Sadism

(this is a part of a continuing post.  If you haven't, I suggest that you start reading from a post entitled "dancing with atheism.")

God is good, my pastors used to tell me.  Well, here's a passage and a question for them. 

This is what the Lord Almighty says... 'Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have.  Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'  1 Samuel 15:3

Why would a loving God order a genocide?

Here are some possible answers, taken from various websites and my memory of what pastors had said:  Amalekites were sinful people, God knows all so you must have faith in his actions, bible is really a metaphor so you don't know what exactly happened, it really wasn't a genocide, and my favorite, this is before Jesus's redemption so God had to kill all the sinners.

Here's what all the answers have in common.  It's an attempt to rationalize the irrational.  It's an attempt to justify what people under normal conditions would dare not justify.  Such actions, both the command and the justification, are beyond moral bankruptcy. 

But then again, if you're a regular reader of the bible, you should've realized a long time ago that infanticides and mass killings are a common and reoccurring theme in the bible.

God first begins by ordering Abraham to sacrifice his son - something unimaginably cruel.  Of course, Christians would contend that it was merely a test.  Well, it's a shame then, that Job drew the short end of the stick for his test, because God gave permission to kill all 10 of Job's children.  In Leviticus, God says "[if you disobey me] you will eat the flesh of your sons and flesh of your daughters," and here's one that you won't hear in church very much:  "Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us - he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks" (Psalm 137:9). 

But who cares about a couple kids?  After all, God demolished Sodom & Gomorrah because they lacked righteous people (I'm sure a lot of kids and infants died as well), and he wiped out virtually all living things in a deluge.  There's a few more but I think everyone gets the point. 

Here's is what Hitchens has to say about God's cruelty.  In one of the most brutal verbal beat downs I have ever witnessed, Hitchens just destroys Christianity in mere 3 minutes. 

And here is Sam Harris on God's cruelty, starting from 52 second.  A lot more detached style and significantly longer, but it's equally brutal.  

After all this, the church teaches you that God loves you.  This is incredibly sadistic.