God Kills Babies
The Flood and Morality of God Argument with Atheist
If you spend anytime on Twitter or engaging with Atheist (respectable or not) you will be confronted very swiftly with how horrible of a person you are for worshipping a God who would ever condone the killing of women, babies, children, and men throughout the Old Testament.
It is my aim, my goal, to humbly attempt to dismantle the logic and theology behind these attacks on Christians that worship God.
A Moral Question
First, if YOU are an atheist who holds to no-objective-morality, please see yourself out (HA) but really, if there are no objective morals, none of this debate even matters.
Therefore, we must grant objective morality. In order to rightly start, though we will venture into different rebuttals and arguments, we need to logically lay out that God is not evil or immoral.
We could state that God (the God of the Bible) cannot be Immoral, it is an impossibility, therefore we must be misunderstanding or not privy to everything. While this is true, I think it’s helpful to exercise some of our mental faculties and take this further:
God, as the ultimate moral authority, determines what is morally right and wrong.
God’s moral standards are subjective in the sense that they originate from His divine nature and are not dependent on external sources or factors.
However, these moral standards set by God are considered objective for His creation because they apply universally to all creation.
As such, God’s moral commands are objective moral truths from the His nature, to His creation.
This is one way of starting this journey, but another could be this:
Premise 1: God is the creator of the universe and everything in it, including morality. Premise 2: God's nature is perfect and unchanging.
Premise 3: Morality is a reflection of God's nature.
Premise 4: If God were to act immorally, then He would be acting in a way that is contrary to His nature.
Premise 5: However, this is impossible, because God's nature is perfect and unchanging.
Conclusion: Therefore, God cannot be immoral.
We have reason to believe both, but the latter specifically because of: Second Timothy 2:11–13: “The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself.”
The reality is that God can, and does, take life whenever He deems it to be. We read about that here: “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?
Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father knowing it, now you add into this free agency with His creation and the governance only expands. He allows people to act upon their own will, fallen though it may be (Genesis), and sometimes these people act in evil. God doesn’t intervene, this doesn’t make him immoral, and we know from Scripture, He cares far more about after-life, than this life (hence Jesus).
The Flood And All Them People Dying
I’m not sure I need to convince anyone that death is not something most humans look forward to, though as you get older, I’ve been told that changes greatly.
What I’m not about to do here is reiterate years of Apologetic methods to discuss the text of the flood and how it doesn’t show God being immoral. Instead, I want to discuss what we did above very briefly, I’m not going to sit here and make up logical arguments for a text we can all read, there is no need for that.
Question: Did people die?
Answer: Yes
Question: Why?
Answer: God deemed it so, but even though they were as evil as can be (Genesis 6:5), God allowed them time to see Noah’s righteousness as a standard, then allowed them to survive but they did not want to (2 Peter 2).
Question: See, God did kill them! He sent the flood!
Answer: Yes, God has every right to take his breath back from the people that use it for evil. He even gave them an example of righteousness had they wanted to turn, for nearly 100 freaking years.
Question: Ahh but babies are innocent, why would they be killed too?
Answer: If you really believe that, stop abortion. However, didn’t Jesus die innocent? People who are innocent are taken back to the Father all the time, it literally happens millions of times per year. God chose it better for His plan to restart humanity, to take those “innocent” newborns (however many there were in that time) to himself, into paradise. As we know from above: (1) God can take his breath back from anyone, at anytime (2) God cannot be immoral, therefore this act must be just even if we can’t comprehend it but (3) see below
A Possible Case of Original Sin
Adamic sin is inherited by every single person, this is why Jesus’ needed to be born of a virgin, through the Holy Spirit. In Scripture we come to understand Jesus is fulfilling what Adam did not, that is Jesus is the second Adam. Those who are born again in Jesus, have new life (reconciled to the Father). Those born of Adam, the world, are in disconnect with the Father.
It’s really straightforward. If you never are born again, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Jesus’ words, not mine).
Jonah 4:11 explains God’s mercy even on the children of a pagan nation: “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand…” (This could be children, unfortunately this phrase appears no where else in the Bible) God takes ownership of these “innocents” (Jer 19:4), those who do not yet “know enough to refuse evil and choose good” (Isa 7:15-16).
The case can be made either way: (1) God brings them into His presence as Scripture may indicate or (2) He, in foreknowledge, knows who will be born again and who will not be and treats them as normal adults.
I think option (1) has more footing, this assumes there is no land of the dead where people can repent before final judgement, which goodness I can’t wait to venture into that dungeon in the coming months.
To Conclude
This may not seem to be a fully satisfactory answer but the claims of God’s immorality just aren’t plentiful or stable enough to hold much bearing on any trained Christian or even agnostic philosophers heart (I say this knowing that this question of God’s morality rarely comes up with fully educated Philosophers).
God is perfectly moral.
God can do no wrong.
God gives life, takes life, redeems life, condemns life.
All perfectly justified.
If you don’t wish to worship such a God, that is your choice. However, the claim “God is immoral” is an amateur one at best.
If you are a philosopher, I am currently working on two arguments that renders Euthyphro dilemma mute (dubious, I know). However, it’s currently in the hands of two atheist for review/rebuttal.