Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham

Marriage is His solution to that. abe: But also when our impulses are out of control that's just part of the fallen nature due to original sin plus personal sin, and all that is what Jesus died to pay for. /abe You are comparing apples and oranges it seems to me. Our personal sin life doesn't have anything to do with our means of daily survival, such as in the economic structure that depended on slavery in those days. Jesus died to pay our personal sin debt. But the world takes a long time to correct its economic and political situation, and all that is a completely different level from personal individual sin anyway..Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You are actually saying that if it is too inconvenient or economically difficult then we shouldn't decry slavery too much????You God is one of relative morality? It was not great but okish when it was too difficult to do away with and since the advancement of science and the industrial revolution made slavery economically obsolete (in some of the world) it is no longer ok at all?Of course, if someone today could demonstrate economic hardship then it would be okish again by your standards. I guess some pimps running slaves as whores would support you.

Not at all. I'm saying that in ancient times it was too much a part of life to make an issue of it. It wasn't the right time. The time came much later in history. it was never "OK," it was merely tolerated as a necessary evil and laws were given to make the slaves' lives easier.God puts up with all kinds of things because of human weakness, for which we should be grateful. As Jesus explains in the Sermon on the Mount He put up with frivolous divorce by the Jews, for instance, because of "the hardness of their hearts," but that "God hates divorce" and Jesus is now commanding us against divorce. God also "winked at" rampant idolatry among the heathen due to their ignorance, says Acts 17:30, but "now commands every man to repent." But of course I'm saying no such thing. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

And yet, according to you, he was incapable of providing a solution to slavery. Well, short of: "don't be too mean to them, but you can still own people."It would have been pretty easy to just have the owners adopt the slaves as children into their family. That way, they still have to be obedient to their parents but they're not actually owned like cattle. Okay, then condemn owning slaves at the personal level.Really, there's so many ways out of this. The fact that slavery is condoned only shows, to everyone but the worst of book-worshipers, that we're dealing with human limitations here and not stuff that an omnipotent and benevolent god would actually decree.Your post-hoc rationalizations only go to show the lengths you'll go to in order to defend your unconditional love for ink on paper.ABE: And yet today, people still can't stop themselves from having impure sexual thoughts outside of marriage.So now is not the right time for that. But we cannot tolerate impure sexual thoughts outside of marriage as a necessary evil today...Sorry, but this is pure crap.Edited by Cat Sci, : No reason given.

As a matter of fact adoption into the family was an option given in the Law.Of course we're dealing with human limitations, but we're also dealing with a merciful God who takes them into account and doesn't impose rules on us that are too hard.

Absolutely false.One of your selling points is that we simply cannot stand up to God's morality and that we're all fallen into such a sad state that it is impossible for us to obey the rules because they are too hard.

It would help if you'd try to get things into their right context. We will certainly answer for all our sins UNLESS we trust in Jesus to save us. God has provided everything we need for our weaknesses, including power to overcome them if we trust in Him but certainly the payment of our sin debt. I really don't know what you are so enraged about. You are continuing to lump personal sin together with the cultural economic system that depended on slavery. Those are two entirely different things.

But again, according to you, he was incapable of providing the ancients a way to overcome their weakness in needing slaves.Well, except for: "Just wait a really long time until your economy doesn't need them anymore and then I'll get around to stopping condoning it"And what about the people who actually were the slaves? Fuck them, amirite? There's no decree against persons/individuals owning slaves either!Face the facts, Faith: The argument that the god of the Bible condones slavery because he couldn't do anything about it is complete and utter bullshit.You should fall back on your other out: There's got to be some kind of explanation but you just don't know what it is yet. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

But I'm not making any of this up, it's information I've absorbed from years of Bible study and sermons and so on, not that I'm sure I have it all right but I'm sure I'm in the ballpark. But that's a nonsensical attempt to make it equivalent to personal moral sin, which I guess is one way you are confused about all this. Owning slaves was part of the economy, it had nothing to do with personal sin. Someone owed you money and you had some animals that needed tending, they came and tended your animals to pay off the debt. You fed and housed them. If they stuck around a long time and raised a family they might choose to make the relationship permanent and in effect become part of your family. Or, after the debt was paid, or perhaps in a Jubilee year when all debts were to be cancelled, you released them to go make their own lives. Maybe you are thinking of it too much like the racist slavery of America?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I didn't say you were. Its still a bullshit argument. Owning other people is not okay - ever.Like I said, its just a post-hoc rationalization.It would have been great if the Bible condemned slavery, but it doesn't. So, your team has to come up with some explanation for why it didn't.The excuse that god couldn't do anything about it is pathetic. Stop making that argument. Economies don't own slaves, people do.And still, there is no personal moral sin identified in owning another person. There should have been.Thou shalt not own slaves.Geez, to throw a whole 'nother five words on there would have been sooo difficult. Maybe if they were Hebrews males... females and non-hebrews were not treated in that way.Another way you got slaves was when your nation's army conquers an enemy's land and you take all the surviving people and make them your slaves.When you get them home you dress them up and pamper them and give them back rubs and make for an all around pleasant experience... er, wait, no, that's not what happened.What the Bible says is that if you beat your slave to death it is a problem, but if they get better in a day or two then that's all good because they are your property.That is reprehensible. All of your moral-relativism combined cannot make up for that, no matter how hard you try.

Does that apply to other things? In Nevada, it's OK to own a whorehouse, so long as it's not in Clark County. If I do so, does this have "nothing to do with personal sin", it's just "part of the economy" of Nevada? Would you/God not hold me personally responsible if I was a brothelkeeper? Would you/God say that it's just "part of the economy" if I do so, and that it's not a "personal moral sin"?

Like Cat Sci said. Even if you live in an economy where many people own slaves, it's not obligatory to do so. And even when something is obligatory, Christians have chosen torture and death over (for example) worshiping the Roman Emperor as a god. But there was never any such obligation to own slaves. Any Christian could always have said "Nuh-uh, I won't own slaves". So how is it not a personal sin if a particular person chooses to do so? If our society allowed us to own slaves, and I personally choose not to own slaves, and Fred personally chooses to own slaves, why am I not personally in the right on this issue, and Fred personally in the wrong?

"Owning people is not OK. Ever."I guess nobody here has any sense of history whatever. I believe perhaps a Roman or a Greek philosopher may have considered that slavery is a bad thing once upon a time, although I'm not entierely sure about that, but neither the Romans nor the Greeks gave up their slaves. It's been a pretty universal practice throughout history and across cultures. And then, guess what, BASED ON THE BIBLE it was finally condemned in modern times, and yet it is the God of the Bible you are all attacking.Here's how the thinking goes about this interpretation you reject. Since slavery was finally abolished on the teachings of the Bible, about humanity's being made in the image of God, about God-given liberty, about loving one's neighbor, about equality based on the common ancestors of all humanity in Adam and Eve, and so on and so forth, we understand that it is not approved by God.That then raises the question that has been raised here, why He didn't do away with it back in Bible times. And the only answer to that, considering that it is NOT approved by Him, is that there had to have been practical reasons. God is fair, God is prudent, God is reasonable. Since this is just a possible interpretation perhaps a better one is possible, but this one really does make a lot of sense based on the known facts.abe: as for the other question about individuals, I'm guessing but I believe that fewer and fewer Christians owned slaves after the early years, for the very reasons given. How it got established again in Christendom much later is a question. But since the Bible doesn't outright condemn slavery and since some Old Testament passages have been used to justify it, perhaps that's the reason.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Practical reasons? your god is so limited that is he is bound by practical reasons? But apparently couldn't be bothered to outlaw slavery.

"Bound?" No, I said He's prudent and reasonable, He isn't going to do something to wrench a whole society into ruins even for the best of reasons, besides which as I started out saying, the people would not obey such a law, it would hit them as too absurd and it would wreck their relationship with God completely, which didn't go too well down the centuries anyway.And again, all ye who think you are above God, remember again that NO SOCIETY ANYWHERE EVER abolished slavery until it was abolished on the basis of the Bible. If it hadn't been for the Bible you'd all be happily living with slavery and justifying it.