Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

by Johan Norberg

The Bible is also full of brutal violence – perpetrated by the good guys. In the Old Testament people casually kill, enslave and rape even family members. And the scale is staggering. When Moses discovers that some of his people worship a golden calf he executes 3,000 of them, and then goes on a merciless ethnic cleansing spree, ordered by God: ‘do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them – the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites – as the LORD thy God has commanded you’ (Deuteronomy 20:16–17). At one point, Moses scolds his men for letting women and children survive, so he orders them to go back: ‘Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourself every girl who has never slept with a man’ (Numbers 31:17–18). God even gives advice on rape himself: ‘if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife’ (Deuteronomy 21:11).