The Book of Joshua poses an even more daunting problem. Consider the Israelite infantry marching into battle to claim the Promised Land. Not being privy to conversations between God and Joshua reduces his actions to nothing short of genocide. Certes, the prophet may tell him "God wills it" as was the custom among later crusaders, but one has to wonder how such a man sleeps at night. Despite opinions to the contrary, violence is not natural to the human condition. We are not predators by nature, but only took to predation out of necessity. Result, people are not like cats and vaguely sociopathic from the womb, but rather experience such activities as traumatic events.

A vindication in Scripture for vigilantism, or more specifically committing acts of violence at the bequest of God and not necessarily from the support of the state, is one way to sooth the conscience in dealing with this breed of trauma, which is part of why I pitched it out there in the first place. Curiosities stems not so much from the question of religious belief as the question of how those beliefs affect people.

Questions relative to the condemnation, explanation or vindication of God for the permission, creation or toleration of evil in the world are not ones that can arise beyond mere speculation. Man is not purview to a perspective of the eternal and can only grasp in a sense so abstract as to be near useless in debate. Either evil exists for a reason that we do not at present understand or it exists in spite of God. Sans the eternal we do not have any way to determine which it may be, rendering debate of the matter moot. At day's end it comes down to what you as an individual are willing to believe, which kind of goes for most everything about religious questions on the divine.

The original intention of this thread was not to introduce rampant speculation about the nature of either God or evil. Theodicy is a consideration that would be more appropriate to a Christian forum, where a constellation of basic assumptions about creation, God and evil can be taken as a given and thus provide common ground for debate. Likewise the vindication of man for actions done at the bequest of God is equally a digression. That vindication is between man and God, the rest of us don't enter into the equation.

The notion was rather more to the point of considering man's justification of actions done at the bequest of God to society. The ancients were possessing of the same caliber of intellect as is found today. So, it stands to reason that most people contemporary with events of Scriptures would be inclined to the same measure of suspicion to someone like say Gideon stumbling out the desert with a tale of divine mandate and a call to arms.

The Book of Joshua poses an even more daunting problem. Consider the Israelite infantry marching into battle to claim the Promised Land. Not being privy to conversations between God and Joshua reduces his actions to nothing short of genocide. Certes, the prophet may tell him "God wills it" as was the custom among later crusaders, but one has to wonder how such a man sleeps at night. Despite opinions to the contrary, violence is not natural to the human condition. We are not predators by nature, but only took to predation out of necessity. Result, people are not like cats and vaguely sociopathic from the womb, but rather experience such activities as traumatic events.

A vindication in Scripture for vigilantism, or more specifically committing acts of violence at the bequest of God and not necessarily from the support of the state, is one way to sooth the conscience in dealing with this breed of trauma, which is part of why I pitched it out there in the first place. Curiosities stems not so much from the question of religious belief as the question of how those beliefs affect people.

The Book of Joshua poses an even more daunting problem. Consider the Israelite infantry marching into battle to claim the Promised Land. Not being privy to conversations between God and Joshua reduces his actions to nothing short of genocide. Certes, the prophet may tell him "God wills it" as was the custom among later crusaders, but one has to wonder how such a man sleeps at night. Despite opinions to the contrary, violence is not natural to the human condition. We are not predators by nature, but only took to predation out of necessity. Result, people are not like cats and vaguely sociopathic from the womb, but rather experience such activities as traumatic events.