Is the moral of the Samson tale that suicide is OK as long as you take lots of unbelievers down with you?

Question

I agree that the parallels with current religious radicals is frightening.

Answer 1

That's what just happened in Pakistan.

Answer 2

The moral of the Samson tale is that there is trouble when a good Jewish boy gets mixed up with a gentile girl!
It was used to help keep the Jewish identity when the people of Israel were in captivity in Babylon and there was a lot of pressure of them to assimilate.

Answer 3

i presumed it develop right into a narrative of ethical weak spot and the way temptation can deliver even the mightiest down. remember through fact Samson fell to temptation Israel remained certain by employing the Philistines. Or would not that tournament your smear marketing campaign. additionally why do you adult men consistently element out Hebrew (Jewish) memories to circulate after Christianity. won't be able to you detect something in the Christian writings of the recent testomony? remember the Biblical literalists you adult men try trash are and consistently have been Gentiles.

Answer 4

Sigh. . .

Actually. the Bible would teach as a whole that Samson was a pretty rotten guy. . .practically everytime you turn around in the story he is dong something he shouldn't be doing. . .

On his death though, it is hard to say if it is actually a suicide (suicide defined as self-murder, not simply as killing yourself, there is a difference) If it was suicide, then he murdered himself as he killed enemies of his country. (but I don't think this could really be classed as self-murder. . .) Leaving his death out of it, it was a military event. Bringing his death into it. it was still totally different from a muslim terrorist, who blows himself up really for the sake of killing himself in combat, because he is taught that if he dies in war against the infidels. . . well, he gets a big reward up in paridise. . .

This is different from a captured soldier who snatches a gun and goes down shooting. . . which is more like what Samson did. . . . .he was supposed to help the nation. . . and he certainly did that. . .


To put a different spin on it:
The asker of this question seems to be an athiest. And as such probably believes in evolution. So as a logical conclusion of his apparent world view, killing anyone for any reason in any way is fine, you would just be demonstrating survival of the fittest (and if it is a suicide attack. . . well you mustnot have been the fittest) and since you are a just an animal, you would just be a part of the process of natural selection..........

Answer 5

In some Eastern parts, the popularity of magically vanishing Bin Laden figures, who emerge from undistinguished lives to break conventional laws in order to save the world, offers another suggestion of how deeply Westernised Arab culture has become.

Let no-one claim, then, that suicide bombing is alien to the West. It is a recurrent possibility of Europe’s heritage. What needs emphasizing, against the snapshot thinking of the journalists, is the absence of a parallel strand in Islamic thinking. For Islam, suicide is always forbidden; some regard it as worse than murder.[65] Many Biblical stories are retold by Islam, but the idea of suicidal militancy is entirely absent from the scriptures. Saul’s suicide is not present in the Koran, nor do we find it in Tabari’s great Annals (which wish simply to record that he died in battle).[66] The Koranic Jonah does not ask to be pitched overboard, and Job does not pray for death. Similarly, the suicidal istishhad of Samson is absent from the Koran and Hadith, no doubt in line with their insistence on the absolute wickedness of suicide. The same Islamic idealism that cannot accept David’s seduction of Bathsheba, or Lot’s incest, has here airbrushed out Samson’s killing of the innocent and his self-destruction.

http://www.masud.co.uk/islam/ahm/moonlig...


Here are Buruma and Margalit, in their important study of Westernised anti-Westernism:

Bin Laden’s use of the word ‘insane’ is more akin to the Nazis’ constant use of fanatisch. Human sacrifice is not an established Muslim tradition. Holy war always was justified in defence of the Islamic state, and believers who died in battle were promised heavenly delights, but glorification of death for its own sake was not part of this, especially in the Sunni tradition. […] And the idea that freelance terrorists would enter paradise as martyrs by murdering unarmed civilians is a modern invention, one that would have horrified Muslims in the past. Islam is not a death cult.[67]

Answer 6

I seriously doubt that the "tricks" with "Homeless Security" would allow Samson to board an airliner Today if they learned HIS "Religious Philosophy"!

Answer 7

Wow, good analogy, I never thought of Sammy as a suicide killer, but he was.

Unlike Samson, my hair is not growing back

Answer 8

A challenging question. I would suggest that, like Abraham offering to sacrifice his son, we need to know the voice of the Almighty, and follow it, for only He knows exactly what is right in many difficult situations!

Answer 9

There are many things that are apparently OK to do, as long as you take out a lot of unbelievers, for example: it's OK to stop infant sacrifice by killing all adults, children and infants.

Answer 10

First of all it's not a tale. Morning Jack A $ $.

Answer 11

No that's not the moral of the story. The moral was he didn't listen to God and ended up in the situation he was in.