Page 3 of 3 FirstFirst 123
Results 41 to 51 of 51

Thread: The Bible on Slavery

  1. #41
    Himster's Avatar Praeses
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Location
    Dublin, The Peoples Republic of Ireland
    Posts
    9,838

    Default Re: The Bible on Slavery

    The Hebrews could have been a people in Egypt. Obviously they couldn't have built the pyramids, but they could have been among the conscripted Delta farmers to move Pi-Ramses when a branch of the Delta changed course. Whoever wrote Exodus had an uncanny knowledge of a city that had ceased to exist hundreds of years before it was written. Having said that it's hugely unlikely there was an "exodus" on the scale as described in the bible, the lack of evidence is overwhelming. We're talking about one of the rockiest deserts on the planet, when a patrol of 20 Egyptians passes through we can see evidence, when the Hyksos made a camp we see evidence, when a hermit lived in a cave there we see evidence, yet when there was between 100,000 and 1,000,000 people living there for 40 years we find absolutely nothing after decades of intensive and extensive searching? Come on.
    The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts.
    -Betrand Russell

  2. #42
    Denny Crane!'s Avatar Comes Rei Militaris
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Newcastle, England
    Posts
    24,462

    Default Re: The Bible on Slavery

    Quote Originally Posted by sumskilz View Post
    Making the argument that the documents are human authored would make a lot more sense than taking the stance that if God is real, you know better than God, because if God is real, you certainly can't know better than God. Although that is based on the Christian conception of God, but you are granting them that assumption when making the argument in that way.
    Every argument of this nature is rooted in some level of absurdity if you walk into one of these threads as you are arguing the existence of God but more than that the assumption that God has actively intervened on the Earth introducing a further level of philosophical nonsense but that is what happen when you enter into one of the threads and there is no two ways about it. The couple of contradictions you've brought up aren't the only ones but you have to bypass them.

  3. #43

    Default Re: The Bible on Slavery

    Wow, how do I respond to such a post, Thanatos? You show numerous errors (eg confusing Israelites and Jews), continue to rant about how the Mosaic laws condone slavery (ignoring the fact that I addressed this point with Christ's words), invent fantastical and ridiculous back-stories to try to evoke peoples emotions (eg her whole family was murdered, and then she was raped!), and continuously evoke Epicurus' appeal to the problem of evil, which is of course an entirely different matter.

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    Only for Jews. I'm getting tired of you not reading your Bible. Foreigners could and were treated as nothing more than inheritable property.
    Apparently you have not read the Bible very well. These regulations applied to all Israelites, not just Jews. A Jew is an Israelite of the tribe of Judah, in some cases those of the tribe of Benjamin are also considered Jews because, along with the tribe of Judah, they comprised the Kingdom of Judah when the northern 10 tribes seceded.

    Also, I pointed out the property issue because in your passage you were referring to those slaves to which the Exodus and Levitical laws pertained - in other words, those in a form of debt bondage and not chattel slaves.

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    ... and even then, they used despicable practices on Jewish slaves, to get them to remain property even after the six year probationary period:

    Notice how here they can get a male Israelite to become a permanent slave by keeping his damn wife and children hostage until, obviously distressed, he says he wants to become a permanent slave. What in the hell kind of family values are these? This is the best we're supposed to expect from an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient god? Are you actually serious?
    "Obviously distressed"... where? In the scenario you have invented in your head? A servant would have been aware of these laws when he chose to take a wife from his master - such a family bond would have cemented his role in the household.

    Also, the relationship between a bondservant and the householder was generally seen as a positive and loving relationship, hence why it was evoked so often by Christ in his parables.

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    God only mentions injury to teeth or eyes. Anything else is apparently fine, aside from the other quote in Exodus 21 that dealt with pregnant women. It doesn't change the fact that people are still being treated as nothing more than disposable property.
    Incorrect. Leviticus 25 states that the slaves your are speaking of here (ie those to which the laws apply) must be given the same rights as domestic servants. And once again, the servants that these laws relate to were not "disposable property" as in chattel slavery.

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    Secondly, the premise that God has to "tolerate" anything when he is again, all three omnis, is nothing short of laughable. God "tolerates" something? To tolerate something is to not like something, but to put up with it nevertheless. God doesn't have to "tolerate" diddley-squat, and in fact, if he is all-just, he isn't allowed to tolerate something that he doesn't like, otherwise he is no longer perfectly just because he just tolerated something that was evil.
    Yes, God tolerates your mocking him right now, what else did you think that the Christian position would be? Evil exists, God is omnipotent - both statements are true within Christianity. Your rantings here are irrelevant to the topic and hand, and add nothing to your argument about God and slavery.

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    How convenient. How absolutely convenient that everyone else that the Israelites committed genocide on were not just evil, but Disney-villain tier evil. And where do we get these accounts from? The same people who wanted their land and eventually took it over! It's not like this is a problem though, because 1) people have never, in all of history, never ever ever ever ever ever EVER made things up prospectively or retrospectively to justify their actions, or 2) doesn't change the fact that they committed genocide.
    And how convenient is it that you should here change the goalposts. One minute, you argue from a Biblical framework and presume the Bible's claims to be true, and from that perspective argue against their morality. Then moments later, with your attack halted by my pointing out the Bible's position on the Canaanites, you realise that all you can say is that the Bible must here be lying, and that the Canaanites were in fact not as bad as the Bible makes them out to be.

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    God's all-powerful and he knows everything. God could have come up with something that didn't involve rampant pillaging, destruction, and genocide, but he didn't. He told the Israelites to just wipe everyone off the damn map. He could have told the Israelites what to say that would have converted everyone peacefully, and then told them what to say so that the Canaanites would have willingly done penance, but again, he didn't. No, God needs blood. Again, he conveniently needs something that would free up land for his people... which just happened to be killing everyone.
    God did in fact come up with a peaceful option, when he sent Christ to die on the cross. As we can see, still this did not turn all people from their wicked ways. And convenience is irrelevant to God - he ordered the events in Canaan in his righteousness and in his love for his people. But you are correct that God needs blood - he is a just God who punishes sin. The glory of the Gospel is that he shed his own blood for our sins - and still a sinner like you stands here and slanders him.

    Also, it is telling that you apologise for the people of Canaan so that you can maintain your wrath against God.

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    Lastly, as to your point about the women being taken as wives, not slaves, again it's as if you've adopted some very strange myopically-rainbow world view. Are you telling me that just because those women were taken as wives that they were HAPPY about it? These women just had the rest of their damn family murdered before their eyes, and now they're forced to marry their families' murderers. And then they had to have sex with them. You think this wasn't rape? Have you never heard of the term "spousal rape?" Do you know what that term means? Do you understand that this is a very real thing and does exist?
    They had their families murdered before their eyes? And then they married their murders? What a lot of fantastical rubbish. Conquered peoples were assimilated into the Israelite nation. Jerusalem itself was populated by the Jebusites until the time of David, and even well afterward. The Israelites coexisted with a whole host of peoples in Canaan - naturally when the native men were being lost in battle their women would marry the conquerors. Their relationships were no more exploitative or arranged than any other - the disgrace in such an instance would fall on the woman's father, who was unable to give her over to a suitor of his choice.

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    And you're telling me this is the best thing an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present God could do?! I'm not impressed, Caledonian, not by your god, and certainly not by your "excuses" for him.
    Look, bad things have always happened and always will on this fallen earth. If you want to discuss the problem of evil, make a new thread for it. For me, the great thing about the Bible is that God's redemptive plan for mankind shines out above all these things, from the dove returning to Noah with a branch, from the Israelites being freed from slavery in Egypt, from the Jews being brought back to their land after exile in Babylon, to Christ dying for our sins on the cross.

    He came to earth and bore the punishment for the sins of all humanity and suffered what we were due in hell, and yet even that doesn't impress you. What can I say, you are a hard man to impress!

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    This is what is known as a red herring. Thou shalt not commit logical and argumentative fallacies when arguing with others. Bad, Caledonian, bad bad bad. If you want to talk about that, create a thread about it.
    So if you derail the thread with the rape issue, and I respond by pointing out your own hypocrisy on the rape issue*, then that is a red herring? Nope, it isn't.

    *Not in the particular claims of Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins, but in the disturbing consequences of the evolutionary and moral relativist position which you subscribe to

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    Doesn't change the fact that the OT was perfectly fine with slavery, not one bit. If God didn't like slavery, but did nothing to personally ensure that it was stopped, then at the least he is no longer omnipotent, at the absolute worst he is pure evil. What Paul did has means nothing when both Ephesians and Timothy don't exhort Christians to stop slavery all together, just for slaves to happily serve their masters, and masters to not be such jerks when dealing with slaves. Slavery was still, for all intents and purposes, perfectly fine.

    If Christianity was so damn anti-slavery, why did it take until the 17th-18th century before Christian Europe and N.A finally got around to eliminating it wholesale? Funny, that.

    Look Caledonian, at this point I'm not sure what else to say. If you still can't understand, then I'm not sure what else will. Your God is sick, and time and again chose actions that were violent/despicable, when other choices were available, given that whole, you know, omnipotent and omniscient thing. That old chestnut.
    Well, ignoring more of your Epicurean musings, I would like to point out that Christianity has historically often tempered the slave trade of secular powers (look up the Mercedarian Order, for example). But ultimately, Christianity is spiritual, rather than political in nature. This was the conclusion of my original post. We are called to focus on individual spiritual reform, not political reform. I believe that the latter follows from the former, not the reverse. We will only succeed in changing the world for the better if we do it out of a love for God and his creation, and not out of a sense of our own pride or righteousness.

    But then, you consider yourself to be a paragon of moral uprightness. So, I hope that you will stick truly by your principles, because one day you will be judged by them.

  4. #44
    Stario's Avatar Domesticus
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Not the CCCP
    Posts
    2,042

    Default Re: The Bible on Slavery

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    It's called the Old Testament. I stated very clearly as much, and even listed examples. But you can just skip all the stuff I've said, that's cool too.
    Sorry I missed the part where you offer any real evidence/proof that God actually wrote the Old Testament. Or are you of the belief that God spoke/communicated in someway with its authors telling them he [God] was fine with slavery- in this case can you also point me to the evidence?!
    Otherwise, as far as I can tell the more logical conclusion being the bible a book of recordings of antiquity- accounts of government, culture, arts,laws, social norms... etc. of the times which it is based on as written by man NOT God.


    Yeah, that's going to be problematic when many Christians do take the book to be either written by God himself, or at the very least extremely inspired by him.
    True, the majority of people are sheeple and willing to believe anything; nothing new here. It is bemusing how many 'pyramid schemes' people fall for and continue to do so. I think this is less to do with religion and more to do with human nature in general- religion is just geared towards exploitation of such facet of human nature.
    Last edited by Stario; April 24, 2014 at 08:38 AM.

  5. #45
    Thanatos's Avatar Now Is Not the Time
    Moderator Emeritus

    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    USA
    Posts
    33,188

    Default Re: The Bible on Slavery

    Quote Originally Posted by Zyzyfer View Post
    Sorry I missed the part where you offer any real evidence/proof that God actually wrote the Old Testament. Or are you of the belief that God spoke/communicated in someway with its authors telling them he [God] was fine with slavery- in this case can you also point me to the evidence?!
    Otherwise, as far as I can tell the more logical conclusion being the bible a book of recordings of antiquity- accounts of government, culture, arts,laws, social norms... etc. of the times which it is based on as written by man NOT God.
    Except I'm not addressing people who don't believe that God wrote the Bible, or that it was heavily inspired by him. My arguments would be pointless to those who believe otherwise, as you have just stated.

  6. #46
    alex man142's Avatar Decanus
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
    Location
    Virginia
    Posts
    507

    Default Re: The Bible on Slavery

    Here is the correct understanding of Biblical slavery:

    Slavery is "condoned" in Scripture. I will most likely get flamed for this but it is true. Paul makes it very clear that slaves are to obey their masters and whatnot. However, my next point is this: slavery back then was different than our connotation of slavery. Slaves were, for the most, very well treated during the Greco-Roman era. They were treated as part of the household and were well fed and equipped. I have even read somewhere that people actually signed up to becomes slaves.

    Understanding this backdrop, we see the Biblical view on slavery form. Jesus did not come to overturn Government. On the contrary, he came to change the Person. He looked on the state of the heart within, not on the outside. Paul writes that we are to obey our government, and Jesus preached a similar message.

    I hate it when Christians say that the Bible is against slavery. It is and it isn't. The whole point of the Gospel is not to achieve social revolution. Paul was not writing to encourage a slave revolt. He was saying that men should be faithful and slaves to Christ no matter what their background was. Christian slaves were to work hard and be a light to the world and christian masters were to treat their slaves as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Slavery was, unfortunately, a social convention of the time. Christ wants us to be followers no matter what occurs in our lives.

    This is, what I believe, to be the Christian view on slavery.




  7. #47
    Stario's Avatar Domesticus
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Not the CCCP
    Posts
    2,042

    Default Re: The Bible on Slavery

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanatos View Post
    Except I'm not addressing people who don't believe that God wrote the Bible, or that it was heavily inspired by him. My arguments would be pointless to those who believe otherwise, as you have just stated.
    In that case you whole argument is more or less arbitrary. You claim God did such and such, but when someone calls you out on it you claim you're addressing only the people that also believe as you do.
    Now your whole argument falls apart when a much more logical presumption- that the bible was written by humans, is put forth; for a starters the bible has human authors.

  8. #48
    Manco's Avatar Dux Limitis
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    Curtrycke
    Posts
    15,076

    Default Re: The Bible on Slavery

    It's telling all the justifications people need to come up with to render acceptable the book of a religion that's supposedly universal.
    Some day I'll actually write all the reviews I keep promising...

  9. #49

    Default Re: The Bible on Slavery

    Quote Originally Posted by alex man142 View Post
    I hate it when Christians say that the Bible is against slavery. It is and it isn't. The whole point of the Gospel is not to achieve social revolution. Paul was not writing to encourage a slave revolt. He was saying that men should be faithful and slaves to Christ no matter what their background was. Christian slaves were to work hard and be a light to the world and christian masters were to treat their slaves as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Slavery was, unfortunately, a social convention of the time. Christ wants us to be followers no matter what occurs in our lives.

    This is, what I believe, to be the Christian view on slavery.
    I agree. Note the conclusion of my original post.

    Think on this though - in a Christian society, should we advocate slavery? I would be inclined to say no.

    Quote Originally Posted by Manco View Post
    It's telling all the justifications people need to come up with to render acceptable the book of a religion that's supposedly universal.
    All I have done is clear up a few misconceptions. Ultimately I am still in agreement with what alex man said above and I came to a similar conclusion in my original post.

  10. #50
    Thanatos's Avatar Now Is Not the Time
    Moderator Emeritus

    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    USA
    Posts
    33,188

    Default Re: The Bible on Slavery

    Quote Originally Posted by Zyzyfer View Post
    In that case you whole argument is more or less arbitrary. You claim God did such and such, but when someone calls you out on it you claim you're addressing only the people that also believe as you do.
    Now your whole argument falls apart when a much more logical presumption- that the bible was written by humans, is put forth; for a starters the bible has human authors.
    Believe as I do? I don't believe that the Bible was written by God, and that a lot of things start falling apart if you approach it from a humanistic/historical standpoint.

    I don't think you quite understand that when it comes to this point, we're on the same side. However, just because you don't think this doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of Christians who do think that the Bible is the literal word of God. It may be useless to you, but it is most certainly not useless to all.

    It's like as if beer bottles came in two different types of bottle cap mechanisms, and you only drink out of bottles that use #1, and then say that a tool designed for #2 doesn't work with your #1 caps, so therefore the tool is completely useless for everyone.

  11. #51
    basics's Avatar Vicarius Provinciae
    Join Date
    Dec 2004
    Location
    Scotland, UK.
    Posts
    11,280

    Default Re: The Bible on Slavery

    " This verse towards the end of the letter is understood by many as Paul hinting that Philemon ought to free Onesimus. It is hard to tell from this alone whether or not Paul would call for the freeing of slaves more generally, since it is unclear if Philemon would have owned any other slaves. "

    Caledonian Rhyfelwyr,

    Well, there's slavery and slavery and one is hard put to say that the Israelites brutalised their slaves in the way they were brutalised when in Egypt. And, one has to consider how the Israelites came to have slaves and how they were to be treated. I think that what Moses brought out of the mountain covered slaves as well as the ordinary Israeli meaning that they weren't the whipping boys that we generally associate with slaves from a more recent past. Indeed there is no hint that Onesimus was brutalised by Philemon at all, the substance being a personal question of his freedom.

    I think that anyone will agree that not all slaves were brutalised by their masters and reading outside of the Bible one can see that many slaves were given their freedom by their masters especially when reading the history of Rome. Of course many weren't perhaps so fortunate but we mustn't associate these with how the Israelites treated their slaves especially since God included their treatment to be inclusive in the commandments He gave to Moses.

Page 3 of 3 FirstFirst 123

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •