(May 31, 2013 at 3:46 pm)Consilius Wrote: Wrong. Different Christians used the Bible to justify slavery than those who abolished it.
Okay. But you're claiming that they were all Christians, aren't you? I'm taking you at your word here. If I'm understanding your statements, some Christians justified slavery on Biblical grounds out of a selfish desire for profit, and others condemned it and finally saw it abolished. Therefore Christians allowed greed to lead them to evil actions, and others provided the moral rectitude to stop a wicked practice. So who was being morally superior, the Christians, or the Christians?
It just seems to me that Christians acted a lot like anyone else. Some mistreated their fellow man to sate their own greed, others made an effort to stop the mistreatment of men and women they didn't know. What difference did Christianity make? And if its adherents did wrong and right like anyone else would, how can Christianity present itself as a moral guide?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
