Is the universe God?

[Sword of Christ]

Jesus did have a parable about slavery where he endorsed it, though. I'm aware the words I used weren't his, but they were in the bible.

If you want to interpret it in a modern context you can apply it someone in a low status poorly paid job as slavery in the classical world was more an equivalent to that than say the African slave trade. It depend who you were owned by and what your role was some slaves were in a privileged position or had a professional trade of some kind and so had a reasonably decent standard of life. Slaves working down say a silver mine were much less fortunate.

Why do I believe slavery is wrong? Easy: I can observe reality. I don't want to be enslaved myself

Of course you don't want to be enslaved yourself but you live in the advanced developed world with all the military power. So we could go back to Africa kick some ass establish some new colonies there and reinstate a thriving slave trade. If you have enough money you could afford to have a slave in your house, they could do all your house work and choirs and generally be rather handy. You can keep them locked in your basement at night and whatever. If we get to decide whats right and wrong all we have to do is decide that doing this right and it will be right there won't be any problem at all. The Africans in question may not like to be enslaved but we care about what they like because? You have no reason why you should care other than the Christian/spiritual values you have had handed down to you which are derived from God. God is your moral foundation not peoples opinions. You damn well know as a fact that slavery is wrong, it's not your in opinion it just is. Facts need to be based in something.

, and in an internally consistent moral model, that means that I've got to enter into a social contract where I don't enslave others to ensure that.

There's nothing stopping us from enslaving some Africans again they wouldn't be able to stand up to us and they could some good work for our benefit. The only reason why we don't do this is because we have come to the understanding that this is wrong. Again this is wrong as a fact not as a cultural preference.

That's the pragmatic answer, but truthfully, my nature as an empathic being means I don't actually like seeing harm come to others

Empathy as the kind that Jesus and the Bible teaches? Do onto others as they would do unto you? You still have Christian/religious morality even if you have nothing to base it upon because you don't believe in any of it.

, as slavery does, so my moral scale places harm as an objectively immoral thing.

It would benefit us to have some unpaid slaves doing some good hard work on our behalf, that would be profitable. It would harm the Africans but you're not explaining why we should care about the Africans. You just feel within yourself that we should? If you feel that you may want to ask why.

The thing that's morally and ethically influencing me is reality, and logic.

You can't logically explain why we shouldn't be able to buy some African slaves. They would be damn useful to have there isn't really a downside to this proposition. Other than the fact that you "feel that's it's wrong".

Why? Do you need to be told slavery is bad before you can figure it out?

The idea is you don't really need to be told because you already know. It's internal within you and the teachings of Jesus and the overall message of the Bible will help to confirm what you already know to be true. You know morality isn't merely a cultural taste or a trend it is a reality of some kind which is based on something.

Not that you actually have been, of course: your bible is all smiles when it comes to slavery, so how did you come to the determination that it's bad?

The abolitionists were Christians inspired by the teachings of Christ and genuine empathy for their fellow man, it was Christianity that helped to pave the away toward the abolition and other great social progress and human rights. These are all religiously inspired values and you share in them yourself as much as you like to deny their source.

Sorry, I don't find corporal punishment to be moral either. People besmirching your name doesn't give you license to assault them, least of all when you're- to their perspective- just some guy off the street.

So if you saw a guy mugging/beating an old woman in the street you would use force to try and fight them off you would stand there and watch? You can use force if it's justified to so and in the case of Jesus in the Temple he shoved out people who were running a scam to make money from the poor. If you think that was an immoral act then fine but I would disagree.

Ah, so you're picking and choosing. What's your metric for deciding what's "too far," beyond what would merely be inconvenient.

Like yourself I have a well developed understanding of morality so I can object to the same parts of the Bible you would object to. This was a 3000 year old culture and they got some things wrong, this has been a work in process. But it's a real progress towards something and Jesus was a big part in this moral development. With God or a foundation for this morality then it's just cultural taste there isn't a definitive right or wrong.

Oh, and incidentally, even accepting all that, you're okay with slavery, right?

I have exactly the opinions on these issues as yourself only I have what I believe is a reason for them while you are just having to copy the morality of your historically Christian culture.

Just curious as to how many nonbelievers you've killed?

It does not say anything about killing non-believers in the Bible, you may have been reading the Quran perhaps? What it actually says is that the alien (non-believer) in your midst must be treated as an equal. Sure you can pick out some dubious passages from the Bible, that stuff is in there and you can't do much about it. But the people who wrote it were flawed, more flawed than us perhaps as we have advanced in many ways. It is through God we have advanced in the case of our moral values however science has nothing at all to do with it.

No actually, it doesn't: what it means is that you've now got two classes of behavior to draw your examples from, one where god is god, and the other where god is Jesus. What justification have you for ignoring the ones you're choosing to ignore?

The Jewish prophets made some mistakes being human and subject to sin, Jesus who was free from sin/God is a better presentation of what the ideal form of God given human morality is supposed to be. So that will help to clear all that up. Nothing is being ignored here just explained.