Why the Bible Doesn't Condemn Slavery

[Lek]

I came across this article which I think does a good job of answering why the bible doesn't directly condemn slavery.

http://www.reasons.org/articles/how-come...mn-slavery

[The Grand Nudger]

You think that was a good job? Anything in particular? My favorite "The institution of slavery was so deeply rooted in ancient culture that it could not be dismantled overnight. "...lol, yeah, some god/religion/unique ethical message we've got there. Illiterates from Indiana with no superpowers whatsoever did a better job in a few years with their own blood than your god could manage with all his power and all his followers and all of their religious beliefs in the previous thousands of years.

[Regina]

"The institution of slavery was so deeply rooted in ancient culture that it could not be dismantled overnight."

Seriously?

Well so were liberal attitudes towards sex, and homosexuality, but the Bible managed to ban that.

We could ban slavery, but no, let's ban what consenting adults in the privacy of their bedrooms do instead.

[Strider]

Lek, don't you think a website named Reasons to Believe might be just a bit biased? A site such as that could never be objective in its reasoning. They have a clear motive and it is to cast as favorable a light on Christianity as possible.

[Jackalope]

The answer to why the bible doesn't condemn slavery is simple: because it mirrors the attitudes of the unsophisticated barbarian cultures that spawned it.

Occam's razor, bitches. Learn to love it.

[psychoslice]

I think back then a slave was a servant, someone who serves another.

[Lek]

Lek, don't you think a website named Reasons to Believe might be just a bit biased? A site such as that could never be objective in its reasoning. They have a clear motive and it is to cast as favorable a light on Christianity as possible.

That means that if a person is a christian he is unqualified to write on the subject? Should I only seek out non-christians for opinions about the bible and slavery?

[The Grand Nudger]

You'd get more competent answers, yes.

[100 Years of Solitude]

I don't want to insult the OP but one thing has to be said about this....
there is always an excuse of some sort for the immoral actions perpetrated in the Bible, particulary in the Old Testament.

Whether because it's a thing that was common in the past so why all the fuss about (despite morality being timeless), or the guy that killed his son because God told him is misunderstood or even that when it says in the book women are servants of men and should obey them it's actually not literally...

I mean c'mon, it's getting ridiculous. At least have the decency to come up with better arguments.

[Chad32]

The bible says that slaves can be passed down from parents to children, and isrealite slaves are explicitly referred to as property after they accept a wife and you drive a nail through their ear. This, plus the fact that you're allowed to beat a slae half to death as long as he doesn't die one or two days later shows that these people had no rights. People bought from other tribes were there for life, and people who accepted a wife were there for life.

If it could not be dismantled overnight, your god is not as smart or as powerful as you'd like us to believe. Where in the bible does it speak of efforts to abolish the practice altogether? Even when it says you're supposed to release isrealite servants after seven years, it still allows for a loophole where you don't have to. This is the most bare bones treatment to a problem as I can imagine.

Anyone who can be considered the property of another person doesn't hae as many rights as they deserve. It says right there that these people are property that can be handed down from person to person, and can be beaten half to death. They are also commanded to obey the cruelest of masters.

Yes I can imagine that people placed more emphasis on worshiping god than actually helping society. That's a big reason why religion is screwed up, and tends to hold society back more than it raises it up.

Yes, after secularists dragged religious people kicking and screaming out of the dark ages, some of them began taking more progressive views like maybe a representative republic would suit society better than a theocracy.

I have always wondered why Yahweh's opinion of right and wrong so closely follows the opinions of the people living at the time, except maybe slightly more progressive.