The Immorality of God - Slavery in the Old Testament

[Cecelia]

Because, Cecelia, you're not simply judging God's behavior in light of today's standards. You're fallaciously attempting to read today's standards back into God's interaction with a more primitive people. You can't do that. Not honestly, anyway.

God acted then according to what the people then could handle. And in doing so, he moved all of humanity forward TOWARD today's standards because the written account of the people of God, the Bible, has had an undeniably positive impact on mankind.

Actually, the Bible has had an undeniably negative impact on progress.  Slavery, Women gaining the right to vote, and Gay Marriage.  All three are things that were impeded much by the bible.  Sure, some Christians were against Slavery.  Some were for women being able to vote.  And a very few were okay with Gay Marriage.  But their opponents had stronger backing by the bible.  

And how much bad has been done in the name of the Bible because of specific things it says?  How many people were stoned for Adultery?  How many were stoned for working on Sunday?  Or eating Shellfish?

The Hebrews couldn't even handle "Thou Shalt Not Kill", yet Yahweh is said to have given them that commandment.  Yahweh couldn't have given them other commandments they couldn't handle?  Really?  And he didn't foresee any of these negative effects of what he said, and the negative impact on progress the bible created?  Surely he could have at the very least given updates to the Bible regularly, so that people would stop using it as an excuse.

Your Bible has had little to do with any of the progress we've seen over the past several hundred years.  Sure, some Christians have been involved.  But that doesn't mean the bible had any thing to do with it.  In fact your bible has impeded progress a lot.  One might even say it's been the biggest obstacle for progress.  More than anything else it convinced people that they were absolutely right when they shared those ancient values that Yahweh apparently couldn't do anything about (which doesn't scream supreme being to me at all.  Why would a supreme being be limited?)

For that matter, why open his mouth at all on many of those subjects? If Homosexuality isn't an abomination according to Yahweh, why did he tell the Hebrews that? Why not just leave that out, what good does it do? What good does it do to say "Stone a woman for being raped"? Seems like a pretty terrible thing to say.