Hobbs

Or, in saying that your "saying no to being a slave has nothing to do with the allowing of them being beaten," are you saying that you would not mind the being beaten part, but there are other aspects of being a biblically defined slave that you would object to if you had to be one? I'm not sure how you thought your attempted dodge actually dodges anything. And I'm not sure how or why anyone feels that it is so important for the Bible not to have any errors that they would be willing to accept and attempt to defend this sort of slavery (as long as they are safely sure that these laws will never actually apply to themselves) in order to avoid the obvious conclusion that the Bible is not the inerrant word of a perfect God.

Not_Registered

Um, why did you say no to wanting to be a peasant, even when I said you would no be beaten?


I used the exact verse that Hobbs use in his quote box. Read the original post.


So your definition of slave is "a servant who is the man's money, his property." I can agree with that. What is your point? Look at the "official definitions" I presented. They define servitude as "A state of subjection to an owner or master" and a slave as "One bound in servitude as the property of a person or household." Never did I contest the concept of a slave or servant belonging to or being the property of the owner/master. The "official definitions" I gave even support this. What is your point? You point out what I have already made clear. Again, what is your point?

Up until one moves out of their parent's house, one is in their parent's possession (i.e. they are their parents "property"). Look up property, all the definitions I could find included the word possession or possessed. So, again, if you are constructing your definition of slave as "a servant who is the man's money, his property", although a child wouldn't fall under the "man's money" category (unless he/she were adopted, I'm not sure how that whole thing works), the child would still fall under the "property" category (until he/she moves out of their parents house). So, by your definition, all people who still live with their parents are slaves. I thank you for the realization of this equivalent relationship. The slave/owner relationship in the bible is much like, and seemingly a parallel of, the child/father relationship in the bible. Now, if we look at it from this view, the fathers were told to beat their children, but only as a corrective measure, not to abuse them (fathers were even warned of this). Any act the father did upon the child was to be out of love for the child, not out of anger or frustration. This is how the slave/owner relationship is also depicted in the bible. The owners are allowed to beat their slaves, but not unnecessarily and not to the point of maiming them.

Not_Registered

As stated in my prior post, Angrillori has brought to my attention the parallel relationship (as depicted in the bible) of slave/owner and child/father. As a child I was beaten. I sustained no maiming, because my father didn't beat me "unnecessarily" or "out of anger or fustration." So I am not "safely sure that these laws will never actually apply to [me]," because they, infact, did apply to me at one time. My father did not beat me all the time for anything I did wrong, although he did reserve the right to, as long as he did not break my spirit (as the bible says). He corrected me through physical means as he saw fit, which tended only to be when I was extremely defiant. Seems to me like he did a superb job, as I am not planning on robbing any banks (not anytime soon anyway). The same principles applied to the slave/owner relationship, as defined in the bible.

If all slaves were treated appropiately and correctly, as my father did me, there would be no negative connotation applied to slaves or slavery. But, since many slaves were abused, killed, raped, maimed, etc., which was not in accordance with the bibles regulations, there has been a negative association applied to "slavery" and "slaves." I, nor anybody, can do anything to reverse this. But, we can look at how the bible defines "slaves" and "slavery" and make clear and distinct separations between its (the bible's) definitions of the terms and what they have come to mean over time.

Mageth

Slavery was condemned and outlawed because we came to realize, thank goodness and in spite of the Bible, that it was immoral for one human being to own another human being, not because slaves were mistreated.

Mathetes

False.

Bible's regulations said that you had to submit to your master whether you were abused or not.

Toto

Children in today's households are not comparable to slaves in Biblical times, and your analogy is rather repulsive.

Slaves were beaten to give them an incentive to work, since there was no monetary incentive.

Not_Registered

Who is determining the slavery defined in the bible is "immoral" and how did they arrive at this conclusion?

We have a UN today. Without it, and it some cases with it, but defintely without it there would be dictatorships and the mistreating of people would happen constantly. Is it "immoral" not to have a UN, or is the UN in place just because without it people would act up and things would get chaotic. Can the same be said about slavery? If conducted properly, by the regulations of the bible, slavery is not "immoral". But maybe this entity you know, which goes around claiming things immoral or moral is correct...and maybe Mormonism is too. Because, as history shows, people will oppress and exploit others in a slavery system, thus we must remove it. Does that make slavery incorrect, or the people that implement it. If I tell someone to bowl a strike and you will win the game, but the individual doesn't do what I say, does that make bowling a strike the wrong method to win?

Mageth

Slavery as defined anywhere is wrong according to our modern ethics.

And WE did, WE determined slavery to be immoral, because we recognized, after some travail, that the right to individual life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, individual freedom, should extend to all. The rise of individualism and the recongnition of basic human rights doomed slavery. Once you recognize basic human rights, eventually you have to recognize that one of those rights should be the right not to be owned by another human being.

And I'm sure that many SLAVES recognized slavery as immoral long before the rest of the world came to see it that way.

Sven

It's scary that people with opinions like this are allowed to vote.

ArchAngel

If conducted properly, by the regulations of the bible, the massacre of a group of people, including women and children, is not "immoral" if God told you to do it. They were inconveniently in the land that God promised you. Nothing in the bible is immoral. Killing is not immoral if you just follow the regulations in the bible for doing it correctly. If you massacre an entire tribe of people, remember to love them, as a good Jew or Christian should. Give them a smile and who knows, maybe they will smile back and then you can share a warm, intimate moment before you disembowel them. After all, it wasn't their fault that they were on the land that God promised you. The bible should be the guide for everything. Even the massacring of an entire people. Only when we use the bible as the ultimate guide for everything in our lives will we truly understand happiness and true human freedoms.


It's hard to get a strike. Maybe they tried to get a strike but were a little rusty. Those foam bumpers that you put in the gutters are nice. It makes it easier.

I'm probably quite dumb as you are most likely thinking right now, but your logic baffles me.