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Originally Posted by Andsigil
To be fair, the last time Christians did this in the name of Christianity was when, exactly?
If you're looking for heartless slaughter, you'd find more results studying the proclivities of atheists in the 20th and 21st centuries. Under the guise of communism, and with modern weaponry, they've amassed quite a record.
Something about all of it reminds me distinctly of Mordor.
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To likewise be fair, and to stop an argument brewing, Stalin and Mao didn't cause the slaughter of millions because of Atheism, either; Hitler was a Catholic, but his murdering was because of Fascism.
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Originally Posted by Groin
It would be far better to have that family destroyed and for the child to be called up to sit at God’s throne. You can argue it both ways Morthoron: is it more merciful to let the infant be raised by a clearly evil family in a clearly evil sociaty until he is old enough to actually take accountability and be damned, or is it more merciful for God to destroy that sociaty and for you, still as a child, to be brought to be in heaven?
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Maybe in Tolkien's creation, but not in our own! Plenty of people have been raised in vile circumstances but must be joyful to grow into adulthood - like Josef Fritzl's children/grandchildren.
Though I have to say that whether Eru tipped Numenor on end because the
people there were 'evil' is entirely debatable in the light of evidence given in recent threads on here. If he did it would have been the first and only time he interfered - and it seems he opened a rift in the world because of the pleading of the Valar to protect Valinor rather than any other reason. The drowning of innocents was purely incidental. It seems rather that Eru wanted to wipe out this failed experiment that the Valar had indulged in and he didn't much care who, if anyone, got away.
This is another reason why I think Eru is 'beyond' any idea of 'goodness', because he is outside the world, he created it, but isn't
concerned with it. That's
extremely different to the various Gods in the real world.