Why would any woman want to be Christian?

[Esquilax]

Strodel, you are literally one of the worst debaters I have ever come across, and by the looks of it a pretty despicable human being too; scrabbling to make excuses for the most awful immoral things while sniffing with haughty derision at we atheists for daring to disagree with you. You are either a liar, an idiot, or a brainwashed puppet, and this will be the last time I respond to any of your rambling, incoherent posts. However, I feel compelled to put a finer point on my reasoning in a few areas that you seem to have missed in your haste to call me a liberal some more, as though I should take that as an insult.

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 A lot of morality in the Old Testament is superceded in the New Testament, consider the teachings about the Jewish law.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.

Sweet! Okay then, I can feel pretty good about not bothering with you after this, because as you've just said, you have no morality! Your entire moral system is based on a system that can change, meaning what you're advocating isn't some divine, objective morality that is rigid and perfect, but for a command structure, where the whims of your deity inform your morality.

Now that we know this, don't you dare ever open your fucking trap again to criticize the strength of secular morality, you hypocritical oaf!

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.

I'll get to this in a moment, but I just wanted to say that this is the most breathtakingly ignorant and privileged comparisons I've ever seen. And that I know you understand the difference between the two, unless you really are an idiot, in which case... well, either way, why bother?

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.

Well, the reason I brought up Lot specifically is because even after offering his daughters up for gang rape, he was still allowed to leave Sodom as the one moral person in the city. God protects him, allows him to live while striking down the rest of his city for immorality. So... does that not count as something of a hint as to god's opinion on Lot's moral stature?

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.

So, I've never sold anyone out as badly as Lot did there, I live a fairly normal and moral life, yet I'm going to hell for not believing, yet Lot's okay? Yeah, sounds like a fair system.

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.

You know, you say we need to interpret the bible, but can you step away from your own position for a moment and try to look at it from the outside? What you're really saying by that is "disregard the actual words there, and just pretend it says something else instead."

Who are you to interpret god's word? Or is god just a bad author? Either way, yes, I do refuse to put myself through the doublethink and mental contortions one needs to go through in order to make an immoral book seem slightly less immoral. Two plus two equals four, Strodel. Not five. We have not always been at war with Eurasia.

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!!

I guess my point was that god has no issues preventing certain social things outright, so why does he ease up on slavery so much? You've made a pretty pathetic strawman here to avoid answering my question, so I doubt you will ever approach this debate honestly at all, but everyone else gets what I was actually saying here, right? All the rational people?

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?".

Okay.

So, I'm an empathic being, which means I can put myself in the shoes of others. Do I think slavery would feel good? No, I think it would cause me quite considerable suffering. Being that I give a shit about other people, does that mean I therefore think of slavery as moral, until it affects me? No, it's immoral, because it causes people suffering and excludes them from being able to contribute to society under their own volition. So, from a moral perspective we seek to reduce suffering, and from a cost/benefit scenario, people who don't actively hate their work are more likely to do better, and the intellectual gifts that might be squandered on lives of hard labor in slavery would be better used in a world of self determined paths. There's your empathy.

Do I live in a world with other empathetic people? Yes, I do, for the evolutionary reasons I detailed to you in another thread. Given this, will they roughly come to the same conclusions, seeing as they can witness the suffering slavery brings too? Yes, essentially. There's your mutual agreement.

Is forced, unending slavery immoral? Yep. I can't understand why a person with a supposedly superior divine morality is arguing otherwise.

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?

What does this have to do with morality? The people who took slaves were doing an immoral thing... people sometimes do that. What's your point? I should excuse immorality because it happened by force?

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.

And? Am I saying slavery had no positive effects on the world? No, not really. Am I saying that there were much, much better ways to accomplish the same things, and probably surpass them? Yes, definitely. But we'll never know what the alternative history without slavery would look like, now will we?

Additionally, I suspect you brought up economics as a smoke screen because you know that you're arguing for an immoral and unpopular act, but you can't stop because that would mean admitting defeat to an atheist. Nobody is talking about economics but you. We were discussing morality and rights, which is a different issue that requires a different tact.

But hey, I'm not surprised that you were being dishonest. It seems it's just a thing that you do, easy as breathing.

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.

Saying all this, just to advocate for slavery? My my, you must be right. Clearly I should bow to you, superior moral philosopher, with your cavalcade of faint ad hominems, constant strawmen and unsupported assertions, and your immoral central position. Yes.

Fuck off, you supercilious prig.

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.

I'd call those nations democracies, you fucking moron.

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.

Because the bible is a self-contradictory piece of trash written by desert dwelling savages with superiority complexes, and the people that follow it are imbecilic cultists like yourself, or indoctrinated normal people who just throw out the bits they don't like.

Now I'm done with you. Feel free to respond as you like. Just know that the rest of us are laughing at you, but we're all secretly disgusted with you too, you dishonest, immoral excuse for a human being.