The war on faith.

[Matt R.]

madnak,
I'm not familiar with the slaughter of the Midianites or your other story, or whether the Bible claims it was ordered by God. It has been too long since my religion classes, and I no longer reference the Bible to determine whether something is moral or not.

I do not take the Bible as literal, first of all. Those stories may be somewhat historical, and I don't know what the beef with the Midianites was. I've never claimed that there could not be human error in the Bible (after all, it was written by humans). My personal use of the Bible comes from the underlying morality.... the stuff hidden beneath Jesus parables, for instance. If you can prove to me that the story of the Midianites is from the Bible and it really advocates slaughtering this group of people for no legitimate reason, I will agree that the "morals" of this story are extremely wrong. But I would *guess* that there is deeper meaning to it and God did not really advocate slaughtering innocents simply because "his people" wanted land or power or some such.

Suffice it to say that either way, I stand by my claim that Jesus (the founder, and reason, for my religion) never advocated such actions. I concede that the Bible may have its flaws, but it would take some convincing that it isn't interpretational issues or there wasn't some deeper meaning to the story.