[quote]From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ they said. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
II Kings 2:23-25 (NIV)[/quote]
This is a cultural difference. To the ancient Hebrews there was absolutely nothing wrong with God sending bears to rip the limbs off children for calling someone a baldhead. That made a lot of sense to them. It makes a lot of sense to post-modern Western minds conditioned to view bears ripping the limbs off children as an exclusively negative act. I see no reason to re-interpret ancient Hebrew concepts for the comfort of post-modern Western minds. I’m so much above doing anything so low-brow and vulgar.
Would anyone like to know the ancient Hebrew term for “baldhead”?
[quote]From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ they said. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
II Kings 2:23-25 (NIV)[/quote]
This is a cultural difference. To the ancient Hebrews there was absolutely nothing wrong with God sending bears to rip the limbs off children for calling someone a baldhead. That made a lot of sense to them. It makes a lot of sense to post-modern Western minds conditioned to view bears ripping the limbs off children as an exclusively negative act. I see no reason to re-interpret ancient Hebrew concepts for the comfort of post-modern Western minds. I’m so much above doing anything so low-brow and vulgar.
Would anyone like to know the ancient Hebrew term for “baldhead”?[/quote]
From TNIV
In context, it’s all about ridding the kingdom of false Gods and idols. Elijah has just been taken up to heaven in a ball of fire. Anybody would be a little stressed at that point.
[quote]From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ they said. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
II Kings 2:23-25 (NIV)[/quote]
This is a cultural difference. To the ancient Hebrews there was absolutely nothing wrong with God sending bears to rip the limbs off children for calling someone a baldhead. That made a lot of sense to them. It makes a lot of sense to post-modern Western minds conditioned to view bears ripping the limbs off children as an exclusively negative act. I see no reason to re-interpret ancient Hebrew concepts for the comfort of post-modern Western minds. I’m so much above doing anything so low-brow and vulgar.
Would anyone like to know the ancient Hebrew term for “baldhead”?[/quote]
[quote]From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ they said. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
II Kings 2:23-25 (NIV)[/quote]
This is a cultural difference. To the ancient Hebrews there was absolutely nothing wrong with God sending bears to rip the limbs off children for calling someone a baldhead. That made a lot of sense to them. It makes a lot of sense to post-modern Western minds conditioned to view bears ripping the limbs off children as an exclusively negative act. I see no reason to re-interpret ancient Hebrew concepts for the comfort of post-modern Western minds.[/quote]
To the ancient Hebrews, there was absolutely nothing wrong with God punishing youths (as the translation says, though you called them ‘children’ to increase the emotional effect of the passage), who were mocking an anointed prophet of God, in the full knowledge that this was blasphemy for which they were culpable under the nation’s social contract.
That made a lot of sense to them, just as it makes a lot of sense to post-modern Western minds to place impressionable youths in remand homes and juvenile detention centers for committing what society considers to be antisocial behaviour (even though such action is morally reprehensible and obviously evil).
No one suggested that doing such a thing was ‘low-brow and vulgar’.
I don’t see how that’s relevant.
You mean their ideas of right and wrong are different to yours. Since we discovered morality is relative and there is no such thing as ‘absolute morality’, that’s all you or I can say. There’s no absolute ‘right and wrong’, there’s just ‘different to what I think is right and wrong’. The guy who wrote the ‘evil Bible’ Website is describing what’s right and wrong for him. That’s great, that’s his idea of right and wrong, and that works for him. Where he goes wrong is trying to hold that up as some kind of carved in stone standard which applies to everyone else. It just doesn’t work that way. Morality is a social construct. We make it up as we go along. It doesn’t exist as some kind of absolute imperative or physical property of the universe.
You mean their ideas of right and wrong are different to yours. Since we discovered morality is relative and there is no such thing as ‘absolute morality’[/quote]
I don’t believe that. There are principles like consistency and fairness that make some systems of morality better than others, not just different. I actually believe that there is a platonic ideal system of right and wrong and the moral systems we have are an approximation of that but some are much farther from it than others.
I don’t believe this either - in a free society morals should converge asymptotically on this platonic ideal, a bit like the way science can converge asymptotically on perfect theories.
What’s offensive morally about the Bible and Quran is that the morality they have claims to be perfect but is quite obviously anything but - it was actually whatever was expedient for the rulers of the tribes that wrote the books but highly imperfect for any outsiders like slaves, foreigners or women. They’re the ones who are set up self serving ‘absolute systems of morality’ and claiming it was divinely inspired to shield them from criticism, the evil bible guy is just pointing out the flaws. It’s people like him that cause a societies system of morals to move closer to some platonic ideal, and it’s the religious types that try to stop this.
Actually your comment reminds me of a wonderful quip. I don’t remember where it comes from but someone said that some people believe in “liberals and cannibals. The liberals should be free to be liberals and the cannibals should be free to be cannibals”
[quote]From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ they said. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!’ He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
II Kings 2:23-25 (NIV)[/quote]
This is a cultural difference. To the ancient Hebrews there was absolutely nothing wrong with God sending bears to rip the limbs off children for calling someone a baldhead. That made a lot of sense to them. It makes a lot of sense to post-modern Western minds conditioned to view bears ripping the limbs off children as an exclusively negative act. I see no reason to re-interpret ancient Hebrew concepts for the comfort of post-modern Western minds. I’m so much above doing anything so low-brow and vulgar.
Would anyone like to know the ancient Hebrew term for “baldhead”?[/quote]
Not really…
What I would like to know is, how that curse works. Would be useful when snotty kids and their stupid parents point and shout “Bignose!” or “Ni kan, waiguoren!” Personally I don’t think that would be a negative act at all.
You mean their ideas of right and wrong are different to yours. Since we discovered morality is relative and there is no such thing as ‘absolute morality’[/quote]
I don’t believe that. There are principles like consistency and fairness that make some systems of morality better than others, not just different.[/quote]
Principles of ‘consistency and fairness’ are just ideas we use to shore up systems of morality of which we approve. We make all this stuff up as we go along. Even to speak of which systems of morality are ‘better than others’ is entirely subjective. It depends on how we define ‘better’.
Any system of right and wrong is ideal insofar as it satisfies our personal preferences. It’s all subjective.
But scratch the surface of this ‘platonic ideal’, and we just find KingZog’s personal preferences. This idea of a ‘platonic ideal’ is a concept of your own construction.
I’d like to see anything in the Bible which claims the Law of Moses is ‘perfect’. The Law of Moses is specifically declared to be imperfect in the Bible, and only applicable within a certain group of people for a certain time. Throughout the Bible numerous exceptions to it are made on the grounds of higher principles, and in the New Testament it is set aside entirely.
Of course the Law of Moses was not written by ‘the rulers of the tribes’, nor was it particularly expedient to them (especially as they bore greater culpability under the Law than the commoners). Within the Law of Moses there was no such thing as chattel slavery (though voluntary intentured service existed), and it was forbidden to enslave others against their will (Exodus 21:16). Any servant who left their master for any reason was granted their liberty and full legal protection (Deuteronomy 23:15-16). If these laws had been in force in America, plantation slavery would never have been possible.
As for foreigners, exactly the same law applied to them as to everyone else (Exodus 12:49), so there was no legal disenfranchisement. Hebrews were commanded by the Law to love the resident foreigner as family and uphold their legal rights (Leviticus 19:34, Deuteronomy 1:16; 10:19; 24:17; 27:19). The Hebrews’ social security system also provided specifically for the economically disadvantaged foreigner (Deuteronomy 24:19-21; 26:12). This might be ‘imperfect’, but it’s the kind of imperfection I wouldn’t mind suffering here in Taiwan. As for women, that’s such an involved subject given the number and nature of the texts and our respective personal backgrounds, it is unlikely we would agree on any of them (for example, I would consider adultery to be wrong no matter if it’s committed by a man or a woman).
Alas, no. The ‘evil Bible guy’ is simply expressing his personal prejudices. He has no interest in pursuing a ‘platonic ideal’ for the benefit of society, and he is effecting no moral change. He’s just ranting. A lot of the time he doesn’t even know what he’s ranting about, because he’s not reading the texts in their socio-cultural context. He also likes to describe anything recorded in the Bible as specifically commanded or approved by God, even if it wasn’t. In terms of striving for the ‘platonic ideal’, he could start by working on personal integrity and intellectual honesty.
You mean their ideas of right and wrong are different to yours. Since we discovered morality is relative and there is no such thing as ‘absolute morality’[/quote]
I don’t believe that. There are principles like consistency and fairness that make some systems of morality better than others, not just different.[/quote]
Principles of ‘consistency and fairness’ are just ideas we use to shore up systems of morality of which we approve. We make all this stuff up as we go along. Even to speak of which systems of morality are ‘better than others’ is entirely subjective. It depends on how we define ‘better’.[/quote]
Right so if Janjaweed militia (or for that matter ancient Israelites) invade your town, kill all the men, carry off the women as ‘wives’ and steal all the stuff, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. Their system of right and wrong is just different from yours, right?
No it isn’t. I have a set of preferences and so does everyone else. If we haggled and bargained the platonic ideal would be the result of that process over an infinite time.
More enlightened people’s preferences might be closer to this than less enlightened ones, but the point of Platonic ideals is that they can only be approximated. So I don’t know what the Platonic Ideal system is. Thogh you can extrapolate from liberalising trends and get some idea.
Actually part of the idea of a Platonic Ideal is that if I knew what it was I might disagree with some parts of it, in much the same way a pre Civil War southerner might disagree with abolishing slavery. Both me and him lack the Godlike perspective necessary to know why some things need to be changed. Of course the savages who wrote the Old Testament or Quran would disagree with even more than most people living in a civilised country in the 21st Century. So there is progress, and it’s that argument that convinces me that we are heading towards something.
But anyhow, that’s too abstract. What I can definitely do is say that the Janjaweed would be wrong to murder and enslave people. Their system of morality is worse than mine or yours.
One of the justifications for Christianity in particular is that it is a system of morality from God. And neither is true.
So he can either got free and leave his family or be marked as a chattel slave forever.
So long as your slaves take a couple of days to die from a beating, it is ok because they are property not people.
[quote]
As for foreigners, exactly the same law applied to them as to everyone else (Exodus 12:49), so there was no legal disenfranchisement. Hebrews were commanded by the Law to love the resident foreigner as family and uphold their legal rights (Leviticus 19:34, Deuteronomy 1:16; 10:19; 24:17; 27:19). The Hebrews’ social security system also provided specifically for the economically disadvantaged foreigner (Deuteronomy 24:19-21; 26:12). This might be ‘imperfect’, but it’s the kind of imperfection I wouldn’t mind suffering here in Taiwan. [/quote]
Hmm, but in the Bible women were property like slaves so they got killed for adultery. Men could own as many sex slaves as they wanted. Which is why adultery was only punished if the adulteress was female.
Women were regarded as booty, i.e. things, in wars too. Or rather they usually were, sometimes they were killed along with the men -
[quote]They attacked Midian just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed all the men. All five of the Midianite kings – Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba – died in the battle. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. Then the Israelite army captured the Midianite women and children and seized their cattle and flocks and all their wealth as plunder. They burned all the towns and villages where the Midianites had lived. After they had gathered the plunder and captives, both people and animals, they brought them all to Moses and Eleazar the priest, and to the whole community of Israel, which was camped on the plains of Moab beside the Jordan River, across from Jericho.
Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle. "Why have you let all the women live?" he demanded. "These are the very ones who followed Balaam's advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD's people. Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves..[/quote]
Note it’s the Lord and Moses that decide this, not some random Israelites. It’s not just history, it’s supposed to be telling us how to behave.
Admittedly you can find passages that are good and ones that are bad. The problem is the bad ones can be used by rulers to given a Biblical gloss to any atrocity they feel the need to do. It’s not done with the Bible much these days, but it has been in the past. And it is still done with the Quran - look at how Saddam Hussein used the ‘sword verses’ to justify his assault on the Kurds. Or how Christians before the Enlightenment used the Old Testament.
Secular morality isn’t as spotty as this - rape and murder are always illegal, not legal (and actually advised) when there’s a war on.
Alas, no. The ‘evil Bible guy’ is simply expressing his personal prejudices. He has no interest in pursuing a ‘platonic ideal’ for the benefit of society, and he is effecting no moral change. He’s just ranting. [/quote]
That ranting serves a purpose - it’s to make people realise that Biblical morality is often just plain wrong. Of course back when Christians controlled the state he would probably have been killed for blasphemy or something.
Muslims say exactly the same thing. Actually the raping and pillaging in the Quran is much worse morally, since lots of it was done by Muhammed himself, who is supposed to be infallible, unlike the Israelites in the bible. So it’s not too surprising that the Muslim Janjaweed behaved the way they do - they’re emulating ‘that most perfect of men’.
[quote=“Charlie Jack”][quote=“Dr. McCoy”]I hope that we can dispense with the arguments. You guys can start your own thread.
And blessing upon thy heads.[/quote]
What have they been talking about? I saw something up there about the Janjaweed militia and Plato. It sounds pretty complicated.[/quote]
My rule is not to read any post that I have to scroll. So let it be written. So let it be done.
Sometimes, quickly scrolling down through the posts using the “Page Down” key can produce a mildly invigorating effect like that of, say, a cup of strong tea.
Of course I would not say there’s nothing at all wrong with that. From my point of view there is. But I could hardly say that there’s anything right or wrong with that, in an absolute sense. Where there’s no absolute morality, then their system of right or wrong is just different from mine, yes. I would of course say that what they did was heinous, but that’s just my opinion.
[quote]No it isn’t. I have a set of preferences and so does everyone else. If we haggled and bargained the platonic ideal would be the result of that process over an infinite time.
More enlightened people’s preferences might be closer to this than less enlightened ones, but the point of Platonic ideals is that they can only be approximated. So I don’t know what the Platonic Ideal system is. Thogh you can extrapolate from liberalising trends and get some idea.[/quote]
This is an excellent case of question begging. You’re saying there’s something out there we can’t know, but we can know when we’re getting close to it, and we can know that ‘liberalising trends’ get close to it.
But your definition of ‘progress’ is simply ‘What I think is right according to the way I’ve been socially conditioned’. It’s completely subjective.
But you can’t say that. There is no absolute morality. You’re treating it as if it’s a physical property of the universe, or something absolutely quantifiable. It isn’t. It’s all just made up. Most people seem not to know this, and many nations have some kind of cultural conditioning or historical legend which justifies their particular morality, but it’s all just made up. Americans seem to think that human rights were carved in stone and given to Thomas Jefferson by the Supreme Being when Jefferson ascended Mount Rushmore, but amazingly that’s not true either. Human rights are just things we made up. They’re social control mechanisms, nothing more. People invent morality to control other people. Read some Richard Dawkins. Morality is simply selfish behaviour. It’s a meme which our genes have developed for their own survival (and yes this is oversimplifying, please read Dawkins).
Please read the links I provided, then you’ll know.
No, he is not a chattel slave in any case. Please read the links I provided. You don’t know what a chattel slave is.
No that is not what it is saying. This is covered in the links I gave. Please read them if you’re going to continue this discussion. It’s disappointing when people attempt to hold forth on subjects concerning which they are ignorant, whilst claiming knowledge.
[quote]Foreigners clearly have less rights than Hebrews.
I note you once again avoided my point. The ‘male or female slaves from among the foreigners’ are indentured servants who voluntarily sell themselves into servitude to pay their debts. They are not chattel slaves, and they had the capacity to free themselves at will even though they were not automatically released in the 7th year of debt release like the Hebrews. So there’s one difference between how they’re treated and how the Hebrews are treated. What about the list of rights I gave? No comment on them? I don’t even enjoy those same rights here in Taiwan. How about that? Remember, you were trying to tell me how badly foreigners are treated in the Bible. Apparently you haven’t actually read the Bible yourself, you’ve just accepted uncritically someone else’s rants about it instead of thinking for yourself.
Utterly false. Men were also killed for adultery, and women were not property treated like slaves (Proverbs 31).
Chapter and verse please.
I don’t think an adulteress can be male, so I’m not sure what you point is.
If you want to make an argument about how women were regarded, you need to do better than select a random verse which you admit is unrepresentative.
No, it’s telling them how to behave in one given situation.
How about that? I bet the good ones don’t find their way onto ‘evil bible’.
Well yes, and when it comes to secular morality ‘even the good ones’ can be used by rulers to give a humanitarian gloss to any atrocity they feel the need to do. Your point?
Well here’s the rub, that depends on what you mean by ‘rape’ and ‘murder’. Legally ‘statutory rape’ is ‘rape’, but according to secular morality there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s also entirely legal to throw a man in prison with the full knowledge that he’s going to be repeatedly and violently raped without anyone taking any action to pervent it or seek to punish the perpetrators (who are taught, de facto, that it is not actually legally or morally wrong to rape this man).
Legally ‘murder’ is wrong, but according to both secular morality and the law, killing people against their will is entirely moral and legal given certain circumstances. You just need to redefine the act as something other than ‘murder’ (call it ‘execution’, or ‘suppressing hostiles’), and you’re good. Apparently kidnapping is wrong, but it’s ok to arrest a man and throw him in jail for the term of his natural life against his will. It’s all relative, isn’t it?
No, it simply expresses his opinion. If his opinion constituted absolute morality, then I would agree with you. I see no evidence that it does.
It’s amazing how much history you’re unaware of. Christian criticisms of the Bible have been written for over 1,500 years without people being killed for blasphemy.
Again, you’re avoiding my point. Some do Muslims say the same thing, and in some cases they are absolutely right.
Of course I would not say there’s nothing at all wrong with that. From my point of view there is. But I could hardly say that there’s anything right or wrong with that, in an absolute sense. Where there’s no absolute morality, then their system of right or wrong is just different from mine, yes. I would of course say that what they did was heinous, but that’s just my opinion.[/quote]
I honestly don’t know how you can believe that.
I suppose an analogy would be that you can extrapolate scientific progress to a Grand Unified Theory without knowing what that theory is.
No, progress is decided democratically. I might disagree with it or agree. And extreme example would be that in the same way that homosexuality has been legalised and normalised future societies might do the same for lots of other types of sexuality which are illegal. I may not approve, but that’s tough shit.
Well this is bizarre. One of the most notable things about Dawkins is that he thinks the morality in the Bible and Quran is wrong, not just different to his.
Chattel slave means property, right? The links I gave say you can buy 'em and sell 'em. That sounds like chattel slavery to me.
I have read it. But that doesn’t matter really, either the quotes on Evil Bible are genuine in which case the Old Testament is morally deeply flawed, or they’re fake. Talking vaguely about context and interpretation won’t convince me.
Chapter and verse please.[/quote]
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
Pick any of the verses on Evil Bible that talks about the Lord/Moses telling the Israelites to kill men and enslaving women after a battle.
And there’s no way some warlord might say “our situation is very similar to this one, here’s what God tells us to do”
How about that? I bet the good ones don’t find their way onto ‘evil bible’.[/quote]
Well, so what. It’s an attack site. The fact that it’s selective doesn’t make it untrue.
Well yes, and when it comes to secular morality ‘even the good ones’ can be used by rulers to give a humanitarian gloss to any atrocity they feel the need to do. Your point?[/quote]
My point is that Christianity doesn’t make people moral, and in fact it can give them an excuse for being highly immoral. If it can’t do that I’ll take my chances with secular morality, which is at least open to criticism and amendment.
It’s still not legal, and it’s a scandal that people allow this to happen.
This is completely crazy! I don’t really agree with capital punishment but murder is not the same as execution. Though since you claim not to believe in any morality at all, I can see how everything seems a bit blurry.
No, it simply expresses his opinion. If his opinion constituted absolute morality, then I would agree with you. I see no evidence that it does.[/quote]
He’s not as far as I can tell. He is saying the moral system in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament is highly warped and he’s right.
Anyhow if there is no objective morality and everyone’s subjective morality is equally valid, why do you waste time arguing about it? If you really believe that my system is just as good or bad as the Dali Lamas’s or the Mao Zedong’s or the Janjaweed’s. Or Hitler’s, to Godwin this discussion before we both get banned for posting Walls Of Text
It’s simple. Morality is something people invent. It’s not a physical property or law of the universe. It’s just whatever we make up. There’s no absolute ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, there’s just opinion.
That’s not an appropriate analogy. We know what the Grand Unified Theory is, it’s the theory which properly relates all of the four universal forces to each other. We haven’t determined that theory yet, but we have scientifically established evidence which indicates that such a theory exists and that it is knowable. This is not comparable to your ‘Platonic ideal’, for which no evidence exists, is not testable, and which you acknowledge is unknowable.
In other words ‘completely subjective’.
If you don’t approve, in what sense do you call this ‘progress’?
I know he does. That doesn’t change what I wrote. Ask Dawkins if there’s any such thing as absolute morality, and read his books, and then tell me what you think he’s saying. Have you read
No, sorry, you have clearly not read the links. Chattel slavery does not simply mean ‘property’, and 'you can by 'em and sell ‘em’ does not necessarily property. This is all covered in detail in the links I provided, which cite standard secular reference sources for the issues under discussion. The ‘buying or selling’ relates to people voluntarily selling themselves into indentured service. This does not render them property or a chattel slave. A chattel slave by definition is not in a social contract such as indentured service. Chattel slavery is involuntary, and the chattel slave has no legal rights, no kinship rights, and no means of release. Please read the links I provided if you wish to speak meaningfully on this subject.
But I’m not ‘Talking vaguely about context and interpretation’. I am talking very specifically. You think those servants in the Law of Moses are chattel slaves. They aren’t. You think they are, just because you’ve been told to. But you have no knowledge of their true position because you have not even read the provisions listed under the Law of Moses, which identify them as indentured servants, not chattel slaves, and which provide the very rights you claimed are denied them. You’re not simply reading the quotes provided by ‘Evil Bible’, you’re accepting blindly and uncritically the interpretation which accompanies them, even though they have been provided outside the context which proves that interpretation to be false.
This is supposed to be the passage which says ‘Men could own as many sex slaves as they wanted’. Alas, it says nothing of the sort. It’s speaking of bride sale. The daughter purchased in a ‘bride sale’ enjoyed kinship rights, marriage rights, personal legal rights relating to physical protection and protection from breach of contract, freedom of movement, and access to liberty through the fulfillment of her marriage contract. She was not a ‘sex slave’, and there is nothing in this passage which says that men could have ‘as many sex slaves as they wanted’. Of course you didn’t read that part of the article to which I linked, or the relevant section of the other article to which I linked, which points out that the Hebrew word used here ‘is not the word for a chattel slave, or even the word for a hired employee’.
Let me save you some time and inform you that if you want to discuss these subjects at this level, you need to learn a lot more about them. I actually do know a lot about them. I know a great deal about them. I have studied them in detail, and I have read many of the standard scholarly works on these subjects.
On the other hand, I know next to nothing about the history of Chinese characters, so you won’t find me entering a discussion in another part of this forum trying to hold forth knowledgeably on the subject of the history of Chinese characters simply on the basis of a few bits and pieces I found on a random Internet site and which I’m quoting simply because it agrees with my prejudices.
Well that’s just the point. After picking all of them, I find that they’re unrepresentative.
He may indeed. That doesn’t change the fact that the passage is telling them how to behave in one given situation.
The fact that it’s selective means that it is not telling the whole truth. The author isn’t interested in telling the whole truth. He’s only interested in manipulating the truth, so he can manipulate people like you.
Neither Christianity nor secular morality ‘makes people moral’, and both can give people an excuse for being highly immoral. People choose to be moral. Welcome to the real world. And if you honestly think that Christian morality is not ‘open to criticism and amendment’, then where have you been in the last 2,000 years? There’s an avalanche of scholarly literature on the centuries of criticism and amendment of Christian morality, by Christians.
Of course it’s legal. Men are legally thrown into prison to be raped every day. Where’s the law which says it’s illegal? Where are all the crowds of secular protesters? There are no crowds of secular protesters, because it’s legal and people are fine with it.
Well there you go, you see? You’ve proved my point. Of course murder is not the same execution. But what you call ‘execution’ is called ‘murder’ by another person. It’s all subjective. Sometimes killing someone is called ‘murder’, sometimes ‘manslaughter’, sometimes ‘execution’, sometimes ‘friendly fire’, sometimes ‘suppressing hostiles’. The very act of killing someone is not considered illegal or immoral. What is considered illegal or immoral is the act of killing someone in certain circumstances. In different circumstances, the act of killing someone is considered praiseworthy.
I have never said that.
You can only say that he’s right if you acknowledge him as an absolute authority, or demonstrate that his view is in agreement with some other absolute authority. Otherwise it’s just his opinion.
Because your entire argument concerning the Bible (which is what I’m really here to debate), is based on the naïve but false belief that there is an absolute objective morality. That’s worth debating. People who believe that there’s an absolute objective morality are usually dangerous, especially because they want everyone else to behave the way they think is right. I’m sure we all know what happens next.
[quote]Quote:
And extreme example would be that in the same way that homosexuality has been legalised and normalised future societies might do the same for lots of other types of sexuality which are illegal. I may not approve, but that’s tough shit.
If you don’t approve, in what sense do you call this ‘progress’? [/quote]
That IS a “sticky” question…lol
Absolute Morality/ Human Rights?
False assumptions/constructs limited only by the scope of human imagination.
Warm 'n Cozy concepts we often wrap ourselves in so that we might sleep better.
… sigh…Rivers of blood over the millenniums…and oceans more to be spilled.
[quote]* Chattel slavery: A dehumanising form of servitude which was identical to that practiced on the plantations, and most properly termed ’slavery’ in its most negative sense. The individual was mere property in the same sense as a piece of furniture and not recognised as a human being. The individual had no kinship rights, no marriage rights, no property rights, personal legal rights relating to physical protection and protection from breach of contract, no freedom of movement, and no access to liberty.
Because the individual was property in the truest sense, the master was not accountable in any way for his treatment of the individual. He was no more accountable for beating or killing his slave than he was for breaking his own chair. The individual could be bought or sold at the discretion of the master. Chattel slavery was always involuntary, coercive, and terminal (the individual was a slave until death, with no means of obtaining liberty).
‘A [chattel] slave was property. The slaveowner’s rights over his slave-property were total, covering the person as well as the labor of the slave. The slave was kinless, stripped of his or her old social identity in the process of capture, sale and deracination, and denied to capacity to forge new bonds of kinship through marriage alliance. These are the three basic components of [chattel] slavery.’
Peter Garnsey, ‘Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine’, 1996, page 1, as quoted by Glenn Miller, ‘Does God condone slavery in the Bible?’, 2005
Whilst chattel slavery was present in the ANE, it was not the only form of servitude and it was not the dominant form of servitude:[/quote]
[quote]When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)
[/quote]
Now your site says that chattel slaves must have absolutely no rights “like furniture” and I suppose if you believe this you can say that Hebrews didn’t have chattel slaves. But the Romans, who certainly did have chattel slaves did still punish occasionally pass laws limiting how their owners could mistreating them.
[quote]Slavery
In its narrowest sense, the word slave refers to people who are treated as the property of another person, household, company, corporation or government. This is referred to as chattel slavery.[/quote]
The foreign slaves I mentioned meet this defintion.
Your site is just playing semantic games. If you define chattle slavery restrictively enough, you can claim any society didn’t have. But look at the wkipedia definition. And once you get past all this stuff, there is still the deep problem that the society described in the Bible was much more unequal than ours and its system of morality reflects this. Most people would regard that as unjust and therefore wrong.
But hey that’s just my opinion, right? If someone wants to beat and rape their slaves or servants they might think it’s ok and who am I (or the servants?) to say they are wrong.
Incidentally, how do you feel about the police? Aren’t they wrong for imposing their subjective morality on people? If someone wanted to mug you because they felt they deserved your money, what right do the police have to object?
