The issues surrounding the thorny topic of abortion

[Alien]

With Ronsons direction I found your link. It appears to take me to a post about Israelites and Amalekites. Which doesn't exactly support your claim, as that's not really an ethnicity issue (indeed, Israelite and Amalekites would be the same ethnicity as both are tribal Canaanite in origin, and even had the same henotheistic religion)

Edit: one interesting tidbit, I had always wondered why they were supposed to kill all the livestock as well as the people. Found out a couple years ago when debating with a Christian on the story and looking into it, the Midrash says Amalekites were believed to have the power to shape-shifting into animals to escape death, thus the order to destroy all their animals.

You know, I'll bet that's one of the historic sites that Dr Who has visited. He/she always finds some kind of alien interference with history.

[Alien]

And here's seer, a pro-lifer, arguing that it was fine for the Israelites to murder the Amelekite children because God told them to and the children might be sacrificed anyway. Sparko and lilpixieofterror (also pro-lifers) approved too, on the grounds that the children would grow up to kill the Israelites and the Israelites didn't have any food for them.

Roy, what you're up against here is what I call GKL (God can't lose) or "nailing one foot to the floor". It's actually perfectly logical from their point of view. It goes like this.

Premise: The Bible is the literal word of God.
Premise: God knows everything and never lies.

Therefore: Everything in the Bible is true, justified, or lacks internal contradiction.
And: Anything that suggests otherwise must be false.
And: An explanation that fits what the Bible says overrides one that suggests that the Bible is in error, no matter how unlikely it may seem.

Arguing is therefore futile, as you're up against a different world-view.

[CivilDiscourse]

Roy, what you're up against here is what I call GKL (God can't lose) or "nailing one foot to the floor". It's actually perfectly logical from their point of view. It goes like this.

Premise: The Bible is the literal word of God.
Premise: God knows everything and never lies.

Therefore: Everything in the Bible is true, justified, or lacks internal contradiction.
And: Anything that suggests otherwise must be false.
And: An explanation that fits what the Bible says overrides one that suggests that the Bible is in error, no matter how unlikely it may seem.

Arguing is therefore futile, as you're up against a different world-view.

I generally agree with what you've said. However, this means that using it as an example of a "Hypocritical pro-lifer" going "Kill the babies before they grow up and kill us" is simplistic thinking. This is because, as you have just demonstrated, that IS NOT the reason why people are OK with that particular story, it's because of their religious faith surrounding that story, not racism.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

(I know this is a sidetrack, but...)

No. Nothing so fanciful as that.

It's actually related to Israelite law: in cases of bestiality, both the offender and the animal were to be killed because both were defiled. According to historical records, many of the Canaanite nations openly practiced bestiality, so when God ordered them killed as punishment for their sins, the animals were also killed in accordance with the Law.

What was being referred to by @Gondwanald is known as herem.

From what attested academic and/or historical sources did you discover that the Canaanites engaged in bestiality?

[NorrinRadd]

What was being referred to by @Gondwanald is known as herem.

From what attested academic and/or historical sources did you discover that the Canaanites engaged in bestiality?

For a brief response, here is the note from Walton et al from the IVP Bible Background Commentary, Old Testament volume. (Citations from Leviticus.)

18:22–23. homosexuality and bestiality. Homosexuality (v. 22) and bestiality (v. 23) were both practiced in the context of ritual or magic in the ancient Near East. The latter particularly occurs in the mythology of Ugarit and is banned in legal materials (especially the Hittite laws). The mixing of realms was contrary to concepts of purity.

20:10–16. capital punishment for sexual crimes. The violation of sexual codes (adultery, incest, homosexuality, bestiality) is placed on a par with idolatry in this law code and thus requires the sentence of death. Both defile persons and the land and cannot be tolerated. Crimes of this nature are also punishable in Hammurabi’s code (adultery requires trial by ordeal in laws 129 and 132; rape is a capital crime in law 130; incest is punished by exile in law 154), the Middle Assyrian laws (homosexuality punished by castration in law 20) and the Hittite laws (bestiality with pigs or dogs punished by death in law 199). In the Hittite treaty between Shuppiluliuma and Huqqana, the latter is charged not to take his sister or cousin sexually because among the Hittites people are put to death for such behavior. Such inhibitions, however, were certainly not universal. In the Persian period, for instance, men were encouraged to marry their sisters, daughters or mother as acts of piety. In Israelite practice, however, these were all believed to undermine the family, the foundational element of Israelite society. To undermine the family was to undermine the covenant.

[NorrinRadd]

Roy, what you're up against here is what I call GKL (God can't lose) or "nailing one foot to the floor". It's actually perfectly logical from their point of view. It goes like this.

Premise: The Bible is the literal word of God.
Premise: God knows everything and never lies.

Therefore: Everything in the Bible is true, justified, or lacks internal contradiction.
And: Anything that suggests otherwise must be false.
And: An explanation that fits what the Bible says overrides one that suggests that the Bible is in error, no matter how unlikely it may seem.

Arguing is therefore futile, as you're up against a different world-view.

I will go on record as saying I never feel a need to "justify" so-called atrocities commanded by I AM. Nothing in the NT, including the recorded words of Jesus Himself, repudiates or disclaims those passages. Various things in the OT are clarified, various misunderstandings are corrected, and ultimately the Law and the Obsolete Covenant to which it was attached are nullified for believers, but those various troubling passages are not renounced.

That's why I would never use the commission of genocide as a theological argument against Islam.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

For a brief response, here is the note from Walton et al from the IVP Bible Background Commentary, Old Testament volume. (Citations from Leviticus.)

18:22–23. homosexuality and bestiality. Homosexuality (v. 22) and bestiality (v. 23) were both practiced in the context of ritual or magic in the ancient Near East. The latter particularly occurs in the mythology of Ugarit and is banned in legal materials (especially the Hittite laws). The mixing of realms was contrary to concepts of purity.

20:10–16. capital punishment for sexual crimes. The violation of sexual codes (adultery, incest, homosexuality, bestiality) is placed on a par with idolatry in this law code and thus requires the sentence of death. Both defile persons and the land and cannot be tolerated. Crimes of this nature are also punishable in Hammurabi’s code (adultery requires trial by ordeal in laws 129 and 132; rape is a capital crime in law 130; incest is punished by exile in law 154), the Middle Assyrian laws (homosexuality punished by castration in law 20) and the Hittite laws (bestiality with pigs or dogs punished by death in law 199). In the Hittite treaty between Shuppiluliuma and Huqqana, the latter is charged not to take his sister or cousin sexually because among the Hittites people are put to death for such behavior. Such inhibitions, however, were certainly not universal. In the Persian period, for instance, men were encouraged to marry their sisters, daughters or mother as acts of piety. In Israelite practice, however, these were all believed to undermine the family, the foundational element of Israelite society. To undermine the family was to undermine the covenant.

Unfortunately we have no real data available concerning the sexual attitudes of the Canaanites and likewise the Egyptian data are insufficient. However, it would appear that evidence for the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians might suggest that the Israelites were not the first peoples to have such taboos.