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Here is one report on the target rationale. Kyoto was proposed but rejected because one of the U.S. generals had been there on his honeymoon. FFS if these idiots used that sort of reasoning you have to wonder about their ability to make any sort of rational decision.

Edwin O. Reischauer, a Japan expert for the U.S. Army Intelligence Service, was incorrectly said to have prevented the bombing of Kyoto.[73] In his autobiography, Reischauer specifically refuted this claim:

... the only person deserving credit for saving Kyoto from destruction is Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War at the time, who had known and admired Kyoto ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier.[74][75]

On May 30, Stimson asked Groves to remove Kyoto from the target list due to its historical, religious and cultural significance, but Groves pointed to its military and industrial significance.[76] Stimson then approached President Harry S. Truman about the matter. Truman agreed with Stimson, and Kyoto was temporarily removed from the target list.[77] Groves attempted to restore Kyoto to the target list in July, but Stimson remained adamant.[78][79] On July 25, Nagasaki was put on the target list in place of Kyoto.[79]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
 
bellenuit said:
It's not that I am not open to the explanations. I simply do not accept the explanations, probably because my "imperfect morality" is far superior to the perfect morality that you believe comes with your religion.

I am honest with myself. But I do not think that applies to most Christians. I'll give you an example. Let's say that there was no OT, but someone today discovers some ancient texts that are identical in every way to what is in the OT and further analysis shows those texts belong to some ancient now defunct religion. You can be sure without any doubt that Christians would condemn those texts and say that the people that held that religion followed the wrong God as his actions are more akin to that of Satan. There would be parallels drawn to the atrocities of ISIS. They would highlight how different the God of those texts is to the God that Christians worship. There wouldn't be one Christian, William Lane Craig included, who would try to defend the God of those texts and that God would simply be condemned as a false God and outright evil. If anyone were to suggest that the God of those texts was in fact Jesus, they would be accused of blasphemy and excommunicated.

That is why Christians aren't being honest with themselves. They are hypocritical for not disassociating themselves from the God of the OT. That is why they do not want to talk about the OT. It forces them to confront their own dishonesty.
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In addition to my last post, I should say that even in today's time many religious people see God in the same way as the OT. As an example, you would have seen on TV overseas some politicians warning about God's retribution, as a result of OT type moralities. I don't support all their views, but I'm just making the point to you that God is the same.
 
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SirRumpole said:
I don't think killing anyone is ok but you have to have some rules.

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I agree, and my rule would be to limited the total number of deaths to the smallest number possible.

I don’t see soldiers as being any more expendable than anyone else involved in the war effort,

In fact I would probably rank our soldiers as being more “innocent” than a women on a production line making bombs for the aggressor nation.

But all that being said, my whole point is just the daily events of the war were devasting and their cumulative effect was greater than the nukes short term impact.

So the nukes “May” have been justified, noticed I said may, I have never claim they were justified just that they may have been
 
SirRumpole said:
Here is one report on the target rationale. Kyoto was proposed but rejected because one of the U.S. generals had been there on his honeymoon. FFS if these idiots used that sort of reasoning you have to wonder about their ability to make any sort of rational decision.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
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Certain places in Europe were off limits due to cultural and religious reasons also.

I couldn’t have seen them agreeing to bomb the Vatican for example.
 
grah33 said:
You're really complicating this. The NT is based on the OT. If you read it, you will constantly see cross referencing back to the OT. In fact Paul actually does some commentating on some of the harsh bits in there. And then talks about Christ's love etc, so no problem reconciling both testaments. I think the problem here is you know very little about the Bible itself.

I'm unclear on what aspect of those stories in particular bother you? Is it:
God destroying some races e.g. Sodom/Gomorah/Amalek?
Or is it because He also took away the innocent (babies/children) as well?
Or you think this extermination act is incompatible with the morals laid out by Jesus in the NT? If so, maybe you could be a bit more specific about the conflict with Jesus's teachings.

Also, the OT isn't just about brutality. It's full of wonder and beauty, to those who have the patience to discover it.
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Isn't it obvious. All of my comments that had extracts from the OT highlighted in bold those parts that described the rape of young virgins and the slaughter of innocents, particularly infants.
 
grah33 said:
I think the problem here is you know very little about the Bible itself.
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You were the one that asked for examples of rape in the bible and stated that God only slaughtered vile people?

Perhaps it is because I do know the Bible but approach it with the scepticism it deserves.
 
Value Collector said:
Another statistic of note.

The American bombing campaign that was operating for 5 months before it was stopped due to the nuclear weapons, killed nearly 5 times the amount of people killed by the nuclear weapons.

So if the war had dragged on for just 1 extra month, the losses due to the conventional bombing campaign added to the losses from both sides in battle would have out weighed the losses from the nukes.

Check out this short video explaining how devastating the American bombing campaign was even though it wasn’t “nuclear”

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I just did a bit of math, comparing the nuclear weapons damage to that done by the daily/nightly conventional bombing campaign which had been going for 5 months,

Basically each Nuclear weapon did about as much damage as 2 weeks of conventional bombing.

So it was a lot of damage in a short period, but had the war not ended, an equal amount of damage would have been done soon afterwards.

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Apparently Hiroshima’s civilian population not working for he war effort had been greatly reduced due to evacuations to the rural areas, so the “innocent” deaths would not have been as high as one would imagine.
 
grah33 said:
You're really complicating this. The NT is based on the OT. If you read it, you will constantly see cross referencing back to the OT.
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Yes, I am well aware of that. My point really concerned why Christians preferred not to talk about the OT but do not reject it out of hand. The reason for the former is because it has large sections where it describes a God who does vile things, but the latter is because the NT and the 'raison d'être' for Jesus depends upon it. So they are in a bind.

It's like a house of cards, with the supporting cards being the OT. Take away even one of the cards from the OT and the whole house collapses.
 
Value Collector said:
I just did a bit of math, comparing the nuclear weapons damage to that done by the daily/nightly conventional bombing campaign which had been going for 5 months,
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The actual method of destruction is not the point. The point is the deliberate targeting of civilians. Obviously there are grey areas like munitions factories etc but there is evidence that some of the bombing was a "shock and awe" tactic that targeted civilians either for revenge or to break the will of the population.

Those tactics have legitimised targeting innocents and have been copied by militant terrorists who justify it by saying "the West started it in WW2".

As ye sow , so shall ye reap. Don't know if that is secular in origin or not, but it's true.
 
Value Collector said:
mate do you even know why Hiroshima was chosen as a target?

It was a military town, that was targeted because it had soldiers, war factories and large stock piles of equipment, 20,000 of those killed were soldiers, many of the “civilians” were working for the war effort in factories.

No allied force goes after civilians for the sake of it, the civilians were collateral damage, not the target.
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Weren't one of the ultimate target was chosen because the other city targeted was too cloudy?

I mean, how serious were the military target when it's cloudy so you go for a city nearby.
 
luutzu said:
Weren't one of the ultimate target was chosen because the other city targeted was too cloudy?

I mean, how serious were the military target when it's cloudy so you go for a city nearby.
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They didn’t just randomly pick Nagasaki on the fly, it would have all been preplanned, they would have primary and secondary targets.

In fact Nagasaki has been bombed 5 times in the conventional bombing missions.

As Sir Rump’s post suggested, they had lists of target cities they wanted to hit.

There can be all sorts of reasons a bomber can’t make it to a target, eg weather, enemy fighters, anti aircraft guns etc, so they pre plan multiple targets, there is no point in returning with a payload of bombs.

I remember watching a documentary about the bombers working over germany, even the fighters escorting the bombers didn’t want to return with ammo left over, so after the mission was done and the bombers headed home the fighters would hang around looking for targets to shoot up, flying along train tracks etc
 
SirRumpole said:
The actual method of destruction is not the point. The point is the deliberate targeting of civilians. Obviously there are grey areas like munitions factories etc but there is evidence that some of the bombing was a "shock and awe" tactic that targeted civilians either for revenge or to break the will of the population.

Those tactics have legitimised targeting innocents and have been copied by militant terrorists who justify it by saying "the West started it in WW2".

As ye sow , so shall ye reap. Don't know if that is secular in origin or not, but it's true.
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Both Nagasaki and Hiroshima where towns important to the war effort, no military commander is going to waste a new powerful weapon on civilians.
 
Value Collector said:
Both Nagasaki and Hiroshima where towns important to the war effort, no military commander is going to waste a new powerful weapon on civilians.
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Imperial Japan was at war so I'm pretty sure every city's industry is contributing to the war effort.

But the nukes would have been used either way. Too much money and effort have been put into it for it not to be used. And using it on Japan would force it to surrender quickly before Stalin managed to send his troops across Siberia and into Japan/Korea.

If Stalin managed to do that, the US would have to then divvy up Japan and Korea with the Soviets and that would ruin their entire post-war plan to contain Russia and China.

The dropping of the nukes have nothing, or very little, to do with saving the US troops. Japan at the time no longer have any floating carrier. Its fuel supplies and practically all imports have stopped. That kind of blockade would render its military/civilian army useless in a matter of weeks or months.

Once Stalin announced his intention to send the Soviets east, Japan will just surrender or face total destruction and having its islands annexed between two powers.

But yea, wars, the never ending story.
 
bellenuit said:
Hot off the press, from the February 2018 issue of Scientific American.....

Our Actions Don't Matter in a Cosmic Sense—But That Doesn't Mean They Don't Matter

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...-mdash-but-that-doesnt-mean-they-dont-matter/
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Another pro securalism article that somehow fails to recognise that it has logically undermined its own logical basis for belief!
Will the entertainment never cease?!

How many more of these comedies are out there, just waiting for somebody to proudly post them?!

Since that article was heavily centred around criticism of Dr Craig, I have attached a video in which Dr Craig gets an opportunity to express some views, which call the reasoning, of many of his secularist critics, into question:
 
Value Collector said:
I agree, and my rule would be to limited the total number of deaths to the smallest number possible.
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The trouble with that is that it is only your opinion of what is the "smallest number possible". What is your evidence that nuking two cities is the least possible damage ?

If the bombs were dropped over uninhabited but observable parts of the country Japan may still have surrendered and the war would be over with minimal deaths from the nukes. It would have been worth a try.
 
SirRumpole said:
The trouble with that is that it is only your opinion of what is the "smallest number possible". What is your evidence that nuking two cities is the least possible damage ?

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Of course it's my opinion, as I said right at the start of this conversation I don't know for sure, but the nukes May have been the moral option. I have never claimed that the were the moral option.

My whole point on objective morality is that in any given situation there is an objective moral action, however without knowing all the information it's not always possible to work out what that action is, but we should always do our best to work out what that correct moral action is, even though obviously die to lack of information we will sometimes be wrong.

As far as two people having different opinions on what is moral, its just like having a different opinion on how many jelly beans are in a jar, the opinions don't change the facts about jelly bean in the jar, the people are either right of wrong in their opinions.
 
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