In this explosive Based Camp episode, Malcolm & Simone Collins dive deep into one of the most uncomfortable topics in Christianity: the Biblical commands to kill infants and civilians during conquest — and why they might actually reflect a coherent (if brutal) longtermist moral framework.

From 1 Samuel 15 and the total destruction of the Amalekites, to Deuteronomy’s rules for Canaanite cities, to Jesus’ teachings on mercy — Malcolm argues that modern “peace at all costs” Christianity has cherry-picked the Bible and is actively destroying Western civilization. They explore how true Biblical mercy often looks like decisive action, not endless tolerance of predators and parasites.

This is a raw, unfiltered discussion about civilizational morality, the dangers of naive pacifism, and what “love your enemies” actually meant in context.

Tract 12: Sociatal Morality & A Genocidal God

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone, I’m excited to be talking to you today. Today we are going to be digging into morality as the Bible and Christian faith relate to it. Because I am getting really sick of all of these Christians out there that we see within like the wider Christian media influencer ecosystem talking about how Christianity is like the religion of peace and we need to always be peaceful.

And if you’re going to, for example make a blanket rule against dropping bombs on schools in a warfare scenario, then all of a sudden terrorists are going to put their headquarters under schools and make society net negative for children.

Simone Collins: Oh, you’re not, you, this is purely hypothetical of course.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. If, if at a, a societal level, right, we did something like just always gave out food whenever somebody was hungry you would have groups begin to evolve or [00:01:00] move in close to you that evolve entirely predatory off of this, right? And somebody could be like, “Well, maybe the Bible didn’t predict all of these things, or didn’t really think through difficult moral decisions.”

And the reality is is that’s not true at all. The Bible all over the place has God telling people to kill infants. And so we are going to go, because I think that this is one of the clearest, I mean, I could go into the instances where God’s like laying out the rules for selling your daughters into slavery or rules on how to treat slaves.

But in this episode, that we’re gonna go more on in the next one, ‘cause this is gonna be a bit of a two-parter. But on this one we’re going to go deeper into specifically where, why, and when does God say it’s okay to kill infants? Because I think it’s through these scenarios we can get a broader understanding of how Christianity should [00:02:00] understand morality.

Speaker 6: You know, maybe I was wrong about this pacifism thing.

Speaker 8: Are you insane? Pacifism works like a charm as long as you button it.

Malcolm Collins: Right?

Simone Collins: Isn’t it broadly understood, though, that one of the reasons Christianity got so much early adoption in the in the Roman Empire was because the Christians didn’t kill the babies, and people kinda liked that. Like especially women.

Malcolm Collins: Did, yeah. And so what I’ll also point out is I do not, I think that there was a period of history where Christianity was meant to be understood as this ultra-peacenic religion because that helped it grow.

We’ve done an episode where we look at the morality of early Christians and show that them being willing to help each other during times of plague, them not killing their infants th- this helped their population grow at a significantly larger rate than pagan populations and lowered the persecution that they might have otherwise gotten during their period of growth.

But once they were the dominant religion within regions- At first, they kept their [00:03:00] warlike nature. You know, they would still go and do crusades. They would still punish the infidel you know, still seek out witches in their community, stuff like this. But parts of the Bible began to be emphasized more than other parts over time until the religion became unrecognizable and a net negative in the way it was being practiced.

So to go back to this we’ve got... And this one is the clearest, so I’m gonna go the longest on it. Samuel 15:2-3. It says, “ Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came out of Egypt.’” Now, note this would have happened hundreds of years before God is talking about this.

So this is something that a people did hundreds of years ago. None of the people who actually did this negative thing to Israel would have still been among the Amaleks, okay? “Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill them, both man and woman, [00:04:00] child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”

And there’s some different translations for infant here. We have suckling basically mean a child while it’s still surviving on breast milk. So you can’t be like, “Well, maybe they’re talking about older children here or something.” This is the- the word that’s used here means that. And you could say, okay, maybe something was lost in translation here, and God didn’t really mean, “No, you gotta kill everyone when you take this territory.”

Speaker: And note here, people who want to say the Bible says thou shall not kill, it doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say that anywhere. It says that you’re not supposed to murder. Murder in Jewish law is very different from a generic killing.

I didn’t mention this in the episode because I assumed it was obvious for people with like baseline biblical knowledge, but probably worth mentioning

Malcolm Collins: Okay? So what then happens in Samuel 15:7-9, all right? “And Samuel defeated the Amaleks, and from Havilah as far as Shur, [00:05:00] which is to the east of Egypt. And he took Agag and the king of the Amaleks alive, and devoted destruction all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best sheep and the best oxen and fattened calves and lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them.

All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction.” Okay? So, what did God do about this, right? And the word of the Lord came to Samuel, this is Samuel 15:10 through 23, “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned his back from following me and has not performed my commandments.”

And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the Lord all night, dot, dot, dot. “And the Lord sent you on a mission,” he said, “Go and devote to destruction all the sinners, the Amaleks, and fight against them until they are consumed. Why then did you not obey the voice of your Lord? Why did you pronounce on the [00:06:00] spoil and do what was evil even in the sight of the Lord?”

And then dot, dot, dot here.

, And then response, “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you being king.” So if it was unclear what happened there, so I’ll just lay it out for you. Did you catch what he did wrong?

Simone Collins: He didn’t kill them all?

Malcolm Collins: He didn’t kill one person, the king- Yeah ... and some of the sheep and oxen.

Simone Collins: Yeah, he was supposed to kill them all.

Malcolm Collins: Now, the, a, he killed all of the infants. He killed

Simone Collins: all the- No, but that’s not all of them ...

Malcolm Collins: but that’s not all of them.

Simone Collins: All of them.

Malcolm Collins: All of them. And,

Simone Collins: God, what is up, dude?

Malcolm Collins: Here, the demons- This

Simone Collins: is the whole demon, “I killed, I killed goblins.”

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, okay, very, very similar to that, which

Simone Collins: is why- Was that just, were they just, were they just trying to reenact the Bible there with the whole, like, goblin baby killing scene?

Were they trying to be like...

Speaker 4: [00:07:00] Then to show them mercy

faces to the light of day

Malcolm Collins: I will say that this is the morality the Bible teaches us. The morality of that scene in Goblin Slayer is essentially the morality the Bible teaches us, and we’re gonna point out, [00:08:00] ‘cause people can be like, “Oh, well, when Jesus came, all of these older stories are revoked,” right?

Like, they don’t matter anymore. This is not the God we’re dealing with anymore. I’m gonna point out, no, Jesus makes it very clear all of this stuff holds.

Well, we’re gonna point out that God’s mercy, when we understand mercy through the eyes of what God means by mercy- Mercy

right, because we’re constantly told God is merciful-

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm ...

Malcolm Collins: and then you’re kicked out for being king because you didn’t kill them all, right? You know, like, clearly if we’re defining mercy through whatever trait God has, it’s not this standard human definition of mercy, right? So when we’re commanded to be merciful that does not undermine the...

And handle it when you’re conquering a territory, right? So we’re gonna go into that. And I’ll note here, people will be like, “Well, like, God matured or something between the Old and the New Testament.” Mm-hmm. And I’m gonna say, no, no, no, no, ...