Would you kill a child if it brought a thousand others to god?

Question

I ask this as a follow up to my question yesterday about if the end's justifies the means.
Most Christians answered that it is not right to commit an evil even if the end result is a greater good.

But why do you not hold god to the same standard? Why is it ok for god to kill (example: story of Job) an entire family or even an entire planet of people (Flood) and not be held accountable.

Goodness is not a characteristic. It is actions interpreted by others. God's actions are not good because he is God. He should be good BECAUSE of his actions.
To justify murder of a family simply because you feel like it or because others can look on it and learn something does not make it ok.
From your own words the ends do NOT justify the means.

Let the Christian rationalizations begin.

Ok. . I gave a couple examples but there are many many more.

And as far as Satan actually performing the act while God sat back and watched.
That's like sitting back and watching while a woman is getting raped when you have the power to stop it. Allowing the action to happen is almost just as bad.

Answer 1

God would kill a thousand if it brought a child to him. Heck, he'd kill the thousand just for kicks on a Saturday night! "Lookout New Orleans, here comes Katrina!"

Answer 2

The killing aspect of this question I have no experience with but I had an experience a few years ago which kind of brought this topic, life and death, very close to home.

The underlying issue of life and death is the primary issue here, correct? There is no way you or I will ever know if committing an evil act will result in a good. 'Values Clarification' was an idea to this point, from a secular humanist perspective, which taught that evil is relative, and taking one persons life to save 100 is just good math.

Making a decision concerning someone elses life / death is, as they say, making yourself God. There are a few exceptions to this, but it is mostly wrong to take the life of another. We are never in a position to know the results of the decisions we make regarding taking someone's life - how could I know what the result of killing someone would be?

God has the right, and ability, to make these decisions, residing outside of time and space, within time and space, and capable of acting within his created universe in any way he sees fit. I don't understand it, and don't think I ever will. I don't need to.

If God is who I believe him to be, he knows the ultimate end result of the actions he takes, as well as those that you and I do. Free-will and predestination are in this somehow, but either way, he is the Creator. Good, as we understand it, does not address the ultimate good / bad - heaven and hell - which is understood and defined by God. We are limited in our understanding of the ultimate good / bad. We are limited because we reside within time and space, and are constrained in this place in our abilities and understandings of this place.

Also, why do you think God killed Job's family?

We have all earned death because of our sin. Nobody can get past this evil thing, without help.

was that coherent, you know, other than being 'illogical'?

Answer 3

Every life has worth, and I would need a very compelling reason to take the life of anyone, especially a child. The lives of others would have to be directly at risk for me to take such action. If a child was packing an AK-47 and shooting people at random on the school playground, I'd feel justified in killing him to protect lives, but I wouldn't be at all happy about it.

In the light of human morality, the Abrahamic God is not a moral god. He does whatever he pleases, favoring those he pleases and destroying those who displease him. That's called a despot, not a paragon of moral excellence.

Stephen J: "God didn't kill Job's family. He allowed Satan to do that bc Satan wanted to test Job's faith, and God permitted him to do so."

A sin of omission.

To quote the Catholic Encyclopedia:
"Omission is here taken to be the failure to do something one can and ought to do. If this happens advertently and freely a sin is committed. Moralists took pains formerly to show that the inaction implied in an omission was quite compatible with a breach of the moral law, for it is not merely because a person here and now does nothing that he offends, but because he neglects to act under circumstances in which he can and ought to act."

Answer 4

"Rationalizations", hmm? Well, I'm glad to see you have an open mind.

I wouldn't. I'm not God, and I freely admit that I may be wrong. Look at it from God's perspective, though - none of those people have ceased to exist. If you believe in God, and you believe in the eternal soul, then every one of them is still around. Yes, they died, and it seems traumatic to us. But assuming that there is a God, and that those people still exist, how much do you think their death matters to them now, several thousand years after it happened? And if it doesn't matter to them, why would it matter to you?

Again - I don't have the right to take a life, for lots of reasons. The primary one for the purpose of this thread is that, while I do believe, there's always the possibility that I'm wrong. That possibility doesn't exist for God. So, yeah - the rules don't apply to Him in the same way.

One final point: you have a choice here. Either God exists, and did those things (yes, Satan "did" it, but God allowed it, so the culpability is still there) - in which case He is as justified in doing that as we would be in causing a little pain to fix a cavity that would cause more pain later on. Or, God doesn't exist, in which case He didn't do those things, so why are you so concerned about it?

Answer 5

I agree with your sentiment. I have asked people before why, if God is so good, he allows such atrocities that take the lives of small children, or kill a mother of three on her way home from the grocery store. Answer: to teach a lesson or test a person's faith. So it's okay for an innocent to die in pursuit of a "religious exam", like God checking up on his employees? Doesn't sound right when you put it that way, does it. Double standard, all the way.

Answer 6

there is not any god to do those issues, so, get that out of your head and you will experience lots extra useful. Theists tell that god created this earth for people, yet god did not provide the people lots habitable land. So, people build thier properties on the foot of the mountains and by potential of the sea the place those organic activities take place. i don't think of there is one sq. foot of land in all the earth the place some style of organic catastrophe won't kill you. people have allways theory they chanced on that place and then they run out of water and pass. The crulest comedian tale this non-god ever pulled on people became giveing them an ocean and that they are in a position to't drink the water.

Answer 7

First, God didn't kill Job's family. He allowed Satan to do that bc Satan wanted to test Job's faith, and God permitted him to do so.

God killed everyone on Earth in the Flood bc He saw that they all were evil, including the children. Evil parents won't discipline their children or hold them to any standard of conduct, therefore, their children will become corrupt and evil. God was preventing this from happening by killing the children as well. It's regrettable, but that's what sin does, it's just that destructive. It isn't an issue of the ends justifying the means, we are all sinners and we deserve to die, even at nine years old, I deserved death for my sins.

You say goodness isn't a characteristic. This isn't true. God is by definition good, and He can't do anything that isn't good. To tell God that He's doing something wrong is foolish, who are you to tell God what to do? God defines morality, we can rely on His definition bc He has remained consistent.

Let the atheist denials begin.

Answer 8

"Satan did all those horrible things to Job. God made good out of evil."

God PERMITTED Satan to do so, in order to prove a point. God could have kept it from happening, but CHOSE not to.


Edited to add:

A note to PaulCyp: I wasn't referring to God choosing not to stop HUMANS from doing something, I was referring to God not stopping SATAN from doing something to Job's family.

With regards to this comment:

"The reason it is morally wrong for human beings to kill one another is that authority over life and death belongs to God alone."

So doctors and paramedics who save peoples' lives on a daily basis are going against God's will?

If you were hit by a bus tomorrow, or if someone you loved were hit by a bus, would you want the doctors to operate and stop internal bleeding and repair the injuries, or would you tell them not to intervene because the "authority over life and death belongs to God alone"?

If your rationale for belief is "because it's God's will" then it applies to ALL situations. You don't get to invoke it in some situations and not in others.

Answer 9

The reason it is morally wrong for human beings to kill one another is that authority over life and death belongs to God alone. God is not "wrong" to exercise authority that is rightfully His. We are wrong to usurp authority that belongs to God alone.

To answer your question - no - the end does not justify the means.

As for God allowing evil to occur when He "could stop it", in fact He cannot stop the evil perpetrated by human beings. He certainly has the power to do so; but doing so would reverse His creation of human beings. We would no longer have free will, which means we would no longer have moral capacity, which means we would merely be smarter than average animals, and as such would not be created in God's image and likeness, and would therefore not have access to eternal life.
.

Answer 10

What in the hell kind of question is that? me personally no I wouldn't. A child's life is worth more than a thousand lives and if those 1000 thousand people are not already in tuned with God then there salvation is on them