A Former Atheist

[Aractus]

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? It seems to me short sighted and perhaps even hypocritical. An emotional fixation. Man, not God, invented slavery, the Mosaic law simply protected slaves. 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. 

The problem is that just isn't true. The Slavery practises in Egypt were far fairer and all slaved could buy property and work their way to freedom; and no slaves were ever used for forced labour. Yet in the Bible, female slaves are never to be released, men could own "concubines" which are sex slaves, and God specifically says that the Hebrews can make their slaves do forced labour. Furthermore the sexism in the Bible is also something that was not shared by Egyptians. In the Bible, women can't own property or get a divorce from their husbands. There is not one single verse in the Bible that makes it lawful for a woman to divorce her husband, not one. Yet in Egypt, Men AND Women could own property, and Men AND Women could get divorces.

Racism is something condoned by the Bible. The Bible mentions several times other "races" of people in Judea. We now know that there is only one human race. Different people are not fundamentally different to each other as was believed by the Hebrews, Jews, and many other societies right up to the 20th century.

Daniel 2:43: As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay.

Deut 7:1-6: “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.

“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

Ezra 9:1-2: After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost.”