Were the Canaanites Nephilim?

One of the stranger justifications I sometimes run across for the holy war commands against the Canaanites is the claim that the Canaanites weren't human. They were Nephilim. Angel/human hybrids. There are some problems with that interpretation:

i) That's not a reason given for why they were to be cleared from the Promised Land.

ii) If they were hybrids, they'd have superhuman abilities, so it's unclear how they could be defeated by the inferior Israelites. 

In principle, God could provide divine assistance to level the playing field, but in general the war narratives don't have the Israelites using anything other than conventional means.

Atheism and its discontents

I recently got into a debate with a former evangelical Christian turned atheist. Here are some bits and pieces from my replies I thought might be helpful to some. Apologies if there's still a lot of filler or fodder in here as I wasn't necessarily all that discriminating in what I left in or took out. Also sorry I don't have the time to better organize this (e.g. topically). It's mostly just a quick copy and paste job in chronological order. And keep in mind I'm not a biblical scholar, theologian, or philosopher so I'm open to correction.

Killing baby Hitler

I recently watched the movie Looper. It asks (essentially) whether we'd be willling to kill baby Hitler if we were able to travel back in time.

While browsing thru some reviews and commentaries online, I noticed some secularists argue for killing baby Hitler. But it's ironic how these secularists say stuff like they'd kill baby Hitler in a heartbeat in order to prevent the Holocaust, WWII, and other great evils, whereas on the topic of killing the Canaanites they'd hardly be so sanguine. How do these same secularists know Canaanite babies weren't each ticking time-bomb baby Hitlers, so to speak?

However, other secularists argue they would not kill baby Hitler. Here's a compelling reason that's been given:

Paradoxes abound.

By killing Hitler then the likelihood that you would never have been born to get on the time machine in the first place would be quite high, and in my case the chances of my parents ever meeting would have been remote.

To go back in time and kill Hitler would be to wipe out all those people alive today in which the war and its consequences were consistent with the appropriate sperm meeting the appropriate egg.

A large chunk of humanity, I'd guess.

Likewise:

If I did so I wouldn't be here to go back in time and do it.

My parents wouldn't have met if it hadn't been for WWII.

We are all the spawn of the misfortunes of yesteryear.

"How Could God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?"

JT has a helpful post addressing the Canaanites question.

Killing the Canaanites

"Killing the Canaanites"

"We Don't Hate Sin So We Don't Understand What Happened to the Canaanites: An Addendum to 'Divine Genocide' Arguments"