responding to common objections to bible part 4

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Bah, your posting was one of the things making these threads worthwhile, even though I have almost no interest in the topic.

Then just for you - I will make a contribution.

The question was whether God ordered genocide or not. Deuteronomy clearly shows that the answer to that question is yes. Whether Israel carried it out or not is irrelevant.
Also... The God of Israel is no stranger to genocide. Two instances pre-Canaan: The Deluge and Sodom & Gomorrah.

Let's give TR a leg up.

Sodom and Gomorrah are the archetype for this - God orders his servants (mortal or angelic) to destroy a city - because the people are evil. The Bible says that the people of the city were irredeemable, even the children.

Now - you can dispute the narrative (probably didn't happen anyway) but the internal logic is consistent.

God is Good -> People Evil -> God destroys Evil.

Nothing morally wrong with that - the only problem is if you say God might have been wrong, maybe not all the people were evil, a problem already dealt with in the Archetype. The key point is that God deemed these cities irredeemable, and as God is infallible we take him at his word. The only people who have a problem with this are people who don't believe in the Christian God, or say he is not as Christians describe.

The point to take from those passages is not "Genocide is OK" but "God destroys Evil, even up to enacting a Genocide."