RE: How can a book that tells you how to treat slaves possibly be valid moral guide
January 23, 2014 at 5:53 pm
(January 23, 2014 at 5:18 pm)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: 3.slavery pretty awful shit? Compared to what exactly. Genocide? Famine? Anarchy? Against what moral yardstick. A society which has lost its way as badly as ours?
Isn't the god of the bible supposed to be both timeless and the ultimate arbiter of morals? Surely his morals wouldn't be dependant on then or now?
(January 23, 2014 at 5:18 pm)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: We live in a world where we drone bomb civilians be the thousand and call it war. Where tens of thousands die of starvation while we die from over consumption. Where we spend £30 on a kids cuddly toy which would feed a family in the third world for a month. Where warlords carry out genocides which would warm the cockles of the OT Yahweh's heart, and we ignore it. Where teenagers commit suicide because people say unkind things to them. Yeah, slavery is not a nice idea but considering how fucked and immoral our society is I'm afraid I can't get that worked up about it. So no, I don't particularly have a problem with the Bible not matching up to modern morality because modern morality ain't that special. It just seems that way to us because we're so inordinately proud of the horror we've created. It's like a paedophile taking a morally high stance over wife beating. Neither are moral. Both are funked.
And where the vatican supports Nazi's, hold billions of dollars but tell everyone else to help the poor? Genocides to warm Yahweh's heart? you mean like the 1994 Rwanda genocide that was sponsored by the church?
I understand your post and can partially agree but this IS an atheist forum and people might come here asking questions of the theists in order to get answers to things they might have issues with in their own minds. My 2c only.