RE: Does Atheism make sense?
January 10, 2012 at 7:26 pm
(This post was last modified: January 10, 2012 at 7:47 pm by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
(January 10, 2012 at 6:23 pm)organiccornflake Wrote: No; this debate is pointless because you can't think of slavery 5000 years ago in another part of the world as the same slavery as you are thinking of in modern day. And to think that they are the same thing is just silly.
This debate is pointless because you've sugarcoated your bible in order to make slavery - the owning of another human being - acceptable in a moral sense to yourself and you won't cede the point that slavery is immoral because the bible, in your mind, is the ultimate moral authority that does not disown the act of forcing another human into your servitude.
In order to do this, you've made excuses that are not backed up by:
1) The bible (which only prohibits the bad treatment of family and the children of israel)
2) History (You'll find plenty of evil despots from all across history that doesn't necessarily treat their slaves well.)
Because of this, you cannot be taken seriously at all - particularly given the fact that slavery is slavery is slavery whether the slave is treated like a king or treated like a dog.
Look at yourself. Look at what you're arguing. You're arguing that slavery in the bible is okay because some people weren't treated so bad.
If this wasn't in the context of the bible, would you honestly be arguing FOR slavery?
You're defending ithe indefensible just to maintain your pointless facade and it shows to everyone here except yourself. The thing is, it's not even the worst thing the bible finds acceptable (murder, genocide, general misogyny, and rape for example.)
EDIT:
In regard to your bible passages: Exodus 21:16 seems to punish the act of kidnapping a person and selling him into slavery. Doesn't seem indicative of forcing a person into servitude with yourself in any other circumstance, such as war or buying other people's slaves or buying a person into slavery (such as with slave wages) - all of which result in the same thing and is still a common tactic in the modern day. Interestingly, the passage only specifices that this cannot happen to men.
In regards to Exodus 23:12, it seems to punish everyone who works the sabbath, except women. That's not exactly special treatment for slaves who can still be beaten, maimed, or raped at any time and still don't have the freedom to quit or otherwise oppose their master's wishes.
Yuo still don't really have much of a case in terms of justifying slavery in the bible.
EDIT 2: Electric Boogaloo
Here's a fun one for you:
Exodus 20:17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
I love how all these things are lumped together as a part of your neighbor's possessions - house, wife, slaves (I'm sorry - "servants"), ox, ass, nor anything else that belongs to him.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan