Barry poses the debate topic:
A soldier amuses himself by ripping a baby from his mother’s arms and tossing it in the air and catching it on a bayonet.
Resolved, it is self-evident that the soldier’s action is wrong in all places and at all times.
However, Barry restricts the range of answers by not allowing anyone to assert whether it would be right or wrong if God commanded the killing.
As many of us know, God, according to the Old Testament, did indeed command the killing of babies.
My position is that in the ordering of baby killing God was wrong and therefore cannot be a trusted source of moral absolutes. If the Old Testament is a true accounting of God’s interaction with the world then I have no choice but to conclude that my morals are superior to His. But rather than believe that I choose to believe that the Old Testament is not a true account of God’s interaction with the world but is rather, at least in part, a rather destructive immoral human fabrication created during a much more barbaric, violent time and place in world history when the sword was more respected than the olive branch.