Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Julio · 10-29-2008, 01:08 AM

Paul was a terrible hypocrite, and should not be regarded as a moral model under any circumstance.
He was a violent fanatic, ready to kill if he had had the weapons.
He ordered the slaves to obey their masters in EVERYTHING because he was a free man.
He never had to do the daily job of collecting the master’s excrement and clean the toilet.
He never had to be punished with a hundred slashes for urinating in the same hole the master used.
Come summer or winter, the slave had to do THAT job, and suffer.
His life was always in danger.
Many of those slaves had been forced out of their families, which were somewhere out there crying and suffering without the husband, the son, the only means of support, and so on, because he was a slave in a far away place.
Now, the preachers come along trying to defend this crude concept of slavery for those days.
The problem is that Paul is representing a God of love in that statement.
The same God that observed the very first case of slavery millennia back somewhere in this planet, but let it go.
Later, slavery would turn into a monstrous abuse of the same human rights the gospel was supposed to teach and protect.
Man, the gospel of Paul is CRIMINAL!

Johnny Skeptic · 10-29-2008, 07:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beforHim

Go here for a good explanation of slavery in the Bible.

I checked the link. The article is at Glenn Miller's web site. I am well acquainted with him. He is very intelligent, and very educated, but I have caught him making many false claims. The article is much too lengthy for my purposes, and Miller does not directly address all of my arguments. The opening post is clear. God is not fair. If you wish to discuss the Scriptures that I mentioned in the opening post, and/or if you wish to quote Miller regarding things that I stated in the opening post, please do so.

Edit: I went back and read part of Miller's article on slavery. Here are some excerpts:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glenn Miller

First of all, we will have the same wide, wide range of meanings of the terms for 'slave' here, as we did in the ANE. It will refer to general (and sometimes vague) subordination:

"The word >ebed, however, denoted not only actual slaves occupied in production or in the household but also persons in subordinate positions (mainly subordinate with regard to the king and his higher officials). Thus the term >ebed is sometimes translated as “servant.” Besides, the term was used as a sign of servility in reference to oneself when addressing persons of higher rank. Finally, the same term was also used in the figurative meaning “the slave (or servant) of God.” Thus, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prophets, David, Solomon and other kings are regularly called slaves of Yahweh (Exod 32:13; Lev 25:55; 1 Sam 3:9; Ezra 9:11, etc.). Similarly, all the subjects of Israel and Judah are called slaves of their kings, including even wives, sons, and brothers of the latter (1 Sam 17:8; 29:3; 2 Sam 19:5, etc.; cf. also Gen 27:37; 32:4). Addressing Moses and prophets, the Israelites called themselves their slaves (Num 32:25; 1 Sam 12:19, etc.). Ruth refers to herself as a slave girl of her relative Boaz (Ruth 3:9). Being a vassal of the Philistine king Achish, David called himself his slave (1 Sam 28:2). It is natural that the same vague and inexplicitly formulated social terminology characteristic of the ANE is also used in the Bible in relation to the subjects of foreign rulers. For example, courtiers of an Aramean ruler or the soldiers of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II were considered slaves of their monarchs (2 Kgs 6:11; 24:10–11). It is natural that kings of Judah depending on more powerful rulers of neighboring countries were considered their slaves. Thus, Ahaz is referred to as a slave of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III (2 Kgs 16:7). In modern translations of the Bible >ebed/doulos and several other similar terms are rendered “slave” as well as “servant,” “attendant,” etc. Such translations, however, might create some confusion and give the incorrect impression that special terms for the designation of servants and slaves are attested in the Bible…However, selecting the proper meaning from such a broad metaphorical application of the term designating a general dependence rarely presents great difficulty. For example, Abimelech, king of Gerar, called up his slaves and told them his dream (Gen 20:8). Apparently, these “slaves” were royal courtiers and officials. Abraham gathered 318 of his slaves, born in his household, in order to recover his kinsman Lot who had been captured by Chedorlaomer and three Mesopotamian kings (Gen 14:14). At least, a part of these persons constituted freeborn members of Abraham’s family. Upon ascending the throne of Judah, Amaziah executed his slaves who had murdered his father, the former king (2 Chr 25:3). These slaves were certainly royal dignitaries. When Josiah, king of Judah, had been killed at Megiddo, his body was taken in a chariot to Jerusalem by his slaves (2 Kgs 23:30). It is quite evident that these slaves were royal soldiers. In a number of cases, however, the interpretation of the actual meaning of the ambiguous >ebed may be disputed. For instance, the steward of Abraham’s household who was in charge of all his possessions is called his slave (Gen 24:2). His status can only conjecturally be interpreted as an indication of actual slavery and, of course, he could have been a freeborn person." [ABD, s.v. "Slavery, Old Testament"]

Regarding "First of all, we will have the same wide, wide range of meanings of the terms for 'slave' here, as we did in the ANE," that will not do. As the opening post clearly shows, if a Jew deliberately killed a Jew, he was put to death, but if he killed another class of people, slaves, servants, or whatever term that you wish to use, he was only punished, but not punished at all if the slaves recovered within a few days. What we have here is an unfair, double standard based upon racial bigotry.

What about God's murder of all of the firstborn males in Egypt. What do you and Glenn Miller have to say about that? What about Hurricane Katrina? What about God injuring and killing innocent animals, and forcing animals to kill each other? What about God sending skeptics to hell for eternity without parole? A merciful God would not send skeptics to hell for 1,000 years without parole, let alone for eternity.

WVIncagold · 10-29-2008, 09:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beforHim

Go here for a good explanation of slavery in the Bible.

I do agree, that even though the Christian God is not supposed to be a "God of confusion", your statement about "The average sixth grader..." can be sympathized with.

Wow talk about a bunch of Bullshit hand waving.
Slavery means just that no amount of hand waving or sanitizing gets rid of the reality of slavery. A slave does not even have the ability to choose who to mate with and when, or to eat or anything for that matter. Their lives were forfeit on the whim of those who owned them. that is what the term SLAVE means no matter how you want to sanitize it.

Johnny Skeptic · 10-29-2008, 01:20 PM

Although most fundamentalist Christians do not want to admit it, the Bible favors immoral slavery. Consider the following Scriptures.

Item 1

Exodus 21:2-4 (NIV)

"If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free."

Item 2

Exodus 21:12-14 (NIV)

"Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death. However, if he does not do it intentionally, but God lets it happen, he is to flee to a place I will designate. But if a man schemes and kills another man deliberately, take him away from my altar and put him to death."

Item 3

Exodus 21:20-21 (NIV)

"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property."

Item 4

Leviticus 25:44-45 (NIV)

"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly."

Regarding item 1, please note that after six years, a Hebrew slave gained his freedom, but item 4 shows that slaves from other nations could be forced to be slaves for life. Part of item 4 says "You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly." That is a good example of racial bigotry, but what else should one expect from a race of people who appointed themselves as God's chosen people. Chosen for what?

Regarding item 2, if a Hebrew deliberately killed another Hebrew, he was put to death, but item 3 shows that if a Hebrew deliberately killed a slave, he was not put to death, only punished, but not punished at all if the slave recovered in a day or two. That is more proof of racial bigotry.

No matter what kinds of semantic games that Glenn Miller and other deceptive fundamentalist Christians use regarding the word "slave," the texts make it quite clear that whatever the word "slave" means, the word refers to people other than Jews. The texts show that God ordained that Jews treat each other much better than they treated their servants, slaves, or whatever else fundamentalist Christians want to call them. What else would one expect from a group of people who pridefully appointed themselves to be God's chosen people. Chosen for what, may I ask?

beforHim · 10-29-2008, 01:36 PM

Man, that's the last time I ever refer to authority around here! (I can just imagine what would've went down had I mentioned...*gulp*...tektonics.org...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

Regarding "First of all, we will have the same wide, wide range of meanings of the terms for 'slave' here, as we did in the ANE," that will not do. As the opening post clearly shows, if a Jew deliberately killed a Jew, he was put to death, but if he killed another class of people, slaves, servants, or whatever term that you wish to use, he was only punished, but not punished at all if the slaves recovered within a few days. What we have here is an unfair, double standard based upon racial bigotry.

I'll go and look into this. Who knows, this might be one of those points which I must concede and say, "I don't know? Tou-Che". But from my remembrance of the article (I read it a few months ago), I got good answers to all the questions I had, but maybe I wasn't being "skeptic" enough.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WVIncagold

that is what the term SLAVE means no matter how you want to sanitize it.

So a word from the beginning of time is what that word means forever? I just used the word "man" to open my statement, and obviously I mean it as an exclamation. In the KJV, there's a statement "let your conversation be pure", but today we say "let your lifestyle, the way you act, be pure". The word conversation, since then, has been changed a little, as by this you might notice. Words can take on different meaning in different contexts at different times in different places, etc. Why do you think some philosophers get all up in arms about "language" and make statements like, "really, we can't mean anything by saying anything"?

Johnny Skeptic · 10-29-2008, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beforHim

Man, that's the last time I ever refer to authority around here! (I can just imagine what would've went down had I mentioned...*gulp*...tektonics.org...)

Ah, yes, the infamous James Holding, aka Robert Turkelbuzzard, aka Jabba the Hut. I used to debate Holding a lot at the Theology Web. It took about a year for me to get him into a corner about the size of the Christian church in the first century. As soon as I did that, I was banned. I know of other cases where the Theology Web unfairly banned skeptics who embarrassed Christians in debates. I also embarrassed Holding in a debate about the Tyre prophecy. In one case, I asked Holding if he had any historical evidence that showed that the prophecy predated the events. He said that there was such evidence, but refused to post it and told me to find it myself. Holding actually gave me a compliment once. He basically told another skeptic that it takes a lot of patience and fortitude to deal with me.

Are you aware that James Holding is a known liar and a hateful person? For instance, Holding's admittedly flagship essay is titled "The Impossible Faith." Orginally, part of the preface said something like "The early Christian church survived and flourished against seemingly impossible odds." After I forced Holding to concede the small size of the first century Christian church, I went back to his essay and found that he has removed the part that I just mentioned because it suggested that the first century Christian church was large. When I told Holding what the preface used to say, he denied that it was ever there.

It is too bad that you have confidence in Glenn Miller. He is a very deceptive person, and he frequently grossly distorts the truth. I will give you some examples in the future.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

Regarding "First of all, we will have the same wide, wide range of meanings of the terms for 'slave' here, as we did in the ANE," that will not do. As the opening post clearly shows, if a Jew deliberately killed a Jew, he was put to death, but if he killed another class of people, slaves, servants, or whatever term that you wish to use, he was only punished, but not punished at all if the slave recovered within a few days. What we have here is an unfair, double standard based upon racial bigotry.

Quote:

Originally Posted by forHim

I'll go and look into this. Who knows, this might be one of those points which I must concede and say, "I don't know? Tou-Che". But from my remembrance of the article (I read it a few months ago), I got good answers to all the questions I had, but maybe I wasn't being "skeptic" enough.

I applaud your willingness to reconsider your position.

Johnny Skeptic · 10-29-2008, 04:27 PM

I will probably not make any posts for several months at these forums because I have an important project that I need to work on.

beforHim · 10-29-2008, 10:30 PM

I had an interesting thought today-

Skeptics are supposed to question the obvious, right? Or the norm, right? Or what people have always believed, right? Well, in a sense, if it's SSOOOO obvious that from the text, we get a cruel God who condones slavery, then aren't I the one being the skeptic, trying to look at it skeptically, thinking it might not be saying what it seems to obviously say?

I mean, if it's so obvious, then shouldn't you be skeptical about it? I guess you're being skeptical about what's been taken for granted for a long time, and hence sometime in the future, if atheism takes ahold, the skeptical ones will be the Christians. Weird.

Anyway, good luck in your studying.

Civil1z@tion · 10-29-2008, 10:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beforHim

I had an interesting thought today-

Skeptics are supposed to question the obvious, right? Or the norm, right? Or what people have always believed, right? Well, in a sense, if it's SSOOOO obvious that from the text, we get a cruel God who condones slavery, then aren't I the one being the skeptic, trying to look at it skeptically, thinking it might not be saying what it seems to obviously say?

I mean, if it's so obvious, then shouldn't you be skeptical about it? I guess you're being skeptical about what's been taken for granted for a long time, and hence sometime in the future, if atheism takes ahold, the skeptical ones will be the Christians. Weird.

Anyway, good luck in your studying.

Skeptics are supposed to seek the truth regardless of whether the truth is widely held. For instance, the idea that air is needed for a human to survive is a very common belief. Skeptics though don't question it (anymore at least) due to the mountains of evidence supporting the idea that air is required for human life. The support of lack thereof of a position cannot be taken as meaning that it must be wrong or right and skeptics are as likely to question minority opinions (like conspiracy theories) as majority ones (like religion).

beforHim · 10-30-2008, 09:43 AM

I'm confused- I really thought being skeptical meant questioning everything? Evidence? You're not questioning those mounds of evidence, those scientists who got that evidence, those sources those scientists got those evidences from, those sources you learned the evidence from, your own cognitive and empirical faculties you used to learn the evidence?

I really would like to see a completely consistent skeptic, being skeptical about all presuppositions what-so-ever. But maybe I have wrong definitions of skeptic and evidence? I might make another thread inquiring of this, because I don't want to go around ignorant, asserting, as so man Christians do, supposed truths about "you guys".

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10-29-2008, 01:08 AM	#21
Julio Banned Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Johannesburg Posts: 5,187	Paul was a terrible hypocrite, and should not be regarded as a moral model under any circumstance. He was a violent fanatic, ready to kill if he had had the weapons. He ordered the slaves to obey their masters in EVERYTHING because he was a free man. He never had to do the daily job of collecting the master’s excrement and clean the toilet. He never had to be punished with a hundred slashes for urinating in the same hole the master used. Come summer or winter, the slave had to do THAT job, and suffer. His life was always in danger. Many of those slaves had been forced out of their families, which were somewhere out there crying and suffering without the husband, the son, the only means of support, and so on, because he was a slave in a far away place. Now, the preachers come along trying to defend this crude concept of slavery for those days. The problem is that Paul is representing a God of love in that statement. The same God that observed the very first case of slavery millennia back somewhere in this planet, but let it go. Later, slavery would turn into a monstrous abuse of the same human rights the gospel was supposed to teach and protect. Man, the gospel of Paul is CRIMINAL!

10-29-2008, 01:20 PM	#24
Johnny Skeptic Banned Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Florida Posts: 19,796	Although most fundamentalist Christians do not want to admit it, the Bible favors immoral slavery. Consider the following Scriptures. Item 1 Exodus 21:2-4 (NIV) "If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free." Item 2 Exodus 21:12-14 (NIV) "Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death. However, if he does not do it intentionally, but God lets it happen, he is to flee to a place I will designate. But if a man schemes and kills another man deliberately, take him away from my altar and put him to death." Item 3 Exodus 21:20-21 (NIV) "If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property." Item 4 Leviticus 25:44-45 (NIV) "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly." Regarding item 1, please note that after six years, a Hebrew slave gained his freedom, but item 4 shows that slaves from other nations could be forced to be slaves for life. Part of item 4 says "You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly." That is a good example of racial bigotry, but what else should one expect from a race of people who appointed themselves as God's chosen people. Chosen for what? Regarding item 2, if a Hebrew deliberately killed another Hebrew, he was put to death, but item 3 shows that if a Hebrew deliberately killed a slave, he was not put to death, only punished, but not punished at all if the slave recovered in a day or two. That is more proof of racial bigotry. No matter what kinds of semantic games that Glenn Miller and other deceptive fundamentalist Christians use regarding the word "slave," the texts make it quite clear that whatever the word "slave" means, the word refers to people other than Jews. The texts show that God ordained that Jews treat each other much better than they treated their servants, slaves, or whatever else fundamentalist Christians want to call them. What else would one expect from a group of people who pridefully appointed themselves to be God's chosen people. Chosen for what, may I ask?

10-29-2008, 04:27 PM	#27
Johnny Skeptic Banned Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Florida Posts: 19,796	I will probably not make any posts for several months at these forums because I have an important project that I need to work on.

10-29-2008, 10:30 PM	#28
beforHim Regular Member Join Date: May 2008 Location: TX, near Houston Posts: 426	I had an interesting thought today- Skeptics are supposed to question the obvious, right? Or the norm, right? Or what people have always believed, right? Well, in a sense, if it's SSOOOO obvious that from the text, we get a cruel God who condones slavery, then aren't I the one being the skeptic, trying to look at it skeptically, thinking it might not be saying what it seems to obviously say? I mean, if it's so obvious, then shouldn't you be skeptical about it? I guess you're being skeptical about what's been taken for granted for a long time, and hence sometime in the future, if atheism takes ahold, the skeptical ones will be the Christians. Weird. Anyway, good luck in your studying.

10-30-2008, 09:43 AM	#30
beforHim Regular Member Join Date: May 2008 Location: TX, near Houston Posts: 426	I'm confused- I really thought being skeptical meant questioning everything? Evidence? You're not questioning those mounds of evidence, those scientists who got that evidence, those sources those scientists got those evidences from, those sources you learned the evidence from, your own cognitive and empirical faculties you used to learn the evidence? I really would like to see a completely consistent skeptic, being skeptical about all presuppositions what-so-ever. But maybe I have wrong definitions of skeptic and evidence? I might make another thread inquiring of this, because I don't want to go around ignorant, asserting, as so man Christians do, supposed truths about "you guys".

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