God asks his followers to kill babies...
As despicable and detestable as it was for God to kill babies, he's taking it a step further and asks his followers to kill babies.
Many of the battles that God's people engaged in with other cities were for the sole purpose of those other cities not worshiping the god of the bible.
There will be another thought exercise at the end of this post.
In the bible, in the 15th chapter of the first book of Samuel, God orders his people to go and kill all the babies in this neighboring city. He specifically calls out the execution of the infants and suckling.
The narcissistic God won't allow anyone to live if they're not worshiping him. All the different stories follow the same pattern. Worship the god of the bible or die.
This is the God who many credit to be a loving and merciful god. In what part of killing babies do we find love or mercy? Why do people consider free will a gift if it only ends in death?
Why would anyone willingly choose to follow a baby killer?
In a small section of the other cities worshiping other gods, they would be sacrificing their kids to their God, Malik.
What is God's answer to that monstrosity? You got it! Kill more babies.
Sacrificing humans is not the problem. It's that they were being sacrificed to the wrong god. In the book of Numbers in chapter 31, you see that a handful of the Virgin daughters were also sacrificed to god.
God doesn't care about human beings, he only cares that he has their worship and admiration.
Did God create us for the sole purpose of worshiping him? And then he kills us if we don't worship him? That sounds sadistic and narcissistic to me. You might say that God can do whatever he wants, but that most definitely is not a good and merciful god.
If you think that killing babies and raping little girls is good or just or merciful or ever warranted in this life, you just better hope you never stumble onto my property or get within 10 ft of my family. If you voluntarily follow a god who does this and commands this, you better not get within 10 ft of my family.
If you are a door-to-door religious solicitor and you stumble onto my front door, the door to my family, you better have your running shoes on.
In the book of Numbers, in chapter 31, God orders that everybody be killed except for the virgin daughters. That includes the little babies.
We will do two thought experiments.
The first thought experiment is killing babies. So imagine this is 3,000 years ago and you are ordered to kill little babies. How do you think they killed the little babies? Did they have swords back then? Would they just bash them on the head with a rock? Would they grab them by their feet and slam them into rocks? If you were ordered to kill a baby back then, how would you do it?
The second thought experiment is coming up with alternatives to killing little babies.
The Hebrews initially worshiped other gods. People would worship their different gods to gain favors such as rain or good crops or things of that kind. Then the god of the Bible said to the Hebrews that if you follow me and do some work for me, I will set you free from your slavery.
So God already proved to the Hebrews that he was a god of action.
Knowing that all the different gods can interact with humanity, what could God have done differently to gain the favors of the other people besides killing the babies?
God could have killed the other gods. God could have dried up their fields and said if you worship me, I will water your fields.
God could have just appeared and said worship me.
What other things can you think of that God could have done that wouldn't have required him to ask his people to kill babies? That wouldn't require his people to now have a traumatic experience for the rest of their lives?