Morality without god

Sure I'll reply and get myself blasted for it. The Bible does not condone slavery, it merely gave laws for treating slaves humanely. Slavery was such a universal institution it couldn't have been confronted until Christ came, and then, although yes some Christians defended it, it was Christians who opposed it on the basis of Christian doctrine.Also, this notion that "genocide" was "allowed" in the Bible is false. God punished entire tribes of people for their sins. He also punished most of the human race for our sins in the Flood. That is God's Law in operation, God's justice. Genocide on the other hand is simply murder done by tyrannical human beings, and it's certainly not something the human race has transcended by a long shot. I put up the film "innocents Betrayed" on the gun control thread and you can find it at You Tube, all about the genocides of the twentieth century, some continuing into very recent times. It is still going on in some parts of the world if you regard it as genocide for Catholics and Muslims and Hindus to kill Christians.And of course the idea of rights for "sexualities" is a flat out violation of God's universal Law which is one of the many violations of His law that is bringing the western world under God's judgment. What you may think of as "changing and developing" is in reality merely degeneration.Cheers.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No, too much for the PEOPLE in a world where slavery was taken for granted, people who were already hard enough to govern as the history of Israel demonstrates. It's an example of God's wisdom and restraint. And of course that was obvious but you had to get your snarky remark in anyway. No, it is merely making the best of an inevitable situation. Quote please?Slavery, by the way, still exists in the Muslim world.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

See answer to Rahvin.

Sometimes I can't WAIT for Judgment Day.

You live in entirely different circumstances.The idea was that the people would not be able to give it up. They might try and fail. They go on to fail the other commandments anyway even though most of those were pretty standard for the day. No, he'd most likely have given up his slaves but his descendants would have gone back to the practice.Slavery was a common way for someone to pay off debt for one thing, but for another it's hard to handle herds of animals without help.

Yes, it was taken for granted but rules were needed. You don't dismantle an entire economy by making a law against one of the pillars that supports it. Since Christians ultimately DID object to slavery it has to be that they believed God to be against it, so the only explanation why it persisted in Israel has to be that it was wiser to leave it along but regulate it at the time. No, it's tolerance and accommodation. That commandment reflects the Ten Commandments according to Jesus, those that address how to deal with one's neighbor, so it existed in Old Testament times as well.Slavery was a way a person could pay off debt. You have no sense of God at all then. If one thing is true of Him it's that He is patient and longsuffering with people who violate His laws, tolerating the Israelites for centuries before sending them into bondage for instance, but also sending prophet after prophet to warn them that punishment is coming if they don't turn back. He's tolerating you right now as He tolerates all sinners giving us time to repent. It will be interesting to hear how God answers you when the time comes. You had made it sound as if God REQUIRED the beating of a slave. Obviously that is not the case. And He DOES require punishment of the owner if he murders a slave, which as I understand it was not considered to be murder anywhere else but in Israel, showing that God's laws ARE more humane. Also there had to be a reason for the beating, some way the slave wasn't working as required, which should count in here somewhere.I don't understand the point about his continuing a day or two. One commentator suggests it means that the owner didn't really mean to kill the slave, and another that his dying would be punishment enough since he would lose the labor. Not that I'm aware of, not condoned by genuine Christians. No, it's just that I'm aware that Muslims take slaves and if other groups also do I'm not aware of it. As I say above, when Christ came Christians began to object to slavery, which means they understood that God is against it, the same God who gave us the Ten Commandments. But asking people to give up their slaves was really asking a great deal as evidenced by Paul's attempt to gently persuade a slave owner to give up his slave in the letter to Philemon, even offering to pay him for whatever loss he had sustained.

If God GIVES a law then it IS absolute and binding. If He does not give a law then it is not. The laws He gave involving slavery were about how to deal with slaves humanely, not about slavery itself.

Evidence please.

You might be able to own a Canadian if you are willing to pay enough. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I see no approval of slavery itself in giving laws about how to treat slaves. I think of it as a necessary evil that required regulation. God also permitted the Israelites to divorce their wives although Jesus told them that was only because of the hardness of their hearts. That too could have been made a commandment, you know: Thou shalt not divorce.I believe slavery was a similar situation. That's what I've been trying to say and your semantic claims are irrelevant to that.As for the Biblical laws being more humane I trust the many many others who have investigated these things so I don't have to do the investigating myself. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Your two minutes was wasted. None of that addresses the topic here AND none of it answers my claim that slavery is not a part of the CHRISTIAN world anywhere. And I meant CHRISTIAN, not European, not American etc. Sex trafficking and other kinds of slavery DO go on these days, I've seen a few documentaries on it, and it's a sad situation that's for sure, but this has nothing to do with anything I've argued here or the general topic of slavery as an institution which is how I've been addressing it, not a criminal underworld business.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What a bunch of logic-chopping irrelevance. I agree, why DO you waste your time on such idiotic strawmanning enterprises anyway?I meant CHRISTIAN for crying out loud and you bring up CRIMINAL stuff. ALSO SLAVERY AS A CULTURUAL INSTITUTION. That ought to be obvious. Good grief, talk about clueless.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry to say that's probably true of you.But of course I meant you live in a culture whose economy is not built on slavery as nomadic cultures and herding cultures were likely to be. Yes, the Christians in this country were able to bring that about finally. Yes, times had changed and it had become possible to end slavery. Why not a law against divorce? See the Sermon on the Mount. Depends. If most slaves were paying off debts, and I know some were, it wouldn't have been a good thing. True, at least in most cases one thinks of, so I can't answer this except to suggest that it was mostly for paying off debt which is something i will have to investigate some time. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, Rahvin, the very first thing I said on this subject acknowledged that some Christians justified slavery.But it was Christians who protested it, REAL Christians, for Christian reasons, and have to be credited with finally ending it.And illegal slavery is not the topic, as I pointed out to Theodoric when he made the same point about its still going on, the topic is culturally institutionalized slavery, you know, what they had in ancient Israel and in the South of the US. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Which is a code you got thanks to the Christians who worked to end slavery. The explanation I've been supporting here is that He had the wisdom not to burden the people with a change in their habits that He knew they could not keep. Same as He wisely did not demand that they not divorce their wives although as Jesus said He hates divorce and from Jesus' time on that was to be the standard. It took longer for slavery to be abolished. When people would not have given it up for anything. God's wisdom in dealing with human frailty is certainly not appreciated by the humanly frail these days.