Slavery: Christian Excuses

You are not understanding the point of that law, it would be to protect the servant, it would not be to favour a beating. It does not say, "beat your servant as much as you can but not so that he dies on the same day", that is a perverse judgement of the scriptures that REQUIRES you put your own meaning to the scripture.Most of the time, such laws are deterrents for people that are so sinful that they need such an obvious law, God knew the people and He said they were evil and that they would not obey, so He provided a neanderthals law, in a sense, in that He knew how morally redundant the people were, and yet He would put up with them because of His own benevolent plan of salvation.For example, we have to look at this judicially. If you beat a man, and then he days, the cause is more probably the beating, but this law, the point of it is, that in any given circumstance, a man could die the following day, of another cause. If anything such a scripture is an example of God attempting to provide their mindsets with some kind of impartial judgement. Most of the time, these laws would have no baring on reality, as those things would not happen.Another example is stoning your child to death for disobedience. Man, it is so obvious that no parent would do that, so it was an incentive to work hard to make the child righteous, and to be a good parent, most of the time, these "ugly" morals, are nothing of the sort.These days, it's all about political correctness and what you "say", rather than what happens in reality.In reality, the atheist is a sinner no matter what his morals are, even if his morals, (his words) are greater words than say, a Christians, this won't make the atheist act any better.For example, Trixie said, IIRC, that s/he is glad that a Christian will stay Christian if their moral capacity is so bad, but it's irrelevant, because even if the Christian accepted slavery this would not mean that the Christian would go out and enslave someone. What the Christian is saying, is that God's permissive will allowed for less than perfect standards in the Old Testament.

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....What the Christian is saying, is that God's permissive will allowed for less than perfect standards in the Old Testament......
  —mike the wizz

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You could not have put it better."God's permissive will" is not the source of our moral standards. We have better moral standards than your god.Morality doesn't come from your god. It comes from society.Edited by Pressie, : Wrong quote function

No, I actually accept refutation on that point. I was a bit rusty, I still think there might be some basic differences between a biblical slave and normal slavery, but I will allow for the term, "slavery", in the sense that I think you have adequately provided the information so that you can fairly use that term. It's wrong to enslave another human being(1). It should be a crime. (2)You then ask, why does the bible institutionalize slavery rather than condemn it? It is a fair question, but it is not fair to insist that God is morally bankrupt. I think there is a good answer, and I mentioned it earlier in the thread.Firstly, I gave the first answer/(1) because nowadays we have a better system. We can talk of morals but we are also dealing with reality.In reality, God destroyed man from the earth in the flood. Now, He can choose a people, and put up with them to an extent, and their ways, to an extent, or, He can destroy them, but no matter what He does, they will not be fully righteous/moral.The bible, allowed slavery, but this says more about the people of the Old Testament than God. God's permissive will is weaved into the bible on an unequivocal scale. He "permits" certain activities, usually for His own reasons.We are told in the New Testament that the plan of salvation was God's will, that the people were evil, they were, "stiffnecked" and their "heart is set on evil". God knew they were no good, and He knew that slavery, for example, was common. infact it was the reality of the day.For example, in the past racism would perhaps have been the normal "way", this does not make it right, but if you had lived back then, you might have been racist, or, you might have been accustomed to racist ways. After all, despite men's morals, there were still places that said, "whites only" which white moral men would have gone into. You also would have gone into such a place if it was the only place to receive food, and would not make you any more sinful than anyone else.I am saying that morals are not relevant to life. You might be a moral person, but for example, you might be in favour of murdering well formed babies in the womb, as a lot of them are well formed, I have seen the violent pictures, that are no less violent than the old testament.So, sin still abounds, even in an imperfect system. Sure- God permitted "slavery" in the bible, but I don't think sin was necessarily at play, there would have been loving masters and loving slaves, slaves were given the decision to stay with their masters, so I think our moral angle of what it meant back then to be enslaved, will largely be based on ignorance.I might post a link, as to AIGs opinion on this, as they are more informed than I, on this issue, I myself can't refute the term, "slave" at this time, but I still think it is mostly an epithet, because of examples of a certain idea people get, I still think there would have been differences in biblical slavery.There are lots of things in today's society which allow CERTAIN evil to happen to an individual, such as abortion, and this is morally acceptable, even though an "evil" happens to an individually, but with biblical slavery, did an "evil" happen to a slave, necessarily?I think your position as moral relativists, is ultimately a position of having a foundation of quicksand - you can argue that morally, it is acceptable, for example, to abort, yet even if you do argue that, it is still a sin and an evil that happens to the individual, otherwise you would be okay with having been aborted. Or, other moralists will say it is wrong.My point is, you are declaring things to be morally "wrong", but "morally" in this context is a moot term, as it can't establish any REAL "wrong", and such morals even dictate that there is no ultimate wrong.So you say there is no real wrong, no objective wrong, and then say the bible is wrong. Why? Why is your wrong, wrong, rather than my wrong?Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

Yet you have sinned.If morals come from us, then who is to say your morals are correct? Unless you can show moral perfection, how can you make the value-statement; "we have better morals than your god". Says who? You say there is not ultimate moral and then you place your own as the "better" morals. Logically, the word, "better" is a vacuous term in this context as there would be no such thing as "better". "Better" would be a matter of opinion, given the above set of premises you outlined.In REALITY, I know that God is 100% righteous, and you are a person of the flesh, a person that has a sinful nature and has sinned. I know God personally, that He is righteous and without sin. This isn't a matter of morals. Morals are words. I am talking actions.Your actions show me that you have hypocrisy and self-righteousness, and I know these to be sin, and yet you want me to value your set of morals? If your morals do not give you the ability to not sin, why should I value them? Unless you are perfect, I have no reason to listen. You can have millions of morals, while all of the time sinning under the radar. All you do is "re-define" sin, so as to make it "not sin", to you.It's can of worms.

It's wrong because we've become civilised; we're no longer primitive tribal societies living short and brutal lives. We've developed our secular laws from a foundation of fairness and equality of rights and we're still improving them.You know slavery is as wrong as I do and you certainly know that beating a slave such that he doesn't quite die on the day of the beating breaks the golden rule in all manner of ways. Why pretend otherwise?

I read until here. This sentence made me realize that you are so deluded tthat there's no way of even trying to have a rational conversation with you.Stop telling untruths. There's no empirical, verifiable evidence that such a flood ever occurred. You repeating your belief in such a flood won't turn your beliefs into the truth.

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Yet you have sinned.
  —mike the wiz

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I don’t have sins.The rest is a long word salad to try and hide the fact that we don’t get our moral values from your holy book claiming that it is the word of your chosen god, amongst all the other books who each claims to be "the word of god".

The problem is sin. You are deceived by thinking that mankind has the solution to the problem. What is the problem? Mankind. Indwelling sin is the problem.You sit there and type these things to me, when I am a slave of God. I can't lie, I can't do many of the things your morals allow you to do. I can't commit fornication as an example.My actions do not sound, "morally special" but those actions of righteousness ensure that a baby can't be aborted( murdered), whereas you would just have some nice-sounding words, such as "pro-abortion". Actions speak louder than words. I don't have pretty words, I have the Holy Spirit GENUINELY changing my nature of sin, I can look back to the past, and see the ugliness that was my former self, whereas your relative morals have no power at all, they do not give you the ability to not sin. Even prisoners are moral - they think it is "wrong" to tell on their friends. You can have a million jails full or moral people if you want, but in reality, indwelling sin is the problem, not morals.Think about it, there is a difference between Reality and actions, and morally pretty words.In reality your morals might allow you to have sex with many women, perhaps cause an abortion, or a single-parent, after all, look at society today - you say it is improving, but is abortion and single-parent families and an increase in crime, do these "actions" show an improving society? Society is becoming worse, not better, because you think that morals can change a person's ability to not sin. I agree, we have become civilized, moral sinners, capable of hiding and pretending that we don't sin, and having more surreptitious and clever ways to be brutal, we are dying of disease and doing all manner of vile things, but we now have the ability to cover it all up with some pretty words.

Yea common how can someone who does not believe in a magic man in the sky have any morals at all. If it wherent for religion we would probably go on torturing people, burning them on pyres, and beat our slaves that they would die on the first day after the beating.Atheists without Christians would probably say things like pesants are from the line of noas third son the one who laughed at his father for getting drunk and as it written they should be our servants as punishment for what that son did.Atheists would also claim that black people can only go to heaven as a slave because they come from the line of Cain who slew his brother and they bare the mark of Cain their black skin.or say things like" Slavery was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts " - Jefferson Davis, President, Confederate States of AmericaEvery hope of the existence of church and state, and of civilization itself, hangs upon our arduous effort to defeat the doctrine of Negro suffrage - Robert Dabney, a prominent 19th century Southern Presbyterian pastor... the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example - Richard Furman, President, South Carolina Baptist Convention

This concludes my participation for two reasons.

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1. It is snowballing, it makes it hard for me to provide quality posts, my thoughts become less clear, I type faster and so forth.

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2. I don't want to quarrell with anyone. I think I have said my piece, if you are convinced my words have had no value, then fair enough, I am not going to say you are wrong or fight with anyone. I will allow you all to have the final word.(I might provide a link from AIG though, I will edit it into this post you are reading.)

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In reality your morals might allow you to have sex with many women, perhaps cause an abortion, or a single-parent, after all, look at society today -
  —mikethe wiz

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Speak for yourself. I don't do what you accuse me of doing, because I don't get my morals from a book that encourages slavery.If your moral values are so questionable, don't reflect your lack of moral values on other people.

What you call morality is very special indeed because it's not based on what you think or feel is wrong or what our society believes to be wrong; it's based on what a particular ancient book tells you is wrong.This results in you being forced to defend the indefensible - the keeping and beating of slaves in this particular case. You can't tell me that slavery is a wrong because, as you say, you can't lie; but you know it's wrong nevertheless.You need to ask yourself how and why you know slavery is a wrong if your book tells you that it isn't. Then you need to ask yourself why I, as an atheist, can have almost identical feelings about lying, fornication and abortion as you do. (And to that list you can add theft, rape and murder etc etc too).How can that be do you think? Suppose you'd been born in the Atlas mountains and never been introduced to the bible. Would slavery still be wrong?

There are examples of societies that done all those things, and did not have religion.The society I live in, in the UK, murders babies in the womb by hundreds of thousands each year. Please see the pictures of the brutally mangled, well-formed babies. Crime is rife in a largely secularist society. There are children that are in strange families, that have no sense of a mother and father, sin is more abundant than ever, it's is just "limited" by laws, but people still rape, murder, and usually those persons are not going to be people that have been born again, and have the Holy Spirit.How could you, being genuinely born again, do such acts? So who is doing them? Is it religious people? I would not say I have religion, so what has that got to do with anything anyway? Do murderers and rapists turn up at church on a Sunday? What got the prisoners in jail? Was it reading the bible? From what you are saying, I am typing these words from jail, if we are to believe the absurd consequences of your statements.I am afraid your whole argument that the atheist is the enlightened breed, is quite silly, and has nothing to do with reality. In reality, those evil religious actions of the past were committed by atheists - people that did not genuinely have a conversion experience.So by lumping me in with the "religious", sure - you can pretend I would allow slavery, you can pretend I would burn a witch, but REALITY shows another picture.You make out I am bad and you are good.You use the epithet, "religion", but I am not in that group, there are atheists that are much more religious than me.You forget that the reality of Christ in your life is not another false religion, you no longer are a slave to sin, but a slave to God. In a way, you can't willfully sin. Largely, these religious histories will have been driven by atheists, in that they were atheist to being born again. Even Muslims, seeks, Budhists, etc....come under "atheist" to us, because they are in the same position as the atheist, according to scripture.

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.

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Even Muslims, seeks, Budhists, etc....come under "atheist" to us, because they are in the same position as the atheist,....
  —mikethe wiz

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Get an education on what an atheist is. On second thoughts.. just get an education.

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... according to scripture.
  —mikethe wiz

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And according to Muslim scripture, the Quran (Muslims believe it is the Word of God), you are an "kafir". A non-believer. An infidel. The same as an atheist.Those old books support things like slavery. Modern societies don't get moral values from any of those books.