Regarding the references to the old testament battles as evidence for a pattern of a propensity toward violence, it is interesting that individuals who utilize this argument also deny the Bible's trustworthiness. This untrustworthiness discounts events such as Noah's ark, the parting of the Red sea, Passover, healings, acts of God, and miracles- including the chief, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This distrust- no more of a contempt- of the Bible is important since in order to utilize the Hebrew accounts of battles as evidence of a warring mentality, one must ascribe to the Bible temporary inerrancy. Our question is 'How does one decide what is infallible & what is not? What criteria is used to discern the infallible from the non-infallible? Given humanity's mental limitations, in both breadth & depths, such a thing would require omniscience? Limited & finite beings cannot possess omniscience. Therefore, in order to distinguish the fallible from the non-infallible, one would have to be a supreme, infinite & uncaused Being from which all things were created from nothing (such a Being could not have eminated such effectual realities as such eminations would then have within themselves remnants of godness, allowing for us to legitimately differientiate between the infallible & the non-infallible); or we would have to at least possess infallible knowledge, total in both breadth and depth. In order to acknowledge such an eminationalism, as in the former, or in order to maintain the necessary epistemological requirement of the latter, we would have to either 1) claim to be that very supreme, infinite & uncaused Being (God); or 2) embrace an indefensible faith-statement. Either delusions of grandeur or hypocrisy. Take your pick. Neither options are apt to shed a positive light upon such a criticism.
When such a statement is made, it indicates more of the speaker's bias toward Christianity and historical unfamiliarity with wars & their fatalities. Which religion s spured the fatalities ascribed to the Mongolian invasions (both 1210-1218 and 1311-1340) which is estimated at 35 million, Chang Hsein-Chung, the so-called 'Yellow Tiger' (40 million), Joseph Stalin, Lenin (65 million), Adolf Hitler- who was more interested in one's Jewish geneology than one's religious practices (at least 6 million), Mao Tse Tung (26 million), Pol Pot (5 million), Idi Amin, et. al? At least 175 million slaughtered in the name of atheism. At the risk of confusing the anti-Christian with the facts, let us grant that between 1431 (when Joan of Arc was condemned/burned as a witch) & 1784 when the witchcraft hysteria in Europe finally died out) possible as much as 50,000 persons had been executed as witches, though not exactly the "millions" that historically-inept critics love to charge. Are all the actions of a person who wears a cross necessarily accurate reprensentations of the teachings with the text they are said to represent? Totals for the crusades (of which there were only 7, far fewer than many people think) & the Spanish inquisition have been placed between 10-20,000. During the Salem witchcraft trials, 19 persons- 14 women & 5 men- were condemned to death as witches. Prior to 1692, this country executed 16 for this same charge. U.S. totals=- 35, not exactly the "hundreds" that a public school teacher recently told me. Total 50,035. Compared to 170 million attributed to atheism. Let us remember, much of that has to be laid at the feet of the Roman Catholic Church. (Sources:World Book Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, Guinness Book of World Records, The Walker Report (issued by the U.S. Senate on July, 1971), and Figaro magazine (Nov. 5, 1978).