Slavery: Christian Excuses

Given a text that describes beating a slave so that he does not die in the same evening as the beating is administered as being lawful, and coupling that with a belief that the Torah is literally and inerrantly the Word of God as dictated to Moses, isn't it quite consistent that owning slaves might not be a sin.I'm way over my Buzsaw comment quota for the year. Not going there. Oops, perhaps I just did...

Your argument is not logical. If the Old Testament is wrong, then none of those things necessarily need an explanation. But perhaps chasing that down is a bit off topic.I take it that you don't believe that slavery as practiced in the US was a sin.I have to admit to never having given the idea of whether slavery was a sin much thought, because not being a sin in the Old Testament sense, has always seemed to me to be an awfully low hurdle for determining whether some behavior is reprehensible and evil. If death is natural, might not eternal life in heaven still be valued?

Surely you must understand how evasive your answer is.The reason for the beating is not at issue. We know that because the law in question would allow for the beater to be prosecuted if the slave did not live for at least one day after the beating.If you think such a beating is justifiable, then I think the onus on you is explain why rather than insisting that asking us to imagine why.Fundamentalists are always accusing liberals of being relativists. But if your position is that understanding the OT requires immersing ourselves in Hebrew culture to the point where a homicidal beating is justified based on the time it takes a man to die, that would seem to be relativism of the highest order.

I'm not questioning your beliefs. I am questioning your arguments.

It appears to protect both the servant and the servant beater. However, that "observation" of yours seems to me to be irrelevant to the discussion or to the point you attempted to make, which was that we needed to understand the reason for the beating. As if there was some reason that would excuse a beating that resulted in a lingering death but not a quick one. Sure. Instead of dying from blunt force trama that same evening, the man might well die a few hours later from loss of blood and deterioration of his organs resulting from the blunt force trauma. The time period involved here is too short as to provide much of an opportunity to do anything more than pardon a murderer.But more to the point, your argument is non-scriptural. The scripture is not referring to the fact that the man might get gored by an ox the next day. It is excusing a less than immediately fatal beating.Further, your reasoning does not address the question, which you seem loathe to answer directly, of whether slavery, or whatever you elect to call the condition of human ownership as described in the old testament, is a sin. In fact, your defense seems to indicate that you don't consider that condition of human ownership to be a sin. I'll agree that child stoning and slave killing was rare. But I think your reasoning is very problematic...According to you, we can dismiss some parts of the Bible that we don't like as having no bearing on reality? As just empty words meant to scare us into good behavior? That's demonstrably nonsense. Good morals won't get an atheist into heaven, but they'd sure make the atheist a lot easier to live with if he acts on his morals.

As anyone familiar with the Old Testament, or willing to do a little bit of research can verify, there is more than one type of servitude described in the Bible. For example, we know that the servitude of the Jews under the Egyptians was some kind of indentured relationship even if it did include harsh treatment. On the other hand, we know that captured enemies could be enslaved, and that such relationships were quite different.But we also know that the Bible describes other forms of slavery in which descendants could be sold, and in which severe beatings could be administered. I'd be more than happy to make the detour to present some such scriptures, if Dr. Adequate had not already done much of the work, and if it weren't for the fact that you are doubtless aware of that yourself.I'm not an atheist. I'm a Christian. But I don't have any reason to deny the truth. The Old Testament describes some practices that are impossible to defend under our current standards, and which no man of conscience would try to defend. And then there comes mike the wiz attempting to do what no atheist would ever do. I imagine if I were in such an untenable position, I'd look for my hidey hole.I'll also note that the answers in genesis article does not hesitate to denounce "harsh slavery" even though you don't seem quite able to do so. But in fairness I'll also note that most of their analysis glosses over the OT references to slavery, while other parts of their analysis concentrates on metaphorical uses of the term "slavery" in the New Testament.