Wednesday, February 22, 2012

The Wrong god

Have you heard this argument before? In the Bible it says that God told Joshua to kill all of their enemies at Jericho, therefore, the Bible isn’t accurate.

I may bore a few people today. I have the urge to talk about logic. Also, I’m a little rusty on that subject.

If we can write the statement as:
A: God told Joshua to kill all of their enemies at Jericho.
B: The Bible says A
C: The Bible isn’t accurate.
Not(A) And B => C ( Not(A) And B Implies C)
This would be the same as saying God didn’t tell Joshua to kill all of their enemies at Jericho but the Bible says it did, so the Bible is inaccurate.
We know that B = True. (From reading the book of Joshua.)
Not(A) And True = Not(A), meaning Not(A) => C
To prove the inaccuracy of the Bible, we must prove A = False, God didn’t tell Joshua to kill their enemies.
Herein is a problem. To be able to show that God didn’t do what the Bible says he did, we must have evidence from a source outside of the Bible. Some people answer this by saying that God wouldn’t do this, so he didn’t do it.
D: God wouldn’t do A
D => Not(A)
So, D => C
But can we say that D is True?
We first need to define who God is in a form that is useful. One of the things the God of Joshua is said to have done is that he controlled the weather.
To say that God would not order Joshua to kill his enemies is to say that God would never kill anyone. At the time I am writing this, a quick search finds an article titled “Freezing weather kills 110 in Russia.” Why they had to died, I don’t know, but God had the power to prevent it and did not. D is clearly False.

Therefore, the claim that the Bible must be inaccurate because it says God order the death of certain people is false.

The fact is, God kills people. We might not like that, but it is true. If the god you worship doesn’t, then you’re worshipping the wrong god.