(March 15, 2026 at 3:56 pm)Disagreeable Wrote: There are many reasons people can have false beliefs. If people thought slavery was moral then I'm not sure what their reasons were.
Maybe the reasons were that morals are not objective or universal, but stem from society and upbringing. Even Aristotle argued for "natural slavery," and he was, apparently, no fool and should have known better.
One could make a good case why slavery is bad, but again, it's "just" a case and not some objective law of nature. Just like corporal punishment was commonplace not so long ago, but is now absent from legal framework, although it's present among lynch mobs.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
