impulse.
Adults reason differently: they won’t murder and rape anyone because they care about them.
There's no empirical evidence that atheists care about everyone. Indeed, there's abundant empirical evidence that atheists don't care about everyone.
In Christian ethics, by contrast, you should treat people justly even if you don't care about them personally. You treat them justly because that's the right thing to do, and not because you care about their wellbeing. You may treat them justly in spite of what you think of them.
on DCT, you can’t decide God is “evil” and thus to be defied, not obeyed…no matter how evil God is
If an atheist came to believe in the existence of an evil God, would he defy him? That would be pretty foolhardy.
He never responds to Sinnott-Armstrong’s actual point: which is that either moral facts are wholly unknowable on DCT (and therefore DCT entails we can know nothing about morality, and therefore by definition cannot ground any morality), or they are knowable by virtue of observable properties apart from DCT. But if they are knowable by virtue of observable properties apart from DCT, then they are already sufficiently moral by virtue of those properties. So we don’t need DCT.
In what sense are "moral facts" "observable properties"? In ethics, we apply moral norms to concrete situations. Moral norms or ethical standards are not observable properties. Rather, they are ethical criteria by which we evaluate events or contemplated courses of action.
Even if God exists, indeed even if a loving God exists, this is of no use to us in ascertaining what is and is not moral. Because He simply isn’t consistently or reliably telling anyone.
Which begs the question.
So all we have left is the ethical naturalist’s best alternative: an increasingly well-informed moral agent who cares about herself, and a body of advisors who care about her (crowdsourced knowledge, tested and accumulated from past to present). That’s the best you get. You don’t have access to an omniscient advisor. So you have to make do. And that means caring about whether you have enough information (about yourself and the world), and caring how to make the information you get more reliable, and caring whether you are reasoning from that information without logical fallacy or cognitive error. That’s the only way to get closer to the truth in matters of morality. Phoning God simply isn’t an option.
How does that rise to the level of moral realism?
Notice that this is Flannagan’s moral theory, minus the primitive hocum about sky spirits.
In classical theism, God is not a "sky spirit." In classical theism, God subsists outside the physical universe.
DCT is therefore unlivable, even if it were correct. It puts moral truth inside an inaccessible black box, the mind of one particular God, whom we cannot identify or communicate with in any globally or historically reliable or consistent way. We therefore cannot know what is moral, even if DCT were true.
Which assumes, without benefit of argument, that we don't have access to divine revelation.
The supernaturalist is stuck in the exact same position as the ethical naturalist: attempting to ascertain from observable facts what the best way is to live.
It's not the same position if the theist relies on moral intuitions which have their source in natural revelation whereas the atheist relies on moral sentiments that have their source in social conditioning and amoral evolutionary psychology.
But we cannot demonstrate that the “God” (or “ideal agent”) we have thus modeled in our mind or intuition is the “one true” God or not, except by appeal to natural facts that require no actual God to exist.
Which disregards theistic proofs that appeal to "natural facts."
Otherwise, we cannot know the God informing the intuition of Islamic suicide bombers is the incorrect God.
If Muhammad appeals to the Bible to vouch his own prophetic credentials, when, in fact, his message contracts the Bible, then he's falsified his own claims.
And the most important turning point here, is where theists simply can’t defeat Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma from 2400 years ago.
i) Even a secular ethicist like Richard Joyce has argued that the Euthyphro dilemma is a failure:
ii) Likewise, in a book which Flannagan recently coauthored with Paul Copan (Did God Really Command Genocide?), they devote two full chapters (chaps 13-14) to the Euthyphro dilemma.
So Carrier has his work cut out for him. He can't win the argument by taking intellectual shortcuts.
Because for DCT to be true, what Flannagan needs to say is, “we should obey whatever character God happens to have,” which would mean, we should all be the mass murderers that the God of the Old Testament actually wants us to be.
Which begs the question of whether Yahweh is a mass murderer.
Or admit the Old Testament God is a demon the worthy of any horror film villain himself, and somehow convince everyone that we are lucky enough that that God just happens not to exist. (Oh wait. Atheists are already doing that.)
How do you disprove the existence of a Being who, if there is such a God, exists outside the physical universe? What would count as evidence for his nonexistence?
The commands of a loving and just person is a conceptual category that does not require that person to exist for their commands to be loving and just. If it is good to obey such commands, it is good regardless of whether they are fictional or real.
To the contrary, good commands involve social obligations. We have no social obligations to fictional characters. Nonentities cannot oblige us.
or not punishing rapists by legally ordering them to continue raping their victims (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).
That's an inept misinterpretation of the passage. It is dealing with a hypothetical situation in which sex could either be coercive or consensual. There are no witnesses. A Jewish judge has no independent evidence to determine if the sex was coercive or consensual.
In that culture, loss of virginity made a single woman far less eligible for marriage. So the law represents a practical compromise: either a shotgun wedding or financial compensation in lieu of marriage.
As I commented for Loftus in The Christian Delusion (p. 101), “any rational would-be rapist who acquired full and correct information about how raped women feel, and what sort of person he becomes if he ignores a person’s feelings and welfare, and all of the actual consequences of such behavior to himself and his society, then he would agree that raping such a woman is wrong.”
That's willfully naive. Serial rapists know how raped women feel, which is precisely why they rape them. They hate women. The psychological damage is intentional. How women feel is a presupposition of the serial rapist. He aims to inflict maximal harm.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Thursday, November 06, 2014
Friday, October 10, 2014
Flannagan v. McGrew
Matthew Flannagan said...
Lydia McGrew said...
Lydia McGrew said...
Lydia McGrew said...
Matthew Flannagan said...
Matthew Flannagan said...
Lydia McGrew said...
Lydia McGrew said...
Matthew Flannagan said...
Lydia McGrew said...
Lydia McGrew said...
Lydia McGrew said...
I note Steve mentioned me in the first comment, in fact almost everything Lydia says is addressed in Paul and my forthcoming Did God really command Genocide? Which comes out in November. This is under copywrite, so let me brief.
1.Lydia interprets the argument about “hyperbole” to be an argument that the reference to animals, women and children, was hyperbolic and denying any non-combatants were present. But that’s not what we argue, the claim we defend is that references to “all” the inhabitants “killing all that breathed” and “leaving no survivors” is hyperbolic, grossly hyperbolic. I in fact explicitly state in the book that I agree non-combatants were killed. The position we defend comes from from Kenneth Kitchen who states that when the war rhetoric is taken into account, what you have is not total destruction and occupation, but disabling raids where less mobile inhabitants were killed and the “alls” are qualified to exclude those that got away to fortified cities, and Israel immediately return to their camp at Gilgal.
2. Lydia takes the reference to hyperbole to be an attempt to address the charge that God commanded the killing of the innocent. But it’s not. It’s addressing the different charge that God commanded Genocide. The position we take out in the book is that the reference to Genocide is a gross exaggeration based on misreading the text, so that particular charge is unwarranted.
I agree that the lesser, but still serious charge, that God commanded the killing of innocent people is not addressed by these textual issues. Which why in the book I address this second charge a different arguing philosophically that there are conditions under which one can attribute an apparently immoral command to God.
3 Some of Lydia’s arguments she uses against Hess are arguments (such as the appeal to Deuteronomy 20) I myself used against Hess in my review of Copan’s book.
4. Lydia makes some claims which I think are false and which we address directly in our book. Here I’ll focus on two.
(a) she claims in Numbers “Moses, purporting to speak for the Lord (and there is no reason in the text to think that he is not speaking for the Lord) expressly orders the killing of real infant boys, not to mention all non-virgin women.” Actually, Moses in the text does not purport to speak for the lord. The phrase “The LORD said to Moses” which accompanies Moses’s prophetic utterances in the book of Numbers is absent from the command in this text. God did earlier state that they were to “attack the midianites” but the text states the Israelites had carried out what God commanded when they killed only the men. (v 7) .Lydia’s here argument to the contrary is based on the fallacy of arguing that because there is no reason to deny a thesis it follows we can affirm the thesis.
(b) Lydia states “Similarly with the Amalekites in I Samuel 15. Saul is not sent against some named and possibly entirely military location. He is sent to wipe out a group qua group.” Actually, in the text Samuel is sent against a specific location. The NASB brings this out well:
Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”Then Saul summoned the people and numbered them in Telaim, 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men of Judah. 5 Saul came to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the valley..
Amalek in the text is actually a city or encampment of some sort not a people group.
I have much more to say about both these episodes and in our book. But the point is Lydia’s observation about the text is not actually what the text presents and her critique of Copan’s position, actually does not address the position Paul and I actually defend in our latest book.
1.Lydia interprets the argument about “hyperbole” to be an argument that the reference to animals, women and children, was hyperbolic and denying any non-combatants were present. But that’s not what we argue, the claim we defend is that references to “all” the inhabitants “killing all that breathed” and “leaving no survivors” is hyperbolic, grossly hyperbolic. I in fact explicitly state in the book that I agree non-combatants were killed. The position we defend comes from from Kenneth Kitchen who states that when the war rhetoric is taken into account, what you have is not total destruction and occupation, but disabling raids where less mobile inhabitants were killed and the “alls” are qualified to exclude those that got away to fortified cities, and Israel immediately return to their camp at Gilgal.
2. Lydia takes the reference to hyperbole to be an attempt to address the charge that God commanded the killing of the innocent. But it’s not. It’s addressing the different charge that God commanded Genocide. The position we take out in the book is that the reference to Genocide is a gross exaggeration based on misreading the text, so that particular charge is unwarranted.
I agree that the lesser, but still serious charge, that God commanded the killing of innocent people is not addressed by these textual issues. Which why in the book I address this second charge a different arguing philosophically that there are conditions under which one can attribute an apparently immoral command to God.
3 Some of Lydia’s arguments she uses against Hess are arguments (such as the appeal to Deuteronomy 20) I myself used against Hess in my review of Copan’s book.
4. Lydia makes some claims which I think are false and which we address directly in our book. Here I’ll focus on two.
(a) she claims in Numbers “Moses, purporting to speak for the Lord (and there is no reason in the text to think that he is not speaking for the Lord) expressly orders the killing of real infant boys, not to mention all non-virgin women.” Actually, Moses in the text does not purport to speak for the lord. The phrase “The LORD said to Moses” which accompanies Moses’s prophetic utterances in the book of Numbers is absent from the command in this text. God did earlier state that they were to “attack the midianites” but the text states the Israelites had carried out what God commanded when they killed only the men. (v 7) .Lydia’s here argument to the contrary is based on the fallacy of arguing that because there is no reason to deny a thesis it follows we can affirm the thesis.
(b) Lydia states “Similarly with the Amalekites in I Samuel 15. Saul is not sent against some named and possibly entirely military location. He is sent to wipe out a group qua group.” Actually, in the text Samuel is sent against a specific location. The NASB brings this out well:
Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”Then Saul summoned the people and numbered them in Telaim, 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men of Judah. 5 Saul came to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the valley..
Amalek in the text is actually a city or encampment of some sort not a people group.
I have much more to say about both these episodes and in our book. But the point is Lydia’s observation about the text is not actually what the text presents and her critique of Copan’s position, actually does not address the position Paul and I actually defend in our latest book.
Matt: When I read Copan's article, to which I link in the main post, it was quite clear to me that Copan _did_ mean to use the hyperbole and other answers to try to respond in some way to God's order to kill the innocent. There are specific phrases to that effect. To be sure, he falls back on endorsing the killing of the boys in Numbers 31, so it doesn't _work_, but he clearly has the idea that he can sort of "whittle away" at all of this by these various responses and make it "not so bad." I think this is a poor approach, but to say it isn't meant to be a response to the claim that God ordered the killing of the innocent *at all* is simply to make an artificial cut between murdering babies and genocide as if the one has little or nothing to do with the other and as if worries about the one are not ipso facto worries about the other and also as if Copan does not give the impression that he is addressing both. Perhaps I will have time later to look up some of the quotations in question, as well as the _universal_ impression among interpreters that this "ancient near eastern phrases" approach has *something* to do with making us feel like God didn't really order the killing of innocents.
As for Amalek, of course the name could refer both a people group and to a place, but the very rationale for killing everything belonging to Amalek is a kind of inherited guilt rationale which does not apply to a single, possibly only military, place. The rationale is anger over the treatment of the children of Israel by the Amalekites long ago. It seems to me intensely strained to take this to be the destruction of a specific place *as opposed to* a people group.
Besides, are you really going back to implying that Samuel did not order the real killing of real innocents? Is this the "hyperbole" response all over again, bolstered by a baseless conjecture that "Amalek" was a military fort containing no innocents? But I thought you just said that wasn't what the "hyperbole" and "ancient near eastern text" argument was meant to address!
As for whether Moses attributes his orders in Numbers 31 to God, I would argue that Moses was tacitly invoking his authority as God-ordained ruler by his giving a religious rationale for the killings. Notice that it is the same as in Deuteronomy 20--namely, that if they don't do this killing, they will be led astray. I have acknowledged in the comments here and elsewhere that one can _try_ to squirrel out of it by saying that Moses just got this wrong, but it seems to me highly implausible that he was not giving the people the _impression_ that he had religious, God-given authority to order them to do this on religious grounds.
As for Amalek, of course the name could refer both a people group and to a place, but the very rationale for killing everything belonging to Amalek is a kind of inherited guilt rationale which does not apply to a single, possibly only military, place. The rationale is anger over the treatment of the children of Israel by the Amalekites long ago. It seems to me intensely strained to take this to be the destruction of a specific place *as opposed to* a people group.
Besides, are you really going back to implying that Samuel did not order the real killing of real innocents? Is this the "hyperbole" response all over again, bolstered by a baseless conjecture that "Amalek" was a military fort containing no innocents? But I thought you just said that wasn't what the "hyperbole" and "ancient near eastern text" argument was meant to address!
As for whether Moses attributes his orders in Numbers 31 to God, I would argue that Moses was tacitly invoking his authority as God-ordained ruler by his giving a religious rationale for the killings. Notice that it is the same as in Deuteronomy 20--namely, that if they don't do this killing, they will be led astray. I have acknowledged in the comments here and elsewhere that one can _try_ to squirrel out of it by saying that Moses just got this wrong, but it seems to me highly implausible that he was not giving the people the _impression_ that he had religious, God-given authority to order them to do this on religious grounds.
For example, Copan starts his wrap-up of the on-line version like this:
"What if the brief sketch above turns out not to be correct in that Israel also targeted noncombatants? We should remember that the non-Sunday School response above takes a good deal of the sting out of the Canaanite problem. But let us pursue the question of noncombatants being targeted as well."
Okay, first of all, the first sentence implies that the brief sketch above is saying that Israel *did not target non-combatants.* This is clear from his saying that, if the sketch above is _incorrect_, then Israel _did_ target non-combatants. This does not fit with a claim that his "hyperbole" claim is *solely* about total genocide and not about the targeting of non-combatants short of total genocide.
Second, he claims that somehow what he has said "takes a good deal of the sting out of the Canaanite problem." This is a vague statement that implies that somehow we should feel better if _fewer_ Canaanite innocents were targeted or something to that effect--in other words, that somehow one can "whittle down" the problem by means of things like the "hyperbole" claim.
Then there is this paragraph:
"This stereotypical ancient Near East language of “all” people describes attacks on what turn out to be military forts or garrisons containing combatants — not a general population that includes women and children. We have no archaeological evidence of civilian populations at Jericho or Ai (6:21; 8:25).8 The word “city [‘ir]” during this time in Canaan was where the (military) king, the army, and the priesthood resided. So for Joshua, mentioning “women” and “young and old” turns out to be stock ancient Near East language that he could have used even if “women” and “young and old” were not living there. The language of “all” (“men and women”) at Jericho and Ai is a “stereotypical expression for the destruction of all human life in the fort, presumably composed entirely of combatants.”9 The text does not require that “women” and “young and old” must have been in these cities — and this same situation could apply to Saul’s battling against the Amalekites."
Here Copan clearly implies that these places "turned out" to be military forts--this strong conclusion is *not* supportable, as I argue above--and uses the "stock phrases" claim to argue that it looks like plausibly *no* non-combatants were killed in these locations. This is a really poor argument, as I argue above in the main post. Moreover, the whole _point_ of Copan's making this argument is (as he says at the end) to "take the sting out of the problem" by implying that Joshua and his armies didn't kill any non-combatants in these passages, because they were military forts and non were living there! So obviously, the problem in question is supposed to be killing non-combatants! This goes beyond merely arguing that _total_ genocide did not take place.
"What if the brief sketch above turns out not to be correct in that Israel also targeted noncombatants? We should remember that the non-Sunday School response above takes a good deal of the sting out of the Canaanite problem. But let us pursue the question of noncombatants being targeted as well."
Okay, first of all, the first sentence implies that the brief sketch above is saying that Israel *did not target non-combatants.* This is clear from his saying that, if the sketch above is _incorrect_, then Israel _did_ target non-combatants. This does not fit with a claim that his "hyperbole" claim is *solely* about total genocide and not about the targeting of non-combatants short of total genocide.
Second, he claims that somehow what he has said "takes a good deal of the sting out of the Canaanite problem." This is a vague statement that implies that somehow we should feel better if _fewer_ Canaanite innocents were targeted or something to that effect--in other words, that somehow one can "whittle down" the problem by means of things like the "hyperbole" claim.
Then there is this paragraph:
"This stereotypical ancient Near East language of “all” people describes attacks on what turn out to be military forts or garrisons containing combatants — not a general population that includes women and children. We have no archaeological evidence of civilian populations at Jericho or Ai (6:21; 8:25).8 The word “city [‘ir]” during this time in Canaan was where the (military) king, the army, and the priesthood resided. So for Joshua, mentioning “women” and “young and old” turns out to be stock ancient Near East language that he could have used even if “women” and “young and old” were not living there. The language of “all” (“men and women”) at Jericho and Ai is a “stereotypical expression for the destruction of all human life in the fort, presumably composed entirely of combatants.”9 The text does not require that “women” and “young and old” must have been in these cities — and this same situation could apply to Saul’s battling against the Amalekites."
Here Copan clearly implies that these places "turned out" to be military forts--this strong conclusion is *not* supportable, as I argue above--and uses the "stock phrases" claim to argue that it looks like plausibly *no* non-combatants were killed in these locations. This is a really poor argument, as I argue above in the main post. Moreover, the whole _point_ of Copan's making this argument is (as he says at the end) to "take the sting out of the problem" by implying that Joshua and his armies didn't kill any non-combatants in these passages, because they were military forts and non were living there! So obviously, the problem in question is supposed to be killing non-combatants! This goes beyond merely arguing that _total_ genocide did not take place.
The entire "ancient near eastern stock phrase" argument is rather extraneous if one is *solely* arguing against total genocide and not addressing the killing of non-combatants per se. In the former case, it would be fairly easy to say that they *did* kill young and old, men and women, but simply that they didn't kill *all* of them. But on the contrary, the whole point of the "stock phrase" argument, together with the (unjustified) implication that these were military forts with no non-combatants, is to imply that such phrases could mean that *no* non-combatants were killed. The very structure of the argument is addressed to concerns about killing non-combatants per se.
Lydia
Matt: When I read Copan's article, to which I link in the main post, it was quite clear to me that Copan _did_ mean to use the hyperbole and other answers to try to respond in some way to God's order to kill the innocent.
The phrase “hyperbole and other answers tends to reinforce my point. In Paul’s article, he offers several lines of argument. One is an appeal to hyperbole, and another is an appeal to Hess’s work about forts and stock phrases. These distinct lines of argument . Hess’s argument that the cities were forts, could be correct and the language of all being killed could be literal. Similarly, the language of killing everyone leaving no survivors, could be hyperbolic and the targets not forts.
My point is that in the book Copan and I wrote on the topic this year we develop the first line of argument ( the appeal to hyperbole) in much more depth. The appeal to Hess plays almost no role at all in our argument. Moreover, we explicitly state the appeal to hyperbole does not show that no non- combatants were killed.
The dialectic is this: some skeptics claim argue as follows: (a)the bible tells us that Genocide is permissible. That it commands us to engage in genocidal slaughter of unbelievers. And (b) it’s wrong to for us to engage in genocidal slaughter. The response is twofold,
re (a) we point out that the picture they paint of scripture is inaccurate, the text does not present a command for us today, or a (present tense) permission of Genocide. It narrates an episode where God in the past granted an exception to the normal rules that govern warfare ( which require non-combatant immunity) for a particular context within salvation history. Moreover, the picture of genocidal slaughter they paint is inaccurate fails to understand the language is highly hyperbolic and is actually talking about small scale disabling raids on various centres using standard ANE rhetoric.
This refutes (a) and makes (b) superfluous. However it does enable the moral problem to be recast in terms of an objection to the more limited claim: that God could on a specific historical occasion grant an exception to the principle of non-combatant immunity, and the rest of the book addresses this objection without appeal to hyperbole. This appears contrary to our moral beliefs. We then address this different objection another way.
but to say it isn't meant to be a response to the claim that God ordered the killing of the innocent *at all* is simply to make an artificial cut between murdering babies and genocide as if the one has little or nothing to do with the other and as if worries about the one are not ipso facto worries about the other
I don’t think it’s an artificial cut, suppose a person engages in a home invasion and kills a women and child, would any government anywhere in the world insist they go to the Haque and face charges for genocide and crimes against humanity? No, almost every jurisdiction in the world would consider that an over the top extreme and unjustified response. Why ? because genocideis not the same as killing the innocent.
If I have evidence which, on the face of it suggests, my neighbor killed his wife for the money. I don’t get a right to testify in court that he killed five people out of racial hatred. No court I know of would exonerate perjury of this sort by noting that, because both accusations involve killing, it’s all artificial and doesn’t matter, and we can proceed to charge the women with the racially motivated murder of five people.
If skeptics exaggerate and distort the facts they should be called on it, not given a free pass because there is some other more sensible objection that they could raise but they don’t. Of course we do need to address those other objections as best we can, but this doesn’t mean the original objection stands.
Matt: When I read Copan's article, to which I link in the main post, it was quite clear to me that Copan _did_ mean to use the hyperbole and other answers to try to respond in some way to God's order to kill the innocent.
The phrase “hyperbole and other answers tends to reinforce my point. In Paul’s article, he offers several lines of argument. One is an appeal to hyperbole, and another is an appeal to Hess’s work about forts and stock phrases. These distinct lines of argument . Hess’s argument that the cities were forts, could be correct and the language of all being killed could be literal. Similarly, the language of killing everyone leaving no survivors, could be hyperbolic and the targets not forts.
My point is that in the book Copan and I wrote on the topic this year we develop the first line of argument ( the appeal to hyperbole) in much more depth. The appeal to Hess plays almost no role at all in our argument. Moreover, we explicitly state the appeal to hyperbole does not show that no non- combatants were killed.
The dialectic is this: some skeptics claim argue as follows: (a)the bible tells us that Genocide is permissible. That it commands us to engage in genocidal slaughter of unbelievers. And (b) it’s wrong to for us to engage in genocidal slaughter. The response is twofold,
re (a) we point out that the picture they paint of scripture is inaccurate, the text does not present a command for us today, or a (present tense) permission of Genocide. It narrates an episode where God in the past granted an exception to the normal rules that govern warfare ( which require non-combatant immunity) for a particular context within salvation history. Moreover, the picture of genocidal slaughter they paint is inaccurate fails to understand the language is highly hyperbolic and is actually talking about small scale disabling raids on various centres using standard ANE rhetoric.
This refutes (a) and makes (b) superfluous. However it does enable the moral problem to be recast in terms of an objection to the more limited claim: that God could on a specific historical occasion grant an exception to the principle of non-combatant immunity, and the rest of the book addresses this objection without appeal to hyperbole. This appears contrary to our moral beliefs. We then address this different objection another way.
but to say it isn't meant to be a response to the claim that God ordered the killing of the innocent *at all* is simply to make an artificial cut between murdering babies and genocide as if the one has little or nothing to do with the other and as if worries about the one are not ipso facto worries about the other
I don’t think it’s an artificial cut, suppose a person engages in a home invasion and kills a women and child, would any government anywhere in the world insist they go to the Haque and face charges for genocide and crimes against humanity? No, almost every jurisdiction in the world would consider that an over the top extreme and unjustified response. Why ? because genocideis not the same as killing the innocent.
If I have evidence which, on the face of it suggests, my neighbor killed his wife for the money. I don’t get a right to testify in court that he killed five people out of racial hatred. No court I know of would exonerate perjury of this sort by noting that, because both accusations involve killing, it’s all artificial and doesn’t matter, and we can proceed to charge the women with the racially motivated murder of five people.
If skeptics exaggerate and distort the facts they should be called on it, not given a free pass because there is some other more sensible objection that they could raise but they don’t. Of course we do need to address those other objections as best we can, but this doesn’t mean the original objection stands.
As for whether Moses attributes his orders in Numbers 31 to God, I would argue that Moses was tacitly invoking his authority as God-ordained ruler by his giving a religious rationale for the killings.
The claim that Moses ordered it as a God ordained ruler, is very different to saying he commanded it in his role of prophet. According to Romans 13, all civil rulers have authority as God ordained rulers, including Nero Caesar yet civil rulers are fallible and prone to error. No one would say that because Nero was the god ordained ruler of Rome, it followed that God ordered Seneca to kill himself in 65 AD . If the claim is that God ordered these killings you need more than to say Moses made the command as an ordained ruler, you need to see him as uttering a prophetic utterance in his office as prophet. The text does not however say that.
Also Moses doesn’t give the religious rationale that God commanded it, nor does he give the rationale that they will be led astray, he gives the simple rationale that the women in question enticed the Israelite men to violate the vassal treaty they had made with Yahweh ( which constitutes treason) no reason is given in the text why the children were killed.
As for Amalek, of course the name could refer both a people group and to a place, but the very rationale for killing everything belonging to Amalek is a kind of inherited guilt rationale which does not apply to a single, possibly only military, place. The rationale is anger over the treatment of the children of Israel by the Amalekites long ago. It seems to me intensely strained to take this to be the destruction of a specific place *as opposed to* a people group.
It’s not strained it’s what the text actually says:
“I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt. 3 Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” 4 Then Saul summoned the people and numbered them in Telaim, 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men of Judah. 5 Saul came to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the valley.”
The word “Amalek” in v 2 is identified in v 5, as a city, by a valley, the reference to an ambush suggests a single location from which the attack on this city occurred. Just prior to the battle Saul asks the Kenites to depart from amongst the Amalekites suggesting Kenites were close to the likely theatre of battle, not that they were mixed amougst the Amalekite people all over the region. All indicators in the text then suggest Amalek is being used to refer to a particular encampment of some sort.
Besides, are you really going back to implying that Samuel did not order the real killing of real innocents? Is this the "hyperbole" response all over again, bolstered by a baseless conjecture that "Amalek" was a military fort containing no innocents? But I thought you just said that wasn't what the "hyperbole" and "ancient near eastern text" argument was meant to address!
Pointing out that Amalek, in 1 Samuel 15 is a city or encampment and not an entire ethnic group is not the same as claiming it’s a fort and does not contain non-combatants. I think Auckland is a city not an entire people group does that mean I think Auckland is a fort and contains no civilians?? That clearly doesn’t follow.
Moreover, even if that was what I said, that’s not the “hyperbole” response. The hyperbole response is the claim that the language of destroying all people is rhetorical exaggeration. The claim that a particular center is a fort is a claim about literal history, it makes no reference to hyperbole at all.
Hess's argument is a distinct argument from the appeal to hyperbole one.
The claim that Moses ordered it as a God ordained ruler, is very different to saying he commanded it in his role of prophet. According to Romans 13, all civil rulers have authority as God ordained rulers, including Nero Caesar yet civil rulers are fallible and prone to error. No one would say that because Nero was the god ordained ruler of Rome, it followed that God ordered Seneca to kill himself in 65 AD . If the claim is that God ordered these killings you need more than to say Moses made the command as an ordained ruler, you need to see him as uttering a prophetic utterance in his office as prophet. The text does not however say that.
Also Moses doesn’t give the religious rationale that God commanded it, nor does he give the rationale that they will be led astray, he gives the simple rationale that the women in question enticed the Israelite men to violate the vassal treaty they had made with Yahweh ( which constitutes treason) no reason is given in the text why the children were killed.
As for Amalek, of course the name could refer both a people group and to a place, but the very rationale for killing everything belonging to Amalek is a kind of inherited guilt rationale which does not apply to a single, possibly only military, place. The rationale is anger over the treatment of the children of Israel by the Amalekites long ago. It seems to me intensely strained to take this to be the destruction of a specific place *as opposed to* a people group.
It’s not strained it’s what the text actually says:
“I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt. 3 Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” 4 Then Saul summoned the people and numbered them in Telaim, 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men of Judah. 5 Saul came to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the valley.”
The word “Amalek” in v 2 is identified in v 5, as a city, by a valley, the reference to an ambush suggests a single location from which the attack on this city occurred. Just prior to the battle Saul asks the Kenites to depart from amongst the Amalekites suggesting Kenites were close to the likely theatre of battle, not that they were mixed amougst the Amalekite people all over the region. All indicators in the text then suggest Amalek is being used to refer to a particular encampment of some sort.
Besides, are you really going back to implying that Samuel did not order the real killing of real innocents? Is this the "hyperbole" response all over again, bolstered by a baseless conjecture that "Amalek" was a military fort containing no innocents? But I thought you just said that wasn't what the "hyperbole" and "ancient near eastern text" argument was meant to address!
Pointing out that Amalek, in 1 Samuel 15 is a city or encampment and not an entire ethnic group is not the same as claiming it’s a fort and does not contain non-combatants. I think Auckland is a city not an entire people group does that mean I think Auckland is a fort and contains no civilians?? That clearly doesn’t follow.
Moreover, even if that was what I said, that’s not the “hyperbole” response. The hyperbole response is the claim that the language of destroying all people is rhetorical exaggeration. The claim that a particular center is a fort is a claim about literal history, it makes no reference to hyperbole at all.
Hess's argument is a distinct argument from the appeal to hyperbole one.
Okay, Matt, perhaps I should clarify. I have used the phrase "hyperbole" in some cases as an umbrella term to refer both to the idea that these phrases referred to a _larger group_ than were in fact killed and to the idea that these phrases referred to _types of people_ who were not in fact killed and who were not envisaged to be killed. Thus I think I've sometimes said "hyperbole or stock phrases" or something like that. I'm afraid this is now causing some confusion, and I apologize for any confusion.
I am _not_ concerned chiefly with strict genocide but rather with _murder_. I think that what you are saying here supports my case that some believe that Copan's overall argument can do more than it can do--that is, that it can resolve our concerns that God commanded what seems like murder. Already in the on-line version of Copan's argument (which I do consider fair game),his capitulation on Numbers 31 shows that that is not the case. If he later merely hammers on the argument that God didn't command literal genocide, that shows even more strongly that he isn't really saying that he's resolved the murder conundrum in a way that dissolves it and that doesn't require falling back on more "traditional" responses.
This should show how my argument applies to Amalek. Your concern is there with God's not literally having them wipe out the entire people group. Therefore, when I used the "people group" phrase as an argument that Samuel really was commanding the killing of innocents, your concern was to show that instead Samuel was commanding killing everyone in a city, not to show that Samuel was commanding killing an entire people group.
I still tend to disagree with you there, because of the rationale based (as the quotation of the passage shows) on the behavior of the ancestors of the Amalekites. But since my concern is with murder by killing innocents, my point is served merely by pointing out that the entire language of the passage suggests going after a large group indiscriminately (you say, a large group in a city) rather than narrowly targeting a military fort.
I am _not_ concerned chiefly with strict genocide but rather with _murder_. I think that what you are saying here supports my case that some believe that Copan's overall argument can do more than it can do--that is, that it can resolve our concerns that God commanded what seems like murder. Already in the on-line version of Copan's argument (which I do consider fair game),his capitulation on Numbers 31 shows that that is not the case. If he later merely hammers on the argument that God didn't command literal genocide, that shows even more strongly that he isn't really saying that he's resolved the murder conundrum in a way that dissolves it and that doesn't require falling back on more "traditional" responses.
This should show how my argument applies to Amalek. Your concern is there with God's not literally having them wipe out the entire people group. Therefore, when I used the "people group" phrase as an argument that Samuel really was commanding the killing of innocents, your concern was to show that instead Samuel was commanding killing everyone in a city, not to show that Samuel was commanding killing an entire people group.
I still tend to disagree with you there, because of the rationale based (as the quotation of the passage shows) on the behavior of the ancestors of the Amalekites. But since my concern is with murder by killing innocents, my point is served merely by pointing out that the entire language of the passage suggests going after a large group indiscriminately (you say, a large group in a city) rather than narrowly targeting a military fort.
On Numbers 31, by a God-ordained ruler, of course I mean something much stronger than the Romans 13 sense. By "led astray," I mean to refer _precisely_ to the story that Moses tells about the women leading the men into sexual sin. Copan appears to agree with this as well, as I recall. He implies that these women were some kind of specially trained "sexual warriors" all set up to try to get the men to commit idolatry. You're quite right that that doesn't even address the issue of the baby boys. But I was bringing up the rationale only to point out that Moses was invoking the idea that they should listen to him as the "regent of God," not to say that he clearly made a _case_ for killing the baby boys. Of course, I think the whole thing is appalling anyway, so it doesn't surprise me that he doesn't even try to give an argument for killing the baby boys.
Lydia
Ok, I think that clarifies things, regarding the exegetical issues.
The issue seems then to be over seriousness the question of Genocide vs Murder and how that relates to the problem.
I guess this brings me to the other objection I have to your post. You state: “Prima facie, this is in direct conflict with the commandment to do no murder. Any attempt to answer the problem by saying that original sin means that no one is really innocent proves far too much, for it removes the rationale for regarding the killing of infants generally as murder.”
I agree with the point about original sin, and get frustrated trying to explain this to some over-zealous Christians who dismiss the problem. However, I am not sure that the problem with the text is simply that the command is in prima facie incompatible with the command against murder. All that would be needed to resolve this problem would be to claim that the prohibition against murder in scripture is, strictly speaking, not an exceptionless absolute prohibition. But rather holds unless God commands otherwise.
But we already accepted something like this with the sixth commandment anyway, the commandment literally states something like “do not man slay” and most Christians accept that this does not rule out things like killing in self defence, or capital punishment, or just wars, precisely because other commandments in scripture suggest these things are permissible and hence qualify or grant justified exceptions to the rules.
Similarly there are various passages in scripture which suggest its wrong to lie, yet passages about the Hebrew midwives suggests to many orthodox commentators that the command to not lie is not an absolute. In both cases people follow the interpretative point that if a general prohibition occurs in a text and latter a specific permission is mentioned in the same text, the general probably lays down the general rule to which the specific case is an exception. This is normal in legal interpretation.
I am inclined to think the moral problem is whether its possible for God to command otherwise in the first place. We want to claim that God is good, that he has various character traits such as being loving and just. The problem is that, one can't attribute these traits to God and also contend he can command just anything at all. A good God would never command us to do what is morally wrong. And unless we are moral skeptics, we have to accept that we have a reasonably accurate (though fallible) grasp of what it is right and wrong for us to do. Consequently, any command attributed to God can’t disagree too violently with our intuitions about is right and wrong.
Now, Consider the following two claims:
[1] Genocide is morally permissible
[2] While killing non-combatants is almost always wrong there are rare circumstances in which it can permissible.
It seems to me that the appeal to hyperbole (in my sense) changes the problem from having a theological position that contradicts [1] to having a theological position that contradicts [2]
Moreover, I am inclined to think that a theology that entails [2] is significantly more plausible than one that entails [1]. To deny [2] all you have to do is deny a strict absolutism with the prohibition against homicide, to a position where it is an extremely strong prima facie presumption that is almost never overridden. That I think doesn’t do a huge amount of violence to our pre-theoretical moral intuitions, in fact most ethical theories skeptics would countenance today would probably have a far less strict position than that. Whereas the claim Genocide is permissible does violently contradict our pre-theoretical moral intuitions.
Of course this doesn't address everything. But I think it goes some way to resolving the concerns about consistency.
Ok, I think that clarifies things, regarding the exegetical issues.
The issue seems then to be over seriousness the question of Genocide vs Murder and how that relates to the problem.
I guess this brings me to the other objection I have to your post. You state: “Prima facie, this is in direct conflict with the commandment to do no murder. Any attempt to answer the problem by saying that original sin means that no one is really innocent proves far too much, for it removes the rationale for regarding the killing of infants generally as murder.”
I agree with the point about original sin, and get frustrated trying to explain this to some over-zealous Christians who dismiss the problem. However, I am not sure that the problem with the text is simply that the command is in prima facie incompatible with the command against murder. All that would be needed to resolve this problem would be to claim that the prohibition against murder in scripture is, strictly speaking, not an exceptionless absolute prohibition. But rather holds unless God commands otherwise.
But we already accepted something like this with the sixth commandment anyway, the commandment literally states something like “do not man slay” and most Christians accept that this does not rule out things like killing in self defence, or capital punishment, or just wars, precisely because other commandments in scripture suggest these things are permissible and hence qualify or grant justified exceptions to the rules.
Similarly there are various passages in scripture which suggest its wrong to lie, yet passages about the Hebrew midwives suggests to many orthodox commentators that the command to not lie is not an absolute. In both cases people follow the interpretative point that if a general prohibition occurs in a text and latter a specific permission is mentioned in the same text, the general probably lays down the general rule to which the specific case is an exception. This is normal in legal interpretation.
I am inclined to think the moral problem is whether its possible for God to command otherwise in the first place. We want to claim that God is good, that he has various character traits such as being loving and just. The problem is that, one can't attribute these traits to God and also contend he can command just anything at all. A good God would never command us to do what is morally wrong. And unless we are moral skeptics, we have to accept that we have a reasonably accurate (though fallible) grasp of what it is right and wrong for us to do. Consequently, any command attributed to God can’t disagree too violently with our intuitions about is right and wrong.
Now, Consider the following two claims:
[1] Genocide is morally permissible
[2] While killing non-combatants is almost always wrong there are rare circumstances in which it can permissible.
It seems to me that the appeal to hyperbole (in my sense) changes the problem from having a theological position that contradicts [1] to having a theological position that contradicts [2]
Moreover, I am inclined to think that a theology that entails [2] is significantly more plausible than one that entails [1]. To deny [2] all you have to do is deny a strict absolutism with the prohibition against homicide, to a position where it is an extremely strong prima facie presumption that is almost never overridden. That I think doesn’t do a huge amount of violence to our pre-theoretical moral intuitions, in fact most ethical theories skeptics would countenance today would probably have a far less strict position than that. Whereas the claim Genocide is permissible does violently contradict our pre-theoretical moral intuitions.
Of course this doesn't address everything. But I think it goes some way to resolving the concerns about consistency.
I think we need to make a couple of distinctions. First, between killing a non-combatant (such as a woman or man who is a civilian)and killing an undeniable innocent, such as an infant or young child. Second, between killing as collateral damage and deliberately killing--e.g., putting to the sword.
Now, you're certainly right that most moral skeptics have a significantly less strict view than that deliberately killing babies is always morally wrong. Many of them are, for example, pro-choice on abortion. But my concern in all of this has _never_ been merely to answer some non-Christian skeptic, where a tu quoque will do or where I can appeal to his own non-absolutism in moral matters. My concern has always been strictly with what is true, and my own work in the pro-life movement and thoughts about the natural law have led me to believe that it _is_ an exceptionless rule that we must never deliberately target and kill an innocent. Cutting off babies' heads or running them through with the sword is a paradigmatically intrinsically wrong act. The skeptic who doesn't believe this is the sort of person I've been arguing with for twenty-five years, starting with the abortion issue and moving out from there to "Wouldn't you kill a four-year-old to save the world?" and other such scenarios.
As far as killing adult non-combatants, I find it just barely possible to imagine a situation in which one could be epistemically justified in believing that an adult non-combatant had nevertheless done something so bad as to deserve the death penalty and that you were supposed to be the one (or group) to carry it out. This is my hat-tip to "the Canaanites were so bad, and the Israelites were the chosen tool of God's judgement." Fine, I say, let's grant as much rope as possible to the biblical account and God's right to do things differently sometimes, but not the little ones who didn't know what any of it was about. If murder _isn't_ always instantiated by killing infants, then the command to do no murder becomes a sort of joke.
I just disagree about how much worse genocide is. I think that intuition is a result of modern race-consciousness and group consciousness. The problem with genocide is simply that it is murder on a grand scale, not especially that you kill or try to kill every member of a people group. If some mass murderer said, "Ah, but I deliberately left alive two hundred males and two hundred females of that people group who could interbreed so as not to commit genocide" after deliberately slaughtering men, women, and children, it wouldn't be cause for heaving a sigh of relief. In the movie _The Last of the Mohicans_ the Indian chief gives a ruling that one daughter of the British colonel is to be burned at the stake for revenge but that the other daughter is to be kept alive "so that his seed won't die out." This is supposed to be a bizarre and cold-blooded murder, not praiseworthy because they are worrying about whether they are committing micro-genocide against the "seed" of the British colonel.
Now, you're certainly right that most moral skeptics have a significantly less strict view than that deliberately killing babies is always morally wrong. Many of them are, for example, pro-choice on abortion. But my concern in all of this has _never_ been merely to answer some non-Christian skeptic, where a tu quoque will do or where I can appeal to his own non-absolutism in moral matters. My concern has always been strictly with what is true, and my own work in the pro-life movement and thoughts about the natural law have led me to believe that it _is_ an exceptionless rule that we must never deliberately target and kill an innocent. Cutting off babies' heads or running them through with the sword is a paradigmatically intrinsically wrong act. The skeptic who doesn't believe this is the sort of person I've been arguing with for twenty-five years, starting with the abortion issue and moving out from there to "Wouldn't you kill a four-year-old to save the world?" and other such scenarios.
As far as killing adult non-combatants, I find it just barely possible to imagine a situation in which one could be epistemically justified in believing that an adult non-combatant had nevertheless done something so bad as to deserve the death penalty and that you were supposed to be the one (or group) to carry it out. This is my hat-tip to "the Canaanites were so bad, and the Israelites were the chosen tool of God's judgement." Fine, I say, let's grant as much rope as possible to the biblical account and God's right to do things differently sometimes, but not the little ones who didn't know what any of it was about. If murder _isn't_ always instantiated by killing infants, then the command to do no murder becomes a sort of joke.
I just disagree about how much worse genocide is. I think that intuition is a result of modern race-consciousness and group consciousness. The problem with genocide is simply that it is murder on a grand scale, not especially that you kill or try to kill every member of a people group. If some mass murderer said, "Ah, but I deliberately left alive two hundred males and two hundred females of that people group who could interbreed so as not to commit genocide" after deliberately slaughtering men, women, and children, it wouldn't be cause for heaving a sigh of relief. In the movie _The Last of the Mohicans_ the Indian chief gives a ruling that one daughter of the British colonel is to be burned at the stake for revenge but that the other daughter is to be kept alive "so that his seed won't die out." This is supposed to be a bizarre and cold-blooded murder, not praiseworthy because they are worrying about whether they are committing micro-genocide against the "seed" of the British colonel.
By the way, if Paul Copan thinks Hess is _wrong_, he should come out and say so. In fact, he should either take the earlier article down or put a prominent UPDATE on it if he has changed his mind about the import of "ancient near eastern stock phrases." Until and unless he does that, the article is fair game. Articles don't just sort of magically cease to be relevant for discussion after a couple of years, as if they have a sell-by date on them, unless the article clearly changes his mind. And this isn't a very long time ago, either, though I suppose in the Internet we now have an exaggerated sense of what counts as a long time ago. Copan was quite willing to make use of Hess, and he writes as if Hess has made his case convincingly. If he doesn't think that anymore, he should make that clear. Until that point, there are undeniably people who still think that Copan/Hess have shown that these "turn out to have been" military forts and that phrases like "men and women, old and young," or "men, women and children" don't really mean to include women and children! If Copan is repudiating that, then that's probably good from a scholarly point of view, but it would be better if he said so explicitly rather than hoping people would just forget about material of his that is still readily available.
Does Paul Copan no longer believe that these "turn out to have been" specific military forts at which no civilians were slaughtered? That would come as a surprise to many, I suspect. When I was preparing to write this post, I at first was going to focus on the hyperbole-genocide angle. I was told by someone I respect that I was *not* investigating and answering Copan's position sufficiently unless I tackled the claim that these were specific military forts and that "ancient near eastern stock phrases" can explain away the references to women and children.
So it's rather frustrating to have addressed that and then to be told that I shouldn't be bothering with it because his most *recent* book doesn't happen to emphasize those claims! Believe me, there is still a very real perception that these claims are an important part of his position.
So it's rather frustrating to have addressed that and then to be told that I shouldn't be bothering with it because his most *recent* book doesn't happen to emphasize those claims! Believe me, there is still a very real perception that these claims are an important part of his position.
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