(October 12, 2021 at 12:16 pm)ayost Wrote: FWIW, bc I hate to see you guys waste your time, I scroll past every post except procaracas without even reading it.

Ignorance is an important part of being a Christian.

(October 12, 2021 at 12:12 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: You aren't forced into it. You aren't subjected to beatings and abuse. Your children aren't taken away from you and sold.

Hello!? It's just a metaphor.

Yeah...actually, that's exactly who that metaphor was speaking to.  Slaves, being bought and sold and bred for sale. There were alot of anxious poor people and slaves in rome, and that was pauls target market. An underserviced demographic, instrumental to the fall of the roman administrative state and the rise of a slaveholding christian theocracy.

We did the same thing with transatlantic transportation.

(October 12, 2021 at 12:21 pm)arewethereyet Wrote:

(October 12, 2021 at 12:16 pm)ayost Wrote: FWIW, bc I hate to see you guys waste your time, I scroll past every post except procaracas without even reading it.

I thought you were only talking to Nudger.

It’s kinda funny actually, because just a day or two ago he was whining because we weren’t asking him enough questions. Now he doesn’t want to play anymore.

I guess we asked all the wrong questions, like why he kept lying about the contents of magic book, why he didn't know anything about the moral worldviews he variously hoped to dismantle or assert.

You know, little shit like that.

(October 12, 2021 at 12:12 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:  And, hell, maybe those laws in Leviticus may have been progressive in their time. But anyone who looks at that and sees a moral standard that holds up today is bonkers.

I think it might be gone...and I figured you would enjoy this.  There are a ton of direct, word for word parallels between mosaic law and laws we find on tablets we know to be centuries older.  However....

One of the most progressive things we'd notice between mosaic law and..say,  ur-nammu's code...is that crimes against people are often punished with fines in the code, and crimes against property punishable by death.  Mosaic law flips this relationship, comparatively.  Crimes against property are handled by fines, crimes against people, death.  

Ur Nammu A2 If a man commits a robbery he will be killed.
Ex 22:1  If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, four sheep for a sheep.

Ur Nammu A3  If a man commits a kidnapping, he is to be imprisoned and pay fifteen shekels of silver.
Ex 21:16  Whoever steals a man and sells him, or is found in possession of him, shall be put to death.

Ur Nammu A28  If a man appeared as a witness, and was shown to be a perjurer, he must pay fifteen shekels of silver.
Duet 19:18  Judges shall inquire diligently, and if a witness has been false and accused his brother, then you shall do to him what he meant to do to his brother.  

so on and so forth.

Now, not arguing the progressiveness of death penalties for anything, I think we can say that the general relationship between capital punishment, fines, and crimes, we might consider progress.  That if we're going to be dealing death, then it's probably more just when the crime is against a person, rather than property.  Obviously, King Ur-Nammu did not think so...and that might have had something to do with him being a king.  His laws seem designed to privilege property over people, mosaic law, the opposite.  

There are exceptions, ofc.  A jewish rapist was fined - but women were widely regarded as property in both cases...so......  Adulterers are put to death in mosaic law, but only the female adulterer is put to death in the code.  We might interpret that as her having damaged herself as goods, and, ofc, in the case of mosaic law....the father was the aggrieved party when his daughter was spoiled in any way.

https://www.worldhistory.org/Ur-Nammu/

(October 12, 2021 at 11:38 am)ayost Wrote: Fair enough to your first sentence. I can see that you're trying to have a standard and apply it objectively. That standard only works when people like you and I are policing each other. Once an crazy dictator comes along the system gets dicey. Obviously, your standards assume not a crazy dictator, haha. Unless you're actually Kim Jong-un and I don't know it, haha.

As I see it, there are two ways to get a dictator in control of a country: military might or voting.
I don't really know how the North Korean dictatorship began, but I guess it had something to do with WW2.
Speaking of, Hitler was voted in.
Mussolini too.
Salazar too.


Recently, in Afghanistan, we saw how military might does it.


Still, in most cases, there is the support (or at least the lack of hindrance) of the people. And the people have that societal morality I spoke of earlier.

(October 12, 2021 at 11:38 am)ayost Wrote: I think we can agree it's an abuse of the Bible in your second sentence. I don't think we should use this kind of argument because you and I know the difference. For example, I don't fault atheists because Jeffrey Dahmer used atheism to validate eating people. Clearly that's an abuse of atheism.

Abusive or not, the argument stuck around the US for a long long time. There was even a war about it, right?
If there is such potential for ambiguity built into the bible, perhaps it's best not to hold it up as the standard, don't you think?

(October 12, 2021 at 11:38 am)ayost Wrote: It was definitely limited by law to 6 years, so it could not be indefinite.

6 years...
Let's try to think about this in present-day terms...
The average US annual income is around $65k. 6 years of slavery represents $390k of wages that the person has no access to. Certainly, I hope the "law" would impose the "lords" to provide housing, feeding and hygiene to the slaves, right? So I guess we can subtract $10k/year and another $10k on food and stuff, making it a grand total of $390k - $120k = $270k.
What kind of debt can be worth that much???
Nowadays, I can only think of buying a home.

Even just a year of slavery would represent a debt of $45k. I can't believe that there would be so many people racking up that amount of debt that it would require regulation in the religious book.
The alternative is that the kind of slavery you don't like was being regulated too.

I don't like any kind of slavery and the idea of regulating it in a religious text only lowers any morality that the text may have. Like I said before, a god that allows slavery is not a god that I want to ever follow.

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(October 12, 2021 at 12:16 pm)ayost Wrote: FWIW, bc I hate to see you guys waste your time, I scroll past every post except procaracas without even reading it.

Why?!!
You're in a forum, it's to get different opinions from strangers on the internet, is it not?
If you just wanted a one-on-one, why not start an email convo with someone like Bart Ehrman?

At work.

(October 12, 2021 at 12:16 pm)ayost Wrote: FWIW, bc I hate to see you guys waste your time, I scroll past every post except procaracas without even reading it.

Oh? Really?

(October 12, 2021 at 8:51 pm)Peebo-Thuhlu Wrote: At work.

(October 12, 2021 at 12:16 pm)ayost Wrote: FWIW, bc I hate to see you guys waste your time, I scroll past every post except procaracas without even reading it.

 Oh? Really?

 

 And you are?

Pray tell from whence  you get the quaint notion that I waste my time because you don't read my posts?  Can you say 'Narcissist'?

Muppet.

(October 12, 2021 at 10:24 pm)Oldandeasilyconfused Wrote:

(October 12, 2021 at 8:51 pm)Peebo-Thuhlu Wrote: At work.


 Oh? Really?

 

 And you are?

Pray tell from whence  you get the quaint notion that I waste my time because you don't read my posts?  Can you say 'Narcissist'?

Muppet.

It thinks some of us are offensive and don't play fair.

At work.

(October 12, 2021 at 10:24 pm)Oldandeasilyconfused Wrote:

(October 12, 2021 at 8:51 pm)Peebo-Thuhlu Wrote:  Oh? Really?

 

 And you are?

Pray tell from whence  you get the quaint notion that I waste my time because you don't read my posts?  Can you say 'Narcissist'?

Muppet.

Oh, hello there.

I didn't see your post(s). I was just throwing my opinion of ayost at them.

Not sure how we got our wires crossed.

Me? I'm a nice 'Thulhu.

Cheers.