How do Christianity, Islam, and Judaism justify war or killing

Religions don't justify killing. People justify killing.

It's pretty easy to do. Just need to generate some level of hysteria that "our way of life is under threat." At that point it's just self defense. Every conflict in the world generally has both sides claiming that they're defending themselves.

 

Promising a bunch of virgins and/or eternal paradise doesn't hurt, either.

 

I am a little offended by the title.

"How do the 3 religions"

There are more than 3 religions out there, I am sure others also justify killing or are used to justify it, it makes sense since religions are human creations, they reflect human values (old school barbaric values in some cases).

 

Thread title edited to reflect what the OP meant.

 

But terrorists killing in order to get virgins is a very small percentage of the killing going on. I remember that the figure of terrorrist killing was around 13,000 people a year, while total global homocides to be around half a million a year. So for every person that was killed by an extremist terrorrist, 40 people were murdered by someone who probably also believes that killing is wrong, but reframes the action as self defense or some form of justice.

You dont need the 10 commandments to believe that killing is wrong or to reframe the killing as self defense.

 

Yes. Thankfully these days superstition has a much less all-encompassing hold on much of the population of the world than it did say, during the time of the Crusades.

 

To the OP:
"I, I can't murder anyone."---Private Griff on confrunting and justfying what he has done in combat
"Son, we don't murder we kill!"
"You don't murder an animal, you kill it"---Sgt. Possum responseThe Big Red One (1980)

 

David being the young King of Israel. The slain spoken of were fellow Canaan tribes who were devout worshipers of Baal. Which their primary form of offerings to Baal was in the form of roasting their own infant children in super heated cast iron stoves.
So, yeah, they had it a comin'!

 

Source? Even if that were true, the Israelites are said to have slaughtered male children and pregnant women, while keeping virgins for themselves as spoils of war. Don't particularly care for which atrocity was supposedly deserved, as there is no moral high ground here.

 

So you have to think of your enemy human beings as animals (I guess we are all technically animals, we are all apes).

Killing in the name of Jahova or Baal, same old, same old.

Well to be fair, Alexander, his Generals afterwards, the Romans, the Mongols, the Spanish/British much later, they did not really kill in the name of their god, they killed in the name of conquest/economic expansion.

The religious part is used to cover up the real motives most of the time.

I am sure in the time of the Israelis, they wanted the land of the Canaanites, so they took it, then they came up with stories about how their god wanted for them to take it and kill off the people.

 

The OP asked how the three major Monotheist religions justify war and I cannot speak to what each do or have done but I will reply from my humble point of view as a monotheist believer that war and the killing of humans is the absence of God. Period.
So there is no "justification" for war or killing if we are to be so specifically black n' white on society.
However, with that in mind, what does history teach us, that we certainly cannot be so naive. The world we live in is never so black and white. There are the times when good men must confront other men that do not want to do good but do evil. I would suggest we ought to think of these evil men and their followers as enemies of humans. Evil humans do exist and as history speaks of, certainly our last century, killing them is unfortunately the only solution. Thus, It appears that with man and how evil, devious, and greedy we can be too each other, we will tell ourselves that the line between murder and killing is blured, we do this in order to get men motivated to complete the task at hand. However the reprocutions of, like what Sgt. Possum tries to pass on to his young GIs in his squad, all the mental toughness is what makes it so tough to be mental and kill your enemy, so much so that it really takes a toll on the human psyche. Concerning those villianous, cunning bastards that want to destroy you, your squad mates and eventually rape and kill your sister and mother, in this mindset the human mind can better come to grips with killing ANYONE. I mean who is up for killing anyone, oh, the certified insane or those folks that we read about that start out killing cats in the neighborhood at age 9 and eventually graduate to being murderous shit bricks in society but who else of us humans wants to kill anyone. It is from our creator we get a moral compass for the very reason we are not to behave like animals.
Also, from what we can read of the God of Abraham, humans are the very vital part of his creation and specifically us as a race of creatures, we are a made a little above the cattle as flesh and bone and a little less than the Angels with we share free will souls, so us the humans are to be focal point of all the creatures on the Earth. We are to have domain over all the other created creatures of our planet and be good stewards of our planet. What we can also study from scripture is that the spilling of human blood is something that the God of Abraham does not want to happen between brother to brother, Greek or Jew. Like when the first murder occured when Cain killed Able. That was just one human. God did not take to this to kindly and went as far as to put a curse on Cain.

And he said, "What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now [art] thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth." (Genesis 4:10-4:12)

Recall that the sons and daughters of Abraham had been living in Canaan for centuries. Upon the return to the land still inhabitated by Edomites and other related tribes of the Hebrews, Joshua and those with him after the 40 years doing figure 8's in the deserts of what is today Saudi Arabia after their Exodus from slavery in Egypt, there was going to be a reckoning for that land upon return.
This reckoning would take generations. Many of those tribes that got eliminated burned their infant children in fires and yet this one Hebrew tribe did not.
How anyone can side step what those pagan tribes did in child sacrifice and put Jehova worhip in the same sentence is silly. The Jews kill goats for a sacrifice, not their own children ceezmad! C'mon man.

 

Well people that believe in the supernatural have to tell them selves something to get over the fact you are taking another human being life away.

So be it killing in the name of god, or acting like your gods are not watching works.

To be fair we non-believers also have to come up with reasons on why we do it, self defense, the greater good, protecting someone, etc.

We all have ways on telling ourselves that what we are doing is not wrong.

Well the Israelis were probably Cannanites of a different religion, so they were taking land away from people that had also been there for centuries.

Many of the tribes?

Even if true does it excuse the killing of the tribes that did not kill their children? Or are you saying that the Israelis only killed people belonging to tribes that sacrificed children?

Or would it matter? The land is what they wanted, so be them tribes with sacrifice or pacifist tribes, and they all got eliminated.

Is just he way the world works.

I do not blame the gods, people invent the gods to make up excuses.


Reminds me of the story of every Egyptian first born being killed, it did not matter if you were some poor Egyptian farmer just trying to get by or some high minister Egyptian, your first son was killed (if you believe the fairy tales).

So think about it, Obama does something and then boom some Angel comes in a kills the first son of every American person, how fvcked up would you feel about that.

And shit is not like Egyptians voted for their pharaohs like we do in the USA.

 

One could start here Justin

Jeremiah 7:9 NIV
" 'Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known,

When burn incense is used and "follow other gods" this is the ritual that included Molech worship along side Baal. Followers would have to bang on large drums and light up lots of incense to drown out the cries of their infant children and the intense smell, as they were burned upon the outstretched ams of a cast iron bull figure with flames from underneath to super heat the iron.
To put this into perspective, this form of infant child sacrifice is the only place in the entire Old Testament and New Testament where the God of Abraham openly declares that it never entered His mind that His creation of mankind would stoop to this kind of acts, burning their own children alive. Kinda like when we admit to a friend after something you for sure knew was not in the cards with a relationship or the like, "I didn't see that coming".

"In addition to Baal worship, the Canaanites worshiped a god named Molech. How do you worship Molech? You heat a large statue of Molech up to an insanely hot temperature. You then take a living baby and place it in the hands of the Molech statue until the baby burns to death. Of all the world religions I have studied, the Canaanite worship of Molech is the most frightening. The Canaanites were not innocent people. If that’s how they worshiped their god, you can only imagine how they treated one another."---B. Mills

Correct. It is where the rubber meets the road in what happens to tribes that practice infant child sacrifice, they get what they give. I am not denying this amigo.
Male children that were raised and taught to worship Baal which of course means taking pregnant women and as soon as they have given birth, take said child and roast the child.

And yet life still goes on for others who live really screwed up lives so from their pov, whomever did them so much harm, heck yes they earned payback, those that celebrated killing of children deserved recompense for all that endearing love that those parents in those tribes showed their kids. Sigh.

 

You are really getting a bias source aren't you.

Aztecs, Mayas and Incas also performed human sacrifice; I guess it was a good thing the Spaniards killed a bunch of them in your opinion.

Crazy things that people do for their religion, that was the main point of this tread, and it is not only the Abraham religions that do fvcked up shit in the name of their gods


But hey I guess the women did deserve to be made sex slaves for allowing their children to be sacrificed, ain't that right?


To be fair, the taking of women as sex slaves was done (still is in many places) all the time by armies that defeated their enemies, ISIS people sold off a bunch of Iraqi women of the Yazidi tribes. This still happens in Africa, during the Yugoslavian wars, the rape of women was used as a weapon all the time.

 

You mean the most dominant book in the history of mankind?
Sigh.

Why are lefties so shocked at how brutal previous centuries were? I'm not calling you out, and certainly you cannot speak to all left leaners and how they view centuries past it is just for us middle of the road, practical at life folks and us students of history, lefties tend to think life is supposed to be fair on people. Where history speaks of the complete opposite in that life is going to be a real kick to the head more often than not.
And regarding the Spanish and them killing off our native tribes, you do understand, and I know you do knowing how well versed you are, that disease has killed off more people in human history than anything else, wars and specifically these wars done by nations that have some individuals that are true believers in the three monotheistic religions.
Jeez that's a mouth full and really is splitting hairs on how diabolic God's people are. Time and place much?
And to put me on the hook as if I would say wide spread disease was "a good thing" is weak sauce.

Naw, they were killed by their Hewbrew brothers for being those mothers that offered their infant child to be burnt to a fuking crisp!

 

I'd like sources from actual history, please. Thanks.

 

They were actually takes as wives/slaves, only the men of above certain age (10 I think) were killed.

BTW is not that Yahweh opposed human sacrifice, there were cases early in the bible where they were made to him, eventually the Torah does away with them (good thing, call it progress), it is that he is pissed that they are sacrificing to a different god.

 

http://www.sciencechannel.com/life-earth-science/10-cultures-that-practiced-human-sacrifice.htm

Actually this happened, there are secular writings about it, like for example the Carthagenas seem to do it (maybe false PR from the Romans) it seen to be a Phoenician tradition.

But what @CeltTexan chooses to ignore is that it was done by high priests/rulers when they felt they needed a favor from their god, it was not done by all the Canaanites.

So just like killing the first born of every Egyptian, killing all males in a tribe is punishing innocent people for the crimes of the higher ups.

The whole apologetic thing is promulgated by Christian websites to white wash the idea that their god would order ethnic cleansing (really it was more about greed).

In reality the Israelis did not do anything that other societies have not done, shit the Canaanites would have done the same thing to them if they had the chance.

Obviously the problem is that they excused it away by writing "god told us to do it", that creates issues today.

No really much different that Portuguese/Spaniards bringing Christianity to their colonies, I mean all in the name of Christ of course.


BTW other people that "got what they desrved".

 

It upsets Him because He Himself will provide the perfect human sacrifice.
Peace.

 

The Roman military documented just how dedicated to human sacrifice my people were, specificaly speaking of Wicker Man burnings. Good find. Just a few centuries later as thank Christ for St. Patrick brining the light of Jesus to our people!

 

Sorry I am not as diplomatic in my response, but this sounds like bullshit. Believing that this story shows how these people viewed god and how they found justification for their actions can be a lot more informative from even a religious point of view than doing gymnastics to justify god actually giving these commands.

 

That's in "Origin of Species" somewhere???

 

To the OP:

I can't speak for Islam or Judaism, but in Christianity, there has long been the so called "Just war theory" (bellum iustum). It goes back to concepts in antiquity, but in it was first systematized in a Christian context by Thomas Aquinas.

Martin Luther took a slightly different approach. At the end of the day, he wanted to keep religion out of war completely but basically accepted that when a ruler decides to go to war, it is ultimately just by definition. So while he mostly didn't allow for religious justification of war, he also didn't think it was the job of the religion to question the motives for war, they simply had to accept it.
Though of course he wouldn't stay true to himself as he later encouraged the rulers (both catholic and protestant) to use extreme violence when persecuting the completely pacifistic baptist movement which he deemed inimical to god, or against the peasants that were rising up against their rulers as a consequence of the protestant stone Luther got rolling.