Religion and Ethics Forum

VG,

No. Try two examples:

1. The God of the OT says, “slaughter the Canaanite men, women and children because their behaviour is sinful”. The Jews accept that as an article of faith and slay the Canaanites.

2. Netanyahu says, “kill the Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza because that way we may also exterminate Hezbollah and in any case our retribution for the October 7 killings will be so terrible that they’ll never attempt the same thing again”.

In both cases, as you note, lots of innocent people end up dead. In the former case though, the faith claim is the beginning and the end of the matter – there’s no way to know if the God of the OT is real and nor, even if "He" is, whether his instructions are faithfully written in a text. There's no particular, real world outcome other than delivering on the article of faith.     

In the second case though, either it works or it doesn’t – ie, either Hezbollah regroups and attacks again, or they never again try it. 

Note too that in the second case there’s no overt reference to a moral or philosophical imperative (which is all there is in the first case). Instead there’s a claim to a pragmatic, real world solution that demonstrably after the slaughter can be shown to have worked or not (regardless of how morally contemptible you or I think it to be whether or not it achieves its objective).

This difference clearly is a difference no matter how much you try to obfuscate that, and I happen to think it’s quite an important one too.   

You keep mentioning you think it's an important difference without ever explaining why you think it's important.

You're comparing a Bible story with a real event? Bible stories, like many religious stories are brief illustrations to make a religious point rather than historically accurate descriptions to be taken literally. Why not pick a real world event to illustrate your point about faith claims.

Are you suggesting with your Netanyahu example and the support he has from Western governments that Israel and its allies don't consider morality or values to be important in their decision to bomb civilians? It is just an academic exercise in recording metrics on how much bombing will allow a country to make an area so uninhabitable that it can ensure there is no resistance to illegal military occupation? Why is that demonstrating the superiority of making decisions based on metrics rather than religion?

The Israelis (supported by their foreign allies) have been bombing, killing and abducting tens of thousands of Palestinians for decades and it hasn't worked in ending resistance to Israel's illegal military occupation. They blockaded Gaza since 2007 turning it into the largest "open air prison" and it didn't work. All that happened was that other countries supporting Israel became targets for terrorism. So why are they ignoring metrics and continuing to do what hasn't worked in the past?

The US bombed and killed thousands of civilians during its War on Terror https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/911-civilian-casualties-iraq-afghanistan-b1912816.html - it didn't work in ending the Taliban.

Sanctions on Iraq and mass bombing of civilian infrastructure killed tens of thousands of Iraqis - ok the US got some oil revenue out of it and US taxpayers spent trillions killing people so it worked in terms of making some private US companies very rich. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-war-bush-twentieth-anniversary-b2302031.html

The US also bombed and killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese - it didn't work in ending Vietcong resistance.

The metrics you might want to look at is how much money are weapons manufacturers earning and how long  Netanyahu can delay his criminal trial by prolonging and extending the war -  to avoid facing up to corruption charges and prison.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/court-rejects-netanyahus-request-to-delay-testimony-in-criminal-trial/

Netanyahu’s defense team requested the delay because it said the prime minister has been unable to prepare for giving testimony, set to begin on December 2, due to the time pressures of managing the current, multi-front conflict.

I still don't get the "important" difference you are trying to highlight. What is the important difference between religious claims and people seemingly ignoring metrics and making decisions based on wishful thinking and their human psychotic urge to kill lots of people?

https://thehumanist.com/voices/the_ethical_dilemma/humanist-dilemma-religion-banned/

And your point is?

I'm not a humanist, and I don't want to ban religion.

Britain apparently needs US permission to use them because they have US-made components.

Isn't it because they need the US satellites for targeting?

So if atheists saying something is affecting your view, it seems that the CoE harbouring and protecting a savage child molester doesn't? You seem a little confused in your approach, to the extent of being hypocritical.

Are you therefore identifying all associated with the CofE as savage child molesters and that is the raisin d’etre of the CofE? And do you also think that all associated with the CofE self identify as such?

I’m sure you want the Church to go away or is there some form in which you think it should continue.
How do you think disestablishment would prevent bad elements in the Cof E?

The utter confusion in this article where it switches between gender and sex and what it means is part of the problem. The BBC are unable to report coherently on this.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxvpl5zw19o