The massacres of the Canaanites    Looking first at the massacres of the Canaanites by the Jews, there is one obvious similarity with the Holocaust - lots of people were killed. Thinking only on this level, we could say that a bank robber who shot a teller and a policeman who shot the robber were on the same plane. They both shot someone, so what's the difference? If we explained that the robber shot an innocent victim, while the policeman did not, and add that the policeman had a certain authority and right to use his gun that the robber did not have, few people would have difficulty accepting these distinctions.    Of course, the analogy of the bank robber and the policeman is not identical in every respect to the larger question we are examining. If it were identical in every respect it would cease to be an analogy. Yet, while there are differences, the analogy is not totally irrelevant to our subject either. There are some significant congruities.      Again, we get back to presuppositions. If the accounts in the bible are not historically accurate, then it is only a collection of stories and we don't even know if there were any massacres of the Canaanites at all. If there were, they would be ordinary historical events, bloody and violent, but no more so than the massacres of the Mongols or the Huns. If, however, the events of the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan are recorded accurately in the bible, then the entire situation must be viewed in a completely different light - a light, I might add, that many feel extremely uncomfortable with and prefer to avoid.    If God exists as the bible describes him, he is the giver of life, and has complete authority to take it when and as he wills. He could destroy the world by a flood or eliminate Sodom and Gomorrah by fire in a way that no human has the right or the power to do. If in the judgement of God the Jews were to be placed in a certain land so that they might prepare the way for the Messiah, he had the right to give them that land, as the  earth is his. If the original inhabitants had to be removed, both as punishment for their wickedness and to ensure that the Jews would be permanently established in the land, God had the right to make that judgement.    This also applies to God destroying the first-born of the Egyptians, which has also been mentioned in this context. God as the giver of life, and the Lord of life and death, has a divine right to take human souls from their bodies whenever he sees fit. Thus against the superficial similarity of many people being killed, we have a difference of agent. On the one hand, the Lord, maker of heaven and earth - on the other hand, a man, Adolf Hitler, who put himself in the place of God.    It is recognized that Hitler was not God, the Lord of life and death, but only a man. That the true God of heaven and earth was acting in the conquest of Canaan and the Israelites were his agents is of course not so incontestably agreed upon, but it is seriously believed by millions, and is at least a legitimate faith proposition in a way that Hitler's divinity is not.    Apart from the difference of agent, there is also a difference of motive. Hitler slaughtered six million Jews according to a completely false ideology of racial superiority that has zero credible adherents today. Moses and the Israelites operated from completely different motives, as genuine agents of a higher power if the bible is true; according to an ordinary desire for land and territory which has been repeated many times in history if the bible is not true.     Along with the differences of operative agency and of motive, there is a third great difference - that of result. Hitler's "truth" lasted for a very short time, and left only misery and ruin in its wake. He failed to achieve any of his objectives and ended in titanic failure. The belief that God exists, that he worked in the world through the Jewish people, settling them in the land and preparing the way for the Messiah through them, has not died out after a decade or so but has lasted many centuries. It has endured for more than three thousand years after the conquest and has spread throughout the world, giving blessing, hope, and peace to many. The truth of these beliefs is disputed of course, but they are infinitely more credible than the bizarre fantasies of Hitler, fantasies that are universally detested by all decent people.    Yet, the Nazis believed they were in the right. Hitler claimed on numerous occasions to be doing the work of the Lord, and believed that Fate, Destiny, Providence, or whatever was behind him. Is this an example of the dangerous fanaticism that is unleashed when people believe that God is with them? This is called "frightening" by some. They do not consider the atrocities of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao to be equally "frightening" examples of the dangerous fanaticism that is unleashed when man rejects God and relies on human reason alone.    I suspect that some people are not really "frightened" at all, though they pretend to be. They are only propagandists in the culture wars, trying to discredit religion because it is a major obstacle to the realization of their secular and anti-religious goals. To this end, any distortion, misinformation, or insinuation will do as long as it makes Christians and Christianity look bad. Those who reject God and the bible are not automatically guaranteed of calm, dispassionate, objectivity, though they like to imagine that this is the case.    People who believe in the Old and New Testaments believe that in Christ we have a new covenant, a better covenant. Jesus Christ is the final and complete revelation of God, and he represents the standard that all sincere Christians aspire to. We recognize that the laws and actions of Moses and the ancient Israelites, while from God, are not his calling for us today. We do not claim to be ancient Israelites, and we recognize that God has never at any other time in the history of the world manifested himself as he did in the events of the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan. The Jews also recognize the uniqueness of Old Testament events.    Finally, great numbers of people, including civilians, old people, women and children were killed in Allied air raids on Germany and Japan in WWII. Most people accept the great loss of life as necessary and justified. Millions of human babies have also been killed, the vast majority of them solely because the mothers don't want to be bothered with them. This mass killing is perfectly acceptable to opponents of the bible. They don't object to massive killing that runs into millions if it is done for a suitable cause - and does man have more power than God? Do we have the right to take life and God does not? Some who claim to be so disturbed by the Old Testament conquests are inconsistent, their imagined objectivity notwithstanding.    At this point we can also challenge those who reject the bible, "Demonstrate that what Hitler did was morally wrong." With no divine laws, no revelation, no higher authority, people who operate strictly according to human reason have no moral basis for condemning Hitler. They may personally feel that what he did was wrong, but in the vast metaphysical darkness and silence of a godless universe, there is no firm and definite "No." If the meaning of life is gratification of self and a pursuit of the will to power, maybe what Hitler did to the Jews was right, and moral whining and hand-wringing is a futile waste of time. Hitler was wrong according to pragmatism only because he lost - if he had handled the Russian and British campaigns differently, and avoided war with America, he could have won. He made some tactical and strategic mistakes, but there is no proof outside of the bible that killing Jews is anything other than part of the struggle for survival of the fittest.