I sometimes wonder what people who call themselves Christians or Jews think of stories of genocide in the Bible, such as the Israelites’ slaughter of the residents of Jericho (the first six chapters of the book of Joshua). For those who are unfamiliar with the story (which I suspect includes a lot of Christians and Jews), here’s a summary: The Israelites have been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years when the Lord tells Joshua that he’s giving the land just on the other side of the Jordan River to them; all they have to do to claim their reward is part the Jordan and walk across it (He tells them how in great detail), perform some rituals outside the fortified walls over the course of seven days that will make the walls crumble (He tells them how to do this in great detail, too), and then kill and burn everyone and everything in the city. Wait—first take anything valuable and add it to God’s treasury. And oh yeah, don’t kill the harlot Rahab or anyone in her house because she sheltered the Israelite spies while they were hatching this plot.

You know, a nice little Biblical morality tale. What I wonder is how people would react today if a modern leader arose who clearly had supernatural powers, claimed to speak for God, and asked them to commit genocide on His behalf. I imagine myself here in the environs of Northampton, Massachusetts, hearing about a man who has appeared on the banks of the Connecticut River and seems to have supernatural powers. For some reason, I uncharacteristically feel compelled to go check this out for myself. When I arrive, I find a man addressing a large crowd near the Calvin Coolidge Bridge. As I approach, everyone seems to freeze except him. He turns to me and says, "Welcome. You’re what, an agnostic? An atheist?"

Taken by surprise, I say, "Both, kind of. But, uh, surely I’m not that unusual. You don’t need to address me personally."

"That’s okay," he says. "I’m having a chat with everyone as they arrive. The others are temporarily frozen in time, as you will be when the next person arrives. So let’s say you’re agnostic. What evidence can I give you that God exists?"

Fortunately, I’ve given this some thought. "Well," I say, "You could start by doing something that would be extremely difficult to explain scientifically."

"You mean something besides freezing everyone else in time?"

"Uh, yeah. Maybe, uh, they’re all actors or something."

"You have something in mind, don’t you?" he says.

"As a matter of fact, I do." I reach into my pocket and pull out a handful of coins, maybe 15 or 20. "I’m going to drop these, but before I do, I want you to draw me a picture of what they’ll look like when they come to rest. Not just which will be heads and which tails, but their relative positions to each other, as well."

"Look down" he instructs me, and there at my feet is an image of coins neatly arranged on the ground. I check it against the coins in my hand, and he’s got the right number of each kind of coin, which is impressive, but I couldn’t get them to fall in such a neat arrangement if I tried. "You expect them to fall just like that?" I ask, to be sure.

"Just drop them," he replies.

So I turn and throw the coins as hard as I can in the opposite direction. A gust of wind arises, blows the coins up over my head, and presses them down exactly on top of their images on the ground.

"That’s pretty unlikely to happen by chance," I point out, unnecessarily.

"Piece of cake," he replies. "Is there anything else?"

"Yeah. Okay, if God is omnipotent, can he make a stone so heavy that he can’t lift it? Can he? Huh? Huh?"

"I never said God was omnipotent."

"Didn’t you?"

"No. That’s silly. He’s just far more powerful than you can imagine. For practical purposes, you’d do well do think of him as omnipotent, but don’t be too literal about it. Anything else?"

So I’m thinking, he’s clearly got impressive supernatural powers, but how would the "God" hypothesis hold up to Ockham’s razor? "How do I know you’re not a technologically advanced alien, or just a figment of my imagination?" I ask.

"Would you behave any differently if I were?" he asks in return.

I mull this one for a moment.

Impatient, he asks, "Can we get on with this thought experiment?"

"Uh, sure, carry on, I guess."

Suddenly everyone is moving again, and the crowd has grown much larger, presumably because I, in turn, was frozen in time as more people arrived.

"Okay, let’s begin" the man says. "I am Joshua, God’s messenger, and I come with a message and an exhortation from God. First the message: God loves you, and by you, I mean the people of Northampton and environs. As a sign of his love for you, he wants to give you...Hadley!"

The crowd cheers wildly, which surprises me because I mostly think of Hadley as someplace you drive through on your way to Amherst, but they’re probably already thinking about all the stuff they can loot from Home Depot, Lowes, and both malls.

"Here’s the exhortation," he continues. "To claim this gift, you must slaughter all the Hadleyites, take anything you find of value and give it to me (I’ll see that God gets it), and burn everything else."

This exhortation gets a somewhat cooler reception than the message did. After a moment, some brave person asks, "Um, kill everyone?"

"Ooh, I’m glad you mentioned that,” Joshua says. "No, there’s a harlot who has been really good to the Northamptonites, and I promised we would spare her and anyone she can cram into her home. You’ll recognize the place by a scarlet rope bound to one of the windows."

Another hand tentatively goes up. "Kill the children, too?"

This seems to anger Joshua a bit. "What, you think God is some sort of monster? Would he make orphans of all the Hadleyite children? Of course not! Kill them, too! If they’re good kids, they’ll go to heaven. Just make it quick, okay?"

People now seem to be trying to imagine what this process will look like. "Will we get weapons or something?" someone asks.

"You bet! God provides for his own," Joshua says. He turns toward the river, raises his arms and suddenly all kinds of guns appear on the shore. I don’t know from guns, but I recognize a neighbor who I know is an NRA member, and he seems suitably impressed. "If there are no more questions, everyone grab a piece, I’ll part the river, and we can just walk across and start shooting. We could wrap this up in time for lunch."

"Or we could take the bridge," a woman points out, and a moment later she is promptly smote. Or is that smitten? In any case, there’s nothing left of her but a wisp of smoke.

"God. Said. Part. The. River. Any other questions?" Joshua asks.

What does one do? I hope I’d be brave enough to say, "Fuck you. Your God is evil," and if I weren’t immediately smitten, do whatever I could to prevent this from happening. But as a nonbeliever, I seriously doubt I will ever have to make a decision like this. How about believers? Do they ever really try to imagine exactly what Joshua was asking of the Israelites?