Posted on 10/31/2019 7:38:50 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Christian apologist William Craig has offered a response to atheist intellectual Richard Dawkins who called him "a deplorable apologist for genocide" in his column last week.
In a speech at the Sheldonian Theater at Oxford University on Tuesday, Craig responded to Dawkins' allegations during the question and answer session.
“There was no racial war here, no command to kill them all,” he said, alluding to extermination of the Canaanites in the Old Testament, “the command was to drive them out.”
He then said: “I would say that God has the right to give and take life as He sees fit. Children die all the time! If you believe in the salvation, as I do, of children, who die, what that meant is that the death of these children meant their salvation. People look at this [genocide] and think life ends at the grave but in fact this was the salvation of these children, who were far better dead … than being raised in this Canaanite culture."
Organizers of the event left an empty chair on stage for Dawkins who has continuously refused to debate Craig, saying Craig does not have the worthy credentials.
“I always said when invited to do debates that I would be happy to debate a bishop, a cardinal, a pope, an archbishop, indeed I have done those, but I don’t take on creationists and I don’t take on people whose only claim to fame is that they are professional debaters; they’ve got to have something more than that. I’m busy," said Dawkins.
Dawkins was replaced by a panel of three Oxford Academics. Among them were Dr. Daniel Came and Philosophy Senior Research Fellow Stephen Priest.
Oxford Inter-collegiate Christian Union President Robbie Strachan praised Craig's speech, saying it contained convincing philosophical arguments.
“The next step after establishing that the existence of God is a possibility is obviously to find out what that God might be like. Christians believe in a good and loving God, which is why the ‘problem of evil’ question came up last night," he said.
“But aren’t the people of God supposed to be different from the nations around them?”
I suppose that is a question best asked of the nations around them.
At the individual level, there were atheists/agnostics. But I don’t recall any OT clan or society that was atheists/agnostics.
The whole issue here in the definition of ‘genocide’ which isn’t stated. Craig notes that the intent of God’s edict is for the Israelites to gain sole occupancy of the land God gave to them. This involved both killing the present occupants and driving them out. The goal is not to rid the earth of Canaanites but to claim that particular land for the Israelites.
God was not engaging in simple genocide for the sake of it.
The religious practices of the Cannaanites and worshipers of Baal and Molech involved child sacrifice of burning their newborns alive as sacrifices to those gods.
If God did not punish that behavior, then He would not be just.
So the condemnation by the God haters then implies that they are OK with the religious practice of those people groups, that they think burning children alive is OK.
Then they can be asked what their solution to that kind of problem would be.
But Craig makes the case that, regardless of God's command, it was OK to kill them all because the children would be in a better place.
It would have been OK if instead Dawkins had called Craig "a deplorable apologist for the mass extermination of a people so we can take their land"?
RE: The religious practices of the Cannaanites and worshipers of Baal and Molech involved child sacrifice of burning their newborns alive as sacrifices to those gods.
OK, then please explain why this would include killing EVEN THE CHILDREN? If they were the victims of child sacrifice, why eliminate the victims?
Children can learn at a very early age and sometimes, the damage is done by toddlerhood.
Not to mention, who’s going to take care of all those kids?
How do you feed and nurture hundreds or thousands of babies?
No, I don’t think there was ever any society on planet earth like that. Even in the modern day, when you had Communists doing their best to impose atheism on people, they still couldn’t really enforce it.
God gave the land to the Israelites. Dawkins calls this immoral but he has no rational basis for doing so. God created the land, He created all human beings, He decides when each of us will die. Dawkins implies that God didn’t give someone something they were owed but Dawkins does not explain why God owes anyone anything.
I doubt even a tiniest fraction of those commenting on this thread, have a clue. Those that do, in majority, would never ever acknowledge. Now the biggie is that those 'children' brought out of bondage, itched, whined, moaned, and built themselves a 'golden calf' to worship... Nothing new under the sun, as the acts of the Old are repeated today in real time.
I will pass on the word to my Amalekite friends ...
Why should anybody care what you are sick of?
Maybe people are already sick of hearing about it all the time.
And why are those "three things" actually four?
I didn't read Dawkin's column and there was no link to it in the article, but the quoted claim was Craig makes an argument to justify mass extermination.
Clearly Craig did that and you just did as well.
Saying it's OK because God can do whatever He wants and we don't know his ways is the quintessential apologetic argument.
Dawkins appears to have been exactly right regardless of whether Craig's rationalization makes sense or not.
Just as in the Garden of Eden, the devil's intentions was to 'pollute' the blood line to Christ... For the same cause that Noah and his family were the only blood line from the Adam and Eve with a 'perfect' pedigree. The devil and his apostles play church too.
You are not being honest. Dawkins called Craig an ‘apologist for genocide.’ I am discussing that accusation rationally and honestly. You are not.
Craig is unquestionably an apologist for the mass extermination of the Canaanites.
The quote is right there in the article.
Are you really basing your argument on the distinction between mass extermination and genocide?
Before people get too worked up about the poor Canaanites, their religion centered around the sacrifice of children. That was why God said to kill them and destroy their “gods.”
I am basing my observations on the fact that you are using terms without defining them and substituting one term for another without explanation. Dr. Craig does not do that and neither do I.
As I've observed, yes.
Can a whole group be evil? yes.
A whole people? Millions upon millions have been killed in the last century for a variety of reasons...like you however, I've no idea if I could kill babies. I'm pro life but I've also seen a lot of evil people that are evil to the core.
I'm just glad I wasn't a part of that decision. However, if you asked me to kill a person who has done evil and continues to do so with zero repentance then I could do that. Dawkins might be reminded the story of Jonah and the Ninevites. He preached all out death on the whole people and they repented and God spared all of them for a hundred years.
Fine. Mass extermination for land isn't genocide.
What, then, is the point of the article? Craig addressed the mass extermination. Was that not meant to be a response to Dawkins?
Did the Christian Post juxtapose Dawkins' accusation and Craig's response just for the hell of it?
Or was maybe Craig addressing the genocide accusation when he made his response?
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