The Bible and slavery

[Nick_A]

And in this particular case, the only true christian seems to be one who thinks he is such a thing.


Cogito christianus ergo christianus sum, sed putas te christianum esse, ergo non christianus sis.

Would you say that the only true lawyer is one who calls himself a lawyer?

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Why worry about me? You have a choice. You can either blindly deny or make the efforts at self knowledge to verify. You've chosen blind denial. You've made your choice.

Perhaps the biggest fault of Christians is the belief that self-knowledge requires Christianity.

I would say that's more than fair to say. Clearly little Nicky there believes that the rest of us can't "know thyself" nor can we understand the nature of our existence because we haven't chosen to see his brand of "truth". Thus his ridiculous remark about us choosing blind denial.

Ridiculous because of the very fact that when one chooses to deny something it means that they have indeed seen it, analyzed it and made a choice to deny it. There's nothing blind about that. A conscious decision was made. All this existential bullshit that you're attaching to your argument is nothing more than the same old tired rhetoric I've been hearing for years from christians who want to attempt to turn their stupid religion into some kind of quest for a higher consciousness. It's bull shit. In the end you're still trying to sell that ancient book of yours and your silly godboy to the rest of the world - and probably yourself.

Talk about being blind.

Amazing! But I guess if people didn't think this way there would not be genocides. they only take place through denial.

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You are confusing Christendom with Christianity. It is an understandable mistake but a mistake just the same. Actually it was the imposition of the Hebrew God on Christianity as well as Rome imposing Christianity on the empire that created such a quick devolution of Christianity into Christendom within society.

No, no confusion whatsoever. You're citing an archaic out of date term, "Christendom", that use to apply when describing Christianity. Now Christendom simply refers to the whole community that practices Christianity. You can not assume your position, as stated above, and use the Bible as a platform for support of that claim.

Basically, you're talking through your hat.

Yeshu never created a faith called Christianity. Rome did. So as to blanket the world with their creation of a false savior of the world, who's origins life death and resurrection led slaves to be obedient unto their earthly masters while living in the faith they were saved in spirit for an after life that would free them of their bonds. As such it was Rome's intent to rule the Jews by taking their Messianic myth into Roman control and then creating their own compilation from pagan myths so as to insure Roman influence and authority continued to rule the worlds people and expand in it's conquest of new territories, long after the Legion was dust.

Yeshu was a radical Rabbi who was murdered on the eve of Passover for the crime of blasphemy. He and his fellows were hung. Which means crucified. They died, never to rise from the grave again. Yeshu did not come to create a religion he came to teach what can be described as Autotheism. No sect known today, whether referred to in archaic out of date terms or Christianity itself was ever orchestrated or "founded" by Yeshu. Nor did he intend religion to spring from his teachings.

There were no scribes taking down his teachings, no creeds, no absolute doctrines related to it. Those books now on the market such as, the gospel of Judas, the gospel of Thomas, etc... arrived long after Yeshu and his fellows were dead.

They're related to the contrivance of Gnostics and evidence of that is all scripture contained therein refer to Yeshu by his Greek name, Jesus. No Jew, no member of an Essene sect, would have ever been named in the Greek. Whereas in the early Roman era of the early Christian church Latin was spoken to the peasant class during the sermons. While the elite class was afforded the homily in the language reserved for kings; Greek. Hence the Roman tradition affording their false prophet to bear the name, Jesus.

Where do you get this stuff? Christianity is a revelation that initiated from a conscious source. Christendom are just devolved man made interpretations.

Judaism and Christianity are complimentary but completely different.

[Faith No More]

Amazing! But I guess if people didn't think this way there would not be genocides. they only take place through denial.

WTF is this supposed to mean? Are you saying that denying Christi is the cause of all genocide?

[Nick_A]

Amazing! But I guess if people didn't think this way there would not be genocides. they only take place through denial.

WTF is this supposed to mean? Are you saying that denying Christi is the cause of all genocide?

Its meaning is clear

"Ridiculous because of the very fact that when one chooses to deny something it means that they have indeed seen it, analyzed it and made a choice to deny it."

it is asserted that people understand what they deny. This is just naive ignorance.

"When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder." Simone Weil

People deny life all the time because they don't understand it in order to value it so murder is a logical result.

[Faith No More]

Its meaning is clear

"Ridiculous because of the very fact that when one chooses to deny something it means that they have indeed seen it, analyzed it and made a choice to deny it."

it is asserted that people understand what they deny. This is just naive ignorance.

What is naive is to believe that anyone who rejects Christianity just doesn't seem to understand it. I'm sick and tired of Christians saying that if people truly understood Christianity, they wouldn't reject it. The fact is that this is just another delusion that Christians live under. People do understand and reject your religion. Get over it.

People deny life all the time because they don't understand it in order to value it so murder is a logical result.

I don't know why you are comparing denying life to denying your religion. The fact is, that you are completely convinced that anyone outside of your religion is spiritually retarded and must not understand the value of life. BULLSHIT! Christianity does not have a monopoly on self-awareness and I would even go as far to claim that it impedes it. When one confines understanding their life to one view, from one book, they are denying themselves the opportunity to understand life on their own and on their own terms. You seem to think that without your book the world would be spiritually lost, but the fact is that your book is not needed to be moral or value life. Your religion has blinded you to the truth about human morality which is that people do not need an ancient collection of fictional stories to do the right thing in life.

If you truly believe that murder is a logical result of denying Christianity, then you are either stupid or your religion is rotting your brain.

[Epimethean]

Nick, by your own reasoning, you have no leg to stand on. You have presented a problem such that you must be doubted fully by us, because, if we believe you, we must disbelieve you, and if we disbelieve you, we must stop talking to you as a barrier to our own path to self enlightenment, for such must and can only be a solitary journey, sundered from all others, since no-one can share this path.

In other words, you are full of bullshit, my friend.

[coffeeveritas]

Did a forum search on this topic and didn't find much. Apologies for any overlap.

I'm interested to hear what folks think about what the Bible says about slavery. You will hear apologists defend the Bible by claiming that it does not condone forced slavery, just indentured servitude. Basically, people would become the property of another person if they were in debt or had other financial problems. Other believers will just claim that we should not make moral judgments about other societies that were vastly different from our own.

I tend to think it's yet another sign that the Bible is written as we should expect in an ancient society, and not by an all-knowing God who would have known that millions would suffer and/or die in the 18th and 19th centuries during the slave trade, and didn't think it important to condemn slavery outright in his special book to mankind.

The issue of slavery in the Bible is an odd one. I remember reading a book by a person claiming to be a Christian economist which actually condoned slavery, and seemed rather disappointed that we had gotten away from it. It was written in 1981. When I read the part about slavery I actually dropped the book and said, "what?!" out loud. That experience kind of brought up slavery as an issue for me again.

The inside track about slavery in the Bible is that if you're using a very literal, modern method of interpreting the Bible, it's actually pretty hard to argue that slavery is wrong. Christians had to let their experience of the horrors of slavery shape the way the saw the Bible. It was a matter of heart as well as head. So people ended up bringing more compassion to their reading and read the Bible as a bigger story rather than a list of rules. This lead to a situation where some Christians were running the slave trade and some were leading the abolitionist movement. You saw the same split in the Civil Rights movement of the sixties, with a southern pastor by the name of Dr. King leading a group of Christians to try and reach the hearts of a bitterly divided nation, while others claiming to be Christians tried to kill him. Honestly it's a little weird. Christians usually end up being on the best and worst side of the issue at the same time. Two different ways of looking at the Bible on each pole, both seemingly valid, but which lead to completely different conclusions. Like I said, it's weird.

That being said it's hard to overlook how often the Bible challenges things like sexism and slavery. Sure the Bible says, "slaves obey your masters" but it also has passages in Philemon where Paul is encouraging a slave owner not to treat his slave like property, but as a brother. Paul even refers to a slave as his very heart. There are also verses like, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galations 3:28) which seems to be encouraging equality for everyone. And whenever Paul talks about a wife's responsibility to her husband, he also talks about a husband's duty to his wife. Their bodies are not their own, but reciprocally belong to one another. This was very counter-culture since the Greeks and most Jews did not believe that a man had any responsibility to his wife, she was property. So for every issue where the Bible seems to be behind the times on some ethical issue, there are verses that make it seem more in step. I'm not going to deny that there are verses that sound really bad though. I'm just saying both sides are there, and it's not as easy as saying that the book was written thousands of years ago and is dangerously out of touch now. The issue of what to make of the Bible now is a big one that's not going to be resolved in a trite way. I'm interested to see how it works out, because I study that particular issue pretty much all the time and, wow, there is a lot of information to take in.

[Nick_A]

Its meaning is clear

"Ridiculous because of the very fact that when one chooses to deny something it means that they have indeed seen it, analyzed it and made a choice to deny it."

it is asserted that people understand what they deny. This is just naive ignorance.

What is naive is to believe that anyone who rejects Christianity just doesn't seem to understand it. I'm sick and tired of Christians saying that if people truly understood Christianity, they wouldn't reject it. The fact is that this is just another delusion that Christians live under. People do understand and reject your religion. Get over it.

People deny life all the time because they don't understand it in order to value it so murder is a logical result.

I don't know why you are comparing denying life to denying your religion. The fact is, that you are completely convinced that anyone outside of your religion is spiritually retarded and must not understand the value of life. BULLSHIT! Christianity does not have a monopoly on self-awareness and I would even go as far to claim that it impedes it. When one confines understanding their life to one view, from one book, they are denying themselves the opportunity to understand life on their own and on their own terms. You seem to think that without your book the world would be spiritually lost, but the fact is that your book is not needed to be moral or value life. Your religion has blinded you to the truth about human morality which is that people do not need an ancient collection of fictional stories to do the right thing in life.

If you truly believe that murder is a logical result of denying Christianity, then you are either stupid or your religion is rotting your brain.

FNM

What is naive is to believe that anyone who rejects Christianity just doesn't seem to understand it. I'm sick and tired of Christians saying that if people truly understood Christianity, they wouldn't reject it. The fact is that this is just another delusion that Christians live under. People do understand and reject your religion. Get over it.

It even gets worse. I don't think you know what Christianity is so it is impossible to either accept or reject it. You are rejecting aspects of Christendom which isn't the issue and a great deal of it should be rejected.

Christianity does not have a monopoly on self-awareness

I agree.

When one confines understanding their life to one view, from one book, they are denying themselves the opportunity to understand life on their own and on their own terms.

True

You seem to think that without your book the world would be spiritually lost, but the fact is that your book is not needed to be moral or value life.
No, Humanity needs forms of sacred art that serve to awaken humanity to its unnatural psychological attachment to the shadows on the wall in Plato's Cave.

The Bible is able to read you so serves this purpose.

If you truly believe that murder is a logical result of denying Christianity, then you are either stupid or your religion is rotting your brain.

No. The logical result of denying what the essence of religion offers is what allows humanity to kill on one day and cure on the next without batting an eye.

The only reason subjective morality exists that justifies killing is because of humanity's loss of the experience of objective morality. This loss is normal for life in Plato's Cave. The purpose of the essence of religion is to awaken to the human condition

[Epimethean]

The purpose of the "essence" of religion? Holy shit, guy.

[Faith No More]

FNM

What is naive is to believe that anyone who rejects Christianity just doesn't seem to understand it. I'm sick and tired of Christians saying that if people truly understood Christianity, they wouldn't reject it. The fact is that this is just another delusion that Christians live under. People do understand and reject your religion. Get over it.

It even gets worse. I don't think you know what Christianity is so it is impossible to either accept or reject it. You are rejecting aspects of Christendom which isn't the issue and a great deal of it should be rejected.

Of course, I have come to expect nothing less from true believers. Would it help if I told you told you I was raised in a Christian church? Of course not, because since I have rejected it, they obviously weren't true Christians. Or perhaps I didn't study it hard enough? Doesn't really matter what I think though, because you will convince yourself of any scenario as longs as it keeps you thinking Christianity can't be rejected based on a complete understanding of it.

No, Humanity needs forms of sacred art that serve to awaken humanity to its unnatural psychological attachment to the shadows on the wall in Plato's Cave.

If this was actually true then there would be no reason for people to worship such 'art' and it wouldn't be a religion. You're giving Christianity another unearned characteristic.

The Bible is able to read you so serves this purpose.

Not sure what you meant by this, but the bible is just a book, not an intelligent entity.

No. The logical result of denying what the essence of religion offers is what allows humanity to kill on one day and cure on the next without batting an eye.

Which gets back to the argument that what you call the 'essence of religion' does not actually require religion to acquire. If this is actually true, then what allows the religious to kill?

The only reason subjective morality exists that justifies killing is because of humanity's loss of the experience of objective morality. This loss is normal for life in Plato's Cave. The purpose of the essence of religion is to awaken to the human condition

If the purpose of religion is to awaken to the human condition then I would say Christianity is a collossal failure. It preaches false origins of this condition and gives ridiculous advice on what to do about it.

[Epimethean]

Plato would likely have recoiled against the effects of christendom, christianity, etc., on the intellect.