random questions

I don't think it will lead to our extinction. We survived most of the world being under the leadership of religion-based governments, and now much of the world is not. If religion couldn't extinguish us over the last few millennia, I suspect it's not going to now. Unfortunately, this seems true to me. This issue is the toughest one for me as a believer. I've survived the transition to believing in evolution, and I've survived a lot of the kind of arguments I've heard on these boards, but this one is tough; real tough.The fact is, Jesus didn't preach this kind of religion (based on the Gospels), but if Jesus is the Son of the God of the Israelites, and if the Torah represents the will of God, then Jesus' Father ordered the genocide of several groups of people. So while it's easy to defend Jesus' preaching (I think), it's pretty hard to defend his Father's actions.So now, what do I do, so that I can in some way justify my status as a believer in Jesus? That's the question for me.Here's my current answer. The Israelites did indeed conquer Canaan and produce a kingdom. Joshua and Judges disagree on exactly how that happened. Archeologists tell us the Judges description is the more accurate one. Either way, it wasn't written down until later, maybe much later.I don't think God ordered the extermination of the rest of the Canaanites. I think the Israelites conquered the land of Canaan, driving out or taking over the other tribes of the area, and later they wrote down their history, however accurately or inaccurately. I don't think God wanted any particular history, but I do think he took a people for himself, the nation of Israel. When the time was right, he sent his Son to make a new nation; one that didn't have a government or even a land. It would consist not just of Israel, but of every tongue, tribe, and people, and it would not have an army, nor conquer by force.

I agree, too, but it's only fair to point out that it's probably only true because of circumstances. Restore large and organized Christian (or most any other religion) governments, and I think it's safe to say that you'll see large and organized violence again. I would present the smaller scale violence in Ireland and the Middle East as my evidence for that.

Oh, yeah.Although, even in this case, we're not talking about extinction. Despite the earlier tongue-in-cheek (I hope) comment, the superpowers are not religious extremists.