pop morality

[Drich]

The bible speaks of chattel slavery.  To equate it with wage slavery is dishonest.  Wage slavery may be an undesirable situation, but it is better than having no work at all, or being a chattel slave.  The irony is that because the dictionary includes a lesser definition of slavery, you want to equivocate on the difference between the two.  The slavery taught in the bible and the 'slavery' you are referring to are not the same thing.  Take your pettifogging nonsense and shove it.

What the dictionary includes is the colloquial use, which is different from its literal definition in the context of this conversation. When Britney Spears sang "I'm a slave for you", I don't think she referred to the literal definition of slavery, but the one you're trying to shoehorn in, here.

A slave is a person literally owned as property  by the other person. Wage slavery, while often cruel, is not the same thing. If you'd like to see what modern day "slavery" looks like (and I'm actually with Drich that it exists and is the moral equivalent of the real thing), consider the following:

Real slavery does continue to exist, both in the United States and elsewhere. One is the prisoners of many states, in which they are forced to work, even in cotton fields, for as little as $10 a month (no, that's not a typo!), just enough to buy toothpaste and shampoo. A little-known fact is that the 13th amendment did not ban slavery entirely: Amendment XIII, Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

That bolded bit is, according to sociologists I've read and spoken to on the subject, a huge part of the reason our modern court system has become so eroded and racially skewed, and minorities are vastly over-represented in the prisons of this nation. In the Jim Crow era, in the South and Midwest, it was a way to continue effective slavery conditions in defiance of the federal government's passage of the amendment; it has morphed over time into the modern chimera that is our "Justice" System.

There's the abusive type of employment, which can often stretch to the point which I would refer to it as slavery, and again it's in the United States while everyone looks the other way and enjoys their cheap fruits/veggies at the supermarket. If you haven't seen the movie Cesar Chavez, which came out in 2014, I highly recommend it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1621046/

The other and more commonly referred to version is sex slavery, which frankly I blame on religious types who have made prostitution an illegal and thus hidden thing upon which those types of predators may (and do) prey, in the dark.

http://traffickingresourcecenter.org/

But all of this is beside the point, Mr. "Bible-Based Christian". Your Bible specifically, in those words, encourages chattel slavery (not the kind you are redefining here), making me more than a little bit skeptical of your claim that any sort of transcendent morality is to be found in the book:

44 "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 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. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly."

(I used the NIV, but I can happily change that to your favorite translation, if you'll divulge what version that might be.)

 See my response to Jo as far as chattel slavery goes..

It's funny how when I draw parallels to modern slavery, I get venom and denial, then when you say them you get kudoed. so long as the message is received i don't care how it gets out.

[Drich]

-and it wouldn't matter anyway, despite Drich's ham-fisted attempts to smear anyone who doesn't believe what he believes, because we also disdain "wage slavery" and work to eliminate it.

Yeah, that's the part I really don't get with him.

We know what wage slavery is.  We find it immoral and do what we can to eliminate it.  Yet, somehow, we're bad because we live in Western civilization (just like him), even though we acknowledge wage slavery, how inhumane it can be, etc.

But he's somehow more moral than the rest of us because he simply doesn't sweat it because it's part of god's rules.

Amazing.  And frightening.

You don't get it because you don't ever hang around to discuss the final point.

Once we identify slavery in modern life the question then becomes is it needed? Can life go one in the world where the slave works, and can it go on in the world buying slave made products???

the answer is no.

Don't you think that if we had an economic structure that did not COMPLETELY depend on slavery we would have at least tried it in one of the countries of the world one time since the dawn of civilization???

This is why you don't understand. You blank out of the conversation, 1/2 way through and come back in after the final conclusion is made missing the correlating argument.

If you want to say all slavery is bad fine. All slavery is bad. Now figure out how to feed 5 billion people without the economic structure and support slavery provides.

That is my point sport! WE DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING ELSE!!!

[Edwardo Piet]

How can you think that? That's truly despicable. Slavery is about as immoral as you can get.

If this is the case then why do you support it with the food you eat or the products you buy?

Wow! I'm impressed by your logic for once Drich! I see what you mean... slavery isn't immoral because I buy stuff!

[Drich]

Yeah, that's the part I really don't get with him.

We know what wage slavery is.  We find it immoral and do what we can to eliminate it.  Yet, somehow, we're bad because we live in Western civilization (just like him), even though we acknowledge wage slavery, how inhumane it can be, etc.

But he's somehow more moral than the rest of us because he simply doesn't sweat it because it's part of god's rules.

Amazing.  And frightening.

No, no, Kevin. You don't get it: morals aren't righteousness and therefore, we are horrible, awful people since we can never live up to God's righteous standards because... something.

Fuck. I don't know either. All I know is that if I'm immoral or unrighteous by Drich's or his god's standards, I'm perfectly content with being a self-righteous hippie.

No, no Ca-rots, with Righteousness everyone is found acceptable before God despite how self righteous hippies judges them in the world!!!

that's the whole point to this thread.

To show the contrast between what the world says is immoral ( for instance, slavery/killing babies) and what it actually does (support compaines who pay slave wages and by your own words "holds people and forces them to work" and also support abortion/infanticide).

Don't you get it? by your own moral standard you can judge yourselves "bad people." The only thing that keeps you from this judgement is you lie to yourselves about what it is you are actually doing.

How then can this 'moral standard' of yours, judge God and his followers bad, while someone like you who does indeed support slavery, and infanticide are allowed to do the very same things you condemn God for?

This is what morality does. It allows a society to adopt evil it would other wise condemn someone else for. How can a true standard be so hypocritical? How can we all be so hypocritical, and not be just bitter vile people when someone questions any part of what we do?

[Drich]

This whole thing, flawed throughout, is a massive tu quoque anyway. We're as bad as God, huh?

Except, of course, we're not. Because we don't condone either slavery or poor pay/working conditions.

Drich was pulling this schtick when I joined the forums, and it hasn't evolved since then. How long before I joined was he at this?

I don't think he really believes what he's saying here, he just has to reassure himself that the bible is somehow good regardless of what reality has to say about it. If it's as simple as God says it's good so it's good, why all this conflation? Why use any other argument?

I thought you were wanting to be seriously part of any of this.. have you changed you mind? do I need to address your points or are you just kudos farming?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

You remove the part where I call you a retard only to ask a retarded question which you also place in the wrong quote block.

We may have differing views on rape and slavery but I think I have sufficiently demonstrated my case on your intelligence.

As for your question, we are to presume from the text the beating is typically administered if the slave is not working to the master's satisfaction. Is that any less abusive?

Who said anything about a slave not working to a master's satisfaction?

Look at the History of the Jews. Beating were reserved as punishment for breaking laws. What did you think would happen if a slave stole and sold all of his master's goats? what recourse would the master have? (The law said if you stole live stock you had to pay it back or become a slave) Did you think he would goto Jail? Remember the context in which the law was given (wandering the desert) And if he were to goto Jail, what of the loss the master suffered? And now has to find another slave??? Why not just keep the one you had, 'correct' the bad behaivor with a big stick, and move on?

again no jails, the only way to make things right then was slavery, but if one was already a slave and still messing up, the next stop was the stick!

No, it was not the only way to "make things right", back then (and was not instituted in reaction to crime, by the way, but to conquest and/or debt... it was "might makes right"). It was a barbaric practice that simply happened to be common at the time because of all the endless, semi-genocidal warfare for territory in the highly-contested Canaan region; it was barbaric then, and it's barbaric now. 

What you're forgetting is that your book, which you claim to be "God-breathed scripture", sets the entire tone for what behaviors are acceptable and which are prohibited. Just as Eloah/Yahweh/Jehovah told them to cut the foreskins off their penises and avoid menstruating women and pork*, he could have told The Chosen People™ to eschew slavery in its entirety. 

* Footnote: the absence of pig bones in archaeological digs in that region is how they can tell if the city is Israelite or built/settled by other Canaanite populations. Clearly, God is not opposed to ordering His Chosen People™ to do things no one else in the region does, or prohibit them from doing things that everyone else in the region does.

The new/alternative verse might look something like this:

Leviticus 25:44 "And then the LORD said unto Moses, 'For as you were slaves in Egypt, and have known the cruelty of the yoke of such bondage from which you were freed by My hand, never again shall My Chosen people own their fellow human beings as property, nor allow others to adopt this practice among you.' And the people said Amen."

Remember, you are the one who says that the Bible is from God.  To us, it is very clearly the work of human beings. Human beings would not necessarily be expected to come up with a moral concept that is actually transcendent, but to have a spotty and very localized set of social beliefs and traditions backed up by the force of a claim  that "this is from God!!", according to the priests/prophets who wrote it. We see the same thing wherever you look in the world (e.g. the Hindu prohibition against eating beef, or the Muslim prohibition against fermented grains). A "God" who cares more about foreskins and who's having sex with whom than about whether or not human beings are turned into property is not a god, but as RaphaelDrake pointed out, is clearly a way of "Super-Alpha-ing" human prejudices and practices so that others will fall in line and obey the rules set down by the priesthood/ruling-class in the name of God.

A "god" who can tell his people how to eat and screw but not how to treat fellow human beings as equals is not a god but a human-created excuse for the goals of the ones who created that god to help shape society as they wanted it. A "god" who cares more about diets, foreskins, and sodomy than about the abuse of women and slaves is indistinguishable from the mythological creations of the Norse, the Greeks, the Romans, the Britons/Druids, or the Japanese. It's man-made, and the fingerprints of our own egos are all over YHWH, just as it is on the others I've listed here.

I'm sorry, but your "God" is no more a god than Odin, Zeus, Iopater (Jupiter), Dagda, or Izanagi.

[Drich]

If this is the case then why do you support it with the food you eat or the products you buy?

Wow! I'm impressed by your logic for once Drich! I see what you mean... slavery isn't immoral because I buy stuff!

O...K.... let me try this another way...

If Slavery is immoral, then why do you support it with your purchases of slave made/produced goods?

[Nihilist Virus]

You remove the part where I call you a retard only to ask a retarded question which you also place in the wrong quote block.

We may have differing views on rape and slavery but I think I have sufficiently demonstrated my case on your intelligence.

As for your question, we are to presume from the text the beating is typically administered if the slave is not working to the master's satisfaction. Is that any less abusive?

Who said anything about a slave not working to a master's satisfaction?

Look at the History of the Jews. Beating were reserved as punishment for breaking laws. What did you think would happen if a slave stole and sold all of his master's goats? what recourse would the master have? (The law said if you stole live stock you had to pay it back or become a slave) Did you think he would goto Jail? Remember the context in which the law was given (wandering the desert) And if he were to goto Jail, what of the loss the master suffered? And now has to find another slave??? Why not just keep the one you had, 'correct' the bad behaivor with a big stick, and move on?

again no jails, the only way to make things right then was slavery, but if one was already a slave and still messing up, the next stop was the stick!

What you are describing is indentured servitude. That was typically Jew on Jew indentured servitude.

WE are all talking about slavery. We are talking about conquered people being taken into chattel slavery where they were property and could be passed down as inheritance.  The Jews either committed genocide or else took the virgins as slaves.  Tell me why you think they were taking virgins only.  Tell me what you think they were doing with them.

[The Grand Nudger]

But again, if you waved a magic wand and eliminated all forms of slavery how would 2/3 of the world's population that currently depends on it exist?

Moot point..if I had a magic wand, like your "god"..... I could and would wave away a bunch of shit that your "god" doesn't...but I don't, so I can't. You do realize that it's not the -slaves- who depend on slavery to exist in any such situation...right.....? It's the plantation owner, not the plantation labor, that depends upon the institution. Meh, fuck all that, too complicated......apparently you can;t handle anything more difficult than wondering what I would do with magical powers, and even that taxes you if the most biting question you can muster is the above. I'd do alot of things that twisted your panties into knots..like getting rid of slavery, substandard wages, and substandard working conditions.

: shrugs :

[KevinM1]

Yeah, that's the part I really don't get with him.

We know what wage slavery is.  We find it immoral and do what we can to eliminate it.  Yet, somehow, we're bad because we live in Western civilization (just like him), even though we acknowledge wage slavery, how inhumane it can be, etc.

But he's somehow more moral than the rest of us because he simply doesn't sweat it because it's part of god's rules.

Amazing.  And frightening.

You don't get it because you don't ever hang around to discuss the final point.

Once we identify slavery in modern life the question then becomes is it needed? Can life go one in the world where the slave works, and can it go on in the world buying slave made products???

the answer is no.

Don't you think that if we had an economic structure that did not COMPLETELY depend on slavery we would have at least tried it in one of the countries of the world one time since the dawn of civilization???

This is why you don't understand. You blank out of the conversation, 1/2 way through and come back in after the final conclusion is made missing the correlating argument.

If you want to say all slavery is bad fine. All slavery is bad. Now figure out how to feed 5 billion people without the economic structure and support slavery provides.

That is my point sport! WE DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING ELSE!!!

Necessity does not imply morality one way or another. Moreover, the necessity of slavery hasn't been proven, either. Indeed, we seem to be ever so slowly moving away from such practices (abject slavery -> feudalism -> pure wage slavery) due to a conflux of our ideas about working, workers' rights, and how we view the Other changing and technology advancing.

Finally, I actually have a life and responsibilities outside of this forum. I'm not beholden to reply to you.