[[Psalm 137:9 very clearly advocates killing babies.]]

No, it does not. No literate Bible scholar would agree with you. Will you please READ the whole psalm? Not every statement in the Bible is normative. There are bad examples as well as good examples.

[[ The fact that they are enemies does not, in my view, make it better.]]

I didn’t say it did.

[[ Perhaps to you it does.]]

I didn’t say it did.

[[ Once again, like most Christians, you cherry pick which verses you think portray your religion in a good light, and eliminate (or make excuses for) those that do not.]]

Where did I do that? I just said, correctly, that you were misinterpreting a verse in a tendentious manner to make your prejudiced point.

[[I will grant you one thing: I did mis-remeber Kings 2:24. On that one God only killed 42 human children for the insult to Elisha’s bald head. He didn’t kill the animals. However your characterization of the group as a “mob” is demonstrably untrue:
Kings I 2:23 “And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.”
Little children out of the city. That’s what it says. Not “mob.”]]

You didn’t read a thing I wrote above, did you? And you’re really determined not to read for context.

Why would 42 little kids leave a city to insult some bald guy they’d never seen before? As I said, but you apparently missed, “little kids” is a mistranslation. The same word refers to armed soldiers in the same book. The reference to “Go up” requires some knowledge of what had happened in preceding chapters, which you obviously do not have. They knew who he was beforehand.

Do you think they had class excursions to harass the prophets in ancient Israel? They weren’t cute little kids having innocent fun, they were a lynch mob. Again, you would have to know the context to be able to comment intelligently. Heinlein was wrong and you are wrong, because neither of you has bothered to put any serious study into the matter.

First, I don’t frequent atheist web sites. I have read the Bible cover to cover 3 times (have you?). You don’t know me; don’t assume things about me.

Psalm 137:9 very clearly advocates killing babies. The fact that they are enemies does not, in my view, make it better. Perhaps to you it does. Once again, like most Christians, you cherry pick which verses you think portray your religion in a good light, and eliminate (or make excuses for) those that do not. Btw, the Bible itself says such cherry picking is a sin. Revelations.

I will grant you one thing: I did mis-remeber Kings 2:24. On that one God only killed 42 human children for the insult to Elisha’s bald head. He didn’t kill the animals. However your characterization of the group as a “mob” is demonstrably untrue:

Kings I 2:23 “And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.”

Little children out of the city. That’s what it says. Not “mob.”

Praise the Lord.

And your God killed them.

[[Oh, and Barton, God saved an old man from a “mob” (a debatable definition) by slaughtering men, women, and children, and animals who had NOTHING to do with anything. Nice. You worship the S.O.B.; I find Him repugnant.]]

Daffy, you got that from an atheist web site or publication. You haven’t read the actual passage. Here’s the whole thing, in the KJV:

KI2 2:23 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
KI2 2:24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

I see no mention of women, children, or animals.

And as I said, the “little children” is a KJV mistranslation; it is better translated “youths.” The same word is used elsewhere in the same book:

KI2 24:2 And the LORD sent against him bands of the Chaldees, and bands of the Syrians, and bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of Ammon, and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by his servants the prophets.

Do you think the Bible is saying the Ammonites armed little kids and sent them out to fight the Judaean army?

[[“Blessed is he who dashes the little ones [children] against the stones.” Psalm 137:9

The Bible, in such a case, does NOT rise to MY moral standards.]]

See, again, you’re not reading for context. Read the whole psalm. The man speaking is a prisoner of war who has just seen his home destroyed and his family killed or enslaved. His new owners have heard of the high quality of Judaean songwriting and order him to make up a song for them. Psalm 137 is his reply.

The Bible is not advocating killing Babylonian babies. It’s giving you a portrait of what it does to a man to be oppressed. It’s a warning to everyone who is tempted to brutalize or oppress another person. You are not just liable for the evil acts you are doing, you are liable for what you may turn your victim into. “His blood will I require at thy hand.”

“Blessed is he who dashes the little ones [children] against the stones.” Psalm 137:9

The Bible, in such a case, does NOT rise to MY moral standards.

But you claim I am taking it out of context. Fine. Tell me the context where you find this slaughter of innocents acceptable. Then we’ll go on to discuss Lot (whom I would call a pig, were it not that such would be an insult to pigs everywhere).

(Btw, Stephen King does not claim to be speaking for God. Your Bible DOES.)

[[A good guide to life?!?! The Bible advocates murdering children, wiping out an entire village (including the animals) because some kids insulted an old man’s bald head, a man giving the females in his household to raping marauders so as to protect himself…]]

You might want to read Alexander Pope some time, Daffy. “A little learning is a dangerous thing./Drink deep, or do not drink, from the Pierian spring.”

The examples you cite are either taken out of context or just plain wrong. The first reference, I suppose, is to the genocide episodes in the Bible. Everybody knows about them, including, though it may surprise you, Christians and Jews. Do you know any of the latter who think those events are supposed to be normative?

The event where God sends bears to rend the 42 children for “making fun of his prophet,” as Robert Heinlein put it, is a typical atheist distortion. These weren’t little kids, they were what the Greeks would call “youths,” and they were threatening the prophet’s life. They knew what had happened to his predecessor; why do you think they kept saying “Go up?” Read for context. It wasn’t God murdering poor little kids for joking about a guy’s bald head, it was God saving an old man from a mob.

There are two events in the Bible where a man offers his female relatives to a mob. The first is Lot. If you read the passages about Lot, you see that his behavior gets worse the closer he gets to Sodom, and better the further away he gets. (Kikawada and Quinn explain this very well; see if you can find their “Before Abraham Was” (1985).) The Bible was NOT advocating what he did. His judgment was distorted. The wonder was that he held to guest-friendship enough to be concerned about his guests. And the main point of the story was a dirty joke about the origins of the ethnic groups then said to have descended from his daughters. Read for context. There’s no shame in not knowing what the issues were in the middle east 3,000 years ago, but there is shame in assuming you do, and not checking with specialists in the area. There are people who study this kind of thing that you could have asked about it.

The other example was the man who put his concubine out and let her be destroyed to save himself. How could you possibly be under the impression that the Bible was ADVOCATING doing this? It was the act of a desperate man in a situation he wasn’t brave enough to handle. That’s like saying Stephen King endorses sucking peoples’ blood because he describes it in ‘Salem’s Lot.

What you get out of the Bible depends on what you bring to it, and how much slack you’re willing to concede to documents from a different culture than your own. A little common sense and tolerance goes a long way.