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God of Love, God of War
Mar. 5th, 2014 05:44 pmYet again, I came across more talk about how bad the God of the Old Testament is, and I've wondered what standard Jewish answers to the claim might be. I've tried googling, but haven't found the right search terms.
For the record, I can see issues with Noah's flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham being told to kill Isaac, and with the conquest of Canaan, but if you compare damage done by Jews to damage done by Christians, it seems that the content of scriptures matters rather little. And possibly that amount of damage is more related to the amount of power available than anything else.
I used to think that pacifist religions led to less violent behavior, and this may be true on the average, but Buddhists are murdering Muslims in Burma, so it's not an absolute truth. (There's a book about how governments with pacifist religions handled (talked about?) their wars, but I didn't note the title-- anyone know of it?)
For the record, I can see issues with Noah's flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham being told to kill Isaac, and with the conquest of Canaan, but if you compare damage done by Jews to damage done by Christians, it seems that the content of scriptures matters rather little. And possibly that amount of damage is more related to the amount of power available than anything else.
I used to think that pacifist religions led to less violent behavior, and this may be true on the average, but Buddhists are murdering Muslims in Burma, so it's not an absolute truth. (There's a book about how governments with pacifist religions handled (talked about?) their wars, but I didn't note the title-- anyone know of it?)
