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In a socialogical study by Professor George Tamarin, more than a thousand Israeli schoolchildren aged eight to fourteen were given this account of the battle of Jericho, from the book of Joshua (this story should be familiar to all kids who grew up attending Sunday School):

Joshua said to the people, “Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction… But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.”
…
Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword… And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.

The children were asked a simple moral question:

“Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly?” The children could choose between:

• A. Total approval
• B. Partial Approval
• C. Total disapproval

The results came back polarized: 66% gave “total approval”, 26% “total disapproval” and 8% “partial approval”.

Typical answers from the “Total approval” group:

In my opinion Joshua and the Sons of Israel acted well, and here are the reasons: God promised them this land, and gave them permission to conquer. If they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone, then there would be the danger that the Sons of Israel would have assimilated among the Goyim.

In my opinion Joshua was right when he did it, one reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and learn their bad ways.

Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion, and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth.

The justifications were all based on religion. Even those who gave “total disapproval” did not do so in the way one might expect, as these samples show:

I think it is bad, since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one will also become impure and share their curse.

Two others who totally disapproved did so because Joshua destroyed everything, including animals and property, instead of keeping some as spoil for the Israelites:

I think Joshua did not act well, as they could have spared the animals for themselves.

I think Joshua did not act well, as he could have left the property of Jericho; if he had not destroyed the property it would have belonged to the Israelites.

What made Tamarin’s experiment truly enlightening was a control group he ran. He gave a different set of children the same text quoted above, but with “Joshua” replaced with “General Lin” and “Israel” replaced with “A Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago”.

Suffice to say the results were drastically the opposite now: only 7% approved of “General Lin”, while 75% disapproved.

The above is extracted from a text in a book by Richard Dawkins. The professor who conducted the study was subsequently fired.

If you’re close to me you’ve probably heard me tell you about the study above before. It underlines how religion divides us and makes behaviour that would otherwise be reviled, simply because “God said so” – even when this means killing the “young and the old”, and the poor animals as well!

Similar passages can be found in Numbers, where God orders vengeance on the Midianites:

1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people.”

3 So Moses said to the people, “Arm some of your men to go to war against the Midianites and to carry out the LORD’s vengeance on them. 4 Send into battle a thousand men from each of the tribes of Israel.” 5 So twelve thousand men armed for battle, a thousand from each tribe, were supplied from the clans of Israel. 6 Moses sent them into battle, a thousand from each tribe, along with Phinehas son of Eleazar, the priest, who took with him articles from the sanctuary and the trumpets for signaling.

7 They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man. 8 Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba—the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. 9 The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. 10 They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. 11 They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, 12 and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the Israelite assembly at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho. [a]

13 Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.

15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

Here Moses is angry because the women and boys were spared; only the virgins deserved to live.

One wonders sometimes why it is that religious people claim that they are more moral than others. It has been said that “Without religion, good people would do good things and bad people would do bad things. But for good people to do bad things – that takes religion!”

There are also those who would shrug off the above saying “Oh but that’s the Old Testament” and but yet happily nod “Amen” when listening to messages from the pulpit preaching prosperity or why God wants you to be rich (which are all drawn from the Old Testament, the NT makes it clear about the camel through the eye of a needle thing), or tell you that morals are absolute and unchanging. (See the term “Cherry picking“).

Morality aside, racism and religion are the two greatest dividers in the world today. People from different religions (I’m talking about the ones who take it seriously, not the “Oh my parents are X, so I’m X”) treat each other differently, and heck even within the same religion, people from different sects/denominations treat each other differently. A conversation I had last week went something like this:

“So you’re Christian?”
“Oh no, I’m Catholic”

Which pretty much sums it up.

It’s not out of the way – I know many Protestants who disparage Catholics in their unguarded moments, and probably vice-versa. The images above for example are from a tract that was sold in my church bookshop. Much of the friction and conflict in today’s society stems from the religious vs the secular, e.g. stem-cell research, euthanasia, abortion, the teaching of evolution, the use of condoms, vaccination and practically every Malaysian political issue.

And in every case when you look closely it’s sometimes not even about what the various religious texts say any more – if you cherry pick through any holy book you’ll find passages to support whatever you want. It’s about the people who control the interpretation, for reasons that may or may not be benevolent. Malaysia is a good example of this; the “defense” of Islam is not so much about furthering the faith itself, but to show that one side is more religious than the other.

Well the main purpose of this post was to share the study made by George Tamarin but I ended up ranting a little. I hope that you remember it the next time someone tells you religion teaches you moral values!

Tags: jericho, morality, Religion, tamarin