I don't think that you know what that word means.  Have we reached a point where you can no longer explain yourself while remaining consistent with your previous statements?

This could all have been avoided.  "That's not my god, I don't believe in that god, my god wouldn't tell anyone to do that".

-"B-b-b-b-b-ut the bible says" whines the angry atheist.

"So what, it's a fucking book, what's wrong with you?".

(June 30, 2016 at 12:48 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote:

(June 30, 2016 at 12:32 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Wait a minute...isn't it -our- opinion?  Am I talking to a person willing to rise to the defense of the goodness of sex trafficking?  It doesn't matter whether or not a god commanded his chosen people to enslave little girls after eradicating their parents?

Then why do you object in the first place?  We already know you don't object to genocide - "cuz evil people"..or somesuch bullshit...why not just tack on sex trafficking to that as well?  What's the problem...?

Cut out the sophism, and we can continue.   Good day!

Man, the irony ...

"Regulating not commanding"... now I've heard it all.

I'd just like to say, thank you to the Christians in this thread for your sterling work in justifying atheism. That is all.

#lurkerlaughing

(June 30, 2016 at 1:01 pm)SteveII Wrote:

(June 30, 2016 at 11:45 am)Mr.wizard Wrote: What!? I'm saying if god is against slavery why would he command the slaves to obey their masters, instead of just commanding people to not own slaves? Is a law telling people not to rape, the same as a law telling people to not get raped?

Slavery and rape are not morally equivalent.

From Paul's letter to Philemon. Notice the bold. 

Quote:8 Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love. It is as none other than Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— 10 that I appeal to you for my son Onesimus,[b] who became my son while I was in chains. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.

12 I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you. 13 I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel. 14 But I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do would not seem forced but would be voluntary. 15 Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever— 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord.

17 So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me. 19 I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. I will pay it back—not to mention that you owe me your very self. 20 I do wish, brother, that I may have some benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ. 21 Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask.

This explains the Christian response: choosing for the right reasons what is morally superior. Jesus did not come with a list of dos and don'ts. He preached a change from the inside.

I didn't say rape and slavery where morally equivalent (although Im sure someone could make the case) that's not even close to the point I was making, I was pointing out that commanding someone to not own slaves is not the same as a command not to be owned as a slave. I was simply using the law for rape as an example.

Your second point is BS about jesus wanting to appeal to us through love and come to conclusions on our own. The idea of Hell and eternal torture was preached by jesus and is found in the NT. Why would that even be necessary if the whole idea was for us to come to our own conclusions?

(June 29, 2016 at 10:01 pm)SteveII Wrote:

(June 29, 2016 at 5:49 pm)Veritas_Vincit Wrote: Ok, let's give it one more go.

[1] Could that nation of tribes get a civilization together? Yes, if that's what your God wanted. The question is, what were his choices? Option 1. is do nothing, don't intervene with their free will, watch the universe unfold but have no interaction and wait for cultural evolution to gradually give rise to ethics, since this will ultimately give rise to more successful societies. But then we wouldn't have the Bible or Jesus - or if we did, they would be false, man made delusions no having come from God even though he was there. Option 2. is give humanity moral guidance. How best to do this? Lots of ways - he could simply appear to each human being, or to whole groups at a time, and clearly explain the world and what is good and bad. There are so many ways he could achieve this, so many creative possibilities.
 
What option does he take? Neither. We are told that he takes option 3. where he chooses only to appear only to a very few humans, meaning that everyone else has to take their word for it and accept extraordinary claims on very weak evidence. He further chooses not to appear after this, meaning that as time goes on the strength of the evidence gets weaker, the message is diluted and corrupted by translation and scribal error, and the heresay evidence gets less and less believable. [A] He only gives them a bizarre selection of very strict and narrow instructions that include barbaric behaviour - by which I mean teachings directly instruct humans to kill and [2]enslave each other [Leviticus 25:44-46; Exodus 21:2-6, 7-11 and 20-21; Ephesians 6:5; 1 Timothy 6:1-2] and consequently create a society based on injustice.

God wants a lot of things that he does not get.
 
Your option 2 is not compatible with free will. If God appeared to each person, our choice to choose God rather than not God becomes nearly impossible. However, that does not mean he has not given moral guidance. Everyone knows the difference between right and wrong. We are born with it. 

[A] I understand your point and I assume you are talking about divine revelation all the way through the NT. However I think your point is invalidated by the fact there are 2.3 Billion Christians on the planet. It seem you underestimate the evidence that it takes for someone to believe. 

[B] Other than to assert there are "so many creative possibilities" to the type of slavery in that time you have not even suggested the details of how a system would work in a tribal culture without centralized power surrounded by similar counties that would achieve the obvious goals in Israel's version of slavery. 

BTW, you won't get any traction with the NT verses. All they do is instruct current slaves to obey their masters. Actually Philemon has Paul imploring that Philemon do the right thing by his slave.

1) Why does it matter that we choose God?
2) If God telling everyone what he wants them to do messes with free will then why tell anyone? Telling a handful is a terrible idea. Surely God would know that revelation is only evidence to the person it is revealed to? I don't believe UFO crazies for exactly this reason!
3) Your point about 2.3billion people believing it is irrelevant as more than that used to believe the world was flat and the sun went round it. They were wrong.
4) If we are born with morality why do we need the Bible?
5) If you're telling me your God couldn't think of a way for humans to live without slavery, and couldn't think of a way to tell them, then he's an idiot because anyone alive on the planet today could do that.
6) Stop going back to the NT - you can't have one without the other. Jesus said all the old stuff still stands, he says it in the sermon on the mount.
7) God could have said Slavery was wrong. He didn't, which is bad enough, but he actually endorsed it, which is immoral. None of this 'cultural context' or 'indentured servitude' gets you anywhere except where you really don't want to be - rationalising slavery. Have you ever considered how similar the dynamic between God and man is to that of an abusive relationship?

---

SteveII
[re God commanding Slavery Wrote:Again, regulating, not commanding. 

I think we've found the problem, because this is not a fair reading of the scripture. God INSTRUCTS people to take slaves. He tells them to do it. He is NOT just regulating it. He is CONDONING it. According to God slavery is allowed. Making love between two men, not allowed, death penalty for that. Shellfish? Mixed fabrics? Not ok. OWNING humans as property? Yes, and you can beat them too as long as they don't die within 2 days.

If we think about it, Old Testament God acts exactly as if he was made in the image of ancient men, and in a way that suited the leaders in order to control their masses and regulate their behavior within the system established. A real and far more loving God would've done a much better job simply because he would be real and actually care about the plight of all sentient beings involved. As God, he would have had infinite options to do away with slavery rather than condone it. For Christian apologists to say otherwise suggests a lack of faith in the power of their God. If any of these apologists were God, would they have done the same thing as the OT God regarding slavery?

(June 30, 2016 at 9:47 am)SteveII Wrote: [1] Again, regulating, not commanding.

So what? If he thought there was anything morally wrong with slavery, he would have made a commandment or law against it (because, again, making laws about various line item little things is one of the most basic traits he has). He didn't, though. I'll say it again: if your god is the source of morality, and the Bible is his message to us about how to behave, then there is no moral admonition against slavery. According to the belief system you profess to uphold, nothing tells us slavery is wrong.

Quote:[2] Your list was for a specific people for a specific time. You are mixing moral laws with dietary laws with social laws--all of which had their meaning to those people. I am listening to myself. You repeating the objection does not change my answer which I have typed out at least 10 times. No one has yet suggested a method to achieve the same goals in this type of society except the "God could have because...omnipotence" line which is a philosophical cop-out.

No it isn't, Steve. Omnipotent means omnipotent. If you or your religion assigns a trait to god, you must answer for all the implications of that trait when your opponents invoke them.


It's a philosophical cop-out to arbitrarily limit an omnipotent being, and it's also a philosophical cop-out to throw up a smoke screen about the different types of Hebrew law. The bottom line is that the commandment "Do not treat human beings as property" does not appear amongst any of those laws, moral or otherwise, nor does anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. Regardless of the time period, you want me to believe that the perfect source of morality was at one time so concerned with the consumption of shellfish that he wrote a law about it in your magic book, and yet the immoral and brutal practice of slavery was such an afterthought that he didn't put it in there, except to use language suggesting that he is more or less OK with slavery in all its most common forms.


Also...what exactly do you think slavery achieved? Feeding and housing the poor could have easily been handled with commandments, or with food falling from the sky, or by multiplying fish...it seems most of your god's miracles are there to either frighten us or show us that he could totally solve all the world's problems if he wanted, he just doesn't. In any case, an all-powerful being shouldn't need slavery as a means of doing anything, so if he does use it, it either means that he is evil or slavery isn't.

Quote:[3] The NT does not endorse slavery. Instructing slaves to obey their masters is perfectly in line with the gospel. What was the alternative instruction? "Slaves do not obey your masters"? That would have led to violence and death in yet another society that practiced slavery.

How about "Do not own other people as property. He who owns another or forces another to work without wages or freedom shall be taken to the edge of the village, drawn, quartered, stoned, and burned at the stake. Their blood will be on their own heads. I am the Lord."?


The Old Testament is full of shit like that concerning a stoopid-long list of things, but not slavery.


"If two men fight, and one man's wife stops the brawl by squeezing his assailant's genitals, chop off her hand. Nobody in the village may take pity on her."


Your god took the time to tell us this, and yet all we have on slavery is rules about how to be a proper slave owner and a proper slave. If your god and your Bible are your measures of right and wrong, by what measure can you say that slavery is immoral?

Quote:There were also references instructing people not to mistreat their slaves/servants. I think it is clear that truly following the NT teachings will convict you of even the most modest forms of slavery. 

Purely a philosophical question: what is the precise problem with this type of slavery (not based on a race having less value)? If you do answer, please address voluntary slavery and if and why that is wrong. I am not saying there isn't a problem, I would just like to hear people articulate it.

You do know that American slavery was expressly based on the Law of Moses, right?


You do know that, right?


Old Testament law lays out rules for properly beating slaves. You're allowed to use a rod as long as you don't knock out eyes or teeth, and you get in trouble for beating your slaves to death...but only if they die within two days of the beating. After that it's not on you.


Nowhere in the Bible are these directives contradicted or updated with laws forbidding the beating of slaves altogether. Jesus himself says that every word of OT law is just as binding as ever, so any mention of "not mistreating slaves" kinda has to come with a grain of salt when you consider what constituted mistreating slaves to them.


So what's wrong with that? It's barbaric and unethical, that's what. It involves owning people as property and beating that property if it doesn't do the job you're forcing on it (jobs which historically include sex on demand, aka rape). What ISN'T wrong with that? Voluntary indentured servitude tends to also be an abusive system, which is probably why civilized people don't really do that any more, either.

Quote:As seen in multiple replies above, the objecting atheists are not remotely interested in comprehensive exegesis.

Oh fuck off you pompous twit.  We simply call "exegesis" what it really is:  apologetics.  Making excuses for nonsensical bullshit.

Refuted ;-) good job team

Quote:Do not own other people as property. He who owns another or forces another to work without wages or freedom shall be taken to the edge of the village, drawn, quartered, stoned, and burned at the stake. Their blood will be on their own heads. I am the Lord

I can think of at least 4 pieces of dead weight in his ten holy commandments whose spaces would have been much better filled with that.  That would seem to suggest that my saying goddamit is of greater importance than the slave trade...to god. Maybe it just slipped his mind, like everything else? Prepping for war and making sure your soldiers are paid in sufficient amounts of pretty young things can be taxing.