Why would any woman want to be Christian?

[Faith No More]

^ I didn't say that

Fixed it.

[John V]

You have read that book haven't you?

Yes. Have you?

See here is the problem, you cant take yourself out of fan status.

Yes, we all have biases. That was the point of my post. You guys can't take yourself out of materialist mode. You only consider this life, when it's obvious that someone considering Christianity believes in an afterlife, or is at least leaning in that direction.

If women in other literature outside your bible were treated in such ways, I doubt you would find those books moral.

It uses a woman as a scapegoat for the fall of man for a garden God didn't have to put the tree in in the first place.

No it doesn't. In Genesis all parties involved are punished, and later, Paul specifically puts the blame on the man.

It has rules on submission of women to men, how to punish them.

What passages are you referring to?

And treats them like property in the 10 commandments in the same class as donkeys and slaves.

Incorrect. That property can be coveted does not imply that all things that can be coveted are property.

[CleanShavenJesus]

It has rules on submission of women to men, how to punish them.

What passages are you referring to?

And treats them like property in the 10 commandments in the same class as donkeys and slaves.

Incorrect. That property can be coveted does not imply that all things that can be coveted are property.

The Bible constantly objectivies women and puts women underneath men, a couple of examples are actually kind of sick.

And if a man sells his daughter to be a female slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money. (Exodus 21:7-11)

"Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go." (Judges 19:24-25)

"For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man." (I Corinthians 11:8-9)

"If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;" (Deuteronomy 22:22)

"Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you." (Deuteronomy 22:24)

And the one we all know (and the one Brian was talking about with Adam and Eve)...

"Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." (I Timothy 2:11-14)

There is no reading this "in context". It's wrong, plain and simple. If Christians didn't cherrypick the Bible, women would be incredibly inferior to men.

There are even more examples of female oppression, but it would take much too long to find all of them.

[John V]

And if a man sells his daughter to be a female slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money. (Exodus 21:7-11)

What's your point? This gives greater rights to female slaves than to male.

"Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go." (Judges 19:24-25)

And all of Israel comes together in the next chapter in outrage to avenge her. It's not endorsed. If you're referring to the selection of the woman over the man, that's one man's decision, not a command of god.

"For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man." (I Corinthians 11:8-9)

Which goes on to say:
11 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12 For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.

"If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;" (Deuteronomy 22:22)

"Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you." (Deuteronomy 22:24)

Both are stoned. Where's the inequity?

And the one we all know (and the one Brian was talking about with Adam and Eve)...

[quote]"Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." (I Timothy 2:11-14)

This doesn't blame the woman, it excuses her. She was deceived. Adam wasn't - he sinned knowingly. That's why Paul says that sin entered the world through one man, not through the woman.

[CleanShavenJesus]

This doesn't blame the woman, it excuses her. She was deceived. Adam wasn't - he sinned knowingly. That's why Paul says that sin entered the world through one man, not through the woman.

Yes, it excuses her inferiority. It excuses the Bible's sexist P.O.V.

[jstrodel]

And if a man sells his daughter to be a female slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money. (Exodus 21:7-11)

This is objectionable against the modern understanding of marriage. How do you know this is wrong. I see this verse as regulating slavery and providing protections for females who are sold as slaves. While this may not be appetizing to people who are used to living in a society in which this is no longer necessary, the intention of the scripture is clearly not to exacerbate the conditions of female slavery but to regulate them and make them easier to endure. In the ancient world, people would be sold into slavery because of war or famine, it was common in all cultures. It took many, many centuries for slavery to be illegal.

The burden is on the atheist to show how slavery could have been abolished in the ancient world. In addition, when you add to the fact that slavery is not a concept that emerges out of the atheist understanding of the natural world or from a trivial appreciation of ethics, you see that the way that the slavery objection typical functions is more to an appeal of the moral authority that abolitionists have in Christian societies. Atheists rely on the fact that slavery has been abolished in Christian countries to justify their absolutist views about morality. This is of course preposterous, why should the moral norms of Christian societies at an advanced stage be used as evidence to condemn theistic societies of the past in a different economic and social stage. The atheist has no evidence to universalize their rejection of slavery but instead makes a pathetic appeal to peoples deep seated sense of national pride. The argument fails because it was never a real philosophical argument to begin with, it is mere propaganda.

"Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go." (Judges 19:24-25)

This is a total misreading of scripture. This shows that you are just cut and pasting difficult passages without even considering the context or what scripture intends to say. The Old Testament condemns rape with the death penalty, see Deut 28.

"For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man." (I Corinthians 11:8-9)

None of this proves the point you are trying to make. You are appealing to a sense of cultural uneasiness with a male dominated society. I would say this sense of uneasiness is well placed. History has shown that men are constantly willing to use their positions of influence to abuse women. That said, this does not prove that there is no natural order that tends to exalt men to leadership positions. Biology would tend to say that there is. The atheist approach to feminism, of course, is not based on biology, or really even based on feminism, it is a crude mix of appeals to political propaganda while cynically promoting pornography and sensuality while ignoring the scientific evidence that is used elsewhere to discredit religious belief. The atheist thrives where demands for consistency are relaxed and he/she is permitted to pick and choose what is desirable to make the point. Biology and history, however, would seem to say that men and women are different and almost always occupy different roles. I do not think this means that God necessarily binds all women to certain positions in all societies, but this is the way that it has played out.

"If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;" (Deuteronomy 22:22)

"Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you." (Deuteronomy 22:24)

The Old Testament punishes adultery with death, as it punishes many crimes with death. This does not prove anything about a misogynistic bias in scripture, it is true that the Old Testament punishes some crimes more severely than the modern world does. How do you intend to say that this is wrong, let alone that it is biased against women?

"Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." (I Timothy 2:11-14)

This scripture does not prove that women are inferior to men. God does not create men with the ability to bear children, does this mean that men are inferior to women? Of course not. You have not said a single thing to justify the very controversial proposition that "men and women should have equal roles in all societies". If you ignore religion and just focus on what is economically and physically possible, I seriously doubt that men and women could occupy the same roles. How many women are there that can cut wood? Look at professional sports, if the NBA played the WNBA, who would win? This is not a matter of political speculation, it is a matter of common sense. Whatever you think of gender roles in the modern church, there are diverse views on this and not all interpret these passages as being binding on modern Christians (I have been in churches where the women preached), it is an absolute fact of history that men and women are different and could not have occupied the same roles.

There is no reading this "in context". It's wrong, plain and simple. If Christians didn't cherrypick the Bible, women would be incredibly inferior to men.

There is no human right that women in all societies have the right to go to college and become lawyers. Anyone who thinks so is incredibly ethnocentric in their views of culture and morality and lacks insight into the changing dynamics of social and economic organization. Life is a lot more complicated than a bumper sticker.

There are even more examples of female oppression, but it would take much too long to find all of them.

There are many more examples of passages that show favor and dignity to women, which, as is customary for the free thinking atheist, are methodically left out and probably not even known. Consider Proverbs 31. Where do you see sexism in the description of the women there. Or consider Deborah, the prophetess in the Old Testament, who is a judge of Israel. Consider the role that Mary Magdelene plays and the way that Jesus treats women in the New Testament.

In the Christian church, women have many protections that they lack elsewhere. They are able to find good husbands who do not abuse them within the church. There is the pastoral authority that helps women to stay in stable relationships. The Christian teachings on sexual purity benefit women, who would be seen as sex objects in bars or in secular culture throughout the world. The Bible teaches that men and women are to "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ", something rarely seen in the ancient or modern world. The institution of marriage is redefined to make all conduct directed towards God, instead of to the selfish desires of the male as it would typically exist in most cultures in the world. The cultures of the world that have seen the most freedom and least exploitation for women have been the Christian cultures. Would you compare the experience of women in America or Europe to the experience of women in the Soviet Union or in the Islamic world?

Today, Christian women occupy many influential positions. Many are pastors and leaders. Many have chosen to occupy traditional roles in carry for children. Christian culture affirms the dignity of human beings and women more than any other culture. Atheist culture denies that any moral norms exist for treating women or anyone else, but demands that people trust it to have some sort of way of regulating conduct based on arbitrary cultural prejudices. Atheists think that this will improve the position of women but there is absolutely no reason to think so.

[John V]

Yes, it excuses her inferiority. It excuses the Bible's sexist P.O.V.

You're the only one calling her inferior. One could just as easily say that someone who knowingly does wrong is inferior.

[Esquilax]

This is objectionable against the modern understanding of marriage. How do you know this is wrong. I see this verse as regulating slavery and providing protections for females who are sold as slaves. While this may not be appetizing to people who are used to living in a society in which this is no longer necessary, the intention of the scripture is clearly not to exacerbate the conditions of female slavery but to regulate them and make them easier to endure. In the ancient world, people would be sold into slavery because of war or famine, it was common in all cultures. It took many, many centuries for slavery to be illegal.

The burden is on the atheist to show how slavery could have been abolished in the ancient world.

Okay, I'm going to try not to put words in your mouth, so before I go any further with this I'm going to ask you: do you believe that your god's morality is unchanging and correct?

Obviously your answer to the latter part will be yes, but what of the former? I assume- for now- a yes too, because if you say no you're venturing into moral relativism and your position isn't as strong as you keep claiming it is. But if it's a yes, and god's morality is unchanging, then you're left with two unfortunate options: either god endorses slavery, in which case he is despicable and I am more moral than he, or you're left with this strange scenario in which god is against slavery but doesn't do anything about it at all, which seems to be where you're going.

You rationalize this by saying that since it was a thing already happening then god's guidelines are moral because they limit damage, but that makes no sense, does it? I mean, not only is your god powerful enough to do things about it, and has written a book of moral guidelines that could, if he so wished, have included a blanket prohibition on slavery like it does the worship of graven images, but even within the context of the biblical canon god has no problems with extending his power to deal with immorality. He struck down Sodom and Gommorah, as anti-gay bigots are so fond of pointing out. And didn't he flood the world for immorality too?

On the one hand you're saying slavery is bad, but you're making excuses that make no sense for the god who outright endorses it. How do you deal with a contradiction in actions like this?

Speaking of Sodom and Gomorrah, can we talk about Lot offering up his virgin daughters for gang rape in this conversation on biblical sexism? Wasn't that all sort of cool with god, since he allowed Lot to leave Sodom alive?

In addition, when you add to the fact that slavery is not a concept that emerges out of the atheist understanding of the natural world or from a trivial appreciation of ethics, you see that the way that the slavery objection typical functions is more to an appeal of the moral authority that abolitionists have in Christian societies. Atheists rely on the fact that slavery has been abolished in Christian countries to justify their absolutist views about morality. This is of course preposterous, why should the moral norms of Christian societies at an advanced stage be used as evidence to condemn theistic societies of the past in a different economic and social stage.

So, is god's morality unchanging or not? Are you saying slavery was moral in the past? Or just that human development wasn't sufficient yet? If it's the latter... seriously, you have a fucking omnipotent and apparently omnibenevolent god: why is he so serious about the graven images and the gay people, but apparently he's willing to be lax about this whole slavery thing?

The atheist has no evidence to universalize their rejection of slavery but instead makes a pathetic appeal to peoples deep seated sense of national pride. The argument fails because it was never a real philosophical argument to begin with, it is mere propaganda.

Have you not been listening to a single answer people give you when you question secular morality? I believe this canard has been answered: empathy and mutual agreement. Slavery does not aid society as a whole, and we as humans are capable of being compassionate because we can empathize. Now, are you just ignoring our answers in order to perpetuate your ignorant strawmen, or are you just not reading this stuff?

This is a total misreading of scripture. This shows that you are just cut and pasting difficult passages without even considering the context or what scripture intends to say. The Old Testament condemns rape with the death penalty, see Deut 28.

It also says that a woman must marry her rapist... and, oh yeah: god the smiter was pretty forgiving on the men who gang raped a helpless woman in that passage, yet he'll (to stick with Lot) kill his wife just for looking back. Bleat about context all you want, it changes nothing.

None of this proves the point you are trying to make. You are appealing to a sense of cultural uneasiness with a male dominated society. I would say this sense of uneasiness is well placed. History has shown that men are constantly willing to use their positions of influence to abuse women.

Which, oddly enough, god allows. Nice guy, that one.

That said, this does not prove that there is no natural order that tends to exalt men to leadership positions. Biology would tend to say that there is. The atheist approach to feminism, of course, is not based on biology, or really even based on feminism, it is a crude mix of appeals to political propaganda while cynically promoting pornography and sensuality while ignoring the scientific evidence that is used elsewhere to discredit religious belief. The atheist thrives where demands for consistency are relaxed and he/she is permitted to pick and choose what is desirable to make the point. Biology and history, however, would seem to say that men and women are different and almost always occupy different roles. I do not think this means that God necessarily binds all women to certain positions in all societies, but this is the way that it has played out.

I am beginning to have second thoughts about rebutting someone as deranged as you...

The Old Testament punishes adultery with death, as it punishes many crimes with death. This does not prove anything about a misogynistic bias in scripture, it is true that the Old Testament punishes some crimes more severely than the modern world does. How do you intend to say that this is wrong, let alone that it is biased against women?

Oh! Oh! I know this one!

Because in that passage the woman is being put to death for not screaming loud enough as she is being raped, you blithering sociopath.

And, once again, would not a god cool with making blanket demands to worship nobody but him, who murders people for immorality all the time, be able to stop this kind of punishment if he found it to be immoral? So either he thinks it's moral, or he's uninterested. Neither is a good outcome for your supposedly good god.

I could keep going, but... well, your casual sexism and apologetics over immorality disgust me.

[jstrodel]

Okay, I'm going to try not to put words in your mouth, so before I go any further with this I'm going to ask you: do you believe that your god's morality is unchanging and correct?

Obviously your answer to the latter part will be yes, but what of the former? I assume- for now- a yes too, because if you say no you're venturing into moral relativism and your position isn't as strong as you keep claiming it is. But if it's a yes, and god's morality is unchanging, then you're left with two unfortunate options: either god endorses slavery, in which case he is despicable and I am more moral than he, or you're left with this strange scenario in which god is against slavery but doesn't do anything about it at all, which seems to be where you're going.

No, I do not believe that God's morality is unchanging. A lot of morality in the Old Testament is superceded in the New Testament, consider the teachings about the Jewish law. Jesus substantially reinterprets the old testament and softens the law, while in other places increases the standard of obedience. God's commandments are occasional and occur in texts that are related to specific cultural and economic circumstances. The Bible does not really intend to give the unchanging laws of God in many cases (although in some cases it does intend to give this) but merely one law that was inspired as a revelation to a particular group of people.

How can you say that God is despicable if he endorses slavery? How can you define slavery as an absolute evil? What you are following is not a real rigorous philosophical view of ethics but a bunch of political propaganda you are taking too seriously. You are like the people that think it is immoral to have a minimum wage below $25 dollars. It is immoral to have the minimum wage below $25 dollars, otherwise people cannot own a house with two stories. Then they will add insult to injury and demand that there is a natural human right to have a minimum wage set at $25 dollars an hour. Where do you find evidence for this? Where does it say that the minimum wage must be $25 dollars an hour? You know where you find this, in promises made by politicians who are trying to get elected. That is where your view of ethics comes from.

An absolute prohibition against slavery cannot be deduced from any set of ethical principles. In many ways the capitalist system resembles chattel slavery, with its almost totalitarian organization and the requirement that workers sell their labor to those who own the businesses. Yet are you so foolish to say that capitalism is intrinsically evil and must be immediately replaced? What is the fruit of this kind of naive idealistic epistemology? Love that is real love finds its source in the real lives of people, not in a theory someone made up to say what their opinion about what morality might be like. Anyone who takes this too seriously is a fool, and lacks the ability to see through political rhetoric and put it in a rigorous philosophical context.

You rationalize this by saying that since it was a thing already happening then god's guidelines are moral because they limit damage, but that makes no sense, does it? I mean, not only is your god powerful enough to do things about it, and has written a book of moral guidelines that could, if he so wished, have included a blanket prohibition on slavery like it does the worship of graven images, but even within the context of the biblical canon god has no problems with extending his power to deal with immorality. He struck down Sodom and Gommorah, as anti-gay bigots are so fond of pointing out. And didn't he flood the world for immorality too?

The Bible teaches that men were originally created without bondage, but that slavery entered the world through Adam's sin. God is powerful enough to do something about it, but God doesn't want to. God wants the earth to suffer under the weight of its sin, until it is purged through Jesus Christ. Christ came to set the world free from the curse inflicted by Adam (whether you actually take the story literally or not, it doesn't matter that much).

It is true that God struck down Sodom and Gommorah and flooded the world for immorality (whether it was a local flood or an allegory, I don't know). I don't see what any of this proves. Perhaps if you were guilty of a crime you would not like it if some told you that you had to suffer for your crimes and that you deserved punishment. You would likely find that whatever you were accused of was a false charge, no matter how true the allegations were. The sinful mind cannot appreciate the holiness of God. The person that does not have a sense of holiness cannot fathom the severity of sin. The person that cries for mercy because he has no sense of holiness does not sit on a moral high ground, actually, he shows his spiritual infancy when he blasphemes and speaks about things his selfish, carnal nature has hidden from him.

On the one hand you're saying slavery is bad, but you're making excuses that make no sense for the god who outright endorses it. How do you deal with a contradiction in actions like this?

God does not endorse slavery, it is regulated in the Old Testament but not condemned outright. Why not complain about the lack of certain types of business regulation in the Old Testament? Perhaps God should have saw fit to consult the SEC and ask them about trading policies. Maybe the 21st century organization of business law actually represents absolute ethical imperatives that are absolutely true in all societies, irrespective if they actually improve the quality of life or not. Or maybe the average atheist who quotes Bible scriptures that do not even support what he says online is just so ignorant of the ancient world and is so steeped in the political propaganda culture of the modern world and so lacking in critical thinking skills and so full of ethnocentrism and ethnic pride that he cannot step out of his own culture for one second and realize that his legal system is a product of complex socio-economic forces that do not at all represent the eternal order in any universal way.

Speaking of Sodom and Gomorrah, can we talk about Lot offering up his virgin daughters for gang rape in this conversation on biblical sexism? Wasn't that all sort of cool with god, since he allowed Lot to leave Sodom alive?

This is typical of atheist interpretations of the Bible, in total ignorance of typical methods of interpretation, they read into scripture exactly what their narrow, politicized minds show them. Nowhere in the Bible is Lot commended for his cowardly act. The most elementary principle of Biblical interpretation is to not draw normative conclusions from a lack of specific condemnation of an action. The Bible is filled with people who things that are mentioned but not necessarily condemned. It is the most basic fallacy to assert that the absence of a specific narrative associated with a divine judgement is evidence of God's favor. Scripture does not support this view, but plainly states that "God shows no partiality". The Bible teaches that God allows all people everywhere time to repent and does not judge people automatically. Have in, in your whole life, ever read, from cover to cover, the whole book, even like a 150 page book, read a book on how to read the Bible? How to read the Bible for what its worth by Gordon Fee comes to mind. I would suggest that you do this in order to avoiding appearing like you don't even care about having an honest debate or taking the most minimal steps of preparation before trying to debate the most important questions in the world. Unfortunately, most atheists will not even read a 150 page book on how to interpret the Bible, let alone struggle through the thousands and thousands of pages that have already been written in response to their fallacious exercises of immaturity.

So, is god's morality unchanging or not? Are you saying slavery was moral in the past? Or just that human development wasn't sufficient yet? If it's the latter... seriously, you have a fucking omnipotent and apparently omnibenevolent god: why is he so serious about the graven images and the gay people, but apparently he's willing to be lax about this whole slavery thing?

Slavery was a moral issue, that is why they regulated it. Why not complain about the lack of an investment banking infrastructure in the ancient world? What a bunch of fools, why couldn't they think clearly enough to set the economy up like modern people? And God, man, why doesn't God just realize that instead of cursing the earth for its disobedience and following through with the curse leveled on Adam, he can just will, ex nihilo, a stock exchange with investment bankers? If God cares so much about homosexuals, why doesn't he create a stock exchange? Investment bankers are rick!!

Of course you are not really making any argument at all, you are just repeating your cultural prejudices with your atheist's shopkeepers mind that tells you can accuse Christians of arguing from authority and culture but be even more absolutist, arguing from a nihilistic naturalism fused with political liberalism, demanding that Christians prove everything according to the laws of science which advocating a relationship of ethics to the natural world that is much, much further away. Nowhere in the language of biology will you find support that the right to modern economic organization is a human right. I would not say it is ironic, I would say it is incredibly cynical.

Have you not been listening to a single answer people give you when you question secular morality? I believe this canard has been answered: empathy and mutual agreement. Slavery does not aid society as a whole, and we as humans are capable of being compassionate because we can empathize. Now, are you just ignoring our answers in order to perpetuate your ignorant strawmen, or are you just not reading this stuff?

You are trying to derive an absolute prohibition against slavery in all societies and circumstances based on "empathy" and "mutual agreement". No, I havn't ignored the answers, you just made up the answers that you gave. There are a million possible starting points for values. You just made two up. Ok, how do you get from "empathy" and "mutual agreement" to "universal condemnation of all types of slavery, at all times, in all contexts, with no exceptions?". You really believe that people that are conquered in a war in the ancient world that it would be better for them to die than to become slaves? Do you think it is feasible to create a democracy when you are armed with swords and spears? Of course not. Even if you could prove that there were no instances in which slavery could be justified (which is highly unlikely, in addition to war with the threat of insurgents, consider famine), it still does not follow from having a mere priority of the values of "empathy" and "mutual agreement" that some sort of universal condemnation against slavery can be uphold. In addition, those terms are hardly sufficient conditions for an economic system (sufficient though they are for liberal political propaganda), which requires a large number of virtues operating together. Of course your system provides no way to relate those virtues together. If you prioritize empathy and mutual agreement to a certain degree, you will see societies dissolve.

You are not a moral or a political philosopher. You are a naive, politically unsophisticated person who has not really thought very clearly about the issue of slavery. I do not mean to say this to offend you, I am trying to help you to see that you have not thought this out very well. Many people have spent a long time building Western civilization, the majority of these people are Christians. Some of them might even be smarter than you. I suggest that you get your understanding of the world from somewhere outside of your atheist bubble and learn about history the way it is.

If you dispute these claims, I challenge you to find one nation in history that has been successfully run solely guided by the virtues of "empathy" and "mutual agreement" above all else. Your dichotomizing of virtues related to love and virtues related to power and economic organization is reminiscent of the typical naive, politically unsophisticated undergraduate with a Che Guvera poster on the wall.

Of course "empathy" and "mutual agreement" relies on and necessarily is subordinate to at times other virtues, such as "strength", "cunning", "diligence", "wisdom", etc. If you can't see this, you are hopelessly stupid and ignorant and doctrinaire liberal that ought never talk about any religious thing because it is too high for you to understand. You are brainwashed by political propaganda that has no relationship to how any society in history has functioned.

That said, this does not prove that there is no natural order that tends to exalt men to leadership positions. Biology would tend to say that there is. The atheist approach to feminism, of course, is not based on biology, or really even based on feminism, it is a crude mix of appeals to political propaganda while cynically promoting pornography and sensuality while ignoring the scientific evidence that is used elsewhere to discredit religious belief. The atheist thrives where demands for consistency are relaxed and he/she is permitted to pick and choose what is desirable to make the point. Biology and history, however, would seem to say that men and women are different and almost always occupy different roles. I do not think this means that God necessarily binds all women to certain positions in all societies, but this is the way that it has played out.

I am beginning to have second thoughts about rebutting someone as
deranged as you...

I consider that to be a very forceful argument. You didn't answer the argument.

Oh! Oh! I know this one!

Because in that passage the woman is being put to death for not screaming loud enough as she is being raped, you blithering sociopath.

Typical of atheists. The context of Deut 28 is obviously relating that kind of rape to consensual sexual activity, because in a verse right nearby rape is punished by death. Atheists are not always intellectually dishonest, but this is pure dishonesty. Read Deutonomy 28 yourself. Why would the Bible punish non-consensual sex with death in one verse but in a verse right next to it it would show mercy, based on where the woman is. The responsible exegete would consider the context and recognize that the passage describes a difference between consensual and non-consensual activity. The atheist typically does not know what the word exegesis means, runs in and adopts the hermenutical approaches of the people he sees as being the weakest (exactly the opposite of what you would do in professional research, this belongs more in political propaganda) and assumes that the Bible will contradict itself in the same chapter with the same author. He doesn't care about what the original attention is, he cares about advancing atheism. Then he goes back home and pats himself on the back for being a freethinker, the atheist has proved, based on using the weakest possible approaches to study a text, that he can find his objections to Christianity in the Bible. I have seen this so many times.

And, once again, would not a god cool with making blanket demands to worship nobody but him, who murders people for immorality all the time, be able to stop this kind of punishment if he found it to be immoral? So either he thinks it's moral, or he's uninterested. Neither is a good outcome for your supposedly good god.

All morality flows of God's requirement to worship no one but God. To say worship God means to direct the actions towards the knowledge of God. It is not an abstract religious formula. And in the Bible, non-Jews are able to worship God such as Job and Melchizdeck. God can stop all conduct if he so feels. What it means for God to stop immoral conduct though and intervene in history, on a large scale, is the end of the world. God could stop all sin from happening right now, but then the end will come. God will judge the whole world, and at that point, all people will receive whatever good or bad they have done. If this happened on earth immediately, people would not have a choice to accept or reject God.

You have just repeated your opinions about aspects of the modern world that you would prefer that they had in the ancient world. Nothing you have written even remotely comes close to answering the demand for proof of a universal standard, and you avoiding a very potent objection surrounding the epistemology of biology (and physics, chemistry) language and ethics. From what do ethics derive their ethics which they have such a strong confidence in universal understanding of the correct way to create an ethical view of economics? Even 150 years ago, after the industrial revolution it was not really settled that human societies could exist without slavery.

You are making incredibly pretentious and falsely informed statements that can be understood as nothing more than a simple yielding to political propaganda.

I could keep going, but... well, your casual sexism and apologetics over immorality disgust me.

For the free thinking atheist, in a debate, it is permissible to accuse, refuse to define the nature of the accusation or ground it, and then repeat the accusation, this time as a means of having to rebut further claims. What does the word sexism even mean? How do you define that in a rigorous way that makes it a concept I should accept as having an ethically binding character (not just something that you think might be a nice thing to do).

[Creed of Heresy]

How can you say that God is despicable if he endorses slavery? How can you define slavery as an absolute evil? What you are following is not a real rigorous philosophical view of ethics but a bunch of political propaganda you are taking too seriously. You are like the people that think it is immoral to have a minimum wage below $25 dollars. It is immoral to have the minimum wage below $25 dollars, otherwise people cannot own a house with two stories. Then they will add insult to injury and demand that there is a natural human right to have a minimum wage set at $25 dollars an hour. Where do you find evidence for this? Where does it say that the minimum wage must be $25 dollars an hour? You know where you find this, in promises made by politicians who are trying to get elected. That is where your view of ethics comes from.

This was about the point where I stopped taking you seriously at all. You're actually equating slavery with being paid less than $25 an hour?

I. I just.

Get the fuck out of here.

Get the fuck out of here, you fucking idiot, and take your silly bitch of a god with you.

---

The only reason I can see a woman wanting to be a Christian, or Muslim, or any adherent to any of the Abrahamic religions, for that matter, is basically just...well...Stockholm Syndrome. Oh, and indoctrination, too.

Here's something to consider; have you ever noticed how so often when an atheist "is born again" and coverts to a religion again, it is, most of the time, a male? You know, the gender that actually gets the better end of the deal in Abrahamic religions?

Can't say as I've heard much of women who were religious and then became atheists who went back to being madly devout all over again. DEFINITELY don't hear much about people who grow up with any religious influence in their lives who convert, either, regardless of gender, but again when you DO hear it once in a blue moon, it's far more likely, relatively speaking, for the individual to be a male.

It's just a matter of being told something ceaselessly for years upon years and finally thinking it to be a universal, unfalsifiable truth. The very definition of indoctrination. Nothing more.