Roger Pearse

Depends on whether the owner is young, blonde, single and female or not.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Yes. The bible has little simple sloganising, true or otherwise.

In the age of near 50% basic rate taxation -- the same as paid by the helots of ancient Sparta -- the question would seem one that most of us have already answered.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

figuer

Clouseau, you are trying to have it both ways, but that doesn’t work. Rather it serves as another example of the incapacity of believers to reason.

Your claim that slavery was not proscribed in the Bible because the only other option was killing the captives is absurd.

The Bible was (according to believers), written by “God” as a guide of appropriate behaviour for his “chosen people”.

Had “God” considered slavery “evil”, he would have informed his “chosen people” that slavery was incorrect, and furthermore, he would have proscribed the killings of captives, thus eliminating the “only other choice” that you subscribe to.

To say that slavery could not be forbidden by “God” because the only other choice is the slaying of captives is to say that “God” could not forbid the slaying of captives, a notion which I don’t see how a believer can subscribe to.

If you claim that it was a result of the culture of the time you are implying that for “God”, what is right or wrong is not based on eternal principles but accommodates to the culture of peoples.

For a believer the Bible is supposed to be the perfect instrument by which “God” establishes a culture of righteousness. Thus “God’s” laws should not accommodate to the culture of the people, but the other way around.

The example of slavery’s non condemnation in the Bible indicates that it is not God's law but rather the instrument by which a particular culture regulated its life and sustained a national agenda.

Gullwind

Which part is untrue? The bible has no proscriptions about slavery? That's true. I and at least Mike Rosoft wish it did? That's true too. That's all we were saying? It was true at the time. Since we can now explore this little moral black hole, we have said more on the subject.

Don't you think that answering the question of why slavery isn't prohibited in the bible with
just might sound like an attempt to justify it? Why else did you respond in that way?

Clouseau

Can you quote, please? That is the usual netiquette.

That is because slavery is not an absolute evil, as theft or murder is. I am not going to go back over the argument. Either you have not noticed it, or you have chosen to ignore it.

That is a quite separate issue.

Chili

It is true even if it is not biblical. The Freeman is eternal because he is no longer enslaved to his temporal ego wherein he lived beside himself and knowingly would die.

Roger Pearse

This seems to me to involve you speaking on behalf of the God of the Christians, tho.

The argument as a whole seems to be a strawman, and might perhaps be reduced to:

1. Society in the west in the early 21st century objects to slavery.
2. The bible reflects a society in which slavery was a normal part of life.
3. This proves that the bible cannot be divinely inspired.

No doubt everyone can see the fallacies, petitio principi and non-sequiturs that litter each stage of this.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Clouseau

'We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers — and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.' 1 Tim 1:9-11 NIV

Not that bit.

Clouseau

See the context you snipped.

jemand

You've just covered an internal inconsistency, that's all. That verse is not evidence that the Bible hasn't been used to support horrific slavery practices (as well as some other horrific actions, but we need ot go there.)

So do you think slavery is positive and something that should be allowed today? If not, when was it that it stopped being a moral good? Please answer me this.

And if the Bible disallowed slavery, but allowed theft in certain situations, you'd be telling us how inherently ambiguous theft is morally, while upholding the standard of the bible for outlawing slavery. One can rationalize anything. It doesn't make it right.