Chris Weimer

The difference between that and ancient slavery is that today you could run, while if you ran then they would go looking for you and recapture you. So no, the parallel doesn't even come close.

Chili

It is a sin to have faith in Israel where faith and doubt can not be conceived to exist.

yummyfur

So your either saying serfdom is acceptable for "love ones' neighbors as oneself", or are you saying that for over a thousand years of Christian history(one of the largest single serf holders being the Catholic Church) this principle was essentially bankrupt?

By the way, serfdom came out of Roman slavery, which merely came out of a change in Roman law in the 4th century, that said that slaves that worked the land could not move or be moved from that land, this was largely to try to keep productive farmland from going to waste, because the landlord might want to sell his slaves and work less land for his own interests, or sell slaves and land seperatly. So in fact there are very few real differences from Roman slavery and later serfdom. Serfs were really just a specific type of slave, that is an agricultural slave, for all purposes. By the way, the term serf is just from the Latin servus, the same Latin term for slave. Contrary to the bullshit one sometimes hears that serfs were not "owned", they were, but not by persons, but by estates, this is a distinction with largely no difference.

Joan of Bark

Not at all. While I can't speak for all atheists, I use a literal interpretation of Biblical passages when a theist does the same. Tit for tat. Over the years I've discovered that theists of ALL stripes will take certain passages literally when it suits them. When they don't agree with some passage, only then do they use the "oh, you have to put it in context/interpret/see the bigger picture" argument. Hey, I can argue it either way ...