(September 6, 2017 at 7:45 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: Your attempts to minimize and explain away the problem of slavery in the ancient near east are transparent and immoral. It's nothing more than you drinking your own koolaid. Yes, slavery covered a range of possibilities, yet it was still an evil in and of itself, visited by the same excesses which the African slave trade visited upon us. You do everything but say that slavery was a zippity doo-dah pleasant way to live one's life. It wasn't. Slaves lived second class lives and people resorted to such measures out of desperation or worse. Your attempts to muddy the waters with bullshit red herrings is disgusting.
A perfect example of how deference to the Bible and Christianity can cause someone to lose their moral compass, yet make them believe they are the ones being moral.
This is exactly why I spend time debating against that immoral belief system.
"Why not just let people believe what they want?", I hear often. Sorry, but people's beliefs don't live in a vaccum, they inform their actions. And making excuses for slavery is just one example of an immoral person believing they are moral.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.