(January 22, 2019 at 1:23 pm)Acrobat Wrote:(January 22, 2019 at 1:00 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: I'm not interested in the similarities, only the differences. So, then, are you suggesting that any difference between the morals in the bible regarding slavery, as one example, are due to delusion or falsehoods? I presume you would say that the bible doesn't contain falsehoods, so the only conclusion that one could draw from that explanation, failing an alternative explanation, is that people are deluded about the morality of slavery, currently, and the view that slavery is wrong is a falsehood. Is this what you believe, or are there other explanations for differences between past morals, biblical or not, and present ones? Second, what faculty of human beings allows for the correction of delusional beliefs or falsehoods?
And I'd still like a response to my second concern previously. If left unanswered, I'll have to conclude that your position on the matter is vapid and unsupported.
No, I'm not a fundie evangelical, and so yes its possible that the bible contains certain things that are false.
It is absolutely certain that the Bible contains many things that are provably false.
Quote:With that being said I don't see that OT practice of slavery being on based on false beliefs, but rather a product of the economic necessities of their tribes, unlike American Slavery being built on false beliefs regarding African Americans as not human, etc...
The OT writers didn't frame slavery in moral terms at all, they did't defend slavery or any moral grounds at all. If the survival of their tribes/communities depended on taking slaves from other tribe, that those are the hard practices they adopted.
Sure, it is probable that slavery helped the survival of various tribes.
The point is, that the slavery in the Bible is reported as being condoned by Yahweh, and he gives rules for slavery, including differences between enslaving Hebrews and heathen.
In other words, the very fact that the Bible condones slavery, makes it an immoral text. And any god that caused it to be written, would (if he actually existed) also be immoral.
Not to mention, where is the Bible 2.0 correcting this immoral practice condoned in the Bible? It certainly isn't the New Testament, where Jesus tells his followers, "slaves obey your masters, even the cruel ones".
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
