The Immorality of God - Slavery in the Old Testament

[athrock]

"Hey guys!  Slavery wasn't as bad in the bible as it was in America!  I mean you couldn't even kill your slave back then! So clearly God isn't a monster.  He had to work with the culture of the time!  You know, because god is limited by man.  This isn't because god is man-made, but because reasons.  Sure, Jesus could have said that all slavery was wrong, but that would have been unpopular, and god only does things that are popular.  Plus it might have got him hung on a cross or something.  You know the Romans.   And by saying that, he might have aided preventing the 'worse' form of slavery that was created by his own people many years later, many of whom used the bible to defend slavery.  But of course some Christians were at the forefront of the abolition movement so we'll ignore all the people who used the bible to defend slavery.  It cancels out!  So Jesus didn't need to say it.  Exodus clearly made it obvious that slavery was bad.  So clearly obvious that Christians participated in slavery for many many many many many years afterwards, but eventually gave it up."

Don't you just HATE it when someone makes a case you can't refute against your one of your pet reasons for hating god, Cecelia?

Sorta makes you sick to your stomach and wanna lose your lunch...like you just did in that post, doesn't it?

Which is why I posted the OP.

Have a nice day. 

[athrock]

God made slavery possible, and he knew that it would happen. Therefor, god made sure slavery was inevitable.

Flawed thinking. Just because God knew that something was possible, it does not mean that He made it inevitable.

Trying to make excuses for an all-powerful being doesn't wash. If he wants things a certain way, then they are that way.

Hardly.

Free will is no excuse, since we have precious little of it anyway. We don't have the opportunity to do hardly anything that we could possibly imagine, including exploring the ~100% of the universe that is here "for us". We have to bust our guts and go mental just to get to the nearest crappy rock.

Well, that's an interesting position. If God doesn't exist, then how is your free will limited (apart from laws designed to protect the neighborhood from nut cases)?

Yet we all have the option to grab and rape a kid.

At the very least, you can want to rape the kid even if you are unable to do so for any number of reasons. So, yeah. God has given you that freedom.

This is not a reasonable set of options for someone who cares about human happiness. In what way does offering rape of kids do anyone any good? If it was never possible, never something we'd ever even think of, who exactly would miss it? God would, presumably. And while the kid is being raped, he loses his free will.

Not exactly. The rape victim or the prisoner in a jail cell has lost his freedom, but not his free will. There is a critical distinction between these concepts.

[Minimalist]

47 “The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. 48 But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

Luke 12

Fuck jesus....slave-beating bastard.

[downbeatplumb]

Yes I think people who think slavery is moral are disgusting monsters, It doesn't have to be right, wrong, or objective.

Since Christians have been at the fore-front of the abolitionist movement throughout the course of history, you have that much in common with them, at least.

Isn't it interesting how the seeds planted in the book of Exodus bore fruit in the Emancipation Proclamation?

Hmm since slavery was a ok by Christians until the 1800s so "throughout the course of history" is a bit strong when for the vast majority of christian dominence there  not only were Christians slavers but they were using the bible to justify it. 
Despite what you US certric education would have you believe the people who drove the anti-slavery cause were British, particularly the Clapham sect led by William Wilberforce who interpreted the religion in a way that is very different from other believers and more humanist that anything. These people led to Britain banning slavery and sailing round the world enforcing it on others, a sort of great Britain world police, but for good.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_fi...liam.shtml

[athrock]

Free Will is all fine and good, until you realize that God allegedly drowned 99% of the planet to get them to act the way he wanted.  When people didn't act the way he wanted them to, he'd kill them.  At the very least he could have told them "END SLAVERY NOW" and if they didn't listen, put a blight on them or something.  Or I don't know, at the very least it'd be recorded that he said it.  Jesus could have easily said it.  Jesus could have talked about the evils of sexism and racism and slavery.  But he didn't.  Apparently they were less important than a fig tree.  He certainly could have said more than "Don't hit your slaves too bad now, you hear?"  I mean Jesus would have to be omniscient, or else he couldn't know that he was god.  Which means he'd have known about what slavery eventually becomes.  If Jesus was not omniscient, then how did he know he was god?

<sigh>

No, Cecelia, that isn't exactly what happened. 

God chose to reboot the planet because mankind had gone astray. It's His computer, He wrote the program, and He can ctrl-alt-del if He wants to. The fact that He wanted to shows just how bad things had become. Later, He used a different plan - sending His son - to redeem sinners. Why no second flood? Clearly, He thought the situation was salvageable.

Now, you ask why Jesus didn't give more specific instructions. Well, this would have required that he provide a clear guideline for every conceivable issue that mankind had or would ever face. Abortion? What did Jesus say? Gay marriage? What did Jesus say? Stem cell research? What did Jesus say? A gospel the size of a set of encyclopedias wouldn't have been sufficient to hold all the possible rules and regulations we'd need to cover every eventuality. And we'd still be arguing over what a particular verse meant, how it should be applied in modern society, and whether we could really be sure that the terabyte-length scriptures weren't just a bunch of corrupted fairy tales told by "bronze-age goat herders" anyway.

Instead, He gave us two rules to focus on:

1. Love God. 
   
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
   

It's a good thing that Jesus didn't bury us with more specific rules as you demand. 

We seem to be having enough trouble following these two.

[Angrboda]

But here's the thing, rob, and there's really no getting around this: when you begin to examine these issues objectively and one at a time, it becomes clear that the predominant characterization of God in the Bible - OT and NT alike - is love.

But there are other voices that are singing a different tune. Have you noticed? Do you care?

So, who are you listening to, rob?

Certainly not to cretins like you.

[Aroura]

So what you are saying is that God's morality mirrors that of the current human society morals.

Fascinating, that. I wonder what possible simple explanation there could be for Gods morals to reflect human morals of the time? Lol. Seriously, do these people even hear themselves??

[The Valkyrie]

Note that the rules you quoted STILL promote and endirse slavery.

Such terms as 'If a slave is chosen to marry a son' quite categorically indicates that she had no chouce in the matter.

And the fact that it says a Hebrew slave must be released after six years and there is punishment of those who kill a slave do nothing to mitigate the slavery or the fact the bible also says how a slave can and cannot be beaten.

[Angrboda]

Obvious retconning is obvious.

[athrock]

But there are other voices that are singing a different tune. Have you noticed? Do you care?

So, who are you listening to, rob?

Certainly not to cretins like you.

I'm a stupid person, Jormungandr?

Do I not compose my sentences and paragraphs in a manner which suggests that I am of at least average intelligence?