The Kill Command is Irrational

I don’t see why religious killing is irrational when simple killing isn’t. For people kill other people to get rid of various pesky problems, and resolving problems is the art of rational reasoning. What makes religious killings any different? But anyway I’ll go into detail why a God might want to give a kill command | CONSTRUCTIVE | It is rational for a testing of loyalty. It might be rational if God is trying to test you to see how deeply committed you are to him. An example can be found in Genesis 22, where it talks about God testing Abraham if he would kill Isaac or not. While in the end Isaac didn’t die, it was a kill command none the less. Might do it to discourage certain behavior within a nation through Fear. Fear is an effective tool when making laws, if you wish to minimize (or eradicate) a behavior in your nation just simply plop some fear in it. For example, if you desire to get rid of oh say beastuality, then simply say “do not lie with a beast on pain of death. ” You can find this commandment in Genesis 22:19. Ideally this should drastically reduce this abominable practice. A plus to do this through the proxy of the judicial system is that it’s more civilized, and don’t have to take care of every single case in the world (just let someone else do it). So there are reasons why issuing kill commands is completely rational, not necessary to kill people, but to instill a fear into them so that they are steered into a behavior that is more preferable to God. | REBUTTAL | Psycho Killers "Particularly in the sense that they are more preferred by God, such that they would warrant a rational response in the face of the killing. That is, if a killer said "God said to kill you", you would have a right to be skeptical - for good reason. " --- Ooberman In that case simply treat him like you would if he was a killer that did not believe in God and was wanting to kill you for sport and pleasure. I don’t see any reason why you should believe him either, for all you know he could be lying about his belief in God. Efficiency vs Sufficiency "Apparenlty, God - the Thing that could simply give everyone an anuerism, had to COMMAND 18 year old kids to kill women and children. " --- Ooberman You mean why didn’t God work more efficiently by snapping his fingers and giving everyone aneurysm instead of using young amateurs? Well I don’t think the idea was to do complete genocide, I think it was more along to drive the wicked out of the land. When you think about it, by doing it a slower method that is sufficient over efficient, it would provide people a way to flee for their lives when they see that they’re losing and everyone were dying around them. So in a sense sufficiency might trump efficiency here by giving a little mercy to some of the fools that opposed God. The Kill Rebuke "Killing, one of the biggest command NOT to do in the Ole Testament, is now, in the Abrahamic and other religions, claimed to be the one things that was important to do in that particular instance. " --- Ooberman Yes, but the argument is probably mute for the command giver can just simply say kill, and then now its okay to kill. For one day a commander of an army can tell his troops not to kill, and the next day to kill. The commandments of the old testament are simply commandments, not objective morality. Not killing is generally a good precept, but war and peace has its seasons. But I do perceive you are an atheist. Tell me, is it not written that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart? If you’re an atheist, you can’t love god with your heart because you don’t even believe he lives. Why rebuke us saying we do not follow the commands when you yourself don’t either? You try to remove dirt from our eyes when you don’t see it in your own. Why should I follow the commands when you don't either?