₦airaland Forum

MaxInDHouse:
May the true God bless you again and again for this thought provoking question!🙂

Back in those days there wasn't anything like boundaries that nations agreed upon and so the only way people claim territories is through war. This means any nation that has the greatest army has the right to choose wherever they want to stay.

So it's by that standard they were all living back then therefore when they heard that a nation is coming to claim their land and all the things the God of that nation has done in the past to Egypt the then world power and other strong nations what do you think they ought to do?

Remember there was nothing like agreement on boundaries o!

Those Muslims aren't coming to take possession of a certain territory otherwise people would have asked them to choose where they want to stay and give it to them for the sake of peace rather they want to force their beliefs on everyone so their own case is not about land as the Israelites were commanded by the Almighty God to take possession of a certain place!🙂

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If the Canaanites, Amorites, Jebusites, Hivites and Hittites were already inhabiting their respective territories, what exactly are you talking about when you say nations fought to claim land?

[Were these people fighting one another over territory, or were the Israelites coming to take land that others already occupied?

Abraham was promised Canaan by Yahweh, but the people living there were never part of that agreement. They weren't consulted, and the Bible doesn't record Yahweh informing them that their land had been promised to Abraham's descendants. How did Abraham's private covenant become a legitimate claim against people who knew nothing about it?

Imagine I tell you that Kaoru has promised me your house. Would that suddenly make your house mine? Would you be a terrorist for refusing to surrender it? If not, why should the same principle change simply because the story is in the Bible?

^{Bear in that you don't even know what or who Kaoru is}

The issue isn't whether ancient people fought wars. It's whether winning wars, or claiming divine permission, makes taking another people's land morally justified.

You cannot condemn one group for doing something [terrorists] while excusing another group for the same thing simply because your scripture approves of one and condemns the other.

This is precisely why I keep referring you people to the actual biblical narrative. Genesis 23 shows Abraham purchasing a burial plot from Ephron the Hittite. Joshua describes the conquest of territories already inhabited by other peoples. These details matter. You cannot selectively read the Bible, ignore the uncomfortable parts, and then claim you've answered an argument you haven't even understood.

PART EIGHT: CONTRADICTIONS AND THE CLAIM OF BIBLICAL INFALLIBILITY

Christians frequently describe the Bible as the perfect word of an all-knowing God. Yet the text contains accounts that disagree, genealogies that differ, and theological tensions that cannot all be reconciled without interpretation. If the Bible is presented as an infallible revelation, these differences demand an explanation.

Consider the death of Judas.

Matthew 27:5 says Judas threw the silver into the temple, left, and hanged himself. Acts 1:18 describes Judas acquiring a field with the reward of his wickedness and falling headlong, with his body bursting open.

Christian apologists often argue that the accounts describe different stages of the same event: Judas hanged himself, and his body later fell. That scenario is conceivable, but neither text explicitly supplies the complete sequence. The reconciliation is an interpretation constructed to make the accounts fit together.

Now consider the genealogies of Jesus. Matthew 1 traces Jesus' ancestry through David's son Solomon, while Luke 3 traces the line through David's son Nathan. The genealogies also differ in numerous names and details. Some Christians argue that one genealogy follows Joseph's legal ancestry while the other follows Mary's biological ancestry, although Luke itself identifies Joseph in its genealogy. That proposed solution is not stated plainly in the text.

These are not merely differences in English translation. They are differences between the accounts themselves.

The problem is not that every difference automatically disproves Christianity. The problem is the standard being applied. If two accounts from ordinary historical sources disagreed, readers would examine the differences and consider whether the authors were mistaken, using different traditions, or pursuing different theological purposes. Biblical accounts deserve the same scrutiny.

Instead, the doctrine of infallibility often determines the conclusion before the evidence is examined. When passages agree, agreement is presented as proof of divine inspiration. When they disagree, explanations are developed to preserve the doctrine. This approach makes the claim difficult to test because no possible textual result is allowed to count against it.

A text that can never be wrong regardless of what it says is not being evaluated critically. It is being protected from criticism.

There is also a distinction between explaining a discrepancy and demonstrating that a text is divinely inspired. Even if two accounts can be reconciled, that does not establish supernatural authorship. Human writers can tell compatible stories, and historians routinely assess sources that overlap without being identical.

The Bible's claim to infallibility cannot be established by assuming that every apparent contradiction must have a hidden solution. That assumption protects the doctrine; it does not prove it.

If Christians want the Bible recognised as the flawless communication of an all-knowing deity, they must show why that explanation fits the evidence better than the ordinary historical explanation: that its writings emerged from human authors, traditions, and theological perspectives.

The burden of proof belongs to the claim of perfection. The reader is not obligated to invent missing events or undocumented family relationships to rescue it.

A book does not become infallible because its readers have decided that it must never be allowed to fail.

PART SEVEN: WHO DECIDED WHICH BOOKS SPEAK FOR GOD?

Christians often speak of the Bible as though it arrived as one complete, divinely assembled book. It did not. The Bible is a collection of writings produced across different periods, by different authors, in different historical circumstances. Its present form is the result of a long process of composition, transmission, selection, and religious debate.

That raises a fundamental question: if the Bible is God's authoritative message to humanity, how did human beings determine which writings belonged in it?

The books of the Hebrew Bible emerged from Israelite and Jewish religious traditions over centuries. The New Testament writings appeared later, within early Christian communities. The four Gospels, the letters attributed to Paul, and other Christian writings circulated separately before a widely recognised collection took shape.

Early Christians did not all use precisely the same collection of writings. Different communities valued different texts, and some writings were disputed. Church leaders considered factors such as a text's connection to the apostles, its consistency with accepted teaching, and its use across Christian communities.

By the fourth century, lists corresponding to the present twenty-seven-book New Testament had appeared. Athanasius's Festal Letter of 367 CE is the earliest surviving list that matches the current New Testament collection exactly. Regional councils, including Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397, also supported lists containing these books.

These events did not mean that a single council invented the Bible or selected every book at once. Canon formation was gradual, and different Christian traditions still disagree about the boundaries of the Old Testament. Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Bibles do not all contain exactly the same books.

But the central problem remains: the collection Christians call the word of God was recognised and transmitted through historical human communities making judgments about religious authority.

Christians argue that these communities were guided by the Holy Spirit. Yet that explanation is itself a theological claim. The historical evidence can show that church leaders debated, accepted, rejected, and transmitted writings. It cannot independently demonstrate that a supernatural being guided their decisions.

How, then, can a Christian establish that the accepted books are divinely inspired without first relying on the authority of the religious tradition that accepted them? If the church's authority is justified by the Bible, but the Bible's authority is justified by the church's recognition of it, the argument risks going in a circle.

The problem becomes even sharper when Christians disagree about which books belong in scripture. If the collection is a universally binding message from God, why do major Christian traditions preserve different canons? Declaring one collection correct does not resolve the dispute. Evidence is needed to establish why that collection, rather than its alternatives, has divine authority.

The historical process does not prove that every biblical statement is false. It does expose the weakness of treating the Bible's status as self-evident. The book's authority is precisely what must be demonstrated, not assumed.

A collection of writings does not become the unquestionable word of a deity simply because religious authorities eventually agree to call it scripture.

PART SIX: WHEN POLITICAL POWER SPEAKS FOR GOD

When a religion gains political power, its teachings can become more than matters of personal belief. They can shape laws, education, public morality, and the boundaries of acceptable thought. Christianity's history offers a clear example of how religious authority can become entangled with political authority.

In the fourth century, Roman emperors began giving Christianity increasing institutional support. Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, where bishops debated disputes over the relationship between the Father and the Son. The council produced a creed intended to establish a common doctrinal position. Later, imperial support helped establish Nicene Christianity as the official religious standard of the Roman Empire.

The important point is that Christian doctrine developed through human debates, councils, and institutions operating within a changing political environment. Bishops argued over interpretations of Jesus' identity. Emperors intervened in religious disputes. Councils formulated statements of belief, while competing positions were condemned as heretical.

If Christianity's central doctrines were simply self-evident truths revealed by an unquestionable God, why did their authoritative formulation require prolonged disputes among human beings, followed by councils and political enforcement?

Christians have theological answers to this question. They argue that councils clarified truths already present in revelation and that political support did not make those truths true. But that response still depends on accepting the underlying claim that Christianity possesses divine guidance. The historical record itself establishes human deliberation and institutional authority, not supernatural supervision.

The same problem appears when religious institutions claim the right to determine what everyone should believe or how everyone should live. An institution's power to punish dissent does not make its doctrine true. It demonstrates that the institution has acquired the means to enforce its doctrine.

This distinction becomes especially important when examining the history of Christian expansion. In different periods and places, Christian authorities worked alongside rulers to suppress rival religious practices, restrict dissent, and impose religious conformity. European colonialism later created further opportunities for Christian institutions to influence societies through education, law, and government. The details differed, and Christian individuals and communities also resisted oppression. But the broader lesson remains: religious authority has often been strengthened by political structures.

None of this requires the claim that every Christian belief originated as a political invention. It exposes a more fundamental problem: the historical success of a doctrine and the truth of that doctrine are two different questions.

A government can make a religion dominant. A council can define orthodoxy. A church can label dissent heresy. None of these actions supplies independent evidence that the religion's God exists.

Christianity asks humanity to accept an extraordinary conclusion: that its doctrines express the truth about the creator of the universe. That conclusion cannot be established by pointing to the institutions that declared those doctrines authoritative or the rulers who helped enforce them.

Political power can make people obey a religious claim. It cannot turn that claim into a fact.

PART FIVE: HOW CHRISTIANITY BECAME A UNIVERSAL RELIGION

Christianity claims to reveal the one true God for all humanity. Yet the religion emerged in a specific historical setting, among a particular people, and spread through recognisable human institutions. How did a faith rooted in first-century Jewish society become a global religion whose followers claim that everyone, everywhere, is answerable to its God?

The historical record offers an answer, and it has little to do with the demonstration of a supernatural truth.

Christianity emerged in the first century CE within the Jewish world of Roman-ruled Judea. Its earliest followers drew on Jewish scriptures and messianic expectations. It was not born as a universal religion independent of its cultural environment. Its understanding of God, prophecy, salvation, and the messiah developed within that world.

Its expansion depended on human activity: travelling preachers, growing communities, trade routes, and the networks of the Roman Empire. A decisive shift came in the fourth century, when Emperor Constantine gave Christianity imperial support. Later, Emperor Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity the empire's official religious standard.

This was a transformation in political status. Christianity moved from a movement that had experienced persecution to a faith backed by imperial authority. Political power helped determine which form of Christianity received official support and which religious practices were marginalised.

Centuries later, European colonial expansion carried Christianity into Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Missionaries established churches and schools, while colonial governments reshaped local institutions and social life. In some places, conversion was accompanied by coercion, cultural suppression, and the denigration of indigenous religions. Africans and other colonised peoples also interpreted, adapted, and reshaped Christianity themselves, producing churches and movements that were not simply copies of European Christianity.

These are historical processes, not evidence of a deity revealing himself to the world.

Christianity's global expansion exposes the human machinery behind its claim to universal authority. Its rise can be traced through missionary work, imperial patronage, political institutions, and colonial power. The religion's dominance is therefore not proof that its God exists, that its scriptures are divinely inspired, or that every competing religion is false.

Consider the problem. If the spread of a religion demonstrates its truth, then the historical success of other religions would establish their claims too. Yet religions make contradictory claims about gods, revelation, salvation, and humanity's origins. Their growth cannot make all those incompatible claims true.

Christianity's worldwide presence tells us that Christianity became enormously influential. It does not establish that the universe belongs to the Christian God. Treating historical dominance as evidence of divine endorsement confuses the power of human institutions with the existence of a supernatural being.

The Christian claim is much larger than the historical evidence used to support it. A religion can conquer institutions, influence laws, reshape cultures, and win millions of adherents without demonstrating that its deity exists.

The conclusion is clear: Christianity's rise to global dominance is evidence of its historical and political success, not evidence of its divine truth. Its claim to be the universal religion must stand on evidence for its supernatural assertions, not on the number of people who came to believe them or the power of the institutions that spread them.

A belief does not become a fact because an empire adopts it, a missionary preaches it, or a continent inherits it.

PART FOUR: A NAME ABOVE EVERY NAME: WHAT DOES THE BIBLE ACTUALLY ESTABLISH?

The central question is simple: Does the Bible prove that Jesus is supreme over every other deity, or does it merely declare him supreme?

Philippians 2:9–11 states that God exalted Jesus and gave him “the name which is above every name,” declaring that every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Christians use this passage to support Jesus’ universal supremacy. But the passage does not independently establish that supremacy. It records a theological declaration made within a text whose authority is itself part of the dispute. Using the Bible’s claim as proof of the Bible’s claim is circular reasoning: the conclusion is assumed before it is demonstrated.

This distinction matters. A religious text can declare its deity supreme, but declaration alone does not establish a universal fact. The same standard must apply to every religion, including Christianity.

There is also a difference between claiming that Jesus has supreme authority and claiming that a particular divine name is inherently superior to every other name. Philippians addresses Jesus’ exalted status; it does not establish that the English word God outranks the names used for deities in other traditions.

The name Jesus itself passed through languages: Greek Iēsous, Latin Iesus, and eventually English Jesus. The underlying Hebrew or Aramaic name is commonly rendered Yeshua. This linguistic history does not disprove Christian theology, but it shows why the argument cannot rest on the supposed superiority of one English word or pronunciation. The claim concerns Jesus’ identity and authority, not the magical power of a particular spelling.

That leaves the actual question unanswered: What independent evidence demonstrates that Jesus holds authority over every deity, rather than Christianity simply asserting that he does?

Christians would not accept another religion’s declaration of supremacy as proof merely because it appears in that religion’s sacred text. They should not expect others to accept the Christian declaration on that basis either.

The Bible establishes what its authors proclaimed about Jesus. It does not, by that proclamation alone, establish that every competing religious claim is false.

Until independent evidence supports the alleged universal hierarchy, “a name above every name” remains a Christian theological claim, not a demonstrated fact about the universe.

PART THREE: THE TOWER OF BABEL AND THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES

Genesis 11 presents a story familiar to many believers: humanity originally spoke one language, but God confused their speech at Babel, causing people to misunderstand one another and scatter across the earth.

The story is often treated as the explanation for the existence of different human languages. But does the biblical account correspond to what historical linguistics tells us?

I reject the literal claim that God suddenly created all human languages at Babel. The historical evidence points to the gradual development of languages and their relationships across generations.


WHAT DOES GENESIS CLAIM?

Genesis 11:1 states that the whole earth had one language and one speech. The people settled in Shinar, built a city and began constructing a tower. God then confused their language and scattered them.

The narrative presents divine intervention as the explanation for linguistic division.

If interpreted literally as the origin of all human languages, this is a historical claim. It should be examined against historical evidence, rather than accepted simply because it appears in scripture.


LANGUAGES HAVE HISTORIES

Languages change over time. Pronunciation shifts, vocabulary changes, grammar develops, and communities that become separated can gradually develop distinct ways of speaking.

Historical linguists investigate these processes by comparing vocabulary, sound patterns and grammatical structures. Such comparisons reveal relationships between languages that developed from common ancestors.

Hebrew, for example, belongs to the Canaanite branch of Northwest Semitic. Its linguistic features connect it to other languages of the ancient Levant. This relationship is established through comparative linguistics and ancient inscriptions, not simply through the biblical account.

This matters to our earlier discussion of Abraham. Genesis places his family in Mesopotamia before describing their migration to Canaan, yet the biblical narrative is written in Hebrew. The language of the text does not establish the language Abraham historically spoke.

Nor does the Bible provide an independently verifiable account of when Abraham's supposed descendants began speaking Hebrew.


DOES BABEL EXPLAIN EVERY LANGUAGE?

The difficulty with a literal interpretation of Babel is that historical linguistics reconstructs the relationships and development of languages through evidence. The biblical story does not identify humanity's supposed original language through vocabulary, grammar or any other independently verifiable linguistic data.

Simply declaring that God confused human speech does not explain the linguistic relationships scholars can investigate.

Some biblical interpreters understand Babel as a theological story about human pride, political ambition and the scattering of a population, rather than a scientific explanation for the origin of every language. These interpretations differ from the claim that God suddenly created all languages at one historical moment.

The distinction matters. A symbolic interpretation may communicate a religious message, but it does not establish the literal account as historical fact.


WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE BIBLICAL GOD?

The issue extends beyond language.

Genesis presents a particular explanation for human linguistic diversity. Historical linguistics investigates language through comparative evidence. The fact that a sacred text offers an explanation does not establish that the explanation is historically accurate.

The same principle applies to the biblical claims about Abraham, Yahweh and divine supremacy. Each claim must be distinguished from the evidence available to support it.

If a Christian argues that God created all languages at Babel, quoting Genesis establishes what the text says. It does not independently establish that the event happened as described.

PART TWO: THE NAME, THE LANGUAGE, AND THE GOD OF ANCIENT ISRAEL

In Part One, I challenged the assumption that the Bible's declaration of divine supremacy establishes that supremacy as a universal fact. Now I want to examine a more fundamental question: who was the biblical deity before Christianity presented him to the world as the universal God of humanity?

To answer that question, we must examine the biblical narrative itself, beginning with Abraham.

The reason is straightforward. Christianity presents its God as the creator of humanity, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and ultimately the God of every nation. Yet the biblical narrative locates the earliest patriarchal stories within a particular geographical, linguistic and cultural world.

If the claim is that this deity has always possessed universal authority, we should be able to examine how the biblical text identifies him, how that identity develops within the narrative, and what the historical evidence establishes about the world in which the story is set.


ABRAHAM AND THE PROBLEM OF UR

According to Genesis 11:31, Terah took Abram, his son, and his family from Ur of the Chaldeans with the intention of travelling to Canaan. They stopped at Haran. Genesis 12:1 subsequently presents Yahweh calling Abram to leave his country and his relatives for a land that God would show him.

The conventional historical identification of Ur places it in southern Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq.

This matters because Mesopotamia had its own linguistic history. Akkadian, a Semitic language, was widely used in ancient Mesopotamia, while Sumerian had a much older history in the south. Hebrew, by contrast, belongs to the Canaanite branch of Northwest Semitic and emerged as a distinct language in the Levant.

These are not interchangeable linguistic identities.

The biblical narrative is written in Hebrew, but that does not establish that Abraham spoke Hebrew. The language of a text and the language spoken by the people described in it are separate historical questions.

If Abraham was a historical person who lived in southern Mesopotamia before Hebrew emerged as a distinct language, the assumption that he spoke Hebrew requires an explanation. The biblical text does not supply a historical account of his language, nor does an independently verified contemporary inscription identify Abraham and establish the language he spoke.

This is the first distinction that must be maintained throughout the discussion: the biblical narrative gives us a Hebrew account of Abraham, not independent proof that Abraham was a Hebrew-speaking historical individual.


WHAT WAS ABRAHAM'S ORIGINAL NAME?

Genesis 17:5 states that Abram's name was changed to Abraham. The text explains the change through the promise that Abraham would become the father of a multitude of nations.

The Hebrew narrative commonly associates Abram with the idea of an exalted father and explains Abraham through a wordplay involving a multitude.

But an explanation within a Hebrew text does not automatically establish the original etymology of a name belonging to someone supposedly raised in another linguistic environment.

Ancient Near Eastern records contain personal names with elements comparable to those in Abram. Such parallels demonstrate that related naming traditions existed among ancient Semitic-speaking populations. They do not establish that the biblical Abraham has been independently identified in those records.

The distinction matters.

If Abraham lived in Mesopotamia, what name did he originally bear? Was it the name preserved in Genesis? Was it a form belonging to a broader Semitic naming tradition? Was the name presented in a form adapted to the Hebrew narrative?

We have no independent evidence that settles these questions for the biblical Abraham.

What we do have is a Hebrew text that presents the name and supplies a theological explanation for its transformation. That is evidence of how the biblical narrative understands the name. It is not independent confirmation of Abraham's original identity.

I am claiming that a Mesopotamian person could never bear a name associated with another language. People can carry names across linguistic boundaries. My point is more precise: the biblical explanation of Abraham's name cannot establish his original language, cultural identity, or historical existence.

Believers' claim require evidence beyond the narrative itself.


WHICH GOD DID ABRAHAM KNOW?

The question becomes even more interesting when we examine the name of the deity.

The Hebrew Bible uses YHWH, conventionally rendered Yahweh, as the personal divine name associated with Israel's God. It also uses titles such as El Shaddai, translated in many English Bibles as “God Almighty.”

Genesis 12:1 presents Yahweh speaking to Abram. Genesis 15:7 presents the deity identifying himself as the LORD who brought Abram out of Ur. Genesis 17:1, however, introduces the designation El Shaddai.

Then we encounter Exodus 6:2–3, where God tells Moses that he appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai but was not known to them by the name YHWH.

Here is the difficulty: Genesis repeatedly uses YHWH in its accounts of Abraham, while Exodus presents a statement that distinguishes the patriarchs' knowledge of God under the designation El Shaddai from the name YHWH.

The two passages create a textual tension that deserves examination.

Scholars have offered explanations involving different literary and theological traditions within the Bible. Such explanations can help us understand how the text developed. But they do not turn the biblical narrative into an independently verified record of what Abraham personally called his deity.

We must distinguish between the name the biblical author uses, the name the narrative says a deity revealed, and the name a historical person actually knew.

Those are three different questions.


DID YAHWEH SPEAK HEBREW TO ABRAHAM?

Genesis presents God communicating with Abraham, but it does not explicitly identify the spoken language of those encounters.

If Abraham lived in Mesopotamia and spoke an early Semitic language other than Hebrew, the biblical narrative leaves us without a historical explanation of how the supposed communication occurred.

A believer can propose that God spoke Abraham's language or communicated in some other way. But the text does not establish the historical language of the encounter, and such explanations do not independently demonstrate that the encounter happened.

The important point is that the Hebrew wording of Genesis cannot serve as proof that Abraham heard Hebrew. It is the language in which the account has been preserved.

This distinction becomes even more significant when we consider the Tower of Babel.

Genesis 11 presents humanity as originally speaking one language before God confuses human speech and scatters the population. The narrative is often interpreted as an explanation for the existence of different languages.

Historical linguistics, however, investigates languages through their relationships, grammatical structures, sound changes and written records. Hebrew's linguistic history places it within the Canaanite branch of Northwest Semitic. It did not simply appear as an isolated language without relationships to the surrounding languages.

Consequently, a literal interpretation of Babel as the sudden origin of every language conflicts with the evidence for gradual linguistic development.

That does not mean every symbolic or theological interpretation of Babel is identical to the literal interpretation. It means that the claim that the story provides a historical account of the sudden creation of all languages must be evaluated against the evidence rather than accepted because it appears in Genesis.


FROM A PARTICULAR RELIGIOUS TRADITION TO A UNIVERSAL CLAIM

We now arrive at the larger question.

The biblical account presents Yahweh as the God who calls Abraham, makes a covenant with him, establishes a relationship with his descendants, and eventually becomes central to the religious identity of Israel.

Christianity inherits this tradition and interprets it through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, presenting the biblical God as the universal creator and Jesus as Lord of all.

But the existence of this theological progression within a religious tradition does not independently establish the truth of its conclusions.

PART ONE: WHO DECIDED THAT THE BIBLICAL GOD HAS A NAME ABOVE EVERY OTHER DEITY?

Someone wrote:

“Atheist wants to preach Bible but refused to figure out why the Bible God built a name that's above the name of all other deities!”

There is something revealing about this statement. It assumes that the Bible's declaration of divine supremacy is an established fact, that the supremacy in question requires no independent demonstration, and that anyone who questions it must first accept the authority of the very book whose claims are being questioned.

That is where the argument begins to fall apart.

I reject the Christian conception of God as a real deity, and I reject the claim that the Bible establishes this God's universal supremacy. I have no obligation to accept a religious assertion merely because it appears in a text, nor must I accept the conclusions of Christian theology before examining the historical and textual evidence on which those conclusions rest.

If someone claims that the biblical God possesses a name above every other deity, the responsibility is to establish why that claim is true. Repeating the claim from the Bible is not an independent demonstration of its truth.

Let us examine the matter.

A CLAIM IS NOT PROOF OF ITSELF

Imagine that a worshipper of another religion announces that their deity is superior to every other God because their sacred book says so. Would a Christian accept that declaration as sufficient evidence? Would the Christian abandon their existing beliefs simply because another religious tradition makes an equally confident claim about its deity?

Almost certainly not. The Christian would demand evidence, question the authority of the other scripture, and examine the reasoning behind the assertion.

That is precisely the standard I apply to Christianity.

A claim does not become true because a religious community believes it. It does not become universally binding because generations of worshippers have repeated it. And it does not become independently established because a sacred text presents it as a fact.

The Bible's claim about the supremacy of its God is a claim made by the Bible. The question is whether that claim is true.

These are two different things.

When Christians invoke the authority of scripture to establish the supremacy of their God, they assume that scripture possesses the authority under dispute. Unless that authority is independently justified, the argument goes in a circle: the Bible is true because it says so, and what it says is true because the Bible is authoritative.

That is a declaration of faith, not an independent demonstration.

FIRST, WHAT EXACTLY IS THE NAME?

The comment speaks of the biblical God having a name above every other deity. Before accepting the premise, we should clarify what the Bible actually says and what later Christian interpretation adds to it.

The English word God is a common noun derived from Old English gudan, with Germanic linguistic roots. It is not the personal name of the deity of ancient Israel.

The Hebrew Bible uses several terms that English translations frequently render as God or Lord. These include Elohim, El, and YHWH, the four Hebrew consonants conventionally associated with the divine name Yahweh.

These terms do not all perform the same function.

Elohim is a Hebrew term whose meaning depends on its grammatical and literary context. It can refer to Israel's God, other Gods, or divine beings. El is an ancient Northwest Semitic term for a deity and is also associated with the broader religious world of the ancient Near East. YHWH is the personal divine name associated with Israel's God in the biblical tradition.

The English word God, the Hebrew term Elohim, and the divine name YHWH therefore cannot simply be treated as interchangeable linguistic objects.

Nor does the capitalisation of the English word god establish the supremacy of its referent. Capitalisation is a convention of writing. It communicates how a word is being used; it does not certify the existence, power, or superiority of the being to which the word refers.

English speakers say God. Spanish speakers say Dios. Greek speakers say Theos. Arabic speakers say Allah. These words belong to different linguistic histories, and their use does not independently establish the truth of any particular religion's claims about the divine.

A name identifies what a community calls a being. It does not establish that the being exists, much less that it outranks every other being described in the religious traditions of humanity.

That distinction is elementary, yet it is precisely the distinction the original comment overlooks.

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE ACTUALLY CLAIM?

The comment appears to confuse two related but distinct claims: that the biblical God is superior to every other deity, and that Jesus has been given a name above every name.

Philippians 2:9–11 states that God exalted Jesus and gave him the name above every name, so that every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Let us take the passage seriously and examine what it actually establishes.

First, the passage makes a theological declaration about Jesus' exaltation. It does not independently demonstrate that the Christian conception of God is true, that Jesus possesses the status attributed to him, or that every other religious tradition is false. The passage tells us what its author declares. Establishing the truth of that declaration requires more than repeating it.

Second, there is an interesting linguistic question. The English name Jesus is not the name his contemporaries would have used in their everyday language. The name passed through Greek Iēsous and Latin Iesus before reaching its familiar English form. The underlying Hebrew or Aramaic name is commonly rendered Yeshua.

This raises a straightforward question: when Christians speak of a name above every name, are they referring to the original name, the Greek form used in the New Testament, or the English form familiar to modern worshippers?

The historical development of the name does not, by itself, disprove the theological claim. But it does demonstrate why we must distinguish a name's linguistic form from the religious status attributed to its bearer. The passage concerns the exaltation of Jesus, not the inherent superiority of a particular spelling or pronunciation.

More importantly, if the argument is that the biblical God possesses a name above every other deity, we must first establish what is meant by that statement. Are we discussing the personal name YHWH, the title God, the name attributed to Jesus, or the theological authority Christians assign to these designations?

These are different questions. Treating them as interchangeable only obscures the argument.

A name does not establish the existence of its bearer. A title does not establish superiority. And a text's declaration that a particular figure possesses supreme authority does not independently demonstrate that the declaration is true.

If the argument is that the Christian God is supreme because the Bible says so, then the Bible is being used as both the claimant and the sole judge of its own claim.

I reject that reasoning.

The question remains: who established this hierarchy of deities, and what independent evidence demonstrates that it is real?

Quoting Philippians 2:9–11 tells us what the Christian text claims about Jesus. It does not relieve anyone of the responsibility to establish why that claim should be accepted as a universal fact.


THE QUESTION CHRISTIANS MUST ANSWER

The issue is not whether Christians are entitled to believe their God is supreme. They are entitled to hold that belief.

If a Christian tells me that the Bible's God has a name above every other deity, I will ask what independently establishes that hierarchy. If the answer is that the Bible declares it, I will ask why the Bible's declaration should be accepted as universally authoritative. If the answer is that the Bible is God's word, I will ask what establishes that the Bible is God's word.

Each answer introduces another claim requiring justification.

The argument cannot be completed merely by returning to the original assertion and repeating it with greater confidence.

Nor does my refusal to accept the claim establish that I have misunderstood the Bible. I can understand what a religious text declares and reject its declaration as false. Comprehension is not agreement, and familiarity with a belief is not an obligation to accept it.

Indeed, the more seriously we examine the biblical text, the more important it becomes to distinguish its theological assertions from what historical evidence independently establishes.

That examination leads us to questions about the identity of Israel's God, the development of Hebrew, the language Abraham supposedly spoke, and the relationship between the biblical narrative and the ancient world in which it is set.

Those questions matter because a universal claim does not become historically established merely by being presented through a religious narrative.

The starting point is simple: the Bible declares the supremacy of its God, but the declaration itself does not prove that supremacy.

Before anyone demands that an atheist explain why the biblical God supposedly possesses a name above every other deity, the more fundamental question must be answered:

What establishes that this deity exists, that the claimed hierarchy is real, and that the Bible possesses the authority to declare it?

Until those claims are justified, the assertion of supremacy remains a religious claim, not an independently demonstrated fact.

And repeating a claim is not the same thing as proving it.

11. From the Covenant With Israel to the Mission to the Nations

The Bible does contain passages that extend Yahweh's concern beyond Israel.

Genesis 12:3 speaks of all the families of the earth being blessed through Abraham. Isaiah 49:6 describes a mission extending to the nations. The New Testament makes the universal dimension more explicit, particularly in Matthew 28:19, where Jesus instructs his followers to make disciples of all nations.
These passages help explain how the biblical tradition comes to support a universal religious mission.
But notice the distinction between the stages of the story.

In Genesis, Yahweh calls Abraham and establishes a covenant with him and his descendants. In the Israelite narrative, Yahweh becomes the deity who rescues Israel, gives it laws, and promises it land. In the New Testament, the mission of Jesus' followers is directed beyond Israel to the nations.

The universal mission is therefore something that the reader encounters through the development of the biblical narrative. It should not simply be assumed that every people described in the earlier books already had the same relationship with Yahweh that Israel was said to have.

The later Christian claim is that this God has always been the Creator of everyone and that the story of Israel ultimately concerns all humanity. That is a theological interpretation of the biblical narrative. It is not the same as demonstrating that every nation independently encountered Yahweh or recognized his authority before the spread of Israel's religion.

The distinction matters because the story of a deity's relationship with one people and the claim that every people must worship that deity are two different propositions.

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12. You Were Told About Yahweh. Abraham Was Called by Him.

According to Genesis 12, El Shaddai calls Abraham directly, and this is fishy because here, God spoke Akkadian to Abraham who lived in Ur, and by the way, Abram couldn't have been his name since he lived before the Hebrew language was developed .

Abraham does not first receive a missionary pamphlet, attend a religious meeting, or hear a preacher explain why he should abandon his existing religious background. In the story, Yahweh initiates the encounter.

Now consider a Christian today.

The Christian may believe that Yahweh is the deity of Abraham and that the promises made to Abraham form part of the foundation of their faith. But the Christian ordinarily learns about these events through the Bible and the people who interpret it.
A parent tells the child about God. A pastor explains the scriptures. A church teaches the doctrines. The believer reads an account of Abraham's encounter and accepts it as true.

This raises a fundamental question: What is the difference between being the person who receives a revelation and being the person who receives a report that a revelation occurred?

If Abraham's experience is taken as the model, the distinction is obvious. Abraham is the person to whom the deity speaks in the story. The later believer is the person who hears about that encounter.

The Christian may argue that God also speaks to people today, I wonder if he speaks English . That claim can be examined separately. But the existence of Abraham's experience in a sacred text does not automatically prove that every later reader has personally received the same revelation.
John 20:29 captures a related distinction. Jesus tells Thomas that he believes because he has seen, and then speaks of those who have not seen and yet believe. The passage itself recognizes a difference between belief following an encounter and belief without that same experience.

The Christian interpretation is that later believers are blessed for their faith. But the underlying epistemic distinction remains: one person may claim to have witnessed an event, while another believes the report.
The second person's belief depends on the credibility of the testimony and the reasons they have for accepting it.

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13. The Chain of Testimony

Christians could not claim to have been present when Abraham was called. They do not claim to have watched the Exodus, stood at Mount Sinai, or witnessed the covenant being made.
They believe these events occurred because they accept the biblical account and the religious tradition built around it.

This is not unusual in itself. Human beings depend on testimony for much of their knowledge. We believe that distant historical events occurred because of documents, witnesses, and evidence. We accept scientific findings because of the work of researchers whose experiments we may not have personally repeated.

But testimony can be examined. Its reliability depends on such questions as the quality of the evidence, the independence of the witnesses, the possibility of error, and whether alternative explanations have been considered.

Religious testimony deserves the same scrutiny.
A person cannot establish the truth of a claim merely by repeating that someone else said it came from God. Nor does the age of a text automatically establish that its supernatural claims are true.
The Bible contains the accounts through which Christians learn about Yahweh. It also contains the claims that Yahweh made about himself. But if the question is whether those claims are true, quoting the claims back to someone who is asking for evidence does not settle the issue.

It explains what the text says. It does not independently verify everything the text says.
The distinction is especially important when a religious claim is used to make demands on someone else.
[b]If a preacher says that God requires a person to surrender money, abandon a relationship, accept a particular authority, or submit to a particular interpretation of scripture, the preacher is making a claim about divine authority. The fact that the preacher sincerely believes the claim does not establish that the claim is true.

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14. The Problem of Competing Revelations

Consider what happens when two people from different religious traditions make incompatible claims.

One says that the God of the Bible is the only true God. Another says that their own deity is the ultimate authority. Each may appeal to sacred texts, inherited teachings, personal experiences, and the certainty of their religious community.

Both may be sincere. Both may believe that their conviction comes from a source beyond themselves.
But sincerity alone cannot establish which claim is true.

[b]The question is not whether people have the right to believe in Yahweh or whether they are entitled to find meaning in Christianity. The question is what makes the Christian claim more reliable than a competing religious claim.









All of these demonstrate that the truth of its central claims cannot be established simply by repeating those claims.

A universal religious claim requires reasons that can be examined beyond the boundaries of the community that already believes it.

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15. The God Who Promised the Land and the People Who Never Received the Promise

The question becomes even more consequential when we return to the Israelites and Canaan.

The biblical narrative says that Yahweh promised Canaan to Abraham's descendants. Later, the Israelites enter the land and fight its inhabitants.
From within the Israelite story, the conquest is understood through divine promise and command. But the people living in Canaan are not portrayed as having entered into Abraham's covenant or as having received the same promise.

If we examine the situation from their perspective, the Israelites' claim rests on a revelation they do not necessarily share.

This is not simply a question about whether the Israelites believed their Yahweh. They did. It is a question about whether their belief alone establishes a moral obligation for everyone else.

Suppose a person today declares that God has promised them someone else's home. The owner is not morally required to surrender the property merely because the claimant believes the promise is genuine.
The claimant must establish why their assertion should be accepted and why it overrides the other person's rights.

The same principle applies to a biblical narrative in which divine authority is used to justify taking land. To understand the story, we can explain what the Israelites believed and what the text says Yahweh commanded. But explaining the belief is not the same as independently establishing the moral legitimacy of the action.

This is one reason it matters to distinguish the perspective of the people telling a religious story from the perspective of those affected by the actions described in it.

The Israelites' claim to divine authorization is part of the biblical narrative. It does not automatically become independent proof for everyone who reads the narrative thousands of years later.

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16. The Difference Between a Universal Creator and an Inherited Belief

A Christian may respond that Yahweh was never merely Israel's God. He created all humanity, and Israel was simply the people through whom he chose to reveal himself.

That is a coherent statement of Christian theology. But notice that it introduces a broader claim about the meaning of the story.

The claim is that Yahweh was always the universal Creator, even when the narrative focuses on his covenant with Israel. The Christian reads the earlier story in light of the later theological understanding.
The question is whether this interpretation can be independently established or whether it is accepted primarily because the reader already believes the Bible is divinely authoritative.

This is where inherited belief becomes important.
If a person grows up in a Christian household, they are likely to encounter the Bible as sacred before they have the knowledge or independence to examine its claims. The stories of Abraham, Moses, Israel, Jesus, and the apostles become part of the person's understanding of the world.

A person raised in another religious tradition may undergo a similar process with a different sacred history.

Inheritance alone cannot distinguish truth from error, because incompatible beliefs can be inherited in the same way.

The Christian must therefore do more than say, “This is the God my religion teaches me to worship.” The question is why that teaching should be accepted as true.

Likewise, someone who rejects Christianity should not assume that every inherited belief is false merely because it was inherited. The appropriate response is to examine the evidence and the reasoning behind the claim.

The standard should be consistent.

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17. So, When Did Yahweh Become the God of Everyone?

Within the Bible, the answer depends on which part of the narrative we are examining.

In Genesis, Yahweh calls Abraham and promises blessings that will extend to the families of the earth. In the books of Moses, the relationship between Yahweh and Israel is developed through covenant, law, deliverance, and national identity. The prophets sometimes describe a wider future in which the nations acknowledge Yahweh. In the New Testament, the mission of Jesus' followers explicitly extends to all nations.

The Bible therefore contains both particular and universal dimensions. It presents Yahweh's special relationship with Israel while also providing the basis for later claims that this deity is the God of all humanity.

The historical and literary question is how those dimensions relate to one another and how later believers have interpreted them.

The philosophical question is different: what establishes that the universal claim is true?

A text can declare a deity universal. A religious community can accept that declaration. A missionary can carry it to another nation. A family can pass it to its children. Over generations, a deity associated with one religious tradition can become familiar to people across the world.

But familiarity is not proof. Widespread belief is not proof. The existence of a religious tradition is not proof that every supernatural claim made by that tradition is true.

The truth of the claim must be examined on its own merits.

The biblical story begins, in its account of Abraham, with a direct call from Yahweh. Abraham is told to leave his homeland and follow a deity who makes promises to him and his descendants. That relationship becomes central to the identity of Israel.

The Bible also preserves passages in which Yahweh is distinguished from other gods or heavenly beings, including passages whose precise meaning remains debated. It describes Israel's obligation to worship Yahweh rather than other gods, and it develops a narrative in which the deity's relationship with Israel eventually becomes the foundation of a universal religious claim.

Modern Christians inherit that claim through scripture, religious communities, teachers, parents, and personal interpretation. Some also describe experiences they understand as direct encounters with God. Those experiences and interpretations can be examined, but they should not be assumed to be identical to Abraham's experience simply because the same deity is named.

The central distinction remains simple: Abraham is described as receiving a call from Yahweh. A Christian who learns Abraham's story receives a report about that call.

Those are not the same event.

The report is not true. The deity does not exist. The Christian interpretation is incorrect. But none of their conclusions follows automatically from the fact that the story is written in a book or that a person has inherited the belief from a religious community.

The same standard should apply to every deity and every religion. A claim of divine authority does not become universally binding merely because one people believes it, writes it down, and passes it to others.

If Yahweh is truly the God of every human being, the question remains: what grounds do we have for establishing that claim beyond the testimony of the tradition that teaches it?

6. Why Command Israel to Have No Other Gods?

One of the most recognizable commandments in the Hebrew Bible appears in Exodus 20:3:

“You shall have no other gods before me.”

From a critical-historical perspective, this command must be understood within the worldview of the Ancient Near East. Rather than asserting strict philosophical monotheism; the absolute denial that other gods exist; the prohibition operates on the assumption of monolatry or henotheism: the exclusive worship of one deity while recognizing the existence of others.

The command targets an ancient audience immersed in a polytheistic environment where worshipping regional deities was standard practice. Biblical narratives repeatedly reflect this tension, portraying Israelite religion not as a static, isolated monotheism, but as a perpetual contest for allegiance:

The Golden Calf Incident (Exodus 32): Depicts syncretic or competing cultic practices during the wilderness tradition.

Prophetic Polemics (e.g., Kings and Hosea): Highlight persistent Israelite veneration of Canaanite deities such as Baal and Asherah.

Exodus 20:2 grounds the prohibition in a national covenant framework: Yahweh claims exclusive devotion because he is the deity who brought Israel out of Egypt. The text frames the obligation as a specific legal contract based on a historical claims of deliverance, rather than a universal declaration of abstract monotheism applicable to all nations.

The biblical text initially focuses on national loyalty. The conceptual shift; requiring other nations to abandon their traditional cults and accept Yahweh’s supreme authority; represents a distinct development in Israel's theological evolution.

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7. The Most High and Yahweh in Deuteronomy 32

A foundational text for understanding early Israelite divine hierarchy is Deuteronomy 32:8–9.

The passage describes Elyon (the Most High) dividing the nations and establishing their borders according to the number of heavenly beings, after which Yahweh receives Israel as his specific allotment.


Textual criticism reveals significant historical developments in this passage:

Masoretic Text (MT): Reads "sons of Israel" (bnei Yisrael).

Dead Sea Scrolls (4QDeut^q) & Septuagint (LXX): Read "sons of God" (bnei Elohim) or "angels of God" (aggelōn theou).


Textual scholars generally consider the Dead Sea Scrolls reading older. In this older reading, the text reflects an ancient divine council framework common in Canaanite mythology (such as the Ugaritic texts), where the supreme deity (El or Elyon) presides over a council of heavenly figures (bnei El), distributing nations to individual divine guardians.

This text preserves traces of a tradition where Yahweh operated as a national deity alongside other divine figures within a broader pantheon. While later editorial redactors conflated Yahweh and Elyon into a single supreme deity, literary analysis demonstrates that the underlying layer of Deuteronomy 32 reflects an earlier, stratified divine hierarchy.

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8. Psalm 82 and the Divine Assembly

Psalm 82 provides additional evidence for the divine council model in ancient Israelite thought.

The psalm opens with a dramatic scene: God (El) takes his stand in the divine assembly (adat-El) and pronounces judgment among the gods (elohim):

“I said, ‘You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High.’ But you will die like mere mortals; you will fall like every other ruler.” (Psalm 82:6–7)

Comparative religious analysis yields two main scholarly interpretations of these elohim:

The Divine Council Model (Historical-Critical Consensus): The figures are lesser supernatural being; national gods or divine guardians; who failed to administer justice on Earth. Consequently, Yahweh strips them of their immortality and absorbs their authority over the nations.

The Human Magistrate Interpretation (Traditional/Rabbinic): The figures are human judges exercising divine authority on Earth who are being condemned for corruption.

The historical language heavily favors the first reading. The Hebrew term elohim functions flexibly in biblical literature:

Plural usage: Refers to foreign deities, spirits, or members of the heavenly council.

Singular usage (with singular verbs): Refers specifically to Yahweh, the primary God of Israel.

Psalm 82 captures a transition in Israelite religious history: the dismantling of a multi-tiered pantheon in favor of an emergent monotheistic model where Yahweh absorbs the domains previously managed by lower deities.

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9. The Prince of Persia and National Guardians
The Book of Daniel expands on the concept of regional divine figures, introducing a developed angelology that mirrors intertestamental and apocalyptic literature.

In Daniel 10, a heavenly messenger describes a spiritual conflict against the "prince (sar) of the kingdom of Persia," which is resolved only when Michael, designated as "one of the chief princes" and guardian of Daniel’s people, intervenes. The messenger further references an upcoming conflict with the "prince of Greece."

These "princes" are heavenly patrons associated with specific imperial powers.

This framework demonstrates that exilic and post-exilic Jewish thought retained the idea of a territorial, supernatural order. Rather than dismissing foreign gods as simple non-entities or carved idols, apocalyptic literature categorized them as lower, often hostile supernatural entities controlling the geopolitical realm.

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10. Yahweh: From Local Deity to Universal Creator

Analyzing these passages does not reduce ancient Israelite religion to simple tribalism, but rather illustrates its complex evolution.

The Hebrew Bible contains distinct layers of tradition that exist in historical tension:

Universalist Traditions: Texts such as Genesis 1 and Deutero-Isaiah present Yahweh as the sole Creator of the cosmos and absolute master of history.

Localized/Henotheistic Traditions: Passages in Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Daniel preserve an older worldview where Yahweh’s primary role was as the specific patron deity of Israel within a populates supernatural realm.

These concepts are inherently contradictory in an ancient context; regional patron gods were frequently credited with cosmic power by their respective worshippers throughout the Ancient Near East.

Tracing these distinctions allows us to examine whether Christianity’s doctrine of the Trinity is truly monotheistic, given its belief in three distinct divine persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Although Christianity maintains that these three persons constitute one God, Judaism argues that this raises fundamental questions about the meaning and consistency of its claim to monotheism.

1. The Question We Rarely Ask

Christians are generally taught to understand the God of the Bible as the universal Creator, the God of Abraham, the God of Israel, and the God of every human being who has ever lived. This understanding is so familiar that many believers rarely stop to examine how the biblical narrative itself develops this relationship.

But let us approach the subject differently.

For the sake of this write-up, let us accept the biblical narrative on its own terms. Let us follow the story as it is presented, without beginning with the assumption that every theological claim made by later Christianity must have been understood in precisely the same way by every biblical writer.

We encounter a deity who calls a man named Abram, establishes a covenant with him, promises his descendants a land, delivers them from Egypt, gives them laws, and identifies them as his chosen people.

That raises an important question: At what point did the God who called Abraham become the God whom every human being is expected to recognize, worship, and obey?

This is not merely a question about religion spreading from one country to another. It is a question about identity, revelation, and authority. Who first encountered this deity? To whom did he reveal himself? Who was expected to recognize him? And how did people who never experienced those original encounters come to regard his claims as binding on them?
To explore these questions, we must begin where the biblical story begins its account of Abraham.

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2. Abraham Did Not Begin in a Religious Vacuum

Abraham did not emerge from nowhere. He had a family, an ancestry, a home, and a cultural background.

Genesis 11:27–31 places Abram within the family of Terah and identifies Ur of the Chaldeans as the place from which Terah's household set out. Genesis does not present Abram as a man who had already abandoned every other religious tradition after conducting a comparative study of the world's religions.

In fact, Joshua 24:2 offers a particularly revealing detail. Joshua tells the Israelites that their ancestors, including Terah, Abraham's father, lived beyond the Euphrates and worshipped other gods.

The biblical text therefore acknowledges that Abraham's family belonged to a religious environment in which other gods were worshipped before the story of Yahweh's covenant with Abraham became central to Israel's identity.

Notice the significance of this detail. Abraham's story begins within a world that the Bible itself portrays as religiously diverse. His family had an existing religious background. The narrative does not describe him as having independently examined all available deities and concluded that Yahweh was the only true God nor does it tell that some missionaries came telling him of Yahweh.

Instead, Genesis 12:1 presents the decisive event:

Yahweh, himself, tells Abram to leave his country, his kindred, and his father's house and go to a land that he will show him.

The direction of the encounter matters. In the biblical narrative, Abraham does not first travel through the ancient world preaching Yahweh to people who have never heard of him. Yahweh calls Abraham.

This is the beginning of a relationship initiated by the deity himself, according to the story.

The distinction is important because it gives us two different situations that should not automatically be treated as equivalent.

In the first situation, a deity appears to a person, addresses that person, and establishes a relationship through a direct encounter, as the Bible says happened with Abraham.

In the second situation, someone hears about that deity from another human being, accepts a religious text as authoritative, and comes to believe that the deity is also their God.

The Bible presents Abraham's experience as the first situation, however we must also realise that the person telling these stories was Moses, The character who wrote of his burial and death even after he has died .

For a Christian who learns about Yahweh through parents, a preacher, a church, or the Bible, the immediate experience is ordinarily the second.

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3. The God Who Called Abraham Made a Promise to Abraham

What follows the call is equally important.

In Genesis 12:1–3, Yahweh promises to make Abram into a great nation, bless him, make his name great, and bless the families of the earth through him. In Genesis 12:7, Yahweh promises the land to Abram's descendants.

The relationship develops through a series of specific promises. Genesis 15 presents a covenant, while Genesis 17 describes a covenant between Yahweh and Abraham's descendants, including the promise that Yahweh will be their God and that they will possess the land of Canaan.

This is not an abstract introduction to a deity who begins by addressing every nation equally. It is a story about a particular deity entering into a particular relationship with a particular man and his descendants.

The promise is transmitted through Abraham's family. Isaac inherits the covenantal line, followed by Jacob, whose descendants become the Israelites.

Exodus 3:6 continues this pattern when Yahweh identifies himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Exodus 6:7 presents the relationship in explicitly national terms: Yahweh will take the Israelites as his people, and he will be their God.

The narrative builds an identity around this relationship.

Israel belongs to Yahweh, and Yahweh is identified as the God of Israel.

This raises a question that should not be dismissed simply because modern Christianity has an answer to it: What establishes that a covenant made with Abraham and his descendants automatically creates a religious obligation for every other people on earth?

The biblical narrative can later make broader claims about Yahweh's authority. But the existence of a covenant with one group does not, by itself, demonstrate that every other group has independently received or accepted that covenant.

A promise made to Abraham is not the same thing as a direct revelation made to every person who would live thousands of years later, even if they sang Abraham's blessings are mine

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4. The Land Promise and the People Who Were Already There

The question becomes more complicated when we examine the land promised to Abraham's descendants.

Genesis 12:6 identifies Canaanites as inhabitants of the land when Abram arrives. Genesis 13:7 also refers to the Canaanites and Perizzites already living there. Genesis 23 later describes Abraham negotiating with Ephron the Hittite to purchase a burial property.

Abraham's relationship with Yahweh therefore unfolds in a land occupied by other peoples, with their own communities and established claims to the places where they live.

Yet Genesis 12:7 presents the land as something Yahweh will give to Abraham's descendants.

From the perspective of the biblical narrative, the promise comes from Yahweh. But from the perspective of the people already occupying the land, the promise is being made by a deity they are not portrayed as having personally encountered in the same way Abraham did.

The moral problem is straightforward: why should a promise made privately between a deity and one man automatically obligate other people to surrender their land?

Imagine that someone arrives in a community and declares that the land belongs to him because his god promised it to his ancestors. The inhabitants may ask who made this promise, why they should recognize that god's authority, and why a promise made without their participation should determine their future.

Simply repeating the claim does not answer those questions.
The same reasoning applies when the claim appears in a sacred text. The fact that the Bible presents the land promise as divinely authorized explains the Israelites' understanding of their actions within the narrative. It does not independently establish that the other inhabitants were morally obligated to accept the promise.

This brings us back to the larger issue. The God of Israel is introduced through a story of ancestry, covenant, national identity, and land. The universal interpretation of that God requires us to examine how the story moves beyond those original relationships.

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5. Did Yahweh Call Every believer as He Called Abraham?

Here we arrive at one of the most important distinctions in this discussion.

According to Genesis, Yahweh called Abraham. The text presents a direct divine initiative: Yahweh speaks, Abraham responds, and a relationship begins.

A Christian today may believe that Yahweh is also calling them. Some may describe personal experiences that they interpret as encounters with God. The biblical tradition itself contains stories of later encounters, including Paul's experience in Acts 9.

But a Christian cannot simply assume that every believer's experience is identical to Abraham's because both people believe in the same deity.

For most believers, the immediate chain of knowledge begins with another person. Someone tells them about the Bible. Someone explains who Yahweh is, what he supposedly did, and why they should worship him. Their understanding is then shaped by scripture, preaching, family, community, and religious interpretation.

The distinction is not that a belief transmitted through another person must be false. Much of what we know about the world comes through testimony. The distinction is that testimony is not the same as direct personal encounter, and a claim transmitted through testimony still requires grounds for believing it.

A Christian may say, “Yahweh is my God.”
But how did that person come to know this?
Did Yahweh call them in the manner described in Genesis 12? Did they independently establish the truth of the biblical account? Or did they inherit the belief from people who themselves inherited it from others?

These questions deserve honest answers.

The person who tells you about a deity is not the deity. The person who interprets a sacred text is not automatically the authority they claim to represent. And a person who believes they have understood God's wishes does not thereby establish that their interpretation is correct.

Abraham's encounter is an event described in the biblical narrative. Your knowledge of Abraham's encounter is a claim transmitted to you through that narrative. Those are two different things.

That distinction does not settle whether Yahweh exists. It does establish that believing the story of Abraham and personally experiencing what Abraham is said to have experienced are not equivalent.

6. The Fundamental Logical Problem

Consider how this claim operates in everyday life:

Person A: “God told me that you must hand over your property to me.”

Person B: “Did God tell me?”

Person A: “No. God told me to tell you.”

Person B: “Then why am I obligated to obey a command given only to you?”

This exposes the fundamental problem with appeals to private revelation. If a deity expects someone to make a decision, why should another person’s unverified claim about that deity automatically become binding on them? The more serious the demand, the stronger the justification required. No one should be expected to surrender their home, family, freedom, or life merely because another person claims to have received a message from God.

The Bible itself illustrates the danger. In 1 Kings 13:1–24, a man of God receives a direct instruction not to eat or drink in Bethel. An older prophet later claims that an angel has given him a different instruction. The man of God believes him, disobeys the original command, and dies. The narrator explicitly says the older prophet lied (1 Kings 13:18). The story raises an uncomfortable question: if even a prophet can falsely claim divine authority, what reliable method does an ordinary person have for distinguishing revelation from deception?

The problem becomes even more serious when divine claims justify violence or dispossession. In the biblical conquest narratives, the Israelites claim that Yahweh has given them the land of Canaan, already inhabited by other peoples. But from the perspective of those inhabitants, the promise was made to someone else, by a deity whose authority they were not necessarily obliged to accept. A promise made between a deity and one group does not, by itself, establish a moral obligation on another group to surrender its ancestral land.

The same principle applies today. If someone from another religion claims that God has commanded them to take your property, would you consider that claim sufficient? If not, what makes a similar claim acceptable when it appears in your own sacred text? The fact that a command is attributed to God does not independently establish that God issued it, that the messenger understood it correctly, or that the command is morally justified.

There is also an irony in how modern believers invoke ancient scripture as proof of present-day divine communication. The biblical texts emerged within particular historical and cultural settings, passed through processes of transmission, translation, interpretation, and canon formation. Yet some preachers extract isolated passages from those texts and present their own interpretations as the immediate voice of God. The interpretation is human, the selection is human, and the claim that it carries divine authority is also made by a human being. Calling it revelation does not remove the need to examine it.

Ultimately, “God told me” is a claim, not proof of the claim. Faith may explain why a person believes a message, but it does not establish why someone else must obey it. Where independent verification is unavailable, moral judgment becomes more important, not less. A demand that requires another person to surrender their rights cannot acquire moral legitimacy simply because someone invokes an invisible authority.

Surrendering your moral judgment, property, or life to another person’s unverified claim is not automatically an act of faith. It may be an act of misplaced trust. Until a messenger provides adequate grounds for believing the claim, the recipient has every right to question it, reject it, and refuse to surrender their conscience to someone else’s alleged revelation.

3. Moses and Pharaoh: Claims Over Unbelieving Recipients
Reference: Exodus 5:1–2; 7–12

Moses and Aaron approached Pharaoh with a demand:
“Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go...” (Exodus 5:1)
Pharaoh’s response was entirely logical within his context:
“Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go.” (Exodus 5:2)

From Pharaoh’s perspective, two leaders of an enslaved population entered his court demanding major economic and political concessions based on a deity he did not worship or recognize.

An unverified claim of divine instruction carries zero weight with a recipient who does not share the messenger's theological framework. Authority cannot be established merely by declaring it exists; it requires external, mutually recognized validation.

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4. Jeremiah and Hananiah: Contradictory Claims of Equal Authority
Reference: Jeremiah 27–28

During the Babylonian threat, two recognized prophets delivered completely opposite instructions to the people of Judah:

Jeremiah: God commands you to submit to Nebuchadnezzar; resist and you will die.
Hananiah: God has broken the yoke of Babylon; the exiles and temple vessels will return within two years.
Both men claimed to speak for Yahweh. Both used the authority of the prophetic office. Yet their messages were mutually exclusive.

When two messengers deliver opposing instructions in God’s name, the audience faces an impossible dilemma if they rely solely on the speakers' titles. Two contradictory statements cannot both be divine truth. The presence of false claims made with absolute religious confidence means that "God told me" is functionally meaningless without verifiable proof.

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5. Rahab and the Spies: External Reports vs. Direct Revelation
Reference: Joshua 2:8–14

When the Israelite spies met Rahab in Jericho, she acknowledged:
“For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red sea for you... the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath.” (Joshua 2:10–11)
Rahab's statement confirms that news of Israel's military and supernatural history had spread over decades across the region.

Hearing news about an invading force’s deity is fundamentally different from personally receiving a divine revelation. Rahab acted on third-party reports and geopolitical survival instincts. Her account does not prove that every inhabitant of Canaan received a clear, personal revelation from Yahweh instructing them to surrender their homes.

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WHEN SOMEONE SAYS, “GOD TOLD ME”: MUST YOU BELIEVE THEM?

Religious claims rarely arrive as direct, personal epiphanies from the divine. Almost always, they arrive via an intermediary; a prophet, a leader, a written text, or a modern religious authority who insists: “God said.”

This dynamic creates a immediate epistemological problem:
To accept the message, you must trust the messenger.
The messenger's own claim of authority cannot serve as the evidence for that authority.

When accepting a message requires surrendering your property, your freedom, or your life, blind trust is not merely irresponsible; it can be fatal. The biblical narrative itself documents the severe dangers of failing to test human claims made in God's name.

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1. King Ahaz: Prophetic Warning vs. Political Reality
Reference: Isaiah 7:1–17

Faced with an impending invasion by the allied forces of Aram and Israel, King Ahaz of Judah was approached by the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah offered reassurance, warned that unbelief would lead to destruction (v. 9), and invited Ahaz to ask for a confirming sign from God. Ahaz declined to ask for a sign, after which Isaiah declared the prophecy of Immanuel.

Ahaz did not observe the divine decree himself; he only observed a prophet claiming to deliver it. Ahaz’s refusal to request a sign illustrates a key structural issue: A messenger’s assertion that "God spoke" leaves the recipient entirely responsible for evaluating whether the speaker actually represents God.

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2. The Young Prophet: Fatal Deception by a Peer
Reference: 1 Kings 13:1–32

A young man of God from Judah received a direct command from God: perform his mission in Bethel, eat no bread, drink no water, and return by a different route. The young prophet obeyed; until an older, respected prophet intercepted him.
The older prophet claimed:

“I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the LORD, saying, Bring him back with thee...” (1 Kings 13:18)

The text explicitly notes: “But he lied unto him.”
The young prophet believed the claim, altered his course, ate at the older prophet's home, and was subsequently killed by a lion on his journey back.

The older man was a recognized prophet, yet he lied.
Supernatural claims prove nothing: Claiming an "angel spoke" did not make the instruction divine.
The victim pays the price: The young prophet suffered the fatal consequences of acting on a false, unverified claim made in God's name.

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4. The Moral Test of the Hivite

To test whether this framework holds any universal moral validity, strip away your inherited identity and view the conquest through the eyes of the person on the receiving end.

Imagine you were born into a Hivite family:

* You never read the Hebrew Scriptures.

* You never heard of Moses, Abraham, or Yahweh.

* You grew up speaking your native language, working your ancestral land, and building a life within your community.

Suddenly, an armed population arrives, asserting that their deity, whom you have never heard of; gave them your home, and that you must either submit, flee, or be killed.


Would you betray your family and hand over your home because the invaders made a religious claim? Or would you defend your home and community?

If you would defend your home, you demonstrate the core flaw in the Israelite narrative: Defending one's home against an invading force is a universal human right.

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2. The Invasions of Today vs. The Invasions of Yesterday

The God owns the land argument breaks down when applied consistently to modern events.

If an armed religious organization enters a community today and announces:

"Our God has given us this territory,"

and subsequently slaughters civilians, displaces families, and destroys homes, how do we classify them? We do not debate their theology; we classify them as terrorists, extremists, invaders, and war criminals.

If they respond: "Our God is the true God, He owns the earth, and He commanded this," what is the counterargument from within a strictly religious framework?

If your response is merely, "Your God is false, but my God is real," you have not engaged in moral reasoning. You have simply declared that violence is legitimate when your group commits it, and illegitimate when another group commits it.


If "God commanded it" is sufficient to make mass slaughter morally good, then every religious extremist throughout human history possesses the exact same moral defense: "I was obeying my divine authority."

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3. The Collapse of Independent Moral Standards

Relying on divine command to justify the displacement of human populations destroys independent morality. It replaces moral evaluation with absolute obedience to authority:

*If God commands it: The act is automatically good, regardless of the human suffering caused.

*If God gives the land:** The long-standing inhabitants have no rights, regardless of how many generations they have lived there.

*If God orders total annihilation:** Destruction becomes an act of piety.

This is not moral reasoning; it is dogmatic submission. It strips away empathy for the victim and replaces it with narrative bias.

The Fallacy of Inherited Authority: Why Universal Religious Claims Cannot Grant Moral Exemption

A fundamental assumption underpins the argument that the Israelites were simply taking what was rightfully theirs: It assumes that the God of Israel is universally recognized, self-evidently sovereign, and morally unquestionable to all humanity.

That certainty exists because you are reasoning from inside a inherited religious system. It is a religious conclusion, not a neutral starting point.


1. The Historical Transmission of Religious Inheritance


Yahweh is repeatedly presented within the Hebrew Scriptures specifically as the God of Israel. Christianity later emerged from this tradition, adopted Greek and Roman institutional frameworks, aligned with imperial power, and spread globally through colonial expansion, mission education, and state enforcement.

When someone born today in Nigeria, thousands of miles and thousands of years removed from ancient Canaan, declares:

"Yahweh is the Creator of everyone, owns the earth, and can give land to whomever He pleases,"

the question of epistemological authority must be asked: How did you arrive at that conclusion?

Did this deity personally introduce himself to you? Did he speak to your ancestors in Yoruba or Igbo? Did he appear in West Africa to declare, "I am Yahweh, the God of Israel, and I am also your God"?

No. You received this claim through human intermediaries: translators, missionaries, colonial structures, churches, schools, and parents.

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To understand the arbitrary nature of this confidence, imagine history had unfolded differently:

If an empire centering on a deity named Olúwa had dominated world history, millions today would be declaring:
"How can you question Olúwa? Olúwa created the earth and gave it to His chosen people!"

The confidence with which religious claims are defended is not evidence of objective truth; it is evidence of effective cultural transmission.

* You inherited Christianity.

* Another inherited Islam.

* Another inherited Hinduism or traditional African religions.

Calling the ancient inhabitants "squatters" relies entirely on assuming your inherited deity was their legitimate owner before ever establishing why they should have recognized his authority.

7. The Defense of the Homeland

The narrative often frames Canaanite resistance as wicked opposition to God's will. But from the perspective of a Jebusite or a Hivite, resisting the Israelite army was not an act of evil; it was self-defense.

If an invading force arrives to take your city and kill your family, defending your home is a universal human response. The Canaanites had every moral and natural right to defend their property and lives against incoming military force.

Even the exceptions in the text prove this dynamic:

Rahab (Joshua 2): Acted out of sheer terror after hearing reports of Israel's military destruction of other groups.

The Gibeonites (Joshua 9): Knowing they faced total annihilation, they used deception to secure a peace treaty to avoid being slaughtered.

The Gibeonites acted precisely as any targeted population does when facing an existential military threat: they adapted, negotiated, and survived by whatever means necessary.

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8. The Psychological Trap of Narrative Bias

When modern readers read these texts, a cognitive shift often occurs. Readers naturally align themselves with the narrator, treating the Israelites as "us" and the original inhabitants as "them":

* Israelite violence is framed as "God's righteous judgment."

* Canaanite defense is framed as "rebellion against God."

* Israelite conquest is framed as "claiming an inheritance."

* Canaanite self-preservation is framed as "evil opposition."

Yet, if those same readers had been born into a Hivite, Hittite, or Jebusite family in that era, the framework would reverse entirely. The Israelites would not look like holy liberators or rightful heirs. They would look like an invading army using divine mandate to justify terror, displacement, and total destruction.

4. The World Did Not Pause During the Egyptian Enslavement

When Jacob and his seventy descendants migrated to Egypt (Genesis 46, Exodus 1), Canaan did not freeze in time.

For centuries, while the Israelites grew into a massive population and were eventually enslaved in Egypt, the peoples of Canaan continued their lives. Generation after generation of Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites were born, built cities, farmed the land, raised families, buried their ancestors, and developed their own cultures.

They were not "occupying" someone else's space; they were living in their own homeland. They were not waiting for Abraham's descendants to return and evict them.

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5. The Epistemological Problem of "Our God Said"

When the Israelites finally approached Canaan, an immediate barrier existed: language, culture, and divine revelation.

Imagine being an inhabitant of Jericho or a Hivite village. You did not stand before the burning bush. You did not witness the plagues of Egypt. You did not hear Yahweh speak at Mount Sinai. You have your own language, heritage, and understanding of the divine.
Suddenly, an armed population arrives at your border and declares: "Our God gave us this land."

From an objective standpoint, the word "Our" is the fundamental problem.

* It is their God, not yours.
* It is their claim of a revelation, which you never heard.

If an armed stranger stands on your property and claims a deity told him to take your home, you have no reason to accept his claim. A private religious claim made by an outsider carrying a weapon is not recognizable as a divine mandate, it is a military threat.

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6. The Reality of Modern Terminology: Invasion and Terrorism

If we strip away religious bias and analyze the actions described in the text through a modern analytical lens, the terminology is straightforward.

In Joshua 6:21, the text describes the fall of Jericho:
"They devoted the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword."

In the modern world, when an armed group enters a populated region, cites a religious mandate, slaughters non-combatants, destroys homes, and displaces an entire population to settle its own people, we do not call it a "divine inheritance."
We call it warfare, ethnic cleansing, and terrorism.
When violence is intentionally inflicted on civilian populations; men, women, and the elderly; to intimidate, conquer, and destroy a society, it meets the literal definition of terrorism. Using a religious justification does not change the nature of the act; it simply classifies it as religiously motivated terrorism.

2. Abraham Owned Only a Single Burial Plot

When Abraham needed a place to bury Sarah in Genesis 23, he did not assert a divine right to the land or demand that the inhabitants move. He approached Ephron the Hittite and legally purchased the field and cave at Machpelah.

Genesis 23:16–18 details the transaction: Abraham weighed out silver, and the field, cave, trees, and boundaries were legally transferred to him.

Abraham bought a private plot for a grave. He did not buy Canaan. He did not purchase the cities of the Hivites, Jebusites, or Amorites. Therefore, when later generations returned claiming total ownership over the entire territory, they were not exercising a legal property deed, they were launching an invasion.

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3. A Unilateral Promise Creates No Obligation for the Victims

The covenant detailed in Genesis 12:7, 15:18, and 17:8 was made strictly between Yahweh and Abraham’s lineage.

The Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, and Jebusites were completely absent from this agreement. They were never party to the covenant, nor were they asked to consent to it.

Consider a simple modern parallel: If a stranger tells his children, "That family's house will belong to you one day," the children may genuinely believe their father. But the family currently living in the house has zero obligation to hand over their keys. They would naturally ask:

* Who made this promise?
* Why should a private arrangement made by strangers obligate us to give up our home?

This is the exact logical dynamic facing the inhabitants of Canaan.

There is a standard way the biblical story of the conquest is told.

God calls Abraham, makes a covenant, and promises his descendants a specific territory. Generations later, Abraham’s descendants are enslaved in Egypt. Moses leads them out, they wander the wilderness, and under Joshua, they march on Canaan to claim their inheritance.

To the Israelites, this is the fulfillment of a divine promise. But that narrative relies on looking at the story from only one side.

What did these events look like to the people already living in the land?

This analysis treats the biblical account strictly as a narrative text to examine its internal logic. The question is not whether these events occurred historically, but rather: If we accept the biblical narrative on its own terms, what do these actions look like from the perspective of the original inhabitants?

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1. Canaan Was Already Fully Inhabited

The land was not an empty wilderness waiting to be defined. The biblical text itself acknowledges that it was already Canaan long before any Israelite arrived:


* Genesis 12:5 confirms Abraham entered the "land of Canaan."
* Genesis 13:7 notes that the Canaanites and Perizzites were already living there.
* Genesis 23:2 places Abraham in Canaan at the time of Sarah’s death.

The narrative explicitly names the established nations occupying the territory: the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Girgashites.

There is an absolute moral difference between two distinct claims:

* "God gave our ancestors an empty piece of land."
* "God promised our ancestors a land already owned and occupied by other nations, whom we must violently dispossess."

The biblical text describes the second scenario.

MaxInDHouse:
How do you people think for God's sake?

Why not use your inner sense to judge matters?

Back then the only way people claim lands is through war and invading the inhabitants of any place but instead of the Bible God to do that He allowed His worshipers to be enslaved in the land of Egypt for over 400 years so that they become helpless, in fact the Egyptians were killing males born to Israelites with the intention of reducing male fighters perhaps they could think of revolt. Now the God of Abraham didn't send Moses to go and deliver His people from Egypt during his youthful vigor but allowed Moses to become an octogenarian with his elder brother before saying
"go and deliver my people in Egypt"
Now judge for yourself.

If you hear today that the smallest state in the US decided to leave and to come and occupy a space here in Africa the size of Algeria what would you say?

"Impossible" not so?

But now imagine the US with all their military intelligence refused to let this small population leave and it turned to war between the US and the small population until the US government surrendered and say "please you can go now" after destroying almost half of the US please which country in Africa will say they wouldn't allow such people to occupy the land they choose?

You people just read the Bible without thinking deep!

Ọmọ back then God used the same logic people use to occupy land but due to His mercy He sent a warning message to all the inhabitants of Canaan that He is the Almighty God and He is coming with the Israelites when the people themselves knew that that is the same way they do occupy lands taking it by force but now they decided to wait and fight against a people whose God singlehandedly defeated Egypt the world power back then without a military force!

Ọmọ judge for yourself nah!🤔

Even when the Israelites got to Canaan the most powerful tribe in Canaan didn't think of fighting the Israelites but surrendered humbly saying they will serve both the Israelites and this wonderful God!

So if those who are not strong like the Gibeonites decides to fight the most powerful nation who are coming with the most powerful God over the land that Abraham has paid for ọmọ who is at fault?🤔

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According to Exodus 1:5, the people who went down to Egypt with Jacob were seventy. Yet centuries later, you're saying their descendants could simply return and claim a massive expanse of land already occupied by Canaanites, Hittites, Jebusites, Perizzites, Hivites and others.

Abraham's purchase of a burial field does not give his descendants ownership of an entire populated territory. Were these nations that they destroyed ever shown the deed of ownership for the land they occupied? Genesis 23 records him purchasing the field and cave of Machpelah. I mean, how large could a burial site have been to justify nations being displaced, when Abraham's entire population at the time was no more than a clan?



And your claim that God warned the Canaanites is not true... Where exactly did God warn the Canaanites?

By the way, Your fallacious belief doesn't justify the moral problem.

Also highlight Where the Bible say every man, woman, child and infant in those populations personally committed an offense deserving death?

You keep asking me to “think deeper,” but thinking deeper is precisely what I'm doing. If God is judging individuals, why is an infant included in the judgment for what adults supposedly did?

And the same problem exists in Egypt. Pharaoh made the decision to oppress Israel. Yet Exodus 12:29 says the LORD struck the firstborn throughout Egypt. What decision did the Egyptian firstborn make?

If Pharaoh was guilty, punish Pharaoh. Why punish a newborn for Pharaoh's decision?

A criminal may become dangerous as he grows, but we don't execute a baby because we predict what that baby might eventually become.

You said, “Why wait until a snake bites?” Exactly. Why punish a human child for something the child has not done? A child is not a snake acting purely on instinct. Human behavior is shaped by upbringing, culture, education, and society. So why judge a child for a future they have not yet chosen?

MaxInDHouse:
This is a big lie my guy!🙂

Anyone threatening you doesn't do so because of God who no man can see rather they want to take something from you which they can see and valuable to them.
Those you call terrorists are after your land where you have natural resources that's valuable so they only come using religion as cover because with false religion they can brainwash even your own people to join them in fighting you!🥱

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Your Bible describes Israelites as terrorists, carrying out organized violence against other populations, acting on God's command.

Joshua 6:20-21 describes the destruction of Jericho, including “men and women, young and old.”

The folks who were murdered, raped, killed while living in their own land, would call the invaders loving people abi?

MaxInDHouse:
Do you see baby snakes killing people?
Is it not when they grow up that they do things like their parents?

So what does a baby snake that is SO INNOCENT does to you before you kill it?🥱

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A snake is an animal acting according to its nature.

The question I asked you concerns human infants who were killed despite having committed no offense themselves, I gave you verses for clarity and you jumped to snakes?

Your question about whether baby snakes are “innocent” is simply irrelevant.

Show me the offense committed by the human child.

What did that child personally do that made the child deserving of death?

MaxInDHouse:
What makes children innocent?

Please answer with sincerity?🤔

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I don't see the child committing an offense. You claim the child was guilty, so show me what the child did.

MaxInDHouse:
Who are the innocent children that God punished?
Atheists with confused state of mind!😁

When children are kidnapped is the kidnaper in need of children or targeting the parents to get something from them?

Ọmọ God destroys when people are becoming a threat to the lives of others just as you too will approve the killing of evil people!🙂

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Max, you asked me which innocent children God punished. Let's use the Bible.

2 Samuel 12:14-18: David sins, but the child dies. The text explicitly says, “the LORD struck the child,” and the child died.

1 Samuel 15:2-3: God commands the destruction of the Amalekites, explicitly including “child and infant.”

Exodus 12:29: “The LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt,” including the firstborn of the prisoner.

When you ask, “Who are the innocent children that God punished?” the Bible itself gives you examples.

And this makes your argument even more interesting. You say God destroys people when they become a threat, but some of the people included in these judgments were children and infants.

What threat did the infant pose? What personal wrongdoing did that child commit?

MaxInDHouse:
Just as it will be when mankind in general agree on what God said and there is no group of people to associate with outside God's organization.
As long as there are groups they can associate with then there will always be evildoers.
So that is why our God promised to destroy all those who are not believing the same thing as we do.


For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ‭John 3:16 NIV‬

Now is the time to know what the Bible says and why you need to believe in it! 🙂

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For God so hates the world that He will destroy it because it disbelieves in His Son.

People are born into thousands of religions and cultures, some inheriting their beliefs.

According to your own Genesis, this diversity began when God confused humanity’s languages and scattered them across the earth.

Yet this same God supposedly punishes people for believing the “wrong” thing.

He chooses one people through whom to reveal himself, leaves the rest with different traditions and circumstances, then makes belief in his Son a condition for salvation.

And this is called love.

If your deity creates the confusion, controls the circumstances of belief, and then punishes people for being confused, the problem is not human disbelief.

The problem is the morality of the deity who demands to be believed.

MaxInDHouse:
Who told you that there should be right and wrong?
Ọmọ if you don't believe in God then there is no reason claiming something is right or wrong nah!🤔

Who told you? God?

The same God that doesn't know right and wrong, the same God that punishes children for innocence

People who never knew your God of Israel still developed moral judgments long before this deity was conceptualized.

For example, the Bible does not condemn slavery as an institution. Yet today Christians consider slavery morally wrong like they were not using the same unholy book to justify slavery.

You cannot read the Bible without already having some moral standard. You bring your morality to the text, then pretend the text gave it to you.

If you truly let the Bible determine your morality, you’d have to stone disobedient children in the streets, rape a girl to wife her...

MaxInDHouse:
Well our God promised such a time:

They will not cause any harm Or any ruin in all my holy mountain, Because the earth will certainly be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah As the waters cover the sea. Isaiah 11:9

So when we are diligently taking this understanding to all places that is what Jesus called the doing of God's will! Matthew 7:21-23

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Motice the language he is using: “our God promised.”

Did our God personally come to you and make that promise? Did you hear him say Isaiah 11:9?

If someone tells me, “God promised this,” my next question is naturally: How do you know God said it? Saying “because the Bible says so” simply takes me back to the same book I'm asking you to justify.
And there's another question: why is this particular God our God in the first place? You were not born personally introduced to Jehovah by Jehovah. You encountered the idea through human beings, a religious tradition and a collection of ancient texts. The same basic process happens with people who are born into Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or other traditions.

You cannot simply inherit a God through a book and then treat the book as proof that you inherited the correct God.

And when the book makes claims about human origins, history and the natural world, those claims can be examined independently. Human genetic diversity, population history, archaeology and textual history don't disappear simply because the book says something happened...

MaxInDHouse:
Jehovah's Witnesses only depend on the mentality and it's really really effective that when anyone is excommunicated in our midst without the use of weapons they started begging us to temper justice with mercy despite the fact that we don't use weapons at all!🙂

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Someone begging to be reinstated after being excommunicated doesn't prove that weapons are unnecessary. It only proves that social consequences can influence someone who values membership in the group. There are countless ways people can be pressured by losing family connections, friendships, status, community and support.

But what happens when the person you're dealing with doesn't belong to your organization and doesn't care about your disciplinary system? That's the exact situation law enforcement and physical security exist to deal with.

MaxInDHouse:
How wicked society works!

Instead of depending on mental state of right and wrong you think it's by building destructive devices that you can achieve peace so each person keeps thinking of how to build stronger weapons therefore when it comes to dialogue which humans suppose to use you people keep your weapons will in a corner making the dialogue arrangement useless.

That is what Jehovah's Witnesses have overcome globally among us! Isaiah 2:2-4

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And you're making the same mistake with weapons: you're confusing the tool with the person using it.
A gun can kill, but so can a kitchen knife, a piece of glass, a biro, a pencil or a poisonous plants. We don't conclude that the object itself is the source of evil.

A knife can prepare your food or kill someone. The difference is the person, intention and circumstances, not the knife suddenly developing a moral character.

The same principle applies to weapons. Their existence doesn't automatically produce violence. People decide how and why to use them.

The problem isn't simply that dangerous tools exist. The problem is what human beings choose to do with them. That's why morality, laws, restraint and responsible use all matter.