A Former Atheist

[Esquilax]

How could I have challenged you that they weren't there before you cited them? I simply asked if your socially conscious response to the Bible were serious.

You also asked me to back up my claims, something you wouldn't need to do if you had prior knowledge of the verses relevant to the issues I'd listed.

Your objection to the Bible as condoning slavery, for example, what point is there in that? I should dismiss the Bible, which was honest in it's position on slavery and then denounce democracy, even humanity, for doing the same?

Humanity corrected its views on slavery, something the bible never did, even into the new testament. My point is that one should not read the bible, read those passages regarding slavery, and then worship the entity responsible for that, regardless of how convinced of his reality you end up being. The moral course of action, were one to read the bible and become convinced that that god exists, is to reject him outright, not to play into his hands.

It seems to me short sighted and perhaps even hypocritical. An emotional fixation.

It's not hypocritical: I don't worship any humans who advocate slavery any more than I worship gods who advocate slavery. Where is the hypocrisy, there? Humans changed, god did not.

Man, not God, invented slavery, the Mosaic law simply protected slaves.

... Protected slaves by making it acceptable to beat them to death? By describing in detail how to trick temporary slaves into becoming permanent ones by holding their families to ransom? By allowing them to be raped? Seriously?

Man also invented murder, by the way, but god had no issue abolishing that in his commandments, yet he remains curiously silent on the immorality of slavery, though equally curiously loquacious regarding the particulars of making it happen. It's a matter of priorities, you see; god places getting all the worship for himself above abolishing slavery, something you would, I assume, find to be a noble cause when humanity does it. Doesn't that seem odd, to you?

Also to think of slavery in those times as similar to our own country's more recent history is erroneous. To them our system of debt and imprisonment and racism would be far more immoral and inhumane.

In what way were they different? I warn you, I'm well aware of the full details regarding the "you could let them go after seven years!" style of lazy apologetics, so maybe don't go there if you were intending to.

Your position on rape and genocide are similarly uninformed and not very well thought out. How could God, who created one race, that of the entire human race regardless of geological, governmental, or such mundane differences as skin color be considered genocidal when all along what he was doing was preserving mankind from their own destruction.

I don't think I mentioned genocide, but he became genocidal around about the time he selected a race of people and demanded that they all be killed, because that's literally what a genocide is.

What were the societal options for a rape victim and what were their protections?

You don't think that god could have afforded rape victims a wider range of social options and protections by adding a few "be cool to rape victims" clauses into the bible? Possibly taking out that "she must marry her rapist," bit and just have the rapist fund her life in recompense without forcing her into close quarters with him for life? Or hey, just removing the social stigma on being unmarried and having sex, so that the issue never came up at all? I mean, given how utterly arbitrary the value on virginity actually is, that isn't a huge deal, right?